Page 21 - Studio International - April 1967

inventiveness and skill applied to the quite sensibly make no claims to art status Bell, Duncan Grant and Wyndham Lewis,
decoration of car bodies. The American car for their products. Their painted or sprayed look sadly untidy today as a direct result of
dealer who coined the term six months ago patterns have a glossy mechanical quality of trying to keep the spontaneous freshness of
owns a fleet of Plymouth and Chrysler finish and rainbow colours. Stylistically primitive or peasant-type decoration. What
limousines painted in Op and Art Nouveau they are not remarkable; the only persistently is surprising is that, in almost direct contrast
patterns. Neither commercially nor constant element is the similarity between to the predominant personal touch they
artistically has this venture been particularly their decorations and the more exuberant advocated, they aimed at anonymity, and
successful so far, although the dealer expects type of folk-art, smoothed and stylized. Their none of their tables, chairs, vases, screens
to be doing real business within two years. car bodies tend to be more inventively and handprinted fabrics were signed. There
The only promising comment to date is an adorned than those of their American is only one way in which the Omega products
eye-witness report to the effect that the counterparts, with designs used deliberately like the Dolmetsch Virginals decorated by
painted limousines make other cars look as an extension of the shape on which they Roger Fry are the results of the same
naked. For an extra $500 one can have a are superimposed. The English prices for underlying intention as the Binder, Edwards,
painted car, with designs executed by a art work on cars are approximately three Vaughan furniture—the aim in both cases
number of artists, with an after-sales service times as high as the American ones, which is to enliven objects for everyday use.
for dents and other limited damage to the suggests that both are rather arbitrary. Although the Omega fabrics and other
art work. Although according to American The Binder, Edwards, Vaughan enterprise designs are supposed to have had an
statements the decorating of car bodies was would not have had the approval of the influence on commercial design generally,
initiated there, two painted cars were seen Omega Workshop (1913-20), described by neither their products nor those of the three
around London at least six months earlier, Virginia Woolf as 'a group of artists working young Englishmen contain what could be
with strident designs by Binder, Edwards with the object of allowing free play to the described as 'the seeds of style'. The style-
and Vaughan. Despite the fact that one of delight in creation in the making of objects creating dynamic is something that manifestly
their cars was exhibited in a gallery and for common life. They refuse to spoil the belongs to the work of Mondrian and Rietveld,
attracted a lot of publicity, the number of expressive quality of their work by sand- which is based on a conception that is larger
vehicles with decorated exteriors has not papering it down to a shop finish, in the belief than the actual object to which it is applied.
noticeably swelled. that the public has at last seen through the Ultimately style does not result from either
Binder, Edwards and Vaughan, who have humbug of the machine-made imitation of the rationale or the practicability of a
also decorated Victorian chests of drawers, works of art'. The heroic efforts of the Omega project—it emerges in response to an
screens, tables and other utilitarian objects, artists, who included Roger Fry, Vanessa attitude.
q

Neville Dubow lectures in art history and theory at the Clive Latimer is director of the advanced studies Acknowledgements: We wish to thank Lund Hum-
Department of fine art at the University. of Cape group, Hornsey College of Art. He was the Inter- phries for the loan of blocks; Penguin Books for the
Town. Originally trained as an architect, he is con- national prizewinner 1948-62 for experimental design illustration of Ben Nicholson's Coin and musical
cerned with the synthesis of architecture and the and was awarded Grand Prix Biennale in 1964. He instruments, 1933 (reproduced in 'Ben Nicholson',
'fine arts' and is currently engaged on research in initiated the Light/Sound Workshop in his own ex- published by Penguin Books); Faber and Faber for
England and America. He is art critic for the Cape perimental workshop and with Michael Leonard permission to reproduce the text of Ezra Pound's
Argus. developed the technique at Hornsey College of Art. poem 'The Garret' from Personae; and Bodley Head
John Bowstead and Dick Woods are members of for permission to reproduce the cover of Blast II and
Norbert Lynton, head of the school of art history at Light/Sound Workshop. illustrations from Blast.
Chelsea College of Art, is art critic of the Guardian,
and contributes to Art International.