Page 23 - Studio International - June 1967

The best of British films Correspondence And as for Eileen Agar (her Manchester show was
on painting 'The living Ezra' noted in your April number) the Cantos say: 'Eileen's
sun-light softens London's November', a statement I
fully endorse.
The Arts Council of Great Britain and the National
Yours etc.,
Film Theatre recently showed a number of films under Dear Sir,
this heading. The films were: The Drawings of There are two contributions in the April number of Joseph Bard
Leonardo da Vinci (director: Adrian de Potier 1953 your magazine, 'A Vorticist Poetry with Visual Impli- London, W.14
Experimental Production Fund); Rowlandson's cations', and 'Futurism and the Development of
England (director: John Hawkesworth 1955 B.F.I. Vorticism', which awake many personal memories,
Experimental Production Fund); The Vision of William and prompt me to sound a somewhat discordant note.
Blake (director: Guy Brenton 1957 Morse Films/B.F.I.); Richard Nevinson was a great friend of mine, I first Ezra Pound and 'masses in relation'
and Francis Bacon Paintings 1944-1962 of 1962 and met him in 1927, and the Marinetti period and his
Turner of 1966, both directed by David Thompson and fight with Wyndham Lewis and the Vorticists was a Dear Sir,
produced by Samaritan Films for the Arts Council. frequent theme of his fascinating reminiscences. On As Dr Nanny noted with perceptivity in his letter
They are reviewed here by Kevin Gough-Yates. the whole, your contributors' presentation tallies [May issue], one senses a curious and interesting
relationship between 'auditory arrangement and the
with what I have heard him say, except that his image
An evening with Kasler's 'Mutoscope' is perhaps of of Wyndham Lewis was much more black, and per- visual make-up' in the poems by Ezra Pound, which
I discussed in the April issue ('A Vorticist Poetry with
no service to art or the cinema. But that's what it was- haps distorted by a deep resentment. As for Ezra
Visual Implications'). Dr Nanny asks to know a bit
a painting or a detail held still for a short period, to be Pound, we have been friends since 1928, when I lived
more about this relationship.
replaced by the next. And so we have a continuous at Portofino, and he came to visit us from neighbour-
Both auditory and visual arrangement depend upon
moving picture. The horses and hands grow like ing Rapallo. From a very long, and often very close
sculpture, seen from numerous angles, and are yet personal relationship, it seems to me that in both con- the relation of something to 'nothing', i.e. in music,
sounds in relation to silence; in sculpture, masses in
compiled from miniature Leonardo drawings. One tributions this most alive, irreverent and unpreten-
relation to space. It seems to me that by 1913-14 Ezra
Rowlandson water-colour merges into another in an tious being is presented rather stiffly, in an academic
Pound had observed 'masses in relation' in avant-
incongruous attempt to create a story from his illu- (true, well-documented) manner, and one can hardly
garde sculpture in England; as, for example in
strations of nineteenth-century England. The paint- recognize the living Ezra, with whom one ate pigeon-
Gaudier-Brzeska's Birds Erect. That sculpture demon-
ings of Francis Bacon, with more justification, are pie in Portofino and who once emerged from a
strates the sense of Jacob Epstein's remark, 'form,
harshly cut against photographs and stills from films. chemist-shop in Rapallo-(where he went to buy a roll
The camera links individual Turners as if they form a of English toilet paper)-in one hand a roll, and in the
composite masterpiece. The Blake carries its own other a copy of the Divina Comedia, shouting: 'the
subtitles suggestive of an early silent film. chemist said I should buy Dante, he is cheaper than
Not that professionalism is absent. The two films by the roll'. I would be the last to deny his importance, I
David Thompson have, perhaps, too much of it. But gave an address on his poetry to the Spanish Institute
whatever their faults they spare us the hallowed of Tenerife (in print: El Dinamismo de una nueva
voice of Sir Laurence Olivier (The Drawings of Leonardo Poesia, 1957), and to the Royal Society of Literature,
da Vinci) which is like that of a commentator at a London, in 1962, and have his letter of approval from
Remembrance Day Service. The Francis Bacon what he headlines 'Saint-Lizz'. But let us not overdo
Paintings 1944-1962 has no commentary and the worship into hagiography, kill the exhilarating vision
Turner very little (none over the paintings). For com- of a full-blooded living being, nor forget that art and
mentary, Alec Guinness hits the right tone (Rowland- poetry is fun, and not stifle its life-giving quality by
son's Enigand) but what he has to say is needlessly that oppressive smell of money, spreading into the
repetitious, whilst Sir Laurence has some of the art-world, and surely coming from the marble halls of
choicest phrases ('out of the womb, the curved Banks.
embryo-soft as a flower') to describe anything from In 1928, we met very frequently for our chess tourna-
a drawing of a child to the size of the illustration ments, and he spoke a great deal of an Italian, called
('none larger than an apple'). They are written by Guido, also frequently mentioned by his family. I took
Michael Ayrton. Without explanation, Blake's work this good Guido to be a local Italian friend, and found
can be incomprehensible and just enough informa- later that they were referring to Guido Cavalcanti, a
tion is provided, though again through the most friend of Dante. So when Uncle William was
unctuous of voices. That the voice is used sparingly men-tioned, I was on my guard, you will not have me this
in the David Thompson films is a deliberate attempt time, I murmured, as I remembered that Mrs Pound
to let the paintings speak for themselves. was once a Miss Shakespeare. But Uncle William did
Where he faits is in substituting music. Perhaps materialize one autumn afternoon, and as I was walk-
this kind of venture entails its own necessary evils. ing along the sea-shore, whistling to the melody of
Elizabeth Lutyens' great skill is more in control In the the waves, rhythmically beating last year's pasta
Turner than the Bacon. In the latter, in particular, it asciutta against the pebbles, I was introduced to Gaudier-Brzeska
doesn't allow the paintings to stand alone as visual Yeats, and we continued the walk, Ezra on my right, Birds Erect
experiences. In the Turner the slip becomes an error. Yeats on my left, myself, 'das Weltkind in der Mitte'. limestone
The accompanying sounds of wind, sea, sails and And Ezra, noticing that I was somewhat overcome by Museum of Modern Art, New York
gulls give the same old impression of trying to create the presence of this greatly admired man, took off
movies from stationary canvases. Yeats' pince-nez black ribbon and all, placed the not the form of anything'. As a visual image, the
What function do these films serve? They are not glasses carefully on my nose, and said: 'Jozeff I Can sculpture by Gaudier-Brzeska presents a variety of
designed as works of criticism or evaluation. They are you see fairies?' units of mass set into relation with each other and the
not substitutes for the biography or the text book. As Oscar Wilde says, 'to see the frock-coat of the surrounding space. A calculated lack of identifying
They seem to be labours of love. The Turner and the drawing-room done in bronze, or the double waist- details makes the sculpture not the form of anything,
Bacon seem to know what they are trying to express. coat perpetuated in marble, adds a new horror to but rather, a sequence of intriguing, inter-related
They are direct and emotional. A less reverent death'. So let me add these few touches of life to his shapes, or 'masses in relation'. Such sculpture was
approach to the others might have produced more image. referred to as the English brand of Cubism; yet its
stimulating works. It is hard to believe that the lunatic And let me end with a quotation from the Pisan form derives more from the art theories of T. E. Hulme
Military inventions of Leonardo are works of genius. Cantos, in remembrance of a long friendship: than from the 'Cubism' of Picasso and Braque. In
But the film suggests otherwise. And how much (to break the pentameter was the first heave) this, such sculpture is more accurately named as
stronger would Rowlandson seem if there were a or as Jo bard says: they never speak to each other, 'Vorticist'.
mere hint that fifty pages of Ashbee's lndex were if It Is baker and concierge visibly Precisely this Vorticist sense of form appears in the
devoted to his obscene drawings and engravings. it Is La Rouchefoucauld and de Maintenon audibly. visual organization of much of Pound's poetry. And