The ex factor | 22 November 2018

It is easy to assume that the contours of art history are unchanging, its major landmarks fixed for ever. Actually, like all histories it is a matter of shifting perspectives. As we move through time, the view backwards constantly alters.

The rising and falling critical estimations of the painter Richard Smith are a case in point. Had you asked an art-world insider in 1963 who the brightest rising star of British art was there is a strong chance — though other names such as David Hockney might have been mentioned — that the answer would have been Smith (1931–2016).

Appropriately, 1963 is the end date of an excellent little show at Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert gallery. This collates many of the most impressive pictures from Smith’s earliest and most seductive period. At that time he was working in a fluid boundary zone between what was later termed ‘colour field abstraction’ and what was about to be dubbed ‘pop art’.