Page 31 - Studio Internationa - March 1971

country. Embarked on his career as an artist,
Medley disliked the Tonks-Steer regime at the
Slade and went to evening classes at other
schools. He commenced a life-long friendship
with Henry Moore and with Roger Fry (who
soon afterwards bought his work) and the
Bloomsbury set. Before he was twenty-one, the
Diaghilev ballet made a formative impression on
Medley; at twenty-one he was living in Paris,
where he stayed for two years, copied works at
the Louvre—notably those by Poussin and
Chardin—and had Ozenfant among his teachers.
He also met Marcel Duchamp (around 1926),
read Paul Gleizes, and having digested the lessons
of Cezanne and Matisse earlier, as a student in
London, experienced the first impact of
Picasso, Léger, Cocteau and other formulators
of the twentieth-century spirit. A little later, he
met Picabia, Tzara, Berard and Tcholitcher. and with Alec Guinness and William Devlin in in America, and began to paint mythological
In 1929, still frequently in Paris, Medley the cast. Medley's theatrical work was abstract scenes derived from his middle-eastern
visited the South of France for the first time and surrealist in style. He was interested in experience, influenced by Delacroix—a
and, though enjoying it, got nothing from the allegory and wanted to make symbols out of renewed attempt to portray life, in this case the
South for his work. It took him another real, rather than invented objects. He had moved harsh light and brilliant colour of Egypt in
twenty-five years to realize that he was not, in away from the ideals of the Bloomsbury set and terms of allegory. From then Medley's work
fact, a visual artist in the usual sense, but became more friendly with the more abstract has moved through successive phases of coming
dependent upon a sensual or erotic point of artists : Henry Moore, Sutherland, Piper, to terms with observable reality (the Bicyclists
departure chiefly concerned with the human Zadkine, Wadsworth and Paul Nash. series and the Antique room series; the
figure. Architecture was always to be a central Another strand in Medley's evolution came Gravesend paintings) only in order to discard
concern, but in the way that most of Medley's from close friendship with W. H. Auden. it. An increasing concern to construct a 'poetic'
work relates to the human figure it could be Medley and Auden had attended the same space within an abstractly figurative context
said that his eventual abstract work is filled, school; and whilst Medley, at fourteen, was was given a fresh impetus with the advent of
through its architectonic structure, with the painting and visiting the art galleries, he also abstract expressionism; but then, gradually, the
underlying ethos of what Geoffrey Scott called encouraged Auden to write poetry. The contact intrusive nature of an elaborately worked surface
`the architecture of humanism', though the was renewed in 1933 when Auden's Dance of has been rejected in favour of a matt, even
phrase is applied in a more personal or figurative Death was first produced by the Group Theatre. surface. What is at last retained is a
sense to Medley's painting. The following year Medley met Christopher consequential informality in the disposition of
Toward the end of the twenties, Medley Isherwood and painted his portrait. He also the flat planes in the recent paintings, almost
met many dancers and artists connected with spent some time in Berlin in 1934, where he saw equivalent to a figurative 'situation'. Allegory
the Diaghilev ballet through his friendship with Signorelli's Education of Pan for the first time: a has changed into analogy: the same principles
Rupert Doone : a new world was disclosed, of painting that was to have a dominant influence of an 'architecture of humanism' persist; and
theatre design. In 1932, he helped found the over Medley's subsequent development. what Medley is painting now is the most direct
experimental Group Theatre in Cambridge, Throughout the thirties, therefore, Medley confrontation, so conscientiously achieved, with
which became a part of theatrical history— was closely connected with some of the most his true subject: a fusion of memory, feeling,
notably with its London season of 1936—that radical intellectual life of the period. 1941-5 perceptual obsessions greatly distilled, and a
included productions of Dance of Death (Auden, were spent in the Middle East travelling deeply civilized awareness of poetic myth, ritual,
Henry Moore, Medley, Doone); Sweeney intensively from Syria to Algeria. In 1943-4, pattern and the forces which can dislocate that
Agonistes (the first T. S. Eliot production, Medley also travelled widely in America with pattern. If literary or narrational painting and
masks by Medley, produced by Doone); The the British Military Mission, renewing sculpture is now acceptable, from Rauschenberg
Dog Beneath the Skin (Auden and Isherwood, acquaintance with Léger, Lincoln Kirstein, to Robert Morris as opposite but linked
Medley sets and costumes, produced by Granville Barker, Geoffrey Gorer and other polarities, then Medley is painting not only the
Doone); Timon of Athens (music by Benjamin friends. More particularly, he was able to see image behind the words, or the situation: he is
Britten, Medley sets and costumes, production French art again in the museums. constructing the ikon which summarizes the
by Nugent Monk); and in 1937, also in London, After the war, Medley felt a great need to event. And the event, for an artist of Medley's
The Ascent of F6, by Auden with sets, costumes rid himself of the weight of Picasso, already intellectual calibre as well as emotional fibre, is
and masks by Medley, production by Doone, diminished by war-time contact with his work a complex affair. q

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