Page 63 - Studio International - September 1966

them to you!' This is brisk satire, and a gloss is is unaware. If this is true it naturally gives free Neo-Classicism
added when Moore himself admits to have early rein to his sophisticated and literate celebrants.
given up on Mr Erich Neumann's book The Mr James tells us that in these collected statements English Neo-classical Art: Studies in Inspiration and
Archetypal World of Henry Moore on grounds which `the loose grammar, the impromptu interjections, Taste by David Irwin
amount to an inability to stomach his own work the use of vernacular, have all been allowed to 230 pages of text, 158 monochrome illustrations
being further explained to him. stay' and doubtless they will add to the image of Faber and Faber £4 4s
The source of this whole comedy goes back to our greatest living sculptor as, in the words of the
Jean-Jacques Rousseau's belief in the noble savage T.L.S. review I have quoted, 'a resolute, candid David Irwin's book is the first manifestation of a
as a creature so potent in his innocence that he and simple figure'. 'Simple' is the keynote. It is a reviving interest in the Neo-Classical movement,
could create a golden age. This figure is scarcely patronizing adjective, 'candid' augments it, and an interest which will become more general in the
more fanciful than the Romantic view of the artist Moore has surely needed resolution in order to next few years and can be guaranteed to swell to
with which it has become closely associated. More withstand the implication. a climax when the Council of Europe stages its
recently, aesthetic doctrines expounded by Bene- The coherence and evolution of Moore's thought Neo-Classical exhibition in 1970. By that time, it
detto Croce and Bernard Berenson have been is often expressed simply. His grammar is often is hoped, a symposium of scholars will be ready
followed by several generations of trend-setters `loose' in these collected interviews, as whose is and able further to define this most shapely, yet
who, in their consensus of taste and opinion, have not in interview? But anyone who thinks Moore is elusive, of revivals. Indeed, Dr Irwin's book will
assumed attitudes beneath cultural umbrellas playing with nothing in his head, would be well be an indispensable manual for the organizers of
which any heavy shower of intelligence would advised to read him on Michelangelo's Rondanini that exhibition: the illustrations alone should
surely penetrate. Berenson's opinion of the artist— Pieta, on tribal art, on the Greeks, on Sumer, and lighten their burden considerably, while the
of all artists at all times—may be gauged from this above all, on the relationship between flesh and chapter headings, which permit an excursion into
quotation from his Aesthetics and History: 'Thanks bone implied in sculpture and the intentions the Gothick taste, review contemporary attitudes
to the weaning of the work of art from its begetter implicit in his own two-piece figures. to Dante, and look across the Channel to current
we can uphold the instinctiveness, spontaneity and The introduction includes various penetrating opinions on the Continent, may prove to be the
consequent irresponsibility of the artist in his act aperçus from scholars and journalists who have dis- very basis on which certain rooms of the exhibition
of conceiving. He indulges in free play with his covered for themselves the relationship between are mounted.
gifts and has nothing in his head.' Moore's reclining figures and landscape, or noted, What the author has not done, for the Council
This too is a buttered statement celebrating the with acute perception, that he looked hard at of Europe or for students of this particular subject,
artist's endemic inability to use his loaf. Poor Pisan sculpture before carving the Claydon is to provide a comprehensible historical and
simpleton, he can only play. Fortunately, there Madonna, as if Moore himself had not acknow- philosophical framework into which the move-
are cultured persons on hand to explain what he ledged his debt to the Pisani five years earlier in ment can be fitted, and to isolate and examine the
is playing at, whilst had he been able to explain words. Resolute he is and doubtless candid, but if successive waves of feeling not only for Roman and
himself, where would these persons' reputations Moore is simple then I have considerable diffi- Greek art but for the soul of classical or even
be gained and where would their bread and butter culty and a positive aversion to expressing myself primitive man. We are still short of books on the
come from ? fluently. ambiguous area in which 'taste' shades off into
I myself have recently experienced a wonderfully yearning, nostalgia, religion. Dr Irwin is too scru-
frank example of the concept under discussion in a pulous a scholar to venture into generalizations
notice from Mr John Russell in The Sunday Times. Hayter and the colour print which can only perhaps be supported by reference
`The basic subject matter of the show,' he wrote, to contemporary gossip or to shoddy literature,
`is so well explained in the preface (to the cata- New Ways of Gravure by S. W. Hayter with an and only the two pages of his conclusion cast off
logue) that there is not really a great deal left introduction by Sir Herbert Read in a moderate attempt to survey the whole field.
over for the bronzes to get to work on.' This means 298 pages, 134 illustrations, But to deny the volume of passion and belief
that had I failed to write in two hours (upon request Oxford University Press, £3 10s. behind the Neo-Classical movement is partially to
from Studio International) a four hundred word state- embalm it, and while studies in 'taste' will please
ment of intention, which was thereafter reproduced This book has been out of print for many years and the scholar and the amateur, they may fall short
in the catalogue, the two years I spent upon the Oxford University Press are to be congratulated of doing justice to the painters and sculptors them-
sculpture might not have been wasted on Mr Russell. on this beautifully produced edition. selves.
It is a curious fact in the visual arts in this It first appeared in the U.S.A. and England in Neo-Classicism, political in France, academic in
century—as opposed to any other—that a coherent 1949, and immediately acted as an extension of Germany, and uncharacteristically cosmopolitan
expression of principle or intention concerning S. W. Hayter's influence (of himself and of his in Italy, was mainly a social affair in England, an
work in progress or completed, motivates strongly workshop Atelier 17). There are three new affair, that is to say, of upper-class collecting and
against its acceptance in certain quarters to such chapters in this edition and, notably, a number of patronage. Yet one member of the great trilogy of
an extent that the ability to make a coherent colour illustrations. Neo-Classical masters was English: in this con-
statement is considered to indicate a fundamental Taken together with the companion book About nexion Flaxman is every bit as prestigious as
flaw in the character and talent of the artist. Prints, it is possible not only to follow and under- David and Canova. Compared with personalities
What a Mantegna with his complicated alle- stand Hayter's philosophy of the function of the like these, the vase-collectors and editors of folios
gorical programming would have made of this artist and print maker in society today, but how he of engravings may strike us as a pretty frigid lot.
situation is difficult to conceive. He would surely discovered new ways of etching both in black and It is of course true that much research into the
have found our twentieth-century rejection of any white and in colour. background is needed before we are able to isolate
connexion between literate intention and emo- It was in New York that he really began experi- the figures in the foreground, and the author of
tional or sensory expression an impoverishment of menting in colour printing, mixing silk screen the present volume is following in the honoured
the image. and intaglio work. But it is since he returned to footsteps of Hautecoeur, Bertrand, and Locquin.
I myself suspect that one of the results of this Paris in 1949 that colour became the preoccupa- One may confess to extreme personal frustration
fostered dislocation of image from intellect has so tion of Atelier 17. Ultimately a truly miraculous over a remark such as this one on Fuseli's Oath on
reduced communication that the larger public, system of colour printing was evolved—but I leave the Rütli, which leaves out all the information one
bemused by the pundit's prose, enjoys its visual it to Hayter himself to explain, as he does so could possibly wish to have: 'Although a mediae-
arts today at the level at which it enjoys millinery, vividly, these moments of discovery. A short history val heroic subject, the author has based the poses
or confectionery, or mixed pickles, and regards, of Intaglio print making is included. He chooses and treatment of the three men on classical models.'
art criticism in the Press much as it regards his examples, it is true, to back up his argument One must not, however, fault the author for not
commercial packaging embellished with 'instruct- `Originality Versus Reproduction'. It will be re- having written the ultimate book on Neo-Classi-
ions for use'. freshing, however, for the student to look again at cism, for, like the ultimate book on Romanticism,
Moore has been fortunate, if it is true that words the past in this way. this may never be written, and one can only
come so uneasily to him, for perhaps it allows the To sum up, etcher and student will find in this congratulate him on the lucidness and scholarship
impression that his work stands in need of lengthy work every method clearly described, and the with which he has explored this not inconsiderable
ANTHONY GROSS
interpretation as to meanings of which he himself receipts he gives correct. corner of the problem. ANITA BROOKNER