Page 53 - Studio International - June 1968

Order prefers work which has a mural-like character, as
being of superior essence.
It comes as no surprise to discover that many of
the participants in Peladan's enterprise owed a big
debt to Puvis de Chavannes.
But they were not undistinguished. Among those
who exhibited were Bourdelle and the young
Rouault, Valloton, Knopff, Hodler, Aman Jean
and Delville.
As a first attempt to cast light on a neglected and
difficult subject, the show at the PICCADILLY GAL-
LERY is wisely unambitious, but this does not pre-
vent it from being fascinating. The pictures hover,
very often, between the moving and the ludicrous.
Precisely on the knife-edge between the two, for
example, is the Orphée by Delville— a head framed
by a lyre, and resting, apparently, on a wave-
covered beach. Other things have distinct force—
I'm thinking, here, of a little painting of a forest by
Knopff— mysterious, receding, deserted. One ex-
pects Mélisande to pop out from behind a tree-trunk
at any moment.
The trouble of course is that this is for the most
part 'literary painting', and literary painting is
what we least know how to react to. In England
we have now successfully readjusted ourselves to
the Pre-Raphaelites, and are in the process of
coming to terms with the later work of Burne-Jones.
The Salon de la Rose Croix offers many of the
attractions that Burne-Jones does. One often sees,
in the work at the PICCADILLY GALLERY, that
slightly bleached, moonlit colouring, and the elon-
gated lines, the slightly torpid rhythms. But it
would be wrong, I think, to conclude that this is
the only style that Peladan's chosen artists could
work in. The sculptures by Bourdelle are admirably example, that Rosicrucian rituals by W. B. Yeats Above, Jean Delville Orphée,
tense and energetic—expressionist, almost, in a still survive? Besides its numerous incidental oil on canvas, 31 x 39 in.
work like Le Baiser, with its pouting mouth. fascinations, this small exhibition is a contribution Piccadilly Gallery, London
The re-exploration of the occult side of Symbolism to the history of culture.
is long overdue. How many people know, for Edward Lucie-Smith

Victor Pasmore's mural for to and on to the ceiling bending round so that the
Manchester Institute of Technology piece which has 'spread' out of the wall floats
ambiguously between the columns, between its
Two years ago there was a blank white wall, fifty- own plane and the plane of the ceiling. At the
five feet long and fourteen feet high in the entrance other end near to the window Pasmore has drawn
hall of the Renold Building at the Manchester straight on to the wall with a kind of waxed pencil
Institute of Technology. The architect, W. A. and there the shapes are composed of different
Gibbon of Cruickshank & Seward, had decided textures. Sometimes they are rushing into the end
that the best way to overcome the incomplete of a tube and the tube bends round to meet our
feeling the wall gave to the building was to ask vision as if distended by a gas or a liquid; some-
Victor Pasmore to design a mural and the Institute times they are pulled out into a very thin thread.
was assisted to meet the cost of the mural by funds All the shapes at this end have the appearance of
from the Edwin Austin Abbey Memorial Trust of membranes filled by a continuously varied stream
the Royal Academy. Pasmore has been working of a thin, light substance. Next to them is an image
on the mural since then and has just completed it. in which the pencil marks are even lighter.
The hall opens through a wall of glass windows Pasmore's problem in composing this mural was
and doors into a glass quadrangle which is sur- in drawing both ends together, the broad flat
rounded by the building on all four sides. An open shapes which he had had put on by painters first
staircase takes students to the floor above and parts and the thin, closely worked skeins of pencil which
of the mural can be seen both when ascending the he opposed to them with his own hand at the other
stairs and from underneath their open structure. end. The solution which he has hit on in the middle
At the same time the roof is supported over a very is now one of the outstanding features of the mural.
large area of a very light-coloured marbled floor by The black shape seems to pull both ends together
thick fluted columns. Therefore it is possible to with the force of an eruption. A heavy liquid bursts
look at the mural from forty or fifty feet away through the wall intervening with another channel.
through randomly placed straight columns as well The effect of the columns in the hall is that each
as from the stairs and the result is that different of these events can be separated from one another
parts of the mural are revealed framed by sharp up- and viewed apart. They can then be viewed as a
right divisions. By walking to any part of the hall it whole from another position a few feet away.
is possible to view parts of the mural separated Therefore this mural not only helps 'to explode the
from one another and to juxtapose them as a series space' for the architecture as Pasmore says is his
of related experiences in a time sequence. This is intention; it succeeds in being a whole series of
the way Pasmore has composed the mural. At one Victor Pasmore Mural for the Manchester Institute experiences over its whole length.
end is a tier of broad, flat shapes which spread up of Technology Dennis Duerden