Page 46 - Studio International - February 1968

An interview with if I can help it. I always believe in everything and show, it is that they are representative of the main
Well you know I never like to generalize at all anything in common between the artists I chose to
Helen Lessore everybody being a particular case, and I think European tradition.
that for most of my artists, my best ones, it was
probably a good thing that the gallery was as it Could I ask how you felt about the very thick paint
was; although I don't say it's any worse for other that some of your artists used?
artists if they have a different and more impersonal You know, I would like to quench the idea if
relationship with their dealers. possible once and for all that I liked thick paint as
such. Because if anything, if I had any likes one
I was just trying to pin down what it was that gave way or the other, it would be the other way.
the shows at your gallery a coherent style and
character. It's obvious that all your artists were What attracted you to what became, perhaps mis-
figurative artists. They tended to paint quite con- leadingly, known as the Kitchen Sink School of
ventional subject matter, even art school subject painting?
Mark Glazebrook matter—figures, landscapes, nudes, still-lives. Well, I think I must stress that it was the quality
Yes, they were figurative. But that doesn't mean of the painting rather than the subject. But at the
that I started out with a definite attitude about same time, I had been struck by the fact that in the
Mark Glazebrook Mrs Lessore, I believe that when that. I started with an open mind. In fact it was past there had been a great number of paintings
your husband died and you were obliged to take the de Stäel show in 1953 which excited me so which we now think are beautiful but which when
his gallery over that you thought that the best much that the day I saw it the decision clarified they were new must have greatly shocked con-
thing to do would be to support young artists. itself in my mind that my gallery should play a temporary opinion by their rather humble, drab,
Helen Lessore Well, it was not so clear cut in my part in the living art of my time. You may say of plebeian, every-day subject—for instance Cara-
mind as all that at first. There were very few course that de Stäel was not one hundred per cent vaggio's pictures. And I felt that painting of this
courses open to me, you see. Whatever I did, I non-figurative, and indeed in the end he returned kind, which was entirely based on the artist's im-
wanted to show good pictures and I hadn't to figuration; but still I think the fact that his mediate surroundings, his own visual experience,
enough money to deal in first class pictures by work moved me so much does show that I didn't was very admirable. For instance, Jack Smith's
established artists and so I felt that there was start with a prejudice against so-called 'abstrac- pictures, more than those of any other painter of
nothing for it but to look for talent among the tion'. his time, were made from the most severe, stark
younger ones. and drab elements. They were still tremendously
Your artists didn't have geometrical tendencies, if monumental and some of them, I think, had con-
How did you set about that? you know what I mean, with the possible exception siderable beauty. I felt he deserved every encourage-
I went to my old art school, the Slade, at the of one phase of Jack Smith's painting, which I ment.
time when the summer compositions were hanging don't think you were so interested in showing.
up, and there I was lucky enough to find a picture You mean they were not strongly formalized. Do you feel, looking back, that the critics were
by Michael Andrews, which really quite bowled sympathetic ?
me over, as a student's work. It was a picture called Not strongly formalized, yes, and with no hard- On the whole, I think they were, in spite of the
August Sunday or Sunday for the People . . . something edged, straight-edged, inclinations. remarks that kept creeping in about greyness and
like that. On the strength of that one picture, I Yes, I suppose my dislike of formalization is part gloom and so forth. Every now and again, there
offered him a one-man show whenever he could be of my dislike of generalization. But still, there was would be an extremely enthusiastic review from
ready. After that, people very quickly got the idea Roderic Barrett, whose work was very stylized and John Russell, John Berger, David Sylvester and
that I was interested in the work of young artists. formalized. As I think I told him, I showed his Andrew Forge. I think it certainly helped the
I didn't have to go out and look for it any more. It work because I respected it rather than because I careers of the painters.
all came to me and it was just a question of choos- liked it.
ing. I can see that you could easily squash someone
Also your artists did not seem very interested in who complained that all your artists were grey and
Do you think that being a painter yourself—you the 'isms' of modern painting. I suppose that if gloomy. But it is true that there was a sort of
won the Slade painting prize in the late '20s— one was forced to bring them near to a category, a seriousness, a moral seriousness about art that
rather affected your role as a dealer ? number of them, Bacon, Tim Behrens, possibly your gallery displayed, isn't it? Do you disapprove
Oh, I am quite sure it did, yes. For one thing it Auerbach, Kossof . . . Bratby, were nearer expres- of frivolity and hedonism which some English
put me on the side of the artist, rather than anyone sionism than they were anything. But it doesn't artists seem to have accepted as a part of art
else. And I was a bad business woman, you see. I seem to help very much to say that. They seem to now ?
was not interested in real dealing—I loved buying, have been rather lone talents in a way. You could, I think that art has its own morality. It's possible
and if I had had money I should have been a col- I suppose, link Diana Cumming up with Surreal- to paint what people would call a frivolous picture
lector—but as I was a dealer, what I was interested ism. Euan Uglow was, of course, influenced by which is serious in an artistically moral sense. My
in was finding a few good painters and feeling that William Coldstream and Michael Andrews is also artists were and are deeply serious about art. Of
if I couldn't be an artist myself, which was what I interested in an intense sort of observation. course this is quite separate from the conventional
really wanted to be, at least I might play some Craigie Aitchison is... morality of private life.
part in the art world by being where things were You know I am not interested in all this classifica-
being actually produced . . . in being, you might tion. I am interested in any good individual I wonder why you finally closed the Beaux Arts
say, a kind of mid-wife. painter. And then I suppose I really take a long Gallery ?
view. Because when you look back over the It was becoming financially impossible and if
Perhaps you regard the dealer's role rather like history of art all these movements seem to fall into there had been no other reason that would have
that of, say, a book publisher who is supposed, at place in a great European tradition, and it seems compelled me to. But also, I think that one's taste,
least, to sympathize with and understand what to me what is important is never so much the one's power of appreciation, remains with a certain
the writers whom he publishes are trying to do. movement as the individual artist. I think a lot of generation. And although I always tried to keep an
Or do you think it really suits the artist better to people get that back to front. You see, I don't open mind in looking at art students' work, I never
have a straight commercial relationship with his think any movement is in itself any better or any got so excited about any new work later on. I
dealer ? worse than any other movement. And if there is suppose the most recent addition to the gallery
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