Page 15 - Studio International - January February 1975

of English artists, the effeminacy of their Old traditions were being seriously systems it uses for communicating one to
art. The pessimistic, sceptical and narrow examined and rejected, rules seemed to be the other have shifted around, re-defining
views of the English public, who prefer broken. Art was twitching to life under themselves in a hierarchy of values
the pretty-pretty, the commonplace, the the pressure and observation of outside subject to a continuous ebb and flow. I
soft, sweet and mediocre .. . the perverted events. A new kind of orientation hope the writer will forgive me for
snob who ignores all English originality appeared to lie ahead, which would be the quoting from a personal letter of ten
and daring, but welcomes eagerly all cue for a creative leap into the future.. . years ago. But this year he too defined the
foreign .. . The indifference of the king, What really happened is part of history, state of art in this country now. In the
the state and politician towards all arts. and it is against the burden of this history exhibition at the Hayward gallery just
The English notion that art is a useless that we are in the process of reacting closed — 'British Painting 74'.
pastime, that artists are poor deluded again. It is clear that nothing really What did it tell us of our art and
fools to be pitied and protected, and art a happened because we lacked the insight aspirations ? Of territory gained and
ridiculous complaint, a topic of table to formulate a hypothesis of what art is lessons learned ? Nothing. Except
talk...' Complaining of the sentimentality really about. We look back, and realize perhaps to confirm that when our affairs
of our pictures, they ended with a call for there is nothing to be thankful for, no are in the hands of our friends we have
an English art 'that is strong, virile and kind of morality to guide us, no little need of enemies. The manner of
unsentimental'. The futurists had first discipline to learn from, no tradition to be organization held true to the tradition so
exhibited here two years earlier, and in protected. Just an account of self- dear to the heart of the art establishment:
the same year the vorticists were founded. deception, complacency, compromise and the minimum of commitment shrouded
The Camden Town group was formed, defeat, and we reject these things and say in the maximum dispersal of
and The London Group inaugurated. it could never happen again. Or could it ?' responsibility. The whole idea indeed so
Three Kandinsky exhibitions were held I asked.3 utterly in conflict with the spirit of
around that time, and Roger Fry staged Well has it ? I received a letter after accord we seemed, to my delight, to share
the first post-impressionist exhibition in that article was published which said: 'I for a moment ten years before, that the
London, provoking charges against him, think your attack on the English scene is events, not just of those years, but of the
it is difficult to believe it now, of anarchy absolutely just, and things are not so previous five decades, might never have
and insanity. For a few short years in different for all the talk. I think your occurred. A kind of symmetry restoring
London the traditionally uncritical piece is the first positive art criticism I the status quo — the soft centre — that
acceptance of inherited values was have read here in the last ten years. I mean there had been so much hope of firming
disturbed and upset, and the Marinetti positive in the sense that it is not fifty years before, and sometimes in
manifesto found an echo as a new congratulatory, but is at the same time between.
awareness, a new discipline was seeping tonic and extremely useful, and written It is only a small incident. I mention it
into English art. We know the history not from a position of satisfied as a kind of memento mori. It symbolizes
well, and in an article in 1964 I drew a eclecticism, but from an extremely the unacceptable face of the state of art
parallel between the state of art in precise and didactic one'. that lurks still within the systems here.
England at that time and the period fifty A decade has passed since. During that Not expelled from our consciousness for
years before. time the fabric of the art world, its ever, as we might hopefully have
In summarizing it, I said: 'That institutions, its personalities and its assumed with insight of ourselves. But
period was the one phase of English premises have changed. Its relationship with us still — a kind of destiny fulfilling
painting which parallels the present time. with itself and the external world, and the itself through succeeding generations.

His Majesty the King Emperor Vittorio Emanuele III (centre) with F. T. Marinetti (right)

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