Page 22 - Studio International - September 1967

clients, or turned their brushes to producing gaudy able to understand the problem more easily, and con- News
eye-sores for adorning the interiors of new office- vey it to the reader, who is rapidly losing his 'benefit
blocks. It is also a great pity that so many of our con- of clergy' to those whose tonal range of hearing is The National Gallery
temporaries are so strongly influenced by the quasi- more extensive by use and practice-and in some ways The National Gallery Report for Jan. 1965-Dec. 1966
divine judgements of professional art-critics, by the this is a very dangerous situation, because the makes interesting reading. A thorough documentation
indiscriminate accolades of praise which are heaped 'over-literate' can become deaf to the voice in speech. of the Case of the Missing Goya is the basis for a con-
upon this pretentious bunk, and that they lack the To a writer, it is a very real problem, and I think the vincing plea for greater safeguards in law against the
intellectual honesty to reject it. explanation is related to reality more nearly than removal of paintings (Kempton Bunton was convicted
Yours sincerely, might be suspected. only for the theft of the frame). The Director also
Peter C. Gavagan Yours faithfully, makes very clear how narrow the gallery's scope for
The Students Union, Noela M. Mackenzie future acquisitions must be, in the face of American
University of Aston, Colchester, competition, unless greater fiscal enducements are
Birmingham Essex offered to attract the kind of private donations that
sustain so many American museums. Regular visitors
'Tape-letters' Frank Dolphin and Christine Smith to the National Gallery will be gratified to learn how
much care, consideration and technical and scientific
Dear Sir, Sir, expertise is devoted to the better presentation of the
A recent letter from Dr Max Nanny of Zurich [May Until a few days ago I was given to thinking that collection. Tribute is paid by the Trustees to the
issue] concerning an article by Mr Rozran on the critics of gallery shows should, whenever pdssible, achievements of Sir Philip Hendy, due to retire from
poetry of Ezra Pound, has interested me. give a fair and informative estimate of the objects on his post as Director on 31 December 1967.
I have been writing poetry during the past year, and view. My (no doubt) ultra-conservatively opinionated
the problem of the 'musical' basis is not at all a belief has received a rather sobering jolt from your
strange one. But as a magazine on graphic and visual London critic. Gifted with the provisional confidence The Tate Gallery
art you naturally concentrate on 'words' and 'letters' of the clairvoyant, he condemns Frank Dolphin and
that can be seen, while I have attempted to make sure Christine Smith (at the Grabowski Gallery) for their The Tate Gallery Publications Department has just
of the 'sounds' and 'notes' no matter how the page self-evident anchorage in the present which fails to issued a complete and admirably concise catalogue
looks, and in fact, have intended one poem to convey reveal what will happen to them. listing all items in the collection in March 1967, plus
the message that if the words are spoken on to tape- Indeed, his review provides an extraordinarily rich titles of works in the National Gallery by artists repre-
and only on to tape-the visual point of contact is not vein of new critical standards when, confronted by sented in both collections. The catalogue is produced
there at all, except in the mind. work which has (to quote his own words) 'life and wit,' in a small edition by direct copy techniques which
If it would be possible to communicate by letter, or he starts wondering what the artist's future 'course of facilitate revision and which will enable further up-to-
better still, a 'tape-letter' for recorder, one might be development can possibly be.' date editions to be printed at eighteen-month inter-
When needlessly tempted to vaunt my own jaundiced vals. Price 15s.
prejudices, in my forthcoming articles for Art Inter- Recent acquisitions at the Tate include two works by
national I shall try to emulate your precedential Pol Bury-3609 White dotson an oval ground of 1966, in
example to exploit the certain uncertainties of the which minute wires respond at random with sudden
future to ignore the present. All the same, I should be twitching movement to an invisible force, and 16 balls,
74 years ago grateful to you, Sir, if you would permit me to record 16 cubes in 8 rows of the same year, in which the
the fact that I would not have introduced Frank forms are elemental, solid, and apparently firmly at
Dolphin and Christine Smith to their British public if rest, yet each intermittently moves, slowly and
I had not reposed my confidence in their talent. unexpectedly.
Yours faithfully,
R. C. Kenedy
Kew, Artists for Venice
Surrey. Bridget Riley and Philip King have been chosen by
the British Council to show, respectively, paintings
Comment clarification and sculpture at the Venice Biennale in 1968.
Dear Sir,
May I clarify a statement I made in one of the para-
graphs of my Comment In your last issue? In referring Obituary
to current grants made to the Arts Council, I said 'and John Lyman (1886-1967)
included in these grants is a substantial sum for the William Townsend writes:
organizing of exhibitions abroad'. I must apologize John Lyman who died in June, in Barbados, was one
for having phrased this misleadingly. The sum which of the most distinguished Canadian painters and for a
I had in mind has not, in fact, yet been apportioned. long period a challenging voice. In terms of European
The idea had only been canvassed that some part of development he appears as an artist perfectly ad-
it might be used for subsidizing British artists' justed to the first decade of the century but in 1913,
Never have I seen more attractive costumes than in the expenses abroad on certain occasions. But my ori- when his exhibition in Montreal was greeted with
Salon du Champs de Mars. Even the men were ginal point remains that this would be a job which the derision, he was a whole generation ahead of develop-
interesting. One looked at the pictures for tone and British Council, rather than the Arts Council, should ments in Canada. Overwhelmed later by the nation-
colour and line, but it is none of these things which be given the means to do. alist landscape movement he returned to Montreal in
made the women's clothes charming. That is why I feel I would like to emphasize that I was not voicing critic- 1931 and helped to change the climate in a way which
that all this fear and trembling about the advent of the ism of the Arts Council, and certainly notof the amount made possible the breakthrough of Canadian painting
crinoline is absurd.... Fair ladies, if it does come in, of their new grants as such: these can only be wel- in the late forties.
rest assured that you will make it delightful. comed. The purpose of my paragraph was to deplore In 1909 Lyman, in company with Matthew Smith,
Paris Letter, 1893 what is, by comparison, the shabby treatment of the went to study with Matisse, with whom he enjoyed a
Arts Council's opposite numbers in the Fine Arts lasting friendship. His work is superficially closer to
Department of the British Council. Perhaps a quota- that of Marquet, but beneath the refined control of
The October issue tion of respective annual purchase grants (Arts colour, the stillness and passion for clarity, there is a
Council 1967-8-£16,000: British Council (for each of sense of suspended anxiety, of nervous energy barely
The issue will include a Comment by Joe Tilson; an the last three years)-£1,200) makes the point suffi- mastered by contemplation.
article by Neville Dubow on sculpture and environ- ciently. Lyman painted well into the sixties and lived to see
ment; George Segal on his art; and commentaries Yours sincerely, his causes won and himself regarded as a true forbear
from London and New York. David Thompson by younger generations of painters in Canada.