Page 22 - Studio International - November 1968

of the payments of students' grants to monthly instead purchase of works of art. short, it is another but different 'convention', the
of termly. The payment of part-time staff in full—with I have been informed that this matter was not, word 'convention' being as applicable here as it was
instruction from internal administrators to stay at however, discussed at the committee meeting on not in the first case. The fact that body-type characters
home from May 28 1968 to the end of term, some six October 1, owing to the pressure of other business, have a maximum close-set imposed on them by a
weeks. The payment of full-time staff from May 28 but that it will be dealt with at a subsequent meeting. technical consideration external to their design as
onwards, though continued closure of the college The allocation of £20,000 has always been regarded letters, and film-set characters do not have any res-
prevented them from performing their duties. The as a fund for the commissioning of sculpture and triction other than that of legibility—a conception of
payment of external assessors, apart from many acts murals for the GLC's schools and housing estates infinitely more flexibility than is commonly supposed
of petty obstructionism and interference with the and it would be very improper to use this money to —gives different meanings to 'convention' and
installations of what is public property etc. etc. erect a monument to a political figure, nor can this 'exigency' which are real and not products of my
Many of us would like to insist that education in a part of South Bank, which is scheduled for cultural semantic imagination.
democracy is a right and that it ought to be free of purposes, be considered a suitable place for such a The simulation by 'rub-down' letters of an area of
any possibility of being frustrated by the crude memorial. characters produced 'by an impression from body type
methods we have experienced at Hornsey and which I hope that this letter will help to ensure that there is analogous to the problem confronting sign-writers
frighteningly appear to be prevailing at Guildford. is some discussion among artists and other cultural who, as Mr Tracy is no doubt aware, offer a number
There has been sufficient eminent and scholarly workers, of Mr Sebag-Montefiore's proposal. of contemporary typefaces in their specimens for
sympathy for the students, case to reach the ears and Yours faithfully. hoardings, shop fascias, public authority notice-
intelligence of all save those who are concerned to G. Freeman boards, etc. Here the letter forms are not seen as
subordinate education to reactionary politics, but I London, SE15 primarily typographic but merely as units to be
fear the views of Lord Queensberry, Lord Longford, assembled to convey required information. The adop-
Sir Robin Darwin may meet with the automatic, icy tion of a foreign exigency, i.e. that of typographic
and devious response of our small town politicians Spacing of typographic characters spacing because of the employment of letters which
unfortunately so familiar to most of us at Hornsey. Dear Sir, happen to have been cast simply to facilitate their
Yours sincerely, The article by Mr Walter Tracy entitled 'Typographic multiplication, cannot possibly be seen as relevant by
Keith Grant Agorophobia' (September issue), while being most a sensitive sign-writer aware of such differing con-
Lecturer. Fine Art Department instructive on the subject of the method of spacing siderations as colour of ground and letters, delinea-
Hornsey College of Art embodied in the casting of founders' type, is also tion of text-area, background against which sign is
London NW1 rather blinkered in other respects and contains some to be read, etc.
inconsistencies. The message, then, is this. That a letter form, while
Churchill memorial for South Bank? The convention of the spacing of typographic properly being described as 'calligraphic', 'lapidary',
Dear Sir, characters (in fact a technical exigency due to the or whatever, to denote its allusive character to a
It was reported in The Times of September 13 that nature of movable type as Mr Tracy must well know) prototype, does not embody in its verbal 'tag' a built-
Mr Sebag-Montefiore, Chairman of the GLC's new has not been indicted for its correctness or otherwise in area of surrounding space derived through a purely
Arts and Recreations Committee, intended to pro- by modern graphic designers—just its irrelevance as semantic association of concept and term. Utilitarian
pose, at his Committee's first meeting on October 10, the solution to certain problems of design. The in- and aesthetic considerations should determine the
that a memorial to Sir Winston Churchill should be dictment is eloquent in that it has been made in arrangement of letters : typographers must be moti-
erected on South Bank, in front of the Royal Festival visual, not canonical, terms. Close-setting to the vated by concepts, not terms for concepts.
Hall and that Mr Geoffrey Jellicoe, architbct of the degree exemplified in the illustration at the top of Yours faithfully,
Kennedy Memorial at Runnymede, should be asked page 116 is not good or bad but impossible with Richard Healy
to design it. The cost of the monument would be met body type characters technically: aesthetically it has Farnham School of Art,
out of the GLC's yearly allocation of £20,000 for the a rhythm belonging to the device of film-setting. In Farnham, Surrey

News A retrospective of work by Charles Sheeler, New galleries open in London include Com-
pendium 2 at 137 Fulham Road, SW3, an offspring
perhaps the foremost artistic interpreter of machine-
age America, is at the Smithsonian's National Col- of Compendium Galleries in Birmingham, which
lection of Fine Arts, Washington, until November 24. intends to introduce out-of-London artists (the open-
Among the paintings are a number which he exhi- ing show is of paintings by Peter Tarrant, who studied
bited in the Armory Show in 1913. The show goes at Shrewsbury Art School), and Rotunda Studios of
later to Philadelphia and the Whitney. 116-18 Finchley Road, NW3, which opened on
October 10 with an exhibition of paintings by Harry
Baines.
Norway acquired a new art centre when the
Sonja Henie—Niels Onstad Foundation museum
Henry Moore, Bridget Riley, Hubert Dalwood
opened at Hovikodden in Baerum. The museum
and Michael Ayrton were among artists who con-
houses the Henie-Onstad collection, particularly rich
tributed works to a U.N.A. Czechoslovak Fund exhi-
in works by Bazaine, Estève, Munch, Soulages, de
bition at Camden Arts Centre, London, in October.
Stael, and Jacques Villon, and has adequate space
Mr Bryan Robertson is resigning the directorship Among collectors who donated works of art were Mr
for concerts and theatrical performances. The Founda-
of the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London. He will, how- and Mrs Juda, Sir Roland Penrose, and Mrs Sieff.
tion is also publishing a magazine thrice yearly,
ever, remain associated with the Gallery as adviser
edited by Ole Henrik Moe. The first issue, published
and consultant, and will be responsible for two exhi- The fourth Northern Young Contemporaries
in August, includes a number of articles on the history
bitions a year. During his tenure of the directorship— exhibition will be held at the Whitworth Art Gallery
and architecture of the centre, an article on post-war
which he assumed when he was only 26—Mr from November 16 to December 21. The exhibition
French painting by Jacques Lassaigne, and a cata-
Robertson's creative capacity to assess and pas- is supported by the Peter Stuyvesant Foundation and
logue of the collection.
sionately support the important work of younger The Arts Council.
artists has given the Gallery an international reputa- The works have been selected this year by Mark
tion. It is probably no exaggeration to say that the Recent Tate Gallery acquisitions placed on view Lancaster, painter, Richard Morphet, Assistant
Whitechapel, under his directorship, has played a include six paintings from the Pleydell-Bouverie keeper at the Tate Gallery, Nikos Stangos, Art and
bigger role in securing recognition for post-war bequest (among them Cezanne's L'allée du Jas du Poetry Editor for Penguin Books, and Professor Reg-
British painting and sculpture than any other British Bouffan, Vuillard's The artist's mother of c. 1930, and inald Dodwell, Director of the Whitworth Art Gallery.
gallery. Salvador Dali's Forgotten horizon, 1936), two Mark The judges are also responsible for choosing the ten
Before relinquishing his directorship Mr Robertson Gertlers bequeathed by Thomas Balston to the Peter Stuyvesant Foundation £50 prize winners, and
plans to mount retrospectives of four Canadian National Art-Collections Fund, and Anthony Green's a smaller selection of works to be sent on tour by
artists, including Yves Gaucher and Guido Molinari. Souvenir de jeunesse: Madeleine Jocelyn's lounge. The Arts Council during the first half of 1969.