Page 37 - Studio International - June 1967

own visual culture through study and travel, his aware- green. Nicholson saw that picture with a unique inno-
ness (greater, I suspect, than one tends to allow) of cence. Obviously not with ignorance: his education in
various aspects of modern art, and an innate sense of art was already exceptional. But it takes an unfettered
economy and elegance that one perhaps too readily com- mind, particularly at that early date, to look at a Cubist
mandeers as characteristically English. His primitivism work and to see not its Cubist-ness but a piece of colour.
was by choice—in so far as an artist chooses—and like all That this was an experience of particular importance to
choices had its negative side: it was a way of not doing Nicholson is certain. Two years ago I questioned him
several other things. The example of Alfred Wallis may briefly about his experience of Cubism, and it was
have had some importance, but there are hints in precisely to this green that he referred me.
Nicholson's early work of Cezanne, the Gauguin heritage, Ideally we should bring to all art an equal innocence,
and of Intimism, that seem more fundamental. looking beyond what the stylistic labels prepare our minds
for. In Nicholson's case it is not enough to mention
Synthetic Cubism, or more particularly Gris, and then to
add Purism, and international abstraction as concen-
trated in Paris groupings in the early thirties. What did
Nicholson make of these elements? What distinguishes
him from other, similarly orientated artists ?
I have already hinted at the basis of it: it is his ability
to see beyond dogmatic faction to the green fact. Nichol-
son was drawn into a world of warring programmes and
ideals, yet he ignored dogmatic alignments with a
nimbleness that seems almost foolhardy. Others, though
they might come from less blinkered cultures, could find
strength through them. Nicholson ignored them, and in
doing so was able to recognize with astonishing prompt-
ness the fundamental proposition of modern art: that the
illusions of art are not subservient to the expectations
bred in us by the practicalities of life. He understood, it
seems instinctively, that the new work of art would be a
self-justifying object, addressing us directly through our
visual sensibilities, the way that green patch had addressed
him.
Consider, in contrast, the very partial understanding of
the painters around Nicholson: the fundamental mis-
Flowers c. 1927 conception shared by Wadsworth with many Conti-
oil on canvas, 15 x 14½ in. nental and a few other British artists, whereby an abstract
Coll: Jake Nicholson
painting was in fact a naturalistic painting of an invented
object; or Paul Nash's use of Synthetic Cubism to provide
Opposite Ben Nicholson in his studio a pleasing heraldic background for an emotionally
loaded but idiomatically extraneous symbol (see Charles
Photo : Felicitas Vogler
Harrison's illuminating article in Studio International,
What comes into his art in the thirties resists exact April 1967). Consider too the often factitious-looking
analysis. Cubism was of course a major influence. One products of all but the few leading abstractionists on the
would like to know much more about which particular Continent, the clinging to what seemed extreme positions
Cubist works Nicholson knew. One would like to know largely because they allowed one to leave basic questions
that unknowable thing: how these looked to him at that unasked.
time and in his particular personal and cultural situation. Nicholson's direct access to the heart of modernism
Sir John Summerson, in his aptly delicate account of speaks of some sort of predisposition. And, indeed, if we
Nicholson (Penguin Modern Painters, 1948), quotes a look at his rare earlier work we discover that there is no
letter he had had from the artist relating to this. In 1921 element of style or content that he is forced to discard.
Nicholson saw a Picasso painting: he says of 1915. That it Every artist of this century has had to learn and unlearn,
seemed to him totally abstract illuminates what may well adopt and reject, various methods and manners, except
have been a more normal reaction outside informed Paris Ben Nicholson. Not only the form and pattern but also
circles than one would imagine. Then Nicholson writes : the forbidden highlight of that Striped Jug of 1911, even
`And in the centre there was an absolutely miraculous the shadow cast by the plate in Still Life, Capriccio,
green—very deep, very potent and absolutely real. In fact, Castagnola of 1921, remain in his work. Even the precision
none of the actual events in one's life have been more real and economy of Nicholson's 'mature' painting is an-
than that, and it still remains a standard by which I nounced with the first picture.
judge any reality in my own work.' What the thirties did bring was a new ordering and a
This is very remarkable. It was not the abstractness that new, more total control. Certain softnesses in the paint-
mattered, but the realness; not the syntax or mechanics ings of the twenties are condensed into particular and
of Synthetic Cubist picture making, but that miraculous nameable pictorial constituents. Quiet gestures that had
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