Page 20 - Studio International - November 1973

that, and according to the gospel of St. Antal we general subconscious or anything of that sort. Europe which we probably ought to have known
were allowed to see many of the great We launched a real campaign against about, but I personally did not. This was the
progressive artists of previous centuries as 'all esoteric art and in favour of a realistic, widely change which was brought about in the whole
right'. Giotto and Masaccio in Florence, appealing style. From my own point of view the art world by the rise of the New York School.
Michelangelo and Raphael in Rome, Poussin in climax came when in 1937 Picasso exhibited We must have known about Jackson Pollock, at
France and Rembrandt in Holland represented Guernica in the Spanish Pavilion in the least from reproductions, but certainly the
the progressive stages in the development of the International Exhibition of that year. I was very impact of his work and that of his followers in
bourgeoisie (the word progressive occurred a much moved by it, but I was horrified by it from England had been very slight, and we suddenly
great deal in our arguments). a theoretical point of view. I wrote an article in found, to our great surprise — and to our slight
This enthusiasm for revolutionary art and for the Spectator saying that this was not the right horror — that Paris was no longer the centre of
progressive art and for naturalism and realism — way to commemorate a great human and the art world, but that New York was. This took
we tried to distinguish between the two but not revolutionary tragedy. Picasso, of course, at that a great deal of getting used to, and those of us
in a very clear way — was also connected with time was not a Communist, but he was a keen whose links were with Paris felt an increasing
another great discovery which we made at this supporter of the government party and the left- disappointment, as what came out of Paris
time. That was the Mexican art of the twenties. wing movements in Spain, and I felt that became more and more mediocre and less and
The works of Rivera and Orozxco were just Guernica was merely an expression of his less originaL
beginning to be known in this country. There private sensation of horror and was irrelevant to Coming back to my own personal position
was a rather bad book on Rivera and a the revolutionary movement as a whole and to during the war, I had become more and more
reasonably good book on Orozxco published in the basic problems of the Spanish Civil-War. cut off from what was happening and more and
America which had just become available in (The war was of course the main issue of the more concerned with the art of the past, and
England, and we saw this movement — day, and it is very hard now to realize just how since the war that has been my main
remember this was the early phase of the personally and how intensely one was affected, preoccupation and I have very much lost touch
Mexican School — as a great revolutionary even if one did not go out to Spain and fight, with contemporary painting, and indeed cannot
movement leading away from the dead end of by the atmosphere and the horrors of the war). altogether comprehend much of what has
Abstract art and Surrealism towards a new Herbert Read counter-attacked violently. I happened in the last twenty or thirty years.
realist, communal and monumental art. And I was supported by Bill Coldstream, and Read This is, I think, a quite normal process
think it was not unreasonable that we should wads supported by Roland Penrose and we had a connected with age and the hardening of the
have felt that. I still personally have a great splendid set to on the subject of naturalism and arteries. But I know my place in history. It was
admiration for the early phase of those two of Picasso and the position of Guernica itself. It once defined for me with absolute precision by
artists, though I should be more qualified in was all carried out in the most friendly manner, my friend Ernest Gimpel. I went to see one of
approval of what they did later. But that was all because Read and I happened to be members of his exhibitions of more or less abstract art and I
right, because the revolution in Mexico failed the same club and we used frequently to meet could not make head or tail of it; and on the way
and that ruined the movement in the arts. We there by chance, and one would say to the other out I said to Ernest 'I am very sorry, I just can't
were seeing the high point of it. `I hope that you did not take my saying that you get it', and Ernest looked at me very sadly and
However our views on the function of art led were stupid and wrong, etc., in my last letter, in said 'Pity, because you got as far as Picasso'.
us to be suspicious of certain tendencies in late any personal manner', and we would then go
19th- and early 20th-century art. We thought and have lunch together. Eventually the
that the Impressionists had deserted the true correspondence died down; and I should now
line opened up by Courbet and that their art was wholeheartedly agree with what Read said at the
limited to an interest in purely optical effects. time, and have since publicly eaten my words on
Cézanne was seen as beginning the the Subject of Guernica.
dehumanizing of art, a too great concentration And then the Second World War came and it
on formal qualities, and the first stage in the caused, of course, a complete break. The break Correspondence
artist's retreat into his studio. We lamented the was particularly sharp for those whose primary
same process in Seurat who in his Baignade had interest was in the visual arts, because on the Magic and Strong Medicine
painted a picture of profound human literary side one had some idea of What was In the end I found Tony Rothon's silly,
significance but had slipped away into isolated taking place elsewhere, not much, but it leaked scoffing review quite assuring.
detachment in his later paintings. The through a little bit, even from Italy and occupied The real intention behind that show was of,
Fauves were too decorative, though we France. From the point of view of painting one course to please myself that is, to do an
argued that paintings like Matisse's La Danse knew almost literally nothing, and when, just exhibition of the sort (or of one of the sorts) that
were about human action if not about the before the end of the war, in the spring of 1945, I particularly enjoy and hadn't seen for a long
most important aspects of human life. Naturally there was a big exhibition- of Picasso at the time. It also seemed to me an exhibition that
van Gogh and Gauguin came back into their Victoria and Albert Museum, it came to us as a other people might enjoy, and that proved to be
own, van Gogh for his profound sympathy with great shock. We were completely out of touch, so.
mankind, Gauguin as a rebel against bourgeois we had no idea what Picasso had been doing, and I also thought that it would be controversial
society. what he had been doing, partly under the stress by going against the art world's currently
But the real danger, as we saw things, lay in of the war years, was pretty grim stuff and it dominant conventions of exclusivity and
Cubism which began the final movement away' took a lot of adjusting to grasp it. It caused a intellectual phoneyness. So many people said
from humanist painting and led towards major scandal and the grand-daughter of that they liked the show that I began to think
abstraction; towards an art which had lost all Burne-Jones stood on a chair in the middle of that I must have imagined all that.
contact, we thought, with the general public, the exhibition and said that this was the death - Rothon's dismissal of absolutely everything
with humanity at large, and was either of art, etc., etc. This was of course a familiar in and about the show reads like a near-miss
concerned with playing about with pure shapes form — it had been said about the Cubists, it parody of what I was demonstrating against.
in abstract art, or with the private images and had been said about Cézanne, it had been said But he actually means it, so I wasn't charging at
feelings of the artist in the case of Surrealism, about Manet — but it was said with particular windmills after all.
which, contrary to what would now be said, we vehemence at this time. NORBERT LYNTON
regarded as purely private and not related to any One important thing was happening outside London S.W.6
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