Page 18 - Studio International - November 1974

by class mobility disinterestedly managing the But the post-war Art Schools had seen the
economic life of the country is the new story, influence of the first of the Local Education
the new self-image of the ruling class. Any Authority grant students. Many of them had
intrusion of the ungrateful drab hand of no intention of assuming the then values of the
democracy into their activities would mean the patronising classes. They painted their own
loss of the wealth their charisma is creating for non-upper middle class environments seen
us. The actual social script, the mechanics that through a 'personality'. John Bratby however,
really govern the plot, are obscured by the painted himself. He asserted his 'original
seeming spontaneity of the actors. John Ward personality' by painting his own disintegration,
RA's conversation pieces and portraits show his own bohemian way of life, with an energetic
their subjects in casual poses, the paint roughed artlessness. At the time of his election to the
in on linear drawing. However, any doubt as to RA in 1959, his arriviste painting was outside
what the mythological function of the painting the consensus. By the late sixties, it was central.
is, is abolished by the tight focus on the face The 'unconventional life style', the week-end
which seeks to present the intelligent heads and hippie-ism were the mark of the libertarian
decisive features of people whose social position media man and the 'liberated' rich. The
must stem from ability and grace, and whose unabating solecism of John Bratby's black
facile pictorial celebration is the natural outline technique works, like the erzatz naive
consequence of their personal achievement. painting of Anthony Green who was elected to
Just as wealth and power were to be the RA in 1971, to provide an apparent
legitimized as natural attributes of special traditionlessness: a celebration of a middle-class
personalities because the public celebration of John Bratby The Gentleman who found a Flower present, unperturbed by the myths or
Oil on canvas
inherited and traditional wealth had become too sensibility of the past and uncriticised by
ideologically explicit, so consensus painting was modernism's implicit idea of progress.
naturalized as self-expression and no longer That both the major candidates for the RA
justified by traditionalism. The ruling class can Presidency in 1966 — Professor Weight and Sir
no longer take succour from the past because it Thomas Monnington — were Art School teachers,
reveals their decline. The story of hitory seems portraiture; it is also the ethic of a class who is indicative of the future of the RA.
to have an increasingly mediocre ending for have no clear role. It is this class which provides Increasingly, the membership is financially
Brittania Ltd. Even the most conventional the subject of Professor Weight's own work. supported by teaching and therefore less
painting is justified by the irrefutable assertion In his paintings of South London, he brings into dependent on private patronage. The
of personal conviction rather than a claim to be focus the ethos of the urban fringe and exposes relationship with consensus values will be
continuing the European tradition. Of the four the underbelly of soft, neurotic, suburban determined less by private patronage. Since the
attributes of acceptable painting in 1949, privacy and petty-bourgeois possession. He has late sixties, attendance and sales at the annual
quoted earlier, the 'healthy tradition' and found personalism's unfashionable home. For, Academy Summer Exhibition have increased.
'normality' could be thrown to the Christians while the transparent washes of unattractive Judicious recruitment of painters whose
to defend, like other bits of redundant bourgeois paint record his idiosyncratic handling and even reputations were made within the vanguardist
morality. The 'sincere' and the 'personal' now the priming is uneven, showing the passage of community but who now fit well within the
claimed authority. brush and bristle, there is a social insight behind consensus — Eduardo Paolozzi and Peter Blake
The wedding of 'sincerity', by which the tragic narrative of genteel suburban anguish. have recently been elected — suggests that the
paradoxically, was meant something like Professor Weight delineates the symptoms of Academy may become an acceptable means of
painting unmediated by thought, and the social disintegration through showing unknown institutionalising some section of the vanguardist
'personal', that is the expression of one's people whose private state is made public by the community. It may even join the Arts Council
intrinsic and unique being, formed a powerful atmosphere generated chiefly via his handling of and the Tate Gallery in conferring value on an
and influential theory of no theory. As the paint. artist's work.
'sincerity' debarred ideas, the serious painter By the late fifties some of the new members The growing importance of the Summer
was trapped into trying to make paintings which elected to the RA were part of the immediate Exhibition as a market for painting and
would exhibit artless art legitimized by post-war generation of Art Students. In 1959 sculpture suggests a final metaphor for the
idiosyncrasy and thus be marked as the issue of the amiable traditionalist eclectic Bernard changes in the Royal Academy over the last
'original' personality. Dunstan was elected, but so was the less thirty years. From the appointed art grocer of
The most important personalist painter in amiable John Bratby. With Bernard Dunstan selected artifacts the RA has had to become an
the Royal Academy is Professor Carel Weight. traditionalism's Anglicized impressionism is indiscriminate supermarket of artistic
He was Professor of the Department of Painting remixed, dexterous Sickertian highlights set off merchandise in which value is placed upon that
at The Royal College of Art from 1957 to 1973 warm shadows in an indulgent stylistic nostalgia. which claims to be without values.
and was elected in 1955. In an article on
Stanley Spencer, he wrote: 'The innovator of
[1] The Royal Academy of Arts founded in 1763 [3] Quoted in Sidney C. Hutchinson, 'The History
an art movement need not necessarily have a and housed in Burlington House, Piccadilly, has of the Royal Academy 1768-1968', Chapman and
great personality; it is the idea which takes approximately eighty members consisting of Hall, London, 1968, p.198.
Associates (ARAB), Academicians and Senior [4]
possession, ... But if a man is to succeed as a See Allan Gwynne-Jones 'Portrait Painters',
Academicians, (RAs) who, under an elected President London, 1950, (in particular P.xiii) and 'A Way of
reactionary artist, ... , then he must do so by are managed by a council taken in rotation from the
Looking at Pictures', London, 1947, (in particular
the sheer force and originality of his own membership. The Annual Summer Exhibition is made P.29).
up from works submitted by non-members for
personality. IF he is wanting in this, his work [5] Bernard Dunstan, Editorial, The Artist, Vol.69,
selection by a committee of members and members
must be either a pastiche of the better men who own work. The RA takes no commission on works 1965, p.25.
went before him, or at best dully academic!'[6] sold. [6] Professor Carel Weight, 'The Resurrection:
Cookham: Stanley Spencer,' in Enjoying Paintings,
Personalism is not just a disguise for a class [2] The speech is reproduced in Sir Alfred Ed. David Piper, Penguin Books, Harmsworth, 1964,
Munnings KCVO, PPRA, 'The Finish', Vol. 3 of his
who wish to hide their social and historical role pp. 227-228.
autobiography, Museum Press, London, 1952,
as it appears in its particular application to pp 144-7