Page 12 - Art First: Dan Sturgis: Strict and Lax

modernist paint ing, implying ideas of pro gress or aping indus trial manu fac -

ture’, Sturgis says. But his use of concur rent series and multiples are also
a means of working method ically, mov ing his paint ing along incre men tally.
Ωey allow for the exploration of small things, change, order and di¹erence,
for experimentation. Ωey acknowledge and di¹use aspects of the realities

of modernist painting history but they do so in a painterly way.

It strikes me, as I write this, that Daniel Sturgis’s fondness for the o¹hand
may mark him as a very English artist. Writ ing of a work in an earlier show,

he described its composition as being ‘politely posi tioned’. It is an inter est ing
[9 ] choice of words. Rather than set ting the disparate elements of his paint ings
against each other, Sturgis intro duces them to each other—irony to painter -
liness, postmodernism to modernism, frivolity to seriousness. Ωe meet ing

is amiable rather than combative, aimed at reaching consen sus. Ωere is never
any doubt, though, who is calling the shots. ‘Politeness sounds like a neutral
thing, but it is actually more power ful than that’, Sturgis says. ‘It starts by ask -
ing the question, What is the etiquette here?’