Page 54 - Studio International - March 1973

blot out the myriad literary reflections cast by introduction. (I'd rather have had a few more stir. A great deal of research must have gone
the rococo/romantic visionary 'descriptive plates for the money.) Perhaps the publishers into the writing of the book and it will no doubt
imagination'. are unsure of their market. become a useful source of reference for those
Certainly, 'filling in' seems to have become an But essentially Willem de Kooning Drawings is who want to write about the development of art
increasingly significant procedure for de a picture book, and as such it offers very little to over the last hundred years or so and the
Kooning. In the present book of drawings it's carp at. I could have wished for more works reaction to it of critics and public.
possible to follow the stages by which his from the forties, (the key period; some of the Yet the book should have been more than
depiction of Woman in the early fifties becomes more recent ink and enamel drawings, such as this: a study of the exhibition as a form of
less and less a question of the delineation of the 'Rome' series of 1959-60, could have gone to presenting new ideas in the visual arts. To do
characteristics, and more and more a function of make room) but maybe no more were accessible. this Dunlop would have had to cover many
the means by which a flat surface is treated, as a The standard of reproduction throughout is high more exhibitions, but in less detail, and would
whole, in relationship to a three-dimensional enough to allow one to feel that any judgments have had to relate these more closely to the
image pursued as a whole. Not that the made in the context of the book would hold for social and political background of the times.
characteristics aren't there: it's fascinating to the originals without too much modification — It might seem impertinent to review a book in
see how individual — how full of 'personality' — which is the best one could hope for. the light of what it ought to have been, rather
many of the studies become, and how very There's certainly enough here to justify than what it is, but this does raise important
different are the various types upon which the Hess's opening assertion : 'Willem de Kooning questions about the nature of publishing and
'archetype' is built; the range is from a Bardot- is one of the great draughtsmen of this century.' how art books are commissioned. Dunlop
like nymph to a squat, stockinged germanic De Kooning can certainly draw, and he explains how this came about in his
frau, with a Willendorf-Venus torso as a measures himself as a draughtsman against introduction. He begins : 'The idea for this book
recurrent second theme. other draughtsmen (unusual in mid-twentieth- arose out of a conversation in an oyster bar in
I don't feel that Hess, in a 50-page blow-by- century art, where ambitions tend not to be Shepherd's Market, London. My companion,
blow account of the drawings, adds much to directed that way). There's a definite engagement Tristram Powell, suggested that there ought to
what one can see by just looking at them. with Ingres in some of the earlier figure studies, be a book on famous exhibitions like the first
His evident devotion and enthusiasm lead him and with Picasso at many points; as late as the Post-Impressionist exhibition at the Grafton
to spread himself far beyond his ability to early fifties Picasso seems to have been Gallery'. This is a disastrous way to open an
instruct. It's as if he were unwilling to omit any significant for de Kooning (compare the introduction, for a start, confirming all the
single result of his own study and observation, latter's Reclining Woman of 1951, Hess plate 69, worst fears of the many potential readers who
so that there's nothing left in reserve. with the former's Woman reclining on a Divan, a have always suspected that the visual arts are
Occasionally Hess appears torn between his gouache of 1942). exclusively talked about and manipulated from
instinct to warn against imaginative The variety that's missing in the Masson book oyster bars in Mayfair. Yet the idea of a book
interpretation and his evident desire—born, I am is here in abundance : the seated men of the about exhibitions is a good one. It could have
sure, of a sense of sympathy — to indulge in late thirties, the dense compositions of the late had an importance beyond the history of taste
interpretations for which the word 'imaginative' forties, the magnificent, busy drawings of and connoisseurship and had an audience
seems a wholly inadequate epithet: 'These women of the early fifties, the suburbscapes of amongst those who do not care to read the
[multi-figure compositions of the mid-forties] the mid-late fifties, they are all superb at the average art book. Dunlop goes on: 'The idea
are pictures about the act of love, as Pollock's best. Some of the more recent enamel-on-paper appealed to me immediately. Like most people I
were in the mid-1940s, only where Pollock, I works are a bit slack, but such late drawings as had heard of the Grafton Gallery shows, the
believe, was involved in the heightened tensions Woman in a Rowboat of c. 1965 serve to dispel Armory Show, the first impressionist exhibition
and release of the orgasm, de Kooning seems to suspicion that de Kooning's work might have and other similar events, without really knowing
concentrate on the amorous battles of foreplay deteriorated overall. very much about them'. This is extremely
and on the intricate positionings leading to As de Kooning's drawings develop, speed honest, but it points to a trap into which Dunlop
orgasm.' Hess provides few ideas which one and facility in representing become functions has too often fallen. To throw oneself suddenly
feels safe in employing to elucidate the in the generation of autonomous graphic into detailed and painstaking research for the
drawings, and his interpretations of particular rhythms. Figuration versus abstraction can purpose of a book on a subject one had not
motifs or configurations seem often equivocal — here be seen to be a pseudo-issue. This doesn't delved into very closely before is to risk not
or at least, if he's right all the time, then de hold true, for Masson's drawings, where the seeing the wood for the trees. The hours spent
Kooning isn't half the artist I've taken him for. need to display a facility in metamorphizing in the library are so long, the quotations lovingly
There's a conspicuous lack of common sense entails that involvement in graphic culled and translated at such great expense of
about what one can usefully and instructively procedures must always be readily subject to the time and energy take on a life of their own in the
say of a drawing or painting, and there's very dictates of 'Imagination'. The European and author's mind — they become almost part of his
little hard, concise information. The essentially Romantic concept of imagination own life, so that it is like murdering an infant to
introduction flounders between catalogue and thus given expression by Masson was perhaps cut or exclude them from the finished book.
eulogy. The prose is occasionally dreadful : the chief casualty of the Americans' accession This is particularly true of Dunlop's first
'Black and white had a functional, pictorial to power over the traditions and development of chapter 'The Salon des Refusćs (1863)' which is
reason for being invoked by the artist, and the modern art during the immediate post-war the longest and seems longer. Here, and in the
fact that a connotation of poverty was years. And no great loss on present evidence. account of the First Impressionist Exhibition of
appropriate to a certain aspect of his subject CHARLES HARRISoN I874 and the Salon d'Automne of 1905, Dunlop
matter as well as to his harsh financial troubles is covering ground which has been well-
is one of those dovetailings of the psychic with documented before and the general reader might
the physical, that if too frequent to be dismissed Shucks well give up here. Which would be a pity, for the
as coincidence, are too peripheral to be given The Shock of the New by Ian Dunlop. 272 pp, book gets better as it goes on, particularly when
more than judicious emphasis.' I can't see why illustrations in black and white and colour. dealing with two shows which are closest and
he needed even to try to write that sentence. Weidenfeld and Nicolson. most relevant to the present, the International
It seems irritating that publishers should so Surrealist Exhibition in Paris in 1938 and the
often find it necessary to burden a well- Ian Dunlop examines in detail seven art Degenerate Art exhibition in Munich in 1937.
produced book of plates with a tiresomely wordy exhibitions between 1863 and 1938 that caused a (These last two chapters curiously reversed in
140