Page 58 - Studio International - July August 1972

marble groups representing Charity, Truth and Medical Association headquarters in the Strand. existing cenotaphs, which was economical and a
Justice, and bronze groups representing Rima, the W. H. Hudson memorial in Hyde recognition that art could no longer serve the
Progress, Peace, Manufacture, Agriculture, Park, caused most offence of all, and Epstein state purpose. With Churchill's death some small
Painting, Architecture and Shipbuilding is to claimed to have heard a man denouncing it with monuments were raised but only that fine
Edwardian England what the Albert Memorial `Would you want your sister depicted in this British-Beer-Is-Best traditionalist, Mr Ian
was to Victorian England. It does not fail in manner ?' He lived long enough to receive Nairn, envisaged a giant Churchill staring over
detail (the excellent sculpture is by Thomas universal respect through the churches' the sea towards the Hun. But there is still the
Brock, the general layout by Aston Webb, the inexplicable desire to have art objects on and in chance to continue the Victorian programme of
re-fronter of Buckingham Palace and designer their buildings after World War Two. And any edification. A Lloyd-George clutching the
of the Victoria and Albert Museum) but overall sculptor commissioned by a Dean and Chapter Party funds (Parliament), a recumbent Christine
it lacks movement and energy. For all its and the TUC deserved respect. Keeler (Cliveden), an empty pedestal inscribed
deficiencies it ought to be respected as a noble It had taken a long time for sculpture to move George Best (Manchester), an Enoch Powell
effort towards European grandeur. But such an from the street to the museum, which, if there is Inciting Harmony (Wolverhampton); and we
enterprise requires tradition and rare gifts; the a suspicion that art is about art and not public could fill in some of the obvious gaps—Jack the
only man in England with the necessary panache men and events, seems the right place for it. At Ripper and the Rugeley poisoner would make
to carry it off was E. A. Rickards, the architect the end of the second war the country was powerful images. Desirable, but one can't see
of Central Hall, but he was given little content to add the footnote '1939-45' to the local authorities footing the bill. q
opportunity—his monument to Edward VII at
Bristol and his sketches are witness of his flair.
But at Cardiff he had and took his opportunity Queen Victoria, The Great Hall, Winchester. Photo Winchester Photographic Library.
in purely architectural terms.
The decline in public sculpture was rapid.
The Victorian ideals had gone, the Edwardians
had had enough of earnestness, and the Great
Man died with Gladstone. Memoirs were
already appearing that suggested that some of the
Great Men so prominently displayed in public
places were incompetent bunglers, some were
financially dubious, and others sexually aberrant.
The old statues became jokes and some were
unceremoniously moved about. The fate of
Field Marshal Lord Straithnairn and his horse
(both made by Onslow Ford from guns
captured during the Indian Mutiny) was
symbolic; they lasted only eighteen years in
Knightsbridge and trotted off in 1913. As the
British Empire shrank the ungrateful freed set
about destroying their former conquerors. The
process accelerates; at home General Gordon
on a camel has gone and Manchester is thinking
of destroying its Albert Memorial.
There was a temporary respite for our
monumentalists. After 1918 every town and
village needed a war memorial and sculptors
were fully employed for ten years. On the whole
the cenotaphs were disappointing and the
decline of any national expressiveness in
sculpture was indicated in the choice of
architects to design the more ambitious ones. In
the most famous, Lutyens wisely contented
himself with an exercise in geometry, a
thoroughly twentieth-century conception. But
among the memorials there is one outrageous
masterpiece, C. S. Jagger's Royal Artillery
Monument at Hyde Park Corner. The French
had reasoned into Surrealism, Jagger arrived at
it by divine inspiration. But the whole collection
excited little enthusiasm; Frampton's Nurse
Cavell was admired for its originality, the rest
were seen to serve their purpose.
After the war memorials, public sculpture or
sculpture in public places ceased to interest
anybody unless it was by Epstein and dirty. The
love-hate of the English press for Epstein was
English sculpture for thirty years. His
subversion of all decency and his threat to the
race had begun with figures on the British

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