Page 73 - Studio International - July August 1974

the continent. We see it spreading now in the of art is not nature and the emotions which it
second half of the twentieth century to the arouses but another work of art. This speaks of a
Anglo-Saxon countries. deep and mature understanding of the creative
An obsession born out of profound emotions process on the part of the French writer.
(as that of the artist) and an obession growing The creative process is a stony path upwards
out of an analytical mind, ie, the in finding the essence of one's own personality
intellectualization of emotions (as exemplified where the works of others are used as stepping
by the author of this book) are two opposed stones and landmarks towards this ultimate goal.
phenomena. I wondered when reading this We can name here all the sources of influences
rather difficult text, with its over-complicated cited by the author : Gauguin, Degas,
reasoning, whether an Englishman would ever Toulouse-Lautrec, Daumier, the Japanese
be able to digest it. The title 'In the male brain' print makers, van Gogh, Redon, Rops,
is bewildering in the first place as this study Rembrandt, Klinger, Böcklin, Millais,
seems to be a straightforward monograph of the Khnopff, Rubens, Emile Bernard, Maurice
Norwegian artist with all the necessary Denis, Goya, Rodin, Blake, J. Bérard, Gustave
biographical details, but it proves finally to have Moreau, Gavarni, Delacroix, Vuillard,
been rightly chosen as the emphasis lies and Bonnard, Michelangelo, Puvis de Chavannes. I
always has lain with Mr Svenaeus on apologize if I have left out some names. The
rationalization, ie, the analysis of artistic facts. Sherlock Holmes disease is infectious and
This had already become obvious in his first another 'art historian' found James Ensor not
book on the master 'Idea and Content in mentioned and Rodin underestimated in Mr
Edvard Munch's Art' (Gyldendal Norsk Svenaeus's book (E. Hoffmann, Apollo). Mr
Forlag, Oslo, 1953). The literary and Svenaeus, she says, seems to have been carried
philosophical approach are predominent, not away into the realm of conjecture. 'The wish to
the appreciation of the work of art as such, its see van Gogh's paintings may or may not have
merit and its beauty. It is, however, these which been one of Munch's reasons for a journey to
have established Munch's fame. Paris in 1891; Rachilde's play Madame la
In the next following book 'The Universe of Mort may or may not be connected with The
Melancholy' (Gyldendal Norsk Forlag, Oslo, Three Stages of Woman; the pictorial examples
1968) the step is taken from the 'psychological- of Redon and Toulouse-Lautrec could very well
aesthetic study on the death-thought and life- have supplied all the elements here used by
anxiety in Edvard Munch's art' to a more Munch. Strindberg's 'blood covered hands'
`art-historical' approach in which Mr Svenaeus may or may not have been mentioned when
wished to stress 'not the passive but the active Munch painted the writer in 1892. The
side of the artist's personality'. In what way was portrait of Eva Mudocci (The Brooch) can
this claim fulfilled ? The author, in the guise of indeed be compared with Millais's The
art historian, has become a detective — Bridesmaid, but it is perhaps closer to Rossetti,
detecting even the most far-fetched influences whose influence on Munch seems to have
exercised upon Munch's art, a somewhat escaped Mr Svenaeus. (Sic!) The gesture of
pedantic and irritating procedure. Through a Adam in the sketch for the university painting
lack of distance and genuine understanding of of chemistry is sufficiently explained by the
the creative process, Munch emerges battered fact that he is pouring from a vessel and need
and degraded to a third-rate artist and a fifth- therefore not be traced back to Redon's Un
rate thinker. 'In the male brain' completes this &range jongleur.' (Sic!) One can see where the
effect. Is it love or is it hatred which produces whole trend finally ends. Munch is of no
such monstrous results, an embrace which importance, it is the author's own reasoning and
kills ? Aesop might have written a fable on the inferences that count. Such people know so
busy intellectual ant which runs hither and much about art that they miss the essentials.
thither and up and down over the beautiful Munch's spirit can rest undisturbed, his
body of a bird of paradise, finally to produce the reputation unmolested.
evidence that the bird of paradise is a goose with J. P. HODIN
strange feathers on its tail.
How can a serious critic with any
sensitivity describe one of Munch's greatest Auld alliance
paintings The Dance of Life as 'a mixed brew: an The Art of J. D. Fergusson by Margaret Mortis.
indication of the Ball at the Moulin de la 223 pp, illustrations in black and white,
Galette, rhythms from Botticelli's Spring and 8 in colour. Blackie. £5.5o.
the steaming sex heat of Rubens's Kirmess?
Munch grew out of his time, he was one of its Sub-titled 'a biased biography', this work tells
great representatives; he drew impulses from us almost as much about the authoress as about
art, from friends, from literature, from the subject. For any objectivity in the
philosophy, contemporary or past, as Goethe appraisal of this gentle giant of Scottish
had before him and with him all great men, a twentieth-century art can only be enlightened
process that Ralph Waldo Emerson praised as by the insight into the real Fergus by his life
the only valid one of creative assimilation. companion, herself no mean figure in her time.
André Malraux, indeed, goes as far as to say in There are two kinds of Scottish artist in
his 'Voices of Silence' that the origin of a work conventional lore, those who stay, and those
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