Page 84 - Studio International - July/August 1967

ted to his lack of recognition. The text takes no is evidence of the profound and agonizing damage real. The artist's freedom consists of his unmediated
account of this fact. It presents Born berg's history as caused to a good and talented man. exposure In the given terms of his personality to some
seen through his paranoia. I find this a pity, for no At the beginning-or in the end-we come face to of the deepest forces operating in our society. Thus
one other than those who knew him Intimately is In a face with the paintings. And this could seem to make his extreme example and the testimony of his work
position to document the mechanism. all the rest unimportant. But in the later paintings can reveal the result of some of the forces operating
Let me make my position quite clear. I do not there is ofteA a Job•llke gravity which must be linked in all of us-but only if the reciprocal freedom of being
belleve that Bomberg's paranoia was a mitigating with the victimization of his life. rigorously honest about his evidence is seized upon.
factor to be used as an excuse for the art world, and, The artist in our society is deemed free. This freedom I hope that, if she possibly can, Lilian Bomberg will
behind it, for the society which neglected and be• can mean the freedom to lie neglected and in des­ inspire or herself write another book. We would all be
littled him. On the contrary, his subjective suffering pair. But in a very bitter sense the freedom ls partly in debt to her. John Berger

formal cllches, whereas In Ayrton's critical writing It opposite of the artist: he Is the vessel of hubris,
Ayrton's is usually articulate and exact. whereas the craftsman Is the instrument of develop•
Daedalus For some years, Ayrton has been obsessed, both as ment, the servant, not the rival, of the gods. The
painter and as writer, by the myth of Daedalus, the metaphor of this situation is, in fact, the climax of
archetype craftsman. This has now resulted in a Ayrton's novel-the flight of Daedalus and his son
novel, The Maze Maker. On this one, I am happy to go from Crete, when Icarus, being of heroic cast,
The Maze Maker by Michael Ayrton. Longmans Green off the deep end. What Ayrton has produced is not challenges Apollo and is struck down into the sea,
288 pp. 30s. only the best fictional account of an artist In history while Daedalus flies wearily on to Cumae and
that I have ever read-If, for a moment, you can expand dedicates himself to the restoration of the temple of
Michael Ayrton Is a rock on which many critics' toes history to include myth; It is also incomparably the the sun-god.
are painfully stubbed. One example of the stubbing most vivid reconstruction, In novel form, of the pre­ Daedalus is not a dummy stuffed with straw and
was given, a month ago, by Terence Mullaly on TV, classical Mediterranean world which, so far as I am talent; he is alive; and with considerable skill, Ayrton
while delivering a philippic against Ayrton's paint­ aware, exists in English. Beside It, Mary Renault's makes him credible as a human being-pragmatic,
ings. The bone of Mullaly's argument seemed to be novels (The King Must Die, for Instance) look diffuse wary, a mixture of resolution and diffidence-while
that Ayrton is too intelligent to paint well. This Is and sentimental. Admittedly, there isn't much corn• still preserving the magnification of stature which
an old superstition; nobody believed, before the 20th petition In the fleld of novels about artists. What is myth imposes on the figures who enact It. And the
century, that a high degree of critical intelligence, there to be set beside Ayrton's Daedalus? Gauguin central image of the book-the artist as exemplary
coupled with a thorough knowledge of art history, as seen by Somerset Maugham? Lust for Life? The figure, building mazes from which he must escape
actually inhibited artists from making good pictures Agony and the Ecstasy? only to construct another, spinning out his tangible
and sculptures. Precisely because Ayrton understands the P.re­ universe like a spider-gives Ayrton's novel an admir­
Whatever the faults of Ayrton's paintings, they do classical idea of heroism, he Is able to avoid the sick­ able coherence as well as a sense of truth which is
not stem from any encumbrance of intuition by brain. ening habit which popular novelists have of turning lacking from most attempts to recreate or explain
Rather the reverse: Intellect is masked in them by their artists into culture-heroes. The hero is the myth. Robert Hughes

In order to put such ideas into practice, Father
African Kevin Carroll opened a workshop in Oye Ekltl, Western a Muslim carver, trained in a pagan tradition and ask
him to illustrate Bible stories.
sculpture today Nigeria and assembled a number of traditional But Father Carroll feels rightly that there is also a
Yoruba �arvers whom he commissioned to work for need to do something now while we wait for the
the church. natural process to take place. To begin with, the
Yoruba Religious Carving, by Kevin Carroll, Geoffrey The controversial question that arises In one's mind hideous plaster madonnas and oleum prints imported
Chapman, London-Dublin-Melbourne, 1967. immediately Is this: can the forms of traditional from Europe that disfigure many Christian churches
Modern Makonde Sculpture by J. Anthony Stout, Kibe Yoruba art, that were developed after all to give in Africa must be replaced with something better.
Art Gallery Publication, Moshi, Tanzania, 1967. expressron to Yoruba rellglon, be used to express Secondly there are these Yoruba carvers, they are
Christian ideas as well? In other words, Is form in trained and skilful but there is no work for them In
What happens to the African carver when the Initi­ art simply the old bottle that can be filled with any the traditional context. They will either become
ation rites and rituals die away together with the new wine? tourist artists or stop being artists altogether, unless
religious societies that were his chief patrons? Father Carroll's answer to this is, that much Yoruba a new patron can be found. The Church has become
Often he becomes part of a cooperative of wood­ art was not religious but illustrative, and that the this patron to a number of carvers.
carvers who mass produce certain set pieces for carver might just as well Illustrate a Christian story The modern Makonde sculptors described by J.
export. At the time of writing, London stores are full as a pagan myth. It Is true that some Yoruba carving Anthony Stout had no such enlightened patronage.
of slick little antelopes and giraffes carved by the is of this nature, but the disadvantage of his attitude They are in fact working purely for dealers who
Akamba of Kenya. However, the story is not always is that Father Carroll must take as his starting point supply the tourist market. These carvers originate
quite as sad as that. Alternative posslbilltles are the rather less powerful, less expressive and more from Northern Mozambique but they have migrated
sometimes open. The most remarkable of these is decorative examples of tradltlonal art, so that he to Tanzania where they tlnd more customers for their
described in Father Kevin Carroll's book Yoruba limits the range and possibilities of his new Christian work. Their attitude to their clients is expressed by
Religious Carving. art from the start. one of them, Pesa Ali mast, in this surprisingly callous
The Catholic Church has recently developed con­ In fact the Christian pieces in this book are feebler manner: 'This the Europeans like. We find out what
siderable tolerance towards traditional arts and than the traditional examples shown. Many have they like. We make what they like when we are
crafts in Afriqa. Father Carroll quotes the Constitution charm but the composition of the panels tends to hungry.'
on the Sacred Liturgy saying that the Church does become a little mechanlcal and the treatment of the What do the Europeans like? If the pictures In this
'respect and foster the genius and talents of various traditionally 'loaded' forms often becomes Indifferent book are representative, they like bizarre mon­
races and nations' and that she 'has not adopted any or Insensitive. strosities, creatures with legs sprouting from heads,
particular art style of her own; she has admitted It Is easy, of course to say that the only way to create or brea,sts bursting out into faces. Some are sickly-as
styles from every period according to natural dis• a Christian art is to create Christians and then hope medical photographs can make one sick-some are
position and circumstances of her peoples •.. '. that some of them will be artists-rather than take frightening, but all are Inventive. UIII Beier
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