Page 71 - Studio International - July August 1968

setting Bloomsbury's activities in their accurate con­
Supplement summer 1968 text he facilitates objective assessment of their
importance.
Bloomsbury fought. in its varied fields. for a new
clarity of thought and expression. and for the eleva­
tion of truth and reason over the simplifications and
evasions of mass emotions or of convention for
New and recent art books convention's sake. One intention of this clarity was
the establishment on all levels of human contact of
tolerance and charity. in which the free and full
realization of individual potential could occur.
The Bloomsbury contribution to the visual arts.
though discussed at length. is not treated separately;
its indivisibility from other Bloomsbury achievements
is thus usefully underlined. The relevance to the visual
arts of the call for truth to both feeling and reason.
of published misconceptions. mischievous in effect. and for clarity and individuality of expression. need
Bloomsbury lives the causes of which can now be more clearly under­ not be laboured. Although made sixty years ago. it is
stood. He then discusses the origins in contrasting
sufficiently modern to be as valid in essentials for the
sectors of the Victorian intellectual and aesthetic 1960s as for the 191 0s. During that decade Roger
world, which produced the distinctive Bloomsbury Fry. Duncan Grant and Vanessa and Clive Bell
Bloomsbury by Quentin Bell. 126 pp. 70 mono­ combination of rationality and intuition. before between them effected Post-Impressionism's most
chrome illustrations. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. 21 s. describing Bloomsbury's emergence in the first vigorous pre-war incursion into Britain; took furni­
decade of the century. the crucial identifying effect ture. ceramic and interior design into extraordinary
Improbably, this book appears in the series 'Pageant on it of the first world war. and its more complex areas of both decorative inventiveness and anticipa­
of History'; other titles are 'Gladiators·. "Duelling position in the inter-war years. Each section is sup­ tion of postwar functional developments; in an
Corps·. 'Eunuchs'. 'The Saints' and ·s.s·. The dust ported by quotations from the work and letters of intriguing overlap with these activities extended
jacket explains that the series deals with • .•. sects ..• Bloomsbury, linked by longer interpretative passages. their painting methods to include such unortho­
movements ..• elites, coteries, castes. cults and insti­ Seventy illustrations document Bloomsbury visually. doxies as assemblage. collage. calligraphic and drip
tutions·. Although one of Professor Bell's main Quentin Bell's text has the peculiar merit of personal techniques and near-abstraction; in both fine and
conclusions is that Bloomsbury was none of these experience of many of the events and individuals applied arts interpreted styles of distant periods with­
things, Weidenfeld and Nicolson are to be congratu­ discussed, combined with an effective sensitivity to out restraint and with surprising contemporary rele­
lated on a publication invaluable alike to specialist the dangers of personal bias. Like Leonard Woolf in vance; and in both theory and practice laid much­
Bloomsbury students and to those concerned with his autobiography, he readily admits to shortcomings needed stress on the importance of formal values
the ideas of the period as a whole. in the circle, and his clear analysis of its greatly pre­ and the unexplored possibilities of the bold use of
Several recent biographies have extended under­ ponderant merits is made with sympathetic under­ colour. It is true that others abroad had brilliantly led
standing of the character and achievements of this statement. The irreducible facts of Bloomsbury's the way and that concurrently in Britain more radical
remarkable circle, but none, despite greater length. contribution to the development of the arts and ideas experiments were occurring in the Vorticist circle.
deals socomprehensivelyyet succinctly both with the of twentieth-century Britain thus stand out with all But the passion and innovation of Bloomsbury,
range of Bloomsbury involvement and with the the more authority. Too much adverse criticism of freshly experienced and expressed, were remarkable
essential nature of such attitudes and beliefs as were Bloomsbury over the last forty years has been con­ in themselves and invaluable in developing an open
common to individuals as various as Freud's trans­ cerned with Bloomsbury·s failure to do things it never situation.
lator James Strachey, the art historian and critic attempted, while considering the importance of its Not the least of the merits of the present book is
Roger Fry. the radical economist Keynes, and the major achievements as if they had occurred later that in making clear the originality and range of
pioneer in the novel-form Virginia Woolf. than they did. The consequence has been underesti­ Bloomsbury art and its embodiment for over sixty
In an opening chapter that is essential if his subject mation of the extent to which Bloomsbury helped to years of the balance common to the circle as a whole
is to be seen straight by the present generation. make possible the achievements of later periods, by between intuition and reason. fantasy and control.
Quentin Bell analyses the inadvertent liability to mis­ insisting. in ways that seemed startling in their day, it indicates the need for extensive study and re­
understanding by others inherent in Bloomsbury's on the importance of attitudes now taken for granted. appraisal of an area of British art too long neglected
social and intellectual position. and gives examples A major virtue of Quentin Bell's book is that by and misunderstood. Richard Morphet

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49