Page 42 - Studio International - February 1968

LONDON criticism, for signs of commitment and response to of an idea. The painters themselves, in so far as they
one direction, one painter, one painting as become acutely dissatisfied with the collective
commentary by opposed to another. Comments about the fairness, retrospect on a ten-year working period, can only
or even quality of the selection, about the degree resolve to stay out of the bad situations whenever
Charles Harrison
to which the collection is representative of the art they recognize them in the future. They cannot
of a generation, are of little use to the individual create the criticism, be it committed support or
artist, who has hardly been working for the last ten considered castigation, for which the present
years simply for the sake of his seat in the end of situation cries out. That so many young English
term photograph. And I question, on the other painters and sculptors look longingly and regret-
side, the value of such comments to the reading fully to Clement Greenberg, an American critic
public. People may want to be informed but their of advanced years, is a terrible indictment of
British Critics and British need is to be enlightened. English writing on art.
Sculpture Part of the trouble, of course, is that the circle is I don't think the situation can change unless the
so very small. Add to your first list a second for prospective writer on art is prepared rigorously to
writers on art who reach a reasonably large public. work out his priorities. Either he is committed or
You won't have added many new names. Those he is not committed. Either he is independent or he
The New Year is a good time for accounting. Add who are in a position to write about an exhibition is not independent. The usual path of advance-
the juries of the Edinburgh Open 100 and of the are only too often too closely tied to its organization ment for the young man-about-art, via selection
John Moores exhibition, the selection committees or its organizers for any independence of judgement committees into the official bodies of enlightened
for the Biennales of Sao Paolo, Paris and Venice, to be possible. The system of commitment by patronage, is for the critic a primrose path to com-
the purchasing committee for the Stuyvesant committee has stifled our potential critics. A promise. The tendency has been for the writer on
Foundation collection, plus any two or three other certain interpretation of modernism in English art art to become either a part-time civil servant or a
appropriate ingredients. How many names have has become current—a mean taste levelled out part-time essayist.
you got written down? not enough? through process of committee—and has been The point is that for his judgements to have
There is evidence to show that several of the allowed to go unchallenged, because no one of weight, the critic must be as committed as the
artists whose work was shown in the Stuyvesant sufficient weight has been left outside to challenge artist to the priority of art. This is perhaps why the
collection were deeply disappointed both by the it. (The Americans score by having more than one artist wants and needs the critic—for company if
exhibition and by the critical reaction to it—or major centre, several different and often opposing nothing else. The artist whose work is convincing
rather by the total absence of any reaction. This factions.) For those who have been most closely has always been prepared to preserve at some cost
was a unique opportunity to assess a whole period concerned with the development of British art his independence and his commitment, and if
of British painting in the light of a collection which since the war, it is now too late. The commit- certain sacrifices of reward or prestige are required
would not be broken up once the exhibition ended. ments are all to people rather than to paintings, to of the critic he can hardly complain at having to
The artists represented must have hoped for the image of an organization rather than the force sacrifice the same to preserve the same.

Philip King Declaration 1961, cement and marble chippings, 33 x 82 x 33 in.,
Stonehill School, Birstall