Page 21 - Studio International - January February 1975

plane figures, circles, lines, colours. Now sharpens my eyes to our common taste and I prefer Rafael's "perpetual
— and how dangerously `unpoetic 'a result endowment of the visible. I see and enjoy motion" or flight into eternity'. It is
it suggests and how 'poetic' the result is, points — his points — of imaginative as if this master looked in a thousand
in fact — he has invented and actuated his departure; items of vision which have directions, and embodied in ten
family of mere spanners and pipe-grips. been arrested, retained and poignantly thousand objects of 'the work' what the
That the objects in composition can be transformed and combined into those Ch`an philosophers called `Suchness of
recognized adds — but this is addition of a new Nicholson-compounded objects, Reality' — the 'true and essential nature of
kind never exploited by Nicholson — to be which their maker refers to, and defers things,' which exists only in
sure a piquancy. Spanners — yet spanners to, en masse, and through his time, as 'the consciousness.
translated into Nicholson. Spanners— yet work'. Ch'an students 'were no romantic
they have lost their working reality, they When he mentions 'the work', it is as if dreamers or indolent nature worshippers,
have retained their formal reality, it were by now separated and distanced but men of action, accustomed to hard
gaining at the same time the special from the mere idiosyncrasy of himself. work. The Ch`an monasteries were
reality, the specific distinction, of a family Nicholson is an advocate of an eternal places of such neatness and order' — I
of Nicholsonian objects or individuals. Or factor, not so concerned with transience think of Nicholson's studios and living
should I retract that word 'family' ? and poignancy. I would not try to isolate quarters — 'that "neat as a Ch`an temple"
Spanner may lean to spanner, spanner that factor, since nothing remains more become a common saying'.
may touch spanner, and they may, if you difficult, or less possible, than accurate Ch`an students — and Ch`an painters
like, be interpreted as spanners in summarizings of art. We can see paintings, such as Mu-Chi — 'knew that life is a
companionship; whereas 'family' could not say them. What I see in 'the work' of movement that never ceases, a stream
be too unfree, too associative a Ben Nicholson is something made which flows on, whether we wish it or not.
description ? The titles, devoid of a serenely, and with certainty. Of all They realized that the only way of
capital letter, say spanners 6, spanners 4 painters Nicholson has declared that one converting into full value what life has in
and holes 4, or two spanners in a curve, 'of the two most 'poetic' for himself is store for us is by living completely in the
with a certain whimsicality but never of Mu-Chi (the other is Giorgione). So present moment, by grasping it by the
too personalizing a kind. wings as it flies and not after it has flown.
Let me put it like this. Relieved of For those who know how to do this, time
their banality, these almost dissociated becomes an illusion; one sudden
objects are persuaded to perform the experience which penetrates deep into
Nicholson ballet, to the Nicholson music, the consciousness may become of greater
in the Nicholson activities and lyrical value than years of intellectual study, one
austerities of line and tone. apparently trivial incident may open the
A severe and delicate tact is in spring of a hidden source'.
operation, the draughtsman taking risks For Mu-Chi, and others, space 'was
— and succeeding. not a cubic volume that could be
Here two other things recur to me. In geometrically constructed; it was
the thirties in London I went — I think something illimitable and incalculable
more than once — in Nicholson's which might be, to some extent,
company to see the ballet made from the suggested by the relation of forms and
Jeux d'enfants; Miró's decor with Bizet's tonal values, but which always extended
music. A white cone shape opened as the beyond every material indication and
music wound up, an arm emerged and carried a suggestion of the infinite'.
gestured rhythmically. Shapes one by spanners 4 1973 I may be wrong, but I think — and shall
one quickly resolved themselves into have to accept a contradiction of at least
dancers, into the performing, dancing one thing I have already maintained —
toys. Here in these new Nicholson that in some of these new drawings I see,
compositions, some forty years later, after all, a little more than was to be
shapes don't resolve into things, things expected of the steely nature of their
resolve themselves into shapes, and give formative objects. Steel tools are hard. We
their discoverer, their ballet-master, for live in a hard time, or a time when hard
his own satisfaction (and for ours) the acts are quickly publicized, occurring and
benefit of their form. How delicious a recurring where we should prefer
reconciliation of opposites. gentleness. But then at least these steel
Then, on the day when I began tools, some as fierce and as big as lobster
writing this note, a patterned transience claws, stand in each exhibit, in
new to me was affected by a June association, to put it no more
thunderstorm. After much noise and a sentimentally, without disagreement or
heavy fall of rain, I noticed that a rain violence. Look at spanners, polar cub,
design had formed on a reddish sarsen- and admit (you could hardly not admit)
stone, which stands in my garden, under its tenderness.
a yew-tree. The stone at first slopes But then Nicholson is not a cruel
outward and then inward down to the spanners Holkam r 1974 performer. He is one of those who would
grass, rather like a Sumerian temple recoil from doing dirt on existence. He
priest with his arms crossed. The top, the perhaps a text to read with this latest of blesses. Blessings help, and do not — or
outward slope, was uniformly blackened his exhibitions — indeed in relation to all need not, deceive. In the violence of the
by the rain-water, most of which, after he has ever exhibited — might be the Middle Ages every Virgin and Child
flowing down, had then fallen clear, from chapter on Ch`an Buddhism and carved above a portal or an altar stood in
the ledge, from the folded arms, to the painting in Osvald Siren's book 'The place as at least a reminder of other
lawn. But some of the water, instead of Chinese on the Art of Painting'. One values; decrying that there should be
falling, had also descended the inward distinction of 'the work' is that its cruelty, but not denying that it abounded;
slope and trickled down towards the frequent wit and gaiety, and its offering not escape, but comfort and
grass, making on the reddish surface a frequently punning forms, are aspects of delight. Because there is violence, is no
dozen nearly parallel, vertical black its severity or discipline. In his now long co-existence of the delightful and the
stripes. It was as if nature had been succession of discoveries Nicholson calm to be admitted ? Because there is
looking at an abstract — had been this time repeats and refines answers to the great mess, must we suppose there is no
imitating, over that reddish ground, an enigma. He feels for some 'explanation' antithesis ? Because there is disgrace,
oil-wash drawing by Nicholson. other than the Absurd (hence for those must there be no grace, no figure-skating
In recurrent intimacy with who accept the Absurd that poignancy in by the Protopopovs or their successors,
Nicholson's art through many years I his art). 'Klee's idea of going for a walk no swifts returning, no lines and tones by
have always found that it opens and with a line is rather too pedestrian for my Nicholson ?•
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