Page 25 - Studio Interantional - May 1967

52. Modern science and technology have destroyed 55. Psycho-analytical criticism involves the danger of financial investors. This has debased art and
the old conventions. The artist now operates in a
* over-concentration on particular issues: a know- rendered critics the slaves of those whom they
self-oriented world of choice. The breakdown of ledge of the medium is a good corrective to this should teach.
tradition and the general crisis of values make the tendency.
critic's task nearly impossible today. 60. Criticism should correlate art forms and trends
with the moral background of society.
Objective criticism can only be in terms of publicly 56. Gestalt psychology gives an account of visual *
definable characteristics and qualities. perception.
61. The critic stands on shifting sands and cannot
53. Freud and Jung have-given us a deeper insight 57. The lack of agreed conventions disarms many * assert himself as a moralist.
into the psychology of the artist, and they enable critics, who are afraid to appear philistine in face
a re-examination of the art of the past. of new developments. 62. The role of the critic is particularly important in
the leisure state.
54. Detailed knowledge of psycho-analysis is not 58. Fashionable criticism distorts the value of a work
necessary to the critic, but twentieth century of art.
psychology has given criticism a new dimension
based on dreams and the unconscious. 59. Critics nowadays often act as talent scouts for

Correspondence on many occasions. Art is international, he used to any other material point. And in fact Miss Ashton,
say, and so did most legitimate painters in this city. Mr Lucie-Smith and Mr Lynton in their published
Most artists struggle to be acknowledged on their comments on my article have all immediately con-
Visual or auditory implications in own terms, as unique individuals, first. Only a few are ceded the enormously important point that very
Pound's poetry? susceptible to the kind of false comparative generali- serious artistic chauvinism exists now in New York.
zations that sweep across the seas in art criticism. I I shall be satisfied if my article has no further im-
Dear Sir, am saddened to see Britain succumb—if Mr Heron's mediately visible result than this—that three such
I think Mr Rozran's investigation into Pound's 'visual views are widespread—to national amour propre and important critics have now, without demur, incor-
arrangement of printed words on a page' ('A Vorticist wounded feelings. It was precisely the kind of 'we're porated into their repertory of currently accepted
poetry with visual implications', April issue) is inter- on top now' cant that accompanied the art of the notions about the contemporary scene the fact that
esting and deserves wider attention, although I 1950s here that led to the undeniable chauvinism he New York is at present artistically chauvinistic. But
personally disagree with some of his conclusions. detects in New York. Those of us who enter exhibi- why have they themselves not commented on this
Thus it is my firm belief that, paradoxical as it may tions prepared to see works of art, if possible, and shocking fact before now, if it is so obvious? And
sound, Pound's visual arrangements—like post-im- from no matter where, loathe any simplicist divisions of course I limited myself very severely in giving only
pressionist and cubist art as a whole—are based on into a national grading system. Certainly there are a few concrete examples (with quotations) of that
an auditory rather than visual structure. When read- many vigorous artists in Britain, but they are only chauvinism in operation. I could easily have given
ing Whistler's 'Ten O'Clock' and 'The Gentle Art of incidentally British artists. I would hope the same further evidence. For the moment, consider just a
Making Enemies', Klee's notebooks and Kandinsky's could be said for those artists I defend from the single further example of what I am getting at: every-
'Concerning the Spiritual in Art', one is struck by their United States. Nationalism is quite as loathsome and one knows that the Tate Gallery has for years devoted
musical analogies and their references to musical finally evil in art as it is in politics. a great deal of its wall space to modern American
form. The fact that the revolution in the modern visual Sincerely, paintings (never less than one major room, plus -
arts had an auditory basis is also corroborated by Dore Ashton various anterooms and halls): yet in all my visits to
Mr Rozran's own quotation of Epstein's 'form, not New York, the Museum of Modern Art in New York (in 1960,
form of anything' (p. 3), which can only refer to form N.Y. 1962, 1965) I have never been able to unearth more
in auditory space. Hence, I think that Pound's spac- than five or six smallish paintings by British artists
ing and visual arrangement refers to 'rhythmic units' in the entire building (two Bacons, a Sutherland, a
(p. 5), i.e. they are structured auditorily. Personally, I Patrick Heron writes: Lowry, a Sickert and a tiny Gilman, if my memory
should like to know a little more about the relation- When I decided to break my nine-year-old vow of serves me right—and a small Nicholson relief hung
ship between this rhythmic or auditory arrangement silence and write the article 'The Ascendancy of high up in the sculpture room somewhere).
and the visual make-up. Thus Mr Rozran's probes London in the 60s' (which you published in December Which brings me to that part of my outburst which
into as yet unexplored fields may show some more 1966) I was fully conscious of at least half a dozen is still apparently incomprehensible to most critics—
substantial results and may stimulate some further risks of major misunderstanding arising. But if one is namely my assertion of the ascendancy of British
research. sufficiently incensed by a situation one has ultimately painting since 1960 or thereabouts. As I thought I had
Yours sincerely, (if one has any self-respect at all) to protest, and dis- made clear in my article, my admiration for the Ameri-
Max Nanny count the cost of the operation. can painters I named remains—mainly so far as their
Switzerland- Obviously I realize as well as Dore Ashton and others achievements of the period 1947-50 are concerned.
what a vile thing chauvinism is, in the arts or else- But it looks as though this is not enough for our
[Dr Max Nanny, the Swiss critic, teaches in Zurich. where. And obviously I also recognized in advance American friends, who have come to expect only un-
He is currently interested in the work of Ezra Pound.]
that a sufficiently violent protest against American qualified admiration from us. But I am afraid I think
chauvinism would automatically invite the charge of it is self-evident, partly for the reasons. I outlined,
Chauvinism in art-a reply British chauvinism. The high-minded little lecture that the centre of gravity of main stream development
read to me now by Dore Ashton is quite unexcep- shifted from New York to London round about 1960. I
to Patrick Heron
tionable in itself. But anyone who actually read my know that it goes against the grain of well-bred
Dear Sir, article will surely have had to recognize that the Englishmen to make vulgar claims of this sort (I
Although I do not feel Mr Heron's scathing re- history I there recorded—and for the first time—was believe our national reticence may well be our un-
proaches 'Ascendancy of London', December issue) the history of ten years of positively over-generous doing in the present critical situation) and I can
directed at me, I do feel moved to issue a warning: support for American painting in general, and for a assure readers that it took me many months of deep
The very chauvinism that he claims exists in New long list of American painters in particular, on the thought before I decided to committhis vulgar breach
York is the result of the kind of nationalistic drum- part of my friends (the British middle generation of good manners. But the truth is even more im-
beating in which he (surprisingly) indulges. painters I mentioned) and myself. That this generosity portant than good manners: and I make this claim
The artists whom he cites so warmly, protested has at last run out is the crude meaning of my article. simply because I believe it to be true.
vainly for years against critical nationalism. Pollock, Now, neither Miss Ashton nor anyone else has so If no one else, on either side of the Atlantic, can see
for one, felt impelled to mention his debt to Europe far challenged me on this—or so far as I can see on what I am talking about, I shall probably have to spell
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