Page 18 - Studio International - January 1973

psychoanalytic thought and literature - would be able to partake utterly of every
especially that of the late Melanie Klein - as thought : I would be immobile, provided for, as
intensive as Stokes's own. But for the in the womb yet out-of-doors : existence within
non-specialist the use of psychoanalytical and without would be thinly divided : in the blue
concepts when applied as they are so often in tablecloth I would clutch the sky'. (From Living
Stokes's writing to specific works of art or in Ticino 1947-50,1964.)
artistic situations can be deeply illuminating - Fundamental to all Stokes's views on art is his
even to those of us for whom some of the distinction between carving and modelling,
language and the ideas are unfamiliar. developed first of all in Colour and Form and
With his recently-published anthology The expanded in his analysis of Agostino's reliefs in
Image in Form (Penguin Books, 1972 - the title the Tempio Malatestiano in Stones of Rimini.
is taken from an essay incorporated into He realises the validity of both methods of
Reflections on the Nude, published in 1967) it is procedure and that often they are
possible for the first time to take a panoramic interdependent, and he does not reserve the
view of Stokes's achievement (many of his books terms for sculpture in stone. Briefly, he sees
are out of print and have been collectors' items carving as revealing the inner life, the artistic
for some time past), and the effect, far from potential of the physical vehicle, whether it be
complicating the patterns of this thought, is to limestone or bare white canvas. Carving is a
clarify and simplify - for despite the complexity more aggressive approach, in its initial stages at
of his mind he has been, from the start, a least, but it results in a work of art in which the
thinker of extraordinary consistency. The raw material, the image bodied forth (whether
extracts included in this volume have been abstract or representational - he talks for common sources of the creative urge, as he does
selected by Richard Wollheim, and although example of the 'image' in a Soto) and the artistic in the passages dealing with art and
they have been drawn from works of all periods personality behind it achieve a degree of fusion psychoanalysis, make both for a feeling for the
chronology has to a large extent been and inter-dependence, an 'all over' quality that continuity of art and for the uniqueness and
disregarded, and they have been assembled in is the hallmark of the art he most responds to peculiar value of its different manifestations.
such a way that the book has a strong narrative and loves best - that of Piero, Giorgione, Turner Hand in hand with this goes his ability to relate
impetus. Thus the book begins with the and Cezanne. In a similar way, it seems to me, things, the canvas to the breast, the breast to the
writings which deal most generally with ideas Stokes in his writing creates a 'face' (it is a term landscape (of Piero, 'his sense of the warmth
about art and how we look at it, and then moves he uses frequently in his discussions on carving) between parent and offspring, between
on to the passages which use the discoveries of for the creative act itself, whether of doing or polychrome pavement and shod feet . . .'). The
psychoanalysis to illuminate the nature of the looking. The values of visual art, he suggests, are ripples widen but they have the effect of making
creative process. These are followed by passages values of space in the abstract, and the highest the original object, the work of art, richer and
on individual artists and works of art, and the achievements of visual art not only absorb but more itself; for, in his own words, 'the
book ends with descriptions of some of the places transform time into space. And again despite outermost ripple on the pond after the stone was
which have helped to form the author's visual the more obviously temporal aspect involved in cast is the one that visually reveals the power of
sensibilities and with some brief fragments of reading as opposed to looking, the sensation I the throwing and of the thing thrown'. This is
autobiography. In other words the progress is carry away from a session with one of his books why Piero means so much to him: 'Piero reveals
from reflections on the nature of art to an is one of having seen something. This is not to the family of things . . . The family of things. It
investigation of the workings of art, on to art in say that his arguments are not coherently is as if the poetry of deep affinities were identical
life, and finally to life lived as an aesthetic reasoned, but rather that his writing has about it with those objects and their formulae; as if
experience. It makes irresistible reading. more the quality of revelation than of exposition. death's calm separation lent nobility to the
Perhaps Adrian Stokes's greatest When he talks about a particular Cézanne one pressure of each heart-beat'.
achievement is his ability to capture those sees and feels the canvas in the printed page, in a Yet to me Turner is the artist who brings
moments of fleeting aesthetic apprehension different dimension, but almost as vividly as if together most completely the various facets of
which I believe that everybody experiences but one were standing in front of the original in the Stokes's aesthetic imagery, and I feel that
which are often so fragmentary or so momentary National Gallery. Turner's painting is the art to which his own,
that they vanish before we can analyse or come Few writers can convey the sense of writing is most comparable - in its love for the
to terms with them. He has the ability to completeness, the totality of a work of art in the English countryside and for Italy, for Venice's
re-evoke these truth-giving or life-enhancing way that Stokes can. And although his starting architecture of stone and its relationship to
moments in words that do not so much pin them point was in his discovery of Italian art of the water, for the enveloping warmth of light and
down on the printed page but rather keep them fifteenth century, I think that his deeply-felt colour. In an autobiographical passage on his
vibrating in the mind like after-images of an encounters with the art of his time, and his need childhood Stokes talks of his desire to have
intense experience of colour and light. There to explore in words the truth embodied in things 'put right', and of Turner he writes, 'He
are quotable passages on almost every page, but non-representational art that he has admired, found a way to employ the whole of himself, the
I choose one from a late piece which comes have sharpened his awareness of the processes of immature as well as the mature, and to fit them
towards the end of the book, and I select it art. 'The better we understand art', he writes, together'. In The Image in Form we feel, too,
deliberately because it does not deal with a work `the less of the content we impose, the more that a lifetime of visual experiences, of aesthetic
of art but because it shows how the sort of becomes communicated'. In Three Essays on the encounters has been 'fitted together'. 'The
visual experience that we encounter daily can Painting of Our Time he says, 'The painter', he writes in the essay on Turner, 'is he
flood our entire consciousness in such a way as to distinctness of what we call modern art does whose inner world, everywhere intertwined
destroy totally the barriers between the eye and not lie in the degree of conventionalisation or with the outer, will be projected in such a way
the mind: 'As I walk under the arcade of distortion or in total neglect of appearance but in as to communicate to his fellows a freshness of
Locarno's main square, I see in a clear and treating by such methods of all experiences as if feeling about objects'. And Stokes, painter-
liquid shade a café table with a light-blue cloth they were rudimentary'. The art of the past writer, does just that, about objects and about
that touches a stone pier. I think I would be which means most to him partakes of a very works of art.
entirely safe there: leaning against the pillar I different aesthetic, but his ability to analyse the JOHN GOLDING