Page 38 - Studio International - April 1967

tion as an end in itself and returned to the mood of his way of Post-Impressionism' was represented by a growing
earlier marine still lifes, surrendering his position as the progressive element in the Seven and Five Society. The
apparent leader of the abstract contingent in Britain to Society was founded in 1919 by a group of young painters
Ben Nicholson, whose white reliefs begun in that year and sculptors whose sense of bewilderment was expressed
had an originality and interest unequalled in British art in a brief manifesto. Its membership and direction
at that time. changed drastically after Ivon Hitchens, the only founder
The second of Nash's alternative paths — 'the broad main member of any importance in this context, had success-
way of post-Impressionism' — led by a different route to- fully proposed Nicholson for election in 1924. By the end
wards abstraction but not in the terms that Fry had of the twenties the Seven and Five had a large number of
anticipated. The latter's concept of 'a purely abstract extremely talented members, including Jessica Dismorr
language of form— a visual music' sprang from his own (an ex-Vorticist), Evie Hone, Kit Wood, David Jones,
misunderstanding of 1911-12 cubism. What Fry saw the potter Staite Murray, Winifred Nicholson and
as the creation of visual music was, in fact, the result of a Frances Hodgkins. These members had seen the need for
highly analytic, if poetic, approach to visual reality. an understanding of Cezanne, of Matisse and of early
This misinterpretation was the result of a confusion, to cubism and were able by the late '20s to make use of what
which the nature of his aesthetics made Fry particularly they had learned in their own terms. The Seven and Five
prone, between the aesthetic experience in the spectator exhibitions of 1929 and 1931 (no exhibition in 1930)
and the creative process of the artist. represented the high point of this development. Ben and
Fry's analysis of Cezanne helped many people to an Winifred Nicholson and Wood showed still lifes and
appreciation of his art but it is questionable how com- Cornish landscapes. Other members, notably Jones,
pletely it helped them to understand it. In the end the Hodgkins and Hitchens, showed naturalistic compositions
concept of abstract art as visual music, first mooted in painted with considerable freedom of hand.3 At this time
Britain by Fry and seemingly confirmed by the first Hitchens was attracted by Kandinsky's work of the
translations of Kandinsky two years later, was a consider- Murnau period and brought to his own work some of the
able handicap to those painters who developed into same vividness of colour and of expression. He did paint
abstraction in the thirties. The comparatively sterile some abstract works during the '30s, but his main
Below nature of Wadsworth's abstract painting illustrated the interest continued to lie in landscape compositions.
Fig. 4 extent to which a mistaken belief in the concept could By 1931 new interests had begun to impinge upon the
Calder one-man exhibition at
Galerie Percier, Paris mislead a highly talented painter. Furthermore, those most advanced painters of the generation. Wadsworth
April 1931 painters, like Nicholson, who made their own study of was already painting abstract works. Nicholson was
Cezanne and of the early cubists and avoided the fallacy becoming progressively more involved with the poetry of
Below right
Fig. 5 into which Fry had fallen, who developed into abstrac- shape and space. Nash, working on the Urne Buriall
Alexander Calder tion not by abandoning visual reality but by concen- illustrations, was becoming increasingly interested in
Dancing Torpedo Shape 1932 trating their perceptions of it, found their work under- problems of style and design which led him towards
Motorized mobile, wood,
iron wire and aluminium valued by an audience trained to appreciate the harmony abstraction. In 1931 he painted the 'Kinetic Feature' now
32+ in. high of the end result without looking for evidence of the in the Tate Gallery. (Fig 9.) 'Apples have had their day,'
Berkshire Museum, Pittsfield, creative vision of the natural world which lay beneath. he wrote in April of that year, thus signalling the end of an
Mass.
Reproduced in Axis No 3 Among the younger painters in the '20s the 'main epoch in which Cezanne had dominated English paint-