Page 18 - Studio International - July/August 1967

COMMENT slightly wrong will raise howls of protest. carried out with students. Nobody has
followed up the important implications of
Instead, he is concentrating on projects like
Mr Robert Erskine's museum-series, where Bridget Riley's colour-projections for
the tonal values of drawings, sculpture and `Sweeney Agonistes', performed once only
objets d'art can be enriched by muted at the Globe in a memorial evening to
colour within an easily verifiable frame of T. S. Eliot. Nor noted that Richard Smith
reference. I doubt, though, whether critical at one time intended to train as a stage-
susceptibilities would be all that tender, designer. Nor that Bernard Cohen painted
once the novelty was over; the vilest a safety-curtain at Stratford East which
distortion in printed reproductions has been brilliantly related a personal abstract idiom
tolerated for decades without protest to a cosily theatrical interior (it was
marches being organized. And there are narrowly reprieved only recently from being
sure to be a painter or two who will find painted out altogether). There are techni-
David Thompson inspiration in what happens when the set is calities to successful stage-design which can,
adjusted wrongly. of course, make the commissioning of
independent painters or sculptors a liability:
q The theatre in this country is not exactly ambitious projects by Kokoschka have been
q Colour television being virtually upon us notable for its visual literacy—by which I abandoned before now because of their
(or those few of us who may know where to mean that one can hardly ever expect to see impracticality.
find a set), is there any case for supposing on a stage even a passing commitment to But who else can prevent that relapse
that television might now begin to do for the visual language of our own day. into dated and second-hand experience
the visual arts what radio has significantly Towards the end of May there flashed in every time the curtain rises?
done for music? The subject certainly and out of London an exhibition of stage
occupies the more idealistic fantasies of settings by the Czech designer' Svoboda (to q Obviously there is cause to be thankful
some of the department heads at Television coincide with 'Die Frau ohne Schatten' for the amounts of government subsidy
Centre, but it is hedged round with designed by him for Covent Garden), and which are at last beginning to flow towards
practical cautions. I was invited recently whatever one thought of them theatrically, the arts with some semblance of recognition
to watch the run-through on closed circuit it was at least clear that he was thoroughly for the realities of the need (the latest
of an art-film whose colour-values I could conversant with current developments in the worry is what will happen with a change of
check with some assurance, and on the other visual arts and was working, as a government?). But the priorities observed
whole the quality was translated with matter of course, in a related idiom. Apart and the quantitative relationship of some
considerable subtlety. High tonalities like from Hockney's 'Ubu' at the Royal Court, grants compared with others can still on
pale blues and pinks were most easily it usually takes someone from abroad to occasion be dismaying. One such concerns
distorted in a softening, chocolate-box bring relevant visual currency into our the financing of the Fine Arts Department
effect, but lower ones preserved most of theatres—Martha Graham with Noguchi, of the British Council as compared with the
their body, and difficult colours like greens for instance, or Roland Petit with Martial equivalent section of the Arts Council.
were surprisingly accurate. But, of course, Raysse, who contributed a suitably electrify- These are official bodies for dealing with
the slightest maladjustment of a single knob ing opening, to 'Paradise Lost' at Covent the visual arts abroad and at home
can result in psychedelic transformations, Garden (neither Noguchi nor Raysse, as it respectively, and one would expect to see
and no one can as yet guarantee that what happens, has Otherwise 'exhibited' in this them supported with some measure of
may be accurately transmitted will be country). There are stirrings of hopeful parity. But the first comes under the
accurately received. Programme policy, activity, though. The Ballet Rambert has jurisdiction of the Foreign Office (which has
therefore, will rely on discretion rather than collaborated on a programme with the its own ideas about the British Council's
valour. Mr David Attenborough, for Central School of Arts and Crafts, and role and about priorities within it) and so
example, appears to discountenance the Frederick Ashton went to the Light/Sound falls outside the bounteous sphere of
immediate prospect in colour of such Workshop at Hornsey for his recent ballet influence of the Minister for the Arts. Its
programmes as 'Canvas', on the grounds 'Sinfonietta'. But it is perhaps significant importance for British art hardly needs
that 'full colour' in paintings that goes even that both these were small-scale experiments rehearsing here: it is to a vast extent

Contributors to this issue

Jasia Reichardt, assistant director of the Institute of Ronald Alley is keeper of the modern collection at the David Thompson was formerly art critic for The Times
Contemporary Arts, Edward Lucie-Smith, poet and Tate Gallery. He has written books on Francis Bacon, and now writes regularly for Queen magazine and
critic and Dore Ashton, American writer and critic William Scott, Ben Nicholson, Gauguin etc. Studio International. He has also worked in television
and George Savage, member of the council of the and the theatre as well as writing art criticism.
British Antique Dealers' Association are regular con- Guy Brett is art critic of The Times, London.
tributors to Studio International. Albert Elsen is professor of art history at Indiana
Ira Licht holds a master of arts degree in art history University. He is in England on a Guggenheim Fellow-
Peter Stone, critic and writer, contributes regularly from Columbia University. He is a former fellow of ship doing research on the origins and development of
to the Jewish Chronicle. the University. modern sculpture. He has written extensively on Rodin.