Page 47 - Studio International - April 1968

Although different editors have had different in both my grandfather's and my father's day, IN THE STUDI_t'.
attitudes The Studio has been. in the best as far as Japan to the East and the New (D�wn bJ'l'rtd Pe�)
sense. liberal and never the organ of a clique. World to the West. but my own excursions
It has never offered more information. abroad were few.
presented in livelier fashion. than it does Anyone who has tried running a magazine,
today. however. knows very well that there are
Someone said of a great Chairman of the other things to attend to than living the life
Tate Gallery 'He died seventy-five years which the magazine represents and that
young'. Still living. Studio has done even there's a very strong tendency to become
better. John Rothenstein desk-bound.
We were probably not nearly as profes­
sional in our jobs as we might have been,
although this is a criticism I have heard
levelled at British publishers in general.
Perhaps. however, there is something to be
said for dedicated amateurism.
In our case I should imagine that our
Leicester Square premises. with offices verti­
I remember The Studio as a boy. In those cally stacked and connected by stairs
days it was 'the' magazine for anyone like (instead of arrayed horizontally) and with
myself who had never heard of Cubism and space for personnel and storage at a
Fauvism. At that time the big names in premium. may have inhibited our efficiency
British Art that I knew of were Brangwyn somewhat.
(whose mammoth etchings may yet have Our third floor boasted a balcony over­
another day). Sargent. Orpen. John. Clausen, looking Leicester Square and the Alhambra
Sims and Arnesby Brown. I saw their works Theatre with its gilded onion domes. This
regularly at the Academy and in The Studio. vantage point proved an attraction to
But soon after being transplanted to the big painters who frequently set up their easels
city I became interested in the activities of and struggled with various aspects of the ARTIST (to.his Model): "lt'1 no use contlnuing lo f1016 lf:,011 cot1ch,Uke that; why
the London avant garde and the School of view. -ff the dickens doo't you tako QERAUDEL'8 PAS.TILLBS1"
Paris. As a result the Academy began to fade I recall that our most regular visitor was the An advertisement from one of the first issues of The
in my mind and with it faded The Studio. late Piero San Salvadori. who preferred rain Studio
Nevertheless it is symptomatic of the and fog and usually chose November as the
vitality of the old Studio that. as late as about favoured month for his palette-knife paint­
1963, it was able to undergo a metamorpho­ ings of London. He sat on our balcony in the aesthetic appeal of a Japanese camera
sis. I remember the enthusiasm with which beret and leather jacket and, despite the to the sculpturesque pretensions of a piece
G. S. Whittet and David Pelham. then editors. comparatively crude technique, managed to of derelict plumbing mounted on a pedestal.
announced its new resounding title. The paint smaller and smaller pictures with each But. be that as it may, there can be no doubt
Studio is dead. long live Studio International. successive visit until his paintings eventually about the stimulating manner in which
Victor Pasmore attained sub-postcard dimensions. When Studio International handles and presents its
held in the hand they merely presented a subject and it is very gratifying to see, three­
confused splatter of colour. At six to twelve quarters of a century later, the pioneering
feet distance. however. these minute works work of one's grandfather so skilfully per­
took shape and came alive with detail. petuated and adapted to the needs of our
Now the balcony is no more. The offices, times. Rathbone Holme
which used to belong to my grandfather were
blown to bits during the war. J.M. Dent then
provided us with a suite of offices. all on one
It is only when invited to take a look in floor. at Aldine House.
retrospect at one's earlier days that I find Thereafter. with the gradual easing of the
myself confronted by the si'ght of a singularly austerity measures imposed by war. a new
uneventful career at 44 Leicester Square. It attitude to presentation and layout began to The Studio in Barcelona in· 1893-1901
was there. sandwiched between Thurstons. emerge in our publications. Nevertheless
the billiard's hall, and a restaurant on the their preparation was still handled by a Just before and around the turn of the cen­
corner of Panton Street on the site now method of 'universal editorship' which. by tury Barcelona was very much alive to
occupied by Fanum House, that my thirty­ comparison with today's specialized and English culture. The periodical Peli Ploma
year connection with The Studio began, departmented production techniques. would to which Picasso contributed drawings, in­
thirty-five years after my grandfatherfounded be regarded as archaic. cluded regular reports from their art­
the magazine in 1893. Apart from the merits and enthusiams of correspondent in London. Utrillo's adopted
There was. I think. a fairly general miscon­ successive owners during the last ten years, son Miguel. Sebastian Junyent. a friend of
ception that almost anyone who worked with I think there must be some inherent magic in Picasso. publicly declared that painting had
The Studio was either a bit of a crank or else the magazine itself which inspires its reached its highest achievement with the art
it was assumed that one spent most of the producers. of Turner, Rossetti, Millais and Holman Hunt.
time travelling the world. One may not be in sympathy with current (No one wrote to protest against this some­
There was. in fact. a fair amount of travelling trends in the visual arts. preferring perhaps what strange opinion.) Kate Greenaway's
171