Page 19 - Studio International - November 1973

go a step further, simply in time. If you look visited even by art-historians. repeat that at this time he was not only one of
back at whathad been written about modern art At Cambridge I also enjoyed the help and the most intellectually stimulating people I have
in England at the time, the first figure to emerge advice of Andrew Gow who, though by ever known but also had great charm and
was D. S. McColl, who opened the battle for profession a classical scholar, had a wide tremendous vivacity; and those people who
modern art in the nineties and in the first years knowledge of the painting of the Italian now write saying they felt physically sick in
of the present century. His gods were the Renaissance, based on an extensive experience his presence are very often simply not speaking
impressionists and, above all, Degas, but he of the originals and a minute study of the truth. They are throwing back to his early
could not make head or tail of Cézanne, indeed Berenson. If I have any standards'of years things that may have been true about Guy
he hated him, and attacked him as being really scholarship they are based on what i learnt from in his last months in this country. He was a
the perverter of the arts. Then came Roger Fry him. terrific intellectual stimulus. He had a far wider
and Clive Bell, who built everything on Then, quite suddenly, in the autumn term of range of interest and knowledge than either
Cézanne and to a certain extent on Seurat and 1933, Marxism hit Cambridge. I can date it Kingman or Cornford. He was interested in
the other Post-Impressionists, but they broke precisely because I had sabbatical leave for that everything, and'although he was perverse in
down at the next stage. Clive Bell liked Cubism term, and when I came back in January I found many ways, there was no subject which one
because it fitted with his theories, but I don't that almost all my younger friends had become could discuss with him without his expressing
think he enjoyed it very much. Fry tolerated it Marxists and joined the Communist Party; and some interesting and lively and worthwhile
but certainly never got real pleasure from it and Cambridge was literally transformed overnight. views.
never bought a cubist picture. He had one early Marxism had hit Oxford a good deal earlier but This trio, who really ran the Communist Party
Picasso, but it was of the Negro period. We not nearly so hard. There were quite a number in Cambridge in their several ways, created a
went on to the next stage, that is to say we of Marxists in Oxford from the mid and late new atmosphere which affected us all, from my
moved quite happily with Cubism and with twenties - in Cambridge Maurice Dobb had generation downwards at any rate, very deeply
Purism, and particularly with the near-Purists been an isolated member of the group for indeed. In art history we were of course also
like Léger, who, as I have already said, was many years - but in Oxford they never developed influenced by people outside. There were not
one of our particular gods. And we accepted quite the co-ordination which was very many Marxist art historians at that time.
early Abstract art, Mondrian and people like characteristic of the movement in Cambridge There was Friedrich Antal who had come from
that, though I think without great enthusiasm; during the next few years. The older dons were Germany in 1934, and had settled in London,
and then we stopped. Though we were fully not affected by the wave of Marxism, and - and who had not at that time written very much
aware of Surrealism we disapproved of it generally speaking even the younger fellows but had formulated a completed Marxist
heartily, we thought it was romantic, the pure were little touched, but the undergraduates and doctrine which he would expound at great
development of self-expression, individualism, graduate students were swept away by it and length verbally; and there was Klingender who
absolutely contrary to the ideas in which we during the next three or four years almost every was writing extremely interesting articles on the
believed. intelligent undergraduate who came up to general applications of the Marxist theory to the
Out sheltered existence went on through the" Cambridge joined the Communist Party at arts and also doing detailed work on the art of
late twenties and the first years of the thirties, some time during his first year. the industrial revolution and the more
and we continued to live in this kind of dream The individuals who dominated the immediate applications of the doctrine; but it
world, spinning our little intellectual webs. movement were really three. James Kingman was mainly in Cambridge itself and in
Not entirely, because we didn't wholly neglect who is still, I believe, an orthodox Marxist, was discussions with groups of Marxist students
our academic studies. I got a degree, taking first the pure intellectual of the Party. He was a very that our opinions were formed. The new ideas
Mathematics and then Modern Languages in good scholar and also an extremely good involved a complete reversal of everything that
1930, and I began to research for a Fellowship political theorist. He was the person who worked we had held before. Art for art's sake, Pure
at Trinity to which I was elected in 1932. My out the theoretical problems and put them Form, went by the board totally. We believed,
thesis began as a study of Poussin's ideas on across. He ran the administration of the Party on the contrary, that art was a human activity,
painting but it spread backwards into the with great skill and energy and it was primarily that works of art were created by men, that
sixteenth century and formed the basis of a he who decided what organizations and men were human beings, that human beings
book on the Artistic theory of the Renaissance societies in Cambridge were worth penetrating lived in society, and that society was influenced
which was published much later, in 194o. and what were not. Secondly there was John by social conditions, and ultimately by economic
Although the history of art had long been my Cornford, very different, a much more conditions. And this meant a reformulation not
main interest I had been forced to pursue it as glamorous figure, a romantic, fanatical only of our theories but also our judgments on
a 'private study' because there was no university character and a very remarkable speaker. James individual artists. In some cases we could go on
in England where the subject was taught - the Klugman was not a good speaker in public. admiring an artist for different reasons. For
Courtauld Institute was not founded till 1931. I John Cornford was a vehement orator who instance we had always admired Goya as a
had been lucky enough to get to know Ellis would carry an audience with him; he was also brilliant technician; now he became a
Waterhouse at Marlborough. He was three years highly intelligent but his intelligence was much revolutionary artist. We had some difficulty in
my senior and, though like me self-trained, was more imaginative than the cold, clear mind of explaining away his own slightly reactionary
far more advanced in knowledge and Klugman. It may sound a callous thing to say political opinions, but that we managed
understanding of method:I saw less of him but it was in a way appropriate, though somehow, and he was fitted in with the tradition
while he was at Oxford, but was regularly in tragic, that he should have gone to Spain and of Daumier, Courbet, Dalou, the great
contact with him during his years at the National been killed; he was the stuff martyrs are made nineteenth-century consciously revolutionary
Gallery and spent a number of months in Italy of, and I do not at all know what would have artists. Then we further admired artists whom
with him in 1933-34 when I had a sabbatical happened to him if he had survived. He was a we regarded as semi-conscious social realists,
year, part of which I spent at the British School highly emotional character and I strongly painters like Chardin, who in the 18th century
at Rome where he was librarian. It was my suspect that he might have gone back on his depicted with realism - realism was of course
first real taste of Italian Baroque - I had Marxist doctrine, and if so I think he would now a virtue, not a vice - the life of the solid and
previously concentrated on south Germany - have suffered very acutely. The third figure of progressive bourgeoisie of their time, and
and I find it hard to say hoW much I learnt in the group was Guy Burgess. So many things Greuze with his ideas on sensibility which were
our wanderings through Rome and our visit to have been said against him as a result of his last based on Rousseau and led up to the
Apulia, mainly to see Lecce, a town then hardly disastrous years that it is, I think, important to Revolution. And we went further back than

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