Page 39 - Studio International - December 1969

fine water-colour by Cuthbert Hamilton probably teach in the same art school with actual collapse during the war, it is known
(loaned by the Tate) which is his only known him. The art scene is broken into small that the cumulative effect of constant fear
surviving work, an extremely powerful draw- groups who have only occasional and suspi- and uncertainty is likely in itself to be suffi-
ing by Dorothy Shakespear and indeed works cious contact with each other. An artist's best cient to so disrupt the normal reasoning
which bely the modest reputations of all the audience is other artists who know, from the processes that the mind welcomes and em-
`minor' artists. But the show is inevitably inside, what he is doing while it is new....' braces any opportunity to conform to what-
dominated by the ten leaves of a Lewis sketch- It is my contention that in this sense of the ever appears to be generally acceptable, and
book which have not previously been seen disappearance of an efficient working environ- that once such a conversion has taken root it
and by the eighteen major works by Bomberg ment the war was indeed 'bad for art', and is exceedingly tenacious and can only be dis-
which are probably all that survives of his that the change from rebellion to a sort of
abstract work outside public collections. One is conformity which eventually led us to the
left feeling regret that these artists all turned insipidity of Unit One was the product, akin
away from abstraction and bemusement that to brainwashing, of an unfamiliar world on

a mere five years later, Clive Bell could write men suffering from acute mental strain.
of them with apparent justification, 'Were ' ... we have concluded that all normal men
they really born to be painters? I wonder. eventually suffer combat exhaustion in pro-
But of this I am sure: their friends merely longed and continuous combat.' R. L. Swank
make them look silly by comparing them with and E. Marchand—Combat Neurosis Develop-
contemporary French Masters.' ment of Combat Exhaustion. Arch. Neurol. Psy-
Was Augustus John right when he said to chiat. LV. 236. 1946.
Bomberg in the Cafe Royal on the night of `Once a state of hysteria has been induced in
August 4, 1914, 'David, this news of the out- men or dogs by mounting stresses which the
break of war is going to be very bad for art' ? brain can no longer tolerate, protective inhi-
What happened during the war to change bition is likely to supervene. This will
radically the attitudes of a group of rebel disturb the individual's ordinary conditioned
artists into near conformity? Why was it only behaviour patterns. In human beings, states
in England that the mainstream of art was of greatly increased suggestibility are also
interrupted and diverted? found, and so are their opposite, namely
I am going to suggest that these questions can states in which the patient is deaf to all sug-
only be answered in terms of the psychiatry of gestions however sensible.... The anxiety....
religious conversion and its marked similari- created a state in which large groups of
ties to the effects of combat fatigue, and to the persons were temporarily able to accept new lodged by a similarly violent process. Thus
fact that the Edwardian character of life in and sometimes strange beliefs without criti- the attempt to 'kill John Bull with Art' was a
London was ineradicably destroyed by the cism.' Battle for the Mind. William Sargant. failure, most of the art has disappeared and
war, so that artists were deprived of cafes and Heinemann, 1957. we are left with the tantalising prospect of
meeting places—as Lawrence Alloway put it The suggestion is that all humans who are what might have been if these artists had
in his Granada lecture, 'Here there is almost sane can be reduced to a state in which they recovered from their wartime experiences and
no professionalism among the artists, by which are willing to adopt totally different ideas gone on producing abstract art through the
I mean a level of interpersonal contact which and behaviour patterns, once they have been 'twenties and 'thirties, to compare with the
is sustained and open to newcomers. In softened up by mental overstimulation. This dim reality of art in England from 1915 to
London no artist seems to know enough other can take many forms, ranging from Revivalist 1955. □
artists; there will be a few others, of his own preaching to brainwashing. While, as far as is 1 d'Offay Couper Gallery, 9 Dering Street, London
generation probably, and some of these will known, none of these artists was reduced to W.1. November 11 to December 5, 1969.