Page 17 - Studio International - January 1973

News and notes his current work is about. Though slides are no Adrian Stokes
substitute for actual exhibitions, they do give
some idea of what kind of work an artist is
doing, and it is for this reason that on
i November the ICA in conjunction with the
Louis Wain AIR (Art Information Registry) will be
D. L. Davies writes : The picture reproduced on starting a new project in which artists and I first encountered Adrian Stokes's work when,
the cover of this issue is a hitherto unpublished photographers will be able to show their work as a schoolboy, I took a summer job in one of the
water colour by Louis Wain (186o-1939), an during the ICA's normal opening hours on the British Council libraries abroad. In my spare
exhibition of whose work is currently being held back-projection unit of the Mezzanine Gallery. time I read my way through the books on the art
at the Victoria and Albert Museum until All artists belonging to AIR will have free shelves and when I came to the S's I found The
14 January. access to these facilities though arrangements Quattro Centro, Stones of Rimini and Colour and
Louis Wain's interest in cats began in the can be made for non-members to have their Form (the last named, originally published in the
short years of his marriage in 1883 to Emily work shown at a rental of 50p per fortnight. 'ios like the other two, appeared in a revised
Richardson, who was even then dying from AIR will provide information slides on each form in 1950). I read each book through several
cancer, and who found relief from her suffering artist and any additional information on their times and even so I was baffled by certain aspects
in fondling Peter, a kitten given to them as a careers or work can be obtained from the of them, but I experienced a sense of
wedding present. Registry; therefore artists exhibiting their exhilaration because I realised that a new
Peter became the artist's principal model, as work independently will be providing dimension had been added to my visual life.
he himself described him, and the studies made information on their own material. Today, almost thirty years later, I still read
of this cat formed the raw material for the AIR, as an established artist's index with a Adrian Stokes with the same sense of
hundreds of drawings, paintings, and even functioning library of current and experimental excitement. I could not claim that my
ceramics which brought fame to their work open to all professional artists free of understanding of him is complete — the mind,
originator. charge, will be producing the material for the despite its clarity, is so quick, so allusive and so
Louis Wain suffered deeply at his wife's first fortnightly collection of slides, after which subtle, and the style that mirrors it, despite its
death, and rarely, if ever, could bring himself it is hoped to broaden the scheme to include great beauty, is often elliptical in its imagery —
to mention her in later life — indeed, he seems material from all sources including art schools. but I think that I have learnt, a little, how to
to have falsified his memory to avoid her For further information please contact Hugh read him. I believe that he must be read the way
recall — so that it is not unreasonable to assume Gilbert at AIR on 01-734 3604 or Giana Luke he looks at works of art. In Three Essays on the
that his extreme preoccupation with cats in at the ICA on 01-930 0493. Painting of Our Time, published in 1961, he
some way provided an acceptable outlet for his writes: 'Though things and their systems remain
unbearable grief. The Tate Gallery report 197o-72 has now outside us, we seem to get to know them by
Always an eccentric, unbusinesslike man, been published. The Grant-in-Aid to the taking them in; for the most part, however, we
given to philosophical musings and pseudo- Gallery for the 2 years totalled £530,000. The do not will them to flood through every atom of
scientific speculation, he became increasingly so annual grant was increased to £265,000 pa for our being in entering the store of what we call
after the First World War had pushed him out each of the 5 years beginning 1970/71. Among the mind. The work of art, on the other hand,
of people's thoughts. He lived with his three new acquisitions were the McAlpine Gift of 6o suggests to us physical and mental states of
sisters in Brondesbury, until increasing poverty, sculptures by younger British artists and works envelopment and of being enveloped'. His
and his tendency to violent behaviour, left them by Clyfford Still, Gorky and Yves Klein. books are works of art in their own right and
no alternative but to have him certified insane Attendances have remained more or less stable they work on us in the same way as their
in 1923. for the past 5 years : 892,000 in 1972, 961,00o subjects. He is perhaps the most purely visual
He was a patient first in Springfield Hospital, in 1971. The most successful show was the writer on art alive today.
then the Bethlem Royal Hospital, and for the Hogarth with 68,000. The Gallery Trustees One of the reasons that Adrian Stokes has
last decade of his life in Napsbury Hospital. strongly opposed Museum Charges but their never had the widespread recognition that his
In his schizophrenic period he produced protests were to no avail. It is now their aim to achievement demands is that his writing refuses
work of a quality so different from that of his open the Gallery on Tuesdays and Thursdays to be fitted into any rigid or single category. It is
earlier years, that he has received great between 6 and 8 pm without charge. The 1972 certainly not art history, and it is equally
attention from those who are interested in the Finance Act exempts bequests of money to the emphatically not art criticism; nor, strictly
relationships between art and mental illness. Tate and similar institutions from Estate Duty. speaking, is he an aesthetic philosopher. His
The picture reproduced here belongs to that This relief is in addition to the exemptions from writing obviously belongs to a nineteenth-
later period, as is evident from the way in which Estate Duty and Capital Gains Tax which century tradition of aesthetic writing. He is in
the background is filled up (a feature of apply when works of art are given, or sold by the line of direct succession from Ruskin and
schizophrenic art), and by the floral motif, private treaty, to the Gallery. Pater, and he writes as evocatively, as creatively,
which is seen in other work from his Napsbury as either. But to say this in an age of
period, and may owe something to the design of Peter Cook, one of the founders of the twentieth-century specialization implies a
the wallpaper in the wards where he was Archigram group, assumed the Directorship degree of dilletantism that does him a
housed, as we know from those who nursed of the Institute of Contemporary Arts on the disservice. What renders Stokes's writing
him at that time. first of this month. The appointment is for unique is that a life lived at a level of extreme
The man who was once famous, died as what 2 years. visual intensity has been informed by what is
was then known as a 'pauper lunatic' in 1939, perhaps a profounder knowledge of
penniless and largely forgotten. q Roy Slade has been appointed acting Director psychoanalysis than that enjoyed by any
of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, other writer on art. Therein lies his great
AIR at the ICA: Exhibition space is at a following the resignations of the previous originality and also what I believe will prove to
premium, galleries are booked up for months Director, Gene Baro, and Vincent Melzac, have been one of the most valuable and durable
ahead, critics and dealers cannot always visit Chief Executive Officer. For a blow-by-blow contributions to the literature on art produced
studios, and meanwhile time slips away without account see the Dec. issue of Art Gallery in our time. Any adequate critical study of his
the artist being able to convey to anyone what magazine. achievement would require a knowledge of