Page 59 - Studio International - July August 1971

affect his commitment to the cause of the had a profound intellectual conviction that their
proletariat within Germany. He continued an condition alone was central to political activity;
active relationship with communist and it was on this conviction that he based all
organizations and individuals for several more his analysis of political and social realities. As he
years after he returned from Russia'. said in 1928, 'To help the worker understand
However, as the German Communist Party his oppression and suffering; to make him
became increasingly dominated by Moscow ascertain openly his poverty and his servitude;
from 1924 onwards, and increasingly to awaken in him self-consciousness; to awaken
bureaucratized and concerned to establish itself him for the class struggle—this is the aim of art,
within the existing political framework, we feel and I serve this aim.'
that Grosz's political vision was being betrayed, It is a pity that the profound disillusionment
and that as a result his work lost its ideological of the late 1920's prevented him from
intensity. He was faced with the problem criticizing the political system of Stalin. But
confronting many artists of the period 1924-30 : this, in turn, raises the second problem, as to
an intuition that the revolution (in Russia how Marxist a thinker Grosz was. As Beth
particularly, and, through the influence of Irwin Lewis says, by the 1930's 'he was
Moscow, in other European countries) had gone obsessed by the basic identity of the Nazis, the
badly wrong; combined with a despairing faith fascists, and the communists. They were all
in the political organization on which their manipulators of power, they all demanded a
earlier commitment had been based, and which submissive populace; they were all built upon
seemed still to offer the only hope for the future. terror and slavery'. This vision accounts for
Even Grosz, it seems, could not turn his Grosz's disillusionment—a disillusionment
destructive critical intelligence publicly against which demonstrates his noted sensitivity to
the Communist Party; he could only slowly political events—but perhaps a real
withdraw his own participation in its activities. understanding of Marx (which does not really
As Beth Irwin Lewis says, 'A decade of political emerge from the writing quoted in this book)
activism seemed to him to have achieved might have given him the weapons to fight
nothing. The spectre of a mass society back. q
dominated by technology and militarism ANDREW HIGGENS
seemed to negate all his work'. He left for
America in 1932, and, again as a deliberate Delacroix's letters
decision, played the role of 'commercial' artist Eugene Delacroix: Selected Letters 1813-1863
in a commercial society; refusing, selected and translated by Jean Stewart,
characteristically, to linger in the past or retain intro. by John Russell. 496 pp with 48
illusions about the future. monochrome illustrations. Eyre and
Beth Irwin Lewis's account is particularly
valuable, I think, in giving considerably Spottiswoode. £7.5o.
Painting at Court by Michael Levey. 228 pp
greater importance to Grosz's political activity
than to his affiliations with the Dada movement. with 7 colour and over 200 monochrome
illustrations. Weidenfeld and Nicolson. £7.50.
Although a leader of Berlin Dada in its early
days, Grosz soon turned to active political work. It is strange how the English continue to take
He shared with the Dadaists from the first a Delacroix not quite seriously, with a pinch of
refusal to worship Art, but soon rejected their sensible salt—he is like de Sade or de
political nihilism. From 1919 onwards he gives Lautréamont, all of them making use of passion
the appearance of a man searching for political to invent a kind of order; icy extremists with
organizations to whose service he could willingly aristocratic prefixes, real or invented; not the
subordinate his art, and this willingness kind of artist we can tolerate. Hence the
involved a high degree of active commitment. giggles of the reviewers. One of them,
The book is also valuable for the large number commenting on this volume of Delacroix's
of quotations from his actual writing, and for a letters, stated that there was no major picture
full check list of his drawings, poems and by Delacroix in England—ignoring,
statements and contributions to periodicals, presumably, Delacroix's own opinion of the
illustration and exhibitions, as well as a very Death of Faliero in the Wallace, subtle and
good index. Its account of the artistic and coherent organization of the data in Byron's
political events of the period is clear and last act; and thinking Baudelaire merely
relevant, though necessarily brief. It seems to misguided in devoting three elaborate pages to
me most useful both as an introduction to the a description, or rather an attempt to avoid
period itself and to the problems of art and description, of Ovid among the Scythian.
politics in a more general sense. Another compared Liberty on the Barricade to
Some problems remain. One of them is a tour-guide leading her flock. Good clean fun,
Grosz's misanthropy, which seems on the one like Kruschev on Niezhvestny.
hand to have deprived him of any emotional So this is really a welcome book, four
commitments—`There were the people and hundred pages of letters, translated finely and
there were the fascists. I chose the people.'—and precisely, with an interesting introduction,
on the other to have given him his particular mainly biographical. The illustrations go to
clarity of vision. Constantly reiterating his lack unfamiliar sources and give us pages from the
of illusions about the masses, he seems to have sketch-books, a superb water-colour of the
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