Page 44 - Studio International - April 1967

1933 counted several of the members of Unit One among This was modelled in part on the Abstraction-Création
his personal friends, took part in their discussions and Cahiers, with reproductions of the artists' work illustrat-
edited and introduced the volume of statements and re- ing their individual statements. Typography and layout
productions which was published to coincide with the were reminiscent of Bauhaus publications.
group's exhibition at the Mayor Gallery in April 1934. The work exhibited by the group and illustrated in the
In his writings, and particularly in The Meaning of Art book represented a fair cross-section of continental influ-
(1931) and Art Now (1933), Read had provided the ences with Nicholson and Wadsworth, among the
British artists of the modern movement with a theoretical painters, at the abstract extreme. There was no outright
justification. The formalist aesthetics of Fry had always surrealist work as yet, but a strong 'English Meta-
differentiated against the expressive element in art. Fry physical' element centred on Nash made obvious a divi-
could never have provided the basis for a just appraisal of sion of interests which had not seemed to matter while the
abstract art while he avoided contact with the sub- initial campaigning enthusiasm lasted. Once the London
conscious element in creative activity. Read, by drawing exhibition was over, however, the disruption began.
attention to the essentially symbolic nature of form (a A serious bout of asthmatic illness early in 1933 had
lesson learned from the theory of psychoanalysis) —to the sapped the energy which Nash had brought to the
function of form as a vehicle for content—provided his organization of the group, and a visit to Avebury that
contemporaries with a means of evaluating creativity in summer had reawakened his interest in 'interpretive
art which applied equally well to pure abstraction or to landscape'. The physical retirement enforced by his ill-
surrealism. 'Form, though it can be analysed into intel- ness deprived Unit One of the only force which might
Facing page
Top left lectual terms, balance, rhythm and harmony, is really have held it together, and accentuated the introspective
Fig, 12 intuitive in origin; it is not in the actual practice of artists elements in Nash's own work. Images of death and dying
John Piper
Construction (intersection) an intellectual product. It is rather emotion directed and began to proliferate in his painting. The influence of
1934 defined... Frankly I do not know how we are to judge Ernst replaced that of Chirico. In 1936 Nash took his
Oil and ripolin on canvas form except by the same instinct that creates it.' (Meaning place among the International Surrealists in their ex-
with wood
21 x 25 in. of Art, 1931.) 'The thing formed—and this is the clue to hibition at the New Burlington Galleries.
Marlborough Fine Art the whole of the modern development of art—can be Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth were withdrawing
subjective as well as objective—can be the emergent sensi- together into an environment and an art that was becom-
Centre left
Fig. 13 bility of the artist himself.' (Art Now, 1933.) ing increasingly self-sufficient. 'Their imagination had
Winifred Nicholson For a brief while in 1933-5 the two elements in the been fired, not only by the idea of purity in individual
Composition c. 1935 British avant-garde, proto-surrealist and abstract, co- works of painting or sculpture, but by the lofty beauty of
Gouache and pencil on paper
Coll: the artist operated in Unit One. Read and critics such as Wilenski a consistent abstract environment.? The contacts which
Winifred Nicholson took a and Grigson had done much to educate their readers in they had been making on the continent became increas-
flat in Paris in 1934 and favour of modern art and Unit One was the subject of ingly important. The connection with Mondrian has
became friendly with many considerable interest. On a visit to Paris in December 1933 been documented in a recent issue of Studio International.
members of the avant-garde
in Paris, among them Paul Nash wrote to a friend, with justifiable pride, that In 1935 Naum Gabo came to London, attracted by the
Giacometti, Hellion, Erni, interest was expressed even there. By November 1933 a evidence, which Nicholson above all others had provided,
Gabo and Mondrian. She
painted her first abstract provincial tour to follow the exhibition had already been to show that London was now a place where it was possible
works in 1934 (exhibited arranged and there was widespread interest from the to produce art that was original and creative in an inter-
under the name Winifred press at all levels. When the London exhibition opened national context. The breakthrough of 1932-4 which
Dacre), and returned to
representational work two or in April of the following year it aroused more attention culminated in the publication of Unit 1 had made the
three years later. She took and controversy than any exhibition of contemporary publication of Circle in England a possibility. In 1935,
several of the photographs art since the Second Post-Impressionist Exhibition in Nicholson, Gabo and the architect Leslie Martin began
for Circle, including those of
Giacometti's sculpture. 1912, and in contrast to the earlier exhibition, Unit One to collect the photos and statements from artists and
was entirely home-bred. architects of the European modern movement which
Bottom left The tour of the exhibition followed its closure in were to be used in Circle (published by Faber, 1937).
Fig. 14
Jean Hélion London. Between May 1934 and April 1935 it was seen in It was a document of the first importance, but the possi-
Equilibre 1933 Liverpool, Manchester, Hanley, Derby, Swansea and bilities which it suggested were never to be fully realized.
Oil on canvas Belfast, on each occasion under the sponsorship of the Many of the contributors found a temporary home in
26 x 32 in.
Coll: Winifred Nicholson local municipal authorities. It aroused controversy at London between 1935 and 1940 before migrating to
An important figure in the each showing, was the subject of a sermon in Liverpool America, and in the years 1935-7 many avenues must
founding of Cathedral, of a heated correspondence in the Liverpool have seemed open to English artists, abstract and sur-
Abstraction-Création. Hélion, accessible Post and Mercury and of a cartoon in 'Ireland's Saturday realist alike. But the approaching threat of Fascism and
and eloquent, had a wide
acquaintance and influence Night': 'That's not the Unit; that's the Limit!' finally the War itself drove the emigrées on across the
among English painters. Unit One had fulfilled its avowed intent of forwarding Atlantic and forced the English artists who remained
After Myfanwy Piper visited
him in Paris in 1934, on the the cause of modernism in England. Many who had into positions of isolation.
advice of Nicholson and previously been ignorant of what modern art involved Tor Hepworth and Nicholson at least', writes Myfanwy
Piper, she felt 'committed to considered its implications for the first time, and others Piper (op. cit.), 'art had crystallized into space and the
action; talked into it by his
eloquence in French and who had already some knowledge and appreciation of history of art was in the future. For most of the rest,
English; conquered by his the aims of the modern movement were prompted to modern art, abstract art, with its life-lines to Cubism or
work and his words' clarify their ideas and their responses by the advanced primitive painting or sculpture or pre-history or Cézanne
(loc. cit.). It was at HOl ion's
suggestion that she started work which was exhibited and by the advanced views or Surrealism, was a means of dealing with the remnants
the magazine Axis. expressed by Read and the artists in the Unit 1 volume. of the object, of nature, left to us: not a new world but
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