Page 81 - Studio International - July August 1970

He distrusted organizations. Leaders of the
labour movement have always regarded him
as no more relevant to politics than Santa
Claus, a silver-haired running dog of the
Arts Council. But it's unfair to blame him for
this. His social feelings were to a remarkable
degree a part of his own emotional make-up;
they rarely became a set of concerted beliefs
with application to the world around him.
They were an extension of his personality, as
personal as that wise and sympathetic
relationship he maintained with some artists
of his own generation, as personal as that
ideal artistic life of which he continually
dreamed, and which, in some way, he actually
led, among those creative people who were English Handwriting 1540-1853
always welcome in his Yorkshire home—in
by J. I. Whalley
that ideal dream landscape of Moon's Farm
A beautifully produced detailed account of English calligraphic material from the Victoria and
and his autobiographies of childhood. Albert Museum Library, including 90 plates. The book will appeal to all calligraphers and provide
Read always lived among artists, and his an invaluable source book for designers. £5 (by post £5 4s 6d)
artistic life was essentially devoted to en-
couraging his friends. He became more Origins of Chintz
largely active as a publicly-inclined critic in
by John Irwin and Katherine B. Brett
his educational theory, and this is quite
A close study by art historians of the cotton-paintings or 'chintzes' shipped from India to Europe
correctly regarded as his most important in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, lavishly illustrated by 235 half-tone and 17 colour plates.
contribution to our culture. The key text The work forms a catalogue of the chintz collections at the Victoria and Albert and Royal Ontario
Museums. £5 (by post £5 4s 6d)
here is Education through Art, published in
1943. There's a nice tribute in this book from
Free lists of titles (please specify subject/s) are available from Her Majesty's Stationery
Walter Gropius which remainds one that Vice, P6A (SI), Atlantic House, Holborn Viaduct, London EC1.
Read's association with the expatriate Bau-
hausman in the 1930s contributed a great Government publications can be bought from the Government Bookshops in
London (post orders to PO Box 569, SE1), Edinburgh, Cardiff, Belfast, Manchester,
deal to that influential work. Read's Words- HMSO Birmingham and Bristol, or through any bookseller
worthianism shifted the adult world of the
Bauhaus back to childhood, and to some
extent swamped artistic training and the
Bauhaus's often-overlooked emphasis on the
intellectual in art by a largely unformulated BETTER BOOKS
and non-cognitive, hardly-discussible feeling
for 'self-expression'. Education through Art now have for
brightened all our primary-school classrooms, sale several
sure, which is great, but one sometimes EDWARD LUCIE-SMITH and
wonders if it didn't have a bad effect on fine art books.
English thinking about art. There was some- PATRICIA WHITE
thing of its critical vagueness about such Egon Schiele. Watercolours
matters in, for instance, the way people took and Drawings. 100 copies
up Alfred Wallis; and this spread into a good Art in Limited Edition to Thames and
deal of discussion of primitive, naive, and Hudson, London. £70
spontaneous-gestural art. Infantilism as an Marcel Duchamp. Notes and
artistic procedure will always require more Projects. £12.12.0
strenuous arguments for its justification than Britain Marcel Duchamp. Complete
any Read was willing to provide. Works. £20
As for art on canvases, hung on walls in Blaeu Atlas of England, Scot-
galleries : Read was of his time, and the time land, Wales and Ireland. £60
was the thirties, those empty years. Read 1969-70
didn't like big canvases, on the whole, and he and One copy only. Ben Nich-
didn't like public art as much as art which olson. 1911-1968 and with
might seem to come from small communes— This essential reference this comes a signed etching
he often thought of artistic movements as chronicles the full range of 1966 (Olympic Fragment)
being like small anarchist communes. He was recent British art activity (No. 11 of only 60) £105
both in and outside London.
very attracted, as a formal and emotional It provides a full documentation
quality, to biomorphic forms in painting and of the important exhibitions and These may be viewed at
sculpture. His critical moment coincided with shows the way art works in our
society—how it is exhibited, Better Books of 94 Charing
such things as the thirties expatriate group in looked at, reacted to, distributed, Cross Road, WC2. Tel. TEM
Hampstead, the English abstractionists around patronized. 6944 or we would be pleased
Axis, Circle and Unit One (his personal tussle Lavishly illustrated with many
plates in full-colour and to have them delivered.
between the biomorphic and the cornered monochrome. 11¼ x 8¾ in £6
and abstract was difficult here) and most of
53