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Authors of Erudition
What is the reason or reasons?
for there are more than one. A new book with the significant title
of Private View* sets out to examine this situation under
the joint authorship of John Russell and Bryan Robertson, illustrated
with photographs by Lord Snowdon and reproductions of many works
by the artists mentioned. In Part I 'The breakthrough 1945-65' John
Russell, author and art critic of The Sunday Times, considers
with an informed detachment the set-up as it was in 1939 when, as
he says, art 'was still the distraction of a superior minority',
a minority that was incapable of transforming the general indifference
of the public which could allow opportunities of buying Seurat,
Cézanne, Picasso and Braque paintings to pass without recognition.
The fault, it will be observed, was not the dealers; they could
and did obtain the exhibitions: their reward was bills for carriage,
insurance, catalogues and much else. Then after the Peace came the
reconstruction of the art schools, the galleries, the forming of
the Arts Council and the spate of excellent historically important
exhibitions at the Royal Academy, the Tate Gallery and more recently
at the Whitechapel Art Gallery. More indirectly effective was the
inspired publishing of excellent books on art generally by authors
of erudition and authority of whom Sir Herbert Read is by far the
most influential as regards the contemporary movement of art in
Great Britain.
By sale room and aeroplane
Other vital factors, as 'J.R.' points out, are
the sale room and the aeroplane. Collectors and dealers fly to London
from all over the world for important sales and for equally important
exhibitions. Mr. Ernst Beyeler of Basle and Mr. AimÈ Maeght
of Paris are just as likely to greet me at a private view in a Curzon
Street gallery as in the scented giardini at the Venice Biennale.
But it is to the new crop of dealers in London that much of the
credit of success is due. To the older established if unfortunately
prematurely active galleries such as the Leicester and the Redfern,
were added Gimpel Fils, the Hanover and most dynamic of all the
Marlborough Fine Art which brought all the methods of promotion
and positively forceful selling that was in tune with the age we
live in. The Institute of Contemporary Arts provided a forum for
discussion and exhibition that was unique in a capital where private
drawingrooms were the customary places for arriving at conclusions
about art and artists. This section for all its brevity sums up
the major forces at work that have produced the status quo with
a succinct accuracy.
The senior artists
Part 2 titled 'The senior artists-an analysis
of achievement' in 104 pages reviews the careers of painters and
sculptors who inevitably are headed by Henry Moore, without a doubt
the greatest living sculptor in the world, followed by Ben Nicholson,
Barbara Hepworth, Ivon
Hitchens, John Piper, L. S. Lowry, Graham Sutherland,
Victor Pasmore, William Scott, Francis Bacon, Sidney Nolan, Patrick
Heron, the late Peter Lanyon, Eduardo Paolozzi, William Turnbull,
Reg Butler, Elisabeth Frink (a senior artist? one suddenly feels
ancient), Bernard Meadows, Lynn Chadwick, Kenneth Armitage, F. E.
McWilliam, Robert Adams, Robert Medley, Ceri Richards, Keith Vaughan,
Merlyn Evans, Roger Hilton, Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach, Henry
Mundy, Patrick George, Prunella Clough, Donald Hamilton Fraser,
Adrian Heath, Alan Davie. By now the list is so long that the authors'
excuse of an arbitrary choice dictated by space will no longer hold
water. Most of the artists are well known: their works have been
reproduced and there has been articles about most of them in previous
numbers of this magazine. But omissions are the more startling for
their obviousness; where is Geoffrey Clarke, Bryan Kneale, John
Hoskin, Robin Philipson, Michael Tain, Alan Reynolds, Arthur Boyd,
Leon Underwood, Buskin Spear? 'The missing men' is perhaps the most
intriguing section of the book.
Power and its background
'Power and its background' is the dialogue between
John Russell and Bryan Robertson (who is the energetic director
of the Whitechapel Art Gallery where most of the important one-man
retrospective exhibitions of living British artists have been held
since 1952). This part deals with art schools, their function and
their growing importance with special reference to the Royal College
of Art, the Slade and the St. Martin's School of Art which has become
the nursery of the most experimental sculpture under Anthony Caro.
It also criticises the activities of the Tate Gallery and suggests
how progress could be made in its exhibition policy; the composition
of its board of trustees is also discussed. Public patronage and
tribute to such bodies as the Peter Stuyvesant Foundation and the
Contemporary Art Society are topics for pointed comment, also the
relationship of architects with the artists. Memories of maladroit
handling of recent exhibitions at the Tate are recalled by Bryan
Robertson when he writes: 'Architects seem to despise painters and
sculptors or feel in competition with them or else they simply don't
understand the nature of a painting and sculpture'. Exceptions to
this generalisation are obvious such as Eugene Rosenberg, Denys
Lasdun and, of course, Sir Basil Spence.
Dealers and the System
Critics come in for mention too and with regret
for the poverty of space afforded them in most newspapers as well
as the encouragement of the knocking criticism which is not criticism
at all but a prejudiced attitude towards something that offends
by its very novelty. Dealers and the System, so called, are the
subject of honest assessment with a fair recognition that most dealers
are worthy of praise rather than the condemnation they occasionally
get, often from unsuccessful artists. (By an extraordinary feat
of arriere pensee, this part which one is reminded is called
'Power and its background' concludes with spreads dealing with Roy
de Maistre, Mary and Kenneth Martin, Josef Herman and David Jones.)
The New Generation
The last part of the book which is over 100
pages long is devoted to 'The New Generation' though again the age
grouping is somewhat arbitrary-is Richard Hamilton, for example,
really junior to Eduardo Paolozzi with whom he has collaborated
more than once? We are introduced to many younger artists, it is
true, ranging from those who have gained reputations as early as
Jack Smith who about 1952 was a wellknown realist of the so-called
Kitchen Sink School that showed at the Beaux Arts Gallery. Others
of more recent vintage include the diversely talented American long
settled here: R. B. Kitaj, Richard Smith, Anthony Caro, Bridget
Riley, Philip Sutton, the Cohen brothers, Peter Blake, Joe Tilson,
David Hockney, Gwyther Irwin, Phillip King, Antony Donaldson, Patrick
Procktor, Derek Boshier, Brian Wall, Michael Andrews, Peter Phillips,
Anthony Fry, Brett Whiteley, Howard Hodgkin, George Fullard, Michael
Fussell and several others. The joint authors alternate their commentaries.
Primary visual impact
If the foregoing stresses the textual contributions
it must be emphasised that the book's primary impact is visual,
from the misty cover plate in colour of a Henry Moore reclining
woman to the 267 monochrome plates and 101 illustrations in full
colour. Lord Snowdon's photography throughout is brilliantly composed
and his collaboration with Germano Facetti in the typography and
layout will inspire art editors for years to come when a general
interest magazine is speculating on the inclusion of a feature about
art. Gems of camera studies include those reproduced with this review
and of the others a reference can be no less than of the arbitrary
kind condemned above. One looks straight into the faces of such
well-known figures as Sir Herbert Read 'without compliments'. Sir
Anthony Blunt (a vividly dramatic portrait with a Picasso transparency
reflected on his eye), Mr. Fischer and Mr. Lloyd of Marlborough
Fine Art doing their well-timed double act, Barbara Hepworth as
a wool-wrapped Cornish pixy, Mrs. Helen Lessore, unforgettably solemn,
seated on a couch at the late Beaux Arts Gallery-these and scores
of others earmark this book as a bound gallery of photographs that
alone are worth the money. Allied to the text of two of the best-informed
writers on the contemporary art scene in Great Britain, they make
Private View a fascinating album of personalities now. It
is already the 'Debrett' of art-if you are not in it, you are 'out'.
• Private View. By Bryan Robertson John
Russell Lord Snowdon. (London: Thomas Nelson & Sons Ltd.) 13‚
x 10i in. 298 pp. £7 7s.
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