Page 86 - Studio International - July/August 1967

Superman written this book.
He,:-ry Moore: Sculpture and
Drawings # &Co.
Volumes 1,·2 and 3
The standard work on Britain's most
eminent sculptor provides a
complete record of his work from
1921-64. The three volumes together
provide nearly 800 illustrations.
Vol. 1 £4 4s; Vol. 2 £3 10s; Vol. 3
£4 10s.
Paul Klee: the thinking eye
Jurg Spiller
Klee's Bauhaus notebooks, illustrated
by nearly 200 halftone subjects and
1,200 line drawings. £7 17s 6d.
Paul Klee
Will Grohmann
The most comprehensive biography
of the artist yet published, with an
illustrated classified catalogue of
Klee's most important work.
470 illus. £6 6s.
Painting in the Twentieth
Century
Werner Haftmann
Acclaimed as a standard work on
modern art,,brilliantly analytical and
breathtakingly comprehensive.
Over 1,000 illustrations. In two
volumes (Paperback: 28s, 35s Cloth
36s, 42s).
William Scott: Paintings
Edited by Alan Bowness
A monograph on an abstract artist
whose work is .represented in
museums and art galleries in Europe
and America. With 80 plates
(24 in colour). £3 10s.
La Tourette
Anton Henze and Bernhard
Moosbrugger
Study (with 48 pages of illustrations)
of Le Corbusier's last religious
masterpiece, the Dominican
monastery near Lyon. 25s.
Sources of Modern Architecture
Dennis Sharp
Biographical, subject and national
bibliographies of the modern
movement, with short biographies
of 100 key figures, provide an
illustrated dictionary of sources.
(AA paper 2) 30s.
The Renaissance Engineers
Bertrand Gille
Fascinating account of the
contribution of inventors and
engineers of the Renaissance to
the development of technology.
168 illustrations. 56s.
Lund Humphries
70
But Feiffer's purpose is not to demonstrate that
.comics are a serious art form. On the contrary, he
argues that they have lost their magic since they
were taken seriously. He writes as an addict as hooked
The Great Comic Book Heroes compiled, introduced on comics as others are hooked on other forms of
and annotated by Jules Feiffer. Allen lane, The junk. Comics were his passion and his education and
Penguin Press 70s. 189 pp. illus. throughout. of there were no more comics round the house he
would suffer from acute withdrawal symptoms. Feiffer
It used to be as unfashionable to admit that comics is qualified to write this book for other reasons. Best•
appealed to anyone other than the idiot proletariat as known for his weekly strips In the form of cartoon
it was to suggest that pop was music, and the enor• satire he invented, he used to work In Wii Eisner's
mous Influence of a book by a certain Frederick W. studio in New York helping to draw Eisner's adult
Wertham M. D., The Seduction of the Innocent, brought
strip saga The Spirit, which must be one of the best
on a mass burning of the comic-books reminiscent of of all time, not only for its drawing, but also for the
the heady days of the 'thirties in Germany. Wertham witty, loaded and intelligent story-line.
suggested, inter alia, that Batman and Robin were Have you ever wondered how Batman got the Idea
queer, that Wonder Woman was a lesbian and that for that ridiculous outfit {'it's not got any magical
children would prefer Black Beauty and little Woman properties, it's just to strike fear into the hearts of
if only they were given the chance. Since then times the underworld'), why Superman can't come into
have changed. The Independent group admitted that contact with the element Kryptonite without getting
it read comics and Miss Susan Sonntag's semantic a severe migraine? It's all here, plus 130 pages of the
exercises on the word 'camp' have both given the original stories round 13 of the original heroes, In
enjoyment of sub-culture intellectual respectability. glorious colour and on paper which shows how much
In Britain, Richard Hoggart's Uses of Literacy has also better the drawings are when printed on something
probably had something to do with it, if only in that better than newsprint. It also shows how much better,
his book provided the intellectual with an excuse for how much slicker the strips are now drawn and how
going into a shop and asking for the latest number of much worse the story lines and dialogue are now that
8/ackhawk: 'I'm doing my Doctorate on the reading the conventions, the characters and situations have
habits of the working classes; can I take out a sub• become atrophied. How much more honestly enter­
scription ?' B movies have suddenly become art, the taining the comics were when they knew that they
Beatles are compared with Mahler, Kingsley Amis has were junk and had no higher aspi�tlons.
taken Ian Fleming seriously and Jules Feiffer has Frank Whitford
volume of this kind too close a discussion of the
symbolic nature of the forms.
Cornish I have one serious criticism to make of the book. As
primitive Mullins very rightly points out, the best of Wallis'
paintings, (i.e. those selected during the Cornish•
man's lifetime, by a small circle of collectors, from
the large parcels he would send them) are for the
Alfred Wallis: Cornish Primitive Painter by Edwin most part still in private hands, and have thus rarely
Mullins, Macdonald 75s. 112 pp. 15 colour plates, 68 been exhibited or Illustrated. To reproduce these
black and white. works well would be to do valuable service to a publ le
reputation which depends largely upon paintings
This is a short, clear, readable, if fairly lowbrow weeded-out from these collections. The photographs
introduction to an artist whose best works are rarely in Mullins' book are with a few notable exceptions
seen. Edwin Mullins writes earnestly and sensibly of poor quality. In most cases the edges have been
about Alfred Wallis, avoiding the sentimentality and trimmed from works whose vitality springs (a point
condescension of many previous studies, and clearing which the author himself makes clear) from the very
away much of the pink fog that confuses our response irregularity of their outlines. To reproduce as a neat
to his paintings, What he writes is persuasive because rectangle a seascape originally fitted onto a torn-up
it Is informed with his own enthusia_sm. There Is a box top is to deprive it of half the excitement of Its
pleasant sense of discovery throughout which will conception. Certainly to deprive its audience of that
no doubt be conveyed to those for whom the book liberating experience, which so excited Nicholson,
provides a first acquaintance with the paintings which of the painting as object or as 'event'.
so excited Ben Nicholson and Kit Wood in St Ives No doubt this situation is due to the difficulty of
almost forty years ago. obtaining photographs of unpublished .;,vorks in
The book is divided Into convenient sections: life, private collections. Mullins was presumably obliged
Paintings, Influences, and reprints as an appendix to use photographs which he had taken himself in
Ben Nicholson's excellent essay on Wallis from the course of his researches. But Wallis above all
Horizon 37 (1943). There is also a brief bibliography. demands a qualified photographer and scrupulous
The biographical section provides a useful and sober presentation if the life of his works is to survive
antidote to Sven Berlin's less dispassionate life of reproduction. Presumably the decision to use the
Wallis. Mull Ins has been fortunate in having access to present illustrations was one made, in the interests
tape recordings made In St Ives by Dr Roger Slack of economy, by the publishers of this book. If so, It
of his patients' reminiscences of Wallis, and this was not worth it.
material has been employed to good account in the I do not wish to end on a note of criticism however.
text. Mullins has also been conscientious In in­ There are a few excellent plates, notably those which
forming himself at first hand of the background to have been trimmed to the shape of the painting
Wallis' life and to his art. He writes about the works new audience, as I am sure it will, it will have per•
reproduced, and if the book introduces Wallis to a
as one who has studied them carefully and at length,
and he makes several excellent observations upon formed an important and valuable service.
Wallis' technique. He Is wise, I think, to avoid in a Charles Harrison