Page 19 - Studio International - March April 1975

to be explored. Education's only useful reason: bad judgement of works of art; in modern sculptor so he gave this
up to a certain point, only to those who Darwin's case, ignorance of the subject. exhibition to Henry Moore because he
can use it to project it further. Much later Herbert Read used to hang around didn't think there was anything
I saw the little adobe churches of New gatherings of artists or poets picking up else to be seen. It was a failure but
Mexico with their dramatic carved the crumbs. All his writing was 'lifted' he wasn't going to give up. No, he'd
wooden figures . . . Indian art from other people. It was 'a great give Moore another one, on two
overwhelming that of Spain. What's-Whassery of What is Not'.' But conditions : Moore would provide some
I had never any intention of being an he found art a convenient peg on which to more photographs and a journalist. 'I
art teacher but when you have to live on hang his literary hat. There was a period vant some beeg introduktion zat
fish'n chips you have to pay for them. when he was living in Hampstead beside compares your sculpture to
William Ritchie got me to teach children Ben Nicholson. He said that all forms of Michelangelo and Rodin. And I vill
in Selkirkshire and I found out something painting from nature were at an end and provide ze catalocks. Eef eets verra gut
I'd never thought about: they produced the only painting in the future would be zis introduktion I vill pay £30'. So
another kind of primitive art. I found the abstract! Abstract is a rotten word. There Mr. Herbert Read wrote the introduction
children gave me as much as I gave them. is no abstract art . . . just journalism. So for £30 saying how Moore compared with
In 1931 I went to London where I taught one day, the painter Norman Dawson' Michelangelo. That was how Henry
at Haverstock Hill School for Boys. They came to see me and said: 'Herbert's Moore was born. To say that Moore is
were a lot of rough children. All the parted with anstract art'. I said : 'Never!' the 'greatest sculptor in the world' is the
pencils disappeared, and all the rubbers. He said: 'There's going to be a great big twentieth-century's biggest over-
So I caught the one I thought was the surrealist exhibition and Read's going to statement. I don't think he has enough
most wicked and said: Will you take the write the introduction'. Read then understanding of form or basic structure
responsibility of fetching the pencils and changed from that to something else! Pay to be a really great sculptor. He doesn't
rubbers back to me ?' We never lost any as you learn. The funny thing was that he relate to his time as (for instance) the
more. But these same boys took down the got so confused with his contradictions French sculptors like Rodin, or Arp, or
science teacher's trousers and spanked that he eventually wrote a pamphlet Zadkine, or Lipchitz.
his bare bottom. R. R. Tomlinson was called 'To Hell with Art'. But to go back. Tomlinson saw what I
chief art inspector for the London County Dawson was a great friend of Henry did with the children at Haverstock Hill.
Council. He was a very clever man, very Moore's — they used to read the Sunday They've never had a man like him since,
independent of the Ministry of `Observer' on Primrose Hill and so on — and there was nobody like him at the
Education. He was positive I had a big and they planned to have an exhibition Ministry of Education . . . they were all
contribution to make to art education in together. Few galleries would touch blockheads. He got me two days' teaching
London. By the early thirties the three modern art, but they thought the best at the Regent Street Polytechnic where I
main art schools in London were dead. possibility was with Zwemmer. So it was taught various things including basic and
Every idea rots into academicism. Art agreed. Moore to show sculpture and industrial design in the Schools of
education was futile. The only artist of Dawson paintings. Now, this is Dawson's Architecture, Engineering and Motor-
any importance was Percy Wyndham report to me. Sometime after, he says to body Building, so I gained a practical
Lewis. He belonged to my time. He was a Moore : 'Don't you think we should go experience of specialist and quantity
protest, but I don't think he had any and see Zwemmer about this exhibition, production. I taught design at the Royal
continuity. Harry ?"What exhibition ? Zwemmer's School of Needlework where I discovered
If you ask me who were the most offered me an exhibition with him'. So what a great tradition England had had in
damaging influences on British art in my Moore had his exhibition and, of course, the art of embroidery. Tomlinson used
period I would say Kenneth Clark, it was a failure. Zwemmer told me this me at as many salient points as he could in
Herbert Read and Robin Darwin. My afterwards : he said England had no the shortest possible time. Tomlinson's

Frottage 1931. Watercolour, 14 x 21i in.
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