Page 46 - Studio International - January 1966

The longing for charm is, however, a bit better served intellectual than the painting we find in Florence. Yet
further down Bond Street, where the show by Gunter Beccafumi was, for all that, under the spell of Michel-
Haese is just closing at the Marlborough Gallery. angelo. It was long held that two of the drawings
Haese is that unexpected thing in modern art—a exhibited at Agnew's were in fact portraits of
sculptor whose work is thoroughly domestic. Small in Michelangelo himself, though this is now doubted.
scale, his airy constructions would adorn any mantel- The real fascination of the sketchbook lay in its variety
piece. Yet he is something more than a maker of very —variety of technique, of manner and of mood. The
expensive toys. These gossamer things embody a drawings showed this rather feminine talent submitting
fantasy which is related to Klee. Set in motion, the piece now to one influence and now to another. A metallic
called New York Spring judders and trembles—and nude in the characteristic yellowish red chalk of the
suddenly one sees the haze shimmering round the new period hung next to a sheet covered with nervous pen
skyscrapers on Park Avenue, and sees the leaf bursting and ink studies. Elsewhere there was an angel in pen
out on the trees in Central Park. Here is an entirely and wash which might almost have been taken from a,
European vision of America, one which still retains its sketchbook of Tiepolo's. The whole thing was a
innocence. The delicacy with which the constructions warning against making rash attributions where Old
move, the fragile gaiety of the shadows they cast— Master drawings are concerned.
these, added to a fertile inventiveness, bring us a very Upstairs Agnew's were staging, in aid of Enterprise
lyrical kind of art. The trouble with lyrics, as with Neptune, a brilliant small exhibition of English pictures
unseasonable nightingales, is that they can on occasion of the period 1730-1830 drawn from National Trust
prove exceedingly irritating with their repetitious houses. This hovered between the traditional view of
sweetness. Nevertheless this was a show which gave English painting, and the one which has just begun to
me a great deal of pleasure. prevail. Thus, there were a few full-length portraits in
There was pleasure, too, at Agnew's, in two the grand manner—a marvellous Gainsborough of a
distinguished exhibitions which overlapped for a while. Duchess of Richmond with flaming red hair, and a
One was a show of drawings by the early sixteenth wonderfully effete and elegant Romney of the young
century Sienese artist, Domenico Beccafumi. Beccafumi William Beckford. This picture, which shows us a
(though there is still no good book about him) is now Beckford still unhurried and unsullied, in the years
recognised as one of the most important of the first before the Powderham Castle scandal broke that was
generation of Mannerist artists in Italy. These drawings, to drive him from society and (for some years at least)
all from one sketchbook, enabled one to see exactly from England itself, had one curiously prophetic detail.
where his talent lay. He was not, like the Florentines The young man is leaning on a plinth, and on this
Pontormo and Rosso, a tormented neurotic. His art, plinth there is carved a bas-relief. A figure with
like Sienese art in general, is blander, sweeter, less streaming hair sits bent in sorrow, another stands and
gazes dumbly on. How did this melancholy emblem
come to be placed there, and what is it supposed to
Domenico Beccafumi represent? A minor mystery to add to the many which
Head of a boy wearing a turban
Black chalk on paper already surround a mysterious man. Other pictures
8 1/2 x 5 3/4 in. catered to the fashionable taste for sporting subjects
Agnew's
and conversation-pieces. These included stunning
Hogarths and Stubbses.
Still available to be enjoyed is another 'non-
contemporary' exhibition—that of icons at the Temple
Gallery in Yeoman's Row. It would be a pity if the
somewhat isolated position of the gallery caused the
show to be overlooked. Good icons are seldom seen
in England; and English museums are poorly provided
with them. This show is notable for the number of
early examples. The 14th-century Byzantine Christ
Pantocrator which is the first item in a scholarly
catalogue brings us face to face with a great civilisation
and a noble religious idea. This image of godhead
makes, now I think of it, a curious contrast with
Hockney's ironies—an art which believes in nothing (or,
so the artist seems to assert) confronts an art for which
belief is everything.
Yet this is not to condemn what Hockney is trying to
do. It is uncertainty which is the bane of artists—apart
from that, one doctrine seems (very often) to serve as
well as another, even the firm belief that one can
subscribe to no doctrines at all. A fatal havering and
wavering was what spoilt—for me at any rate—the
exhibition of Belgian Art of the period 1884-1918
which was recently on view at the Arts Council. At
this epoch, Belgium was a cultural cross-roads. The
trouble with the painters of the time was that they
didn't know which arm of the signpost to follow.
Expressionism, Art Nouveau, Impressionism, Pointillism
—Belgian art lurched from one to the other. The most