Page 85 - Studio International - March April 1975

Addled occasional feeling of awe, it can accidentally became the cultural wanted to become a writer it was
In your June 1974 issue you be found anywhere, the British capital of the world. painting that he took up in Paris.
reproduced a painting by Ad Museum for example, but I These refugees soon gravitated In Stuttgart he had been interested
Reinhardt, showing a black certainly have experienced from to a small number of focal points. in the visual arts and had even
square, without any comments. It some American painting — among One of the most important of these known Schlemmer and
was apparently sold at Sotheby's. other things, and who the hell was the house on Downshire Baumeister as friends but he had
for £2,500. Could you please doesn't wish to experience that Hill, owned by Fred and Diana never attempted to paint
explain the virtue of this work ? more often? Uhlman. There, in one of the most anything himself. In Paris he
J. G. Adam Personally I was most attractive houses on one of the turned a lack of training into a
Hamilton, New Zealand influenced by Roger Hilton in the most attractive streets in virtue, painted as
early fifties — read Nine Abstract Hampstead, the Uhlman unselfconsciously as he could
Painters — and I had never heard arranged accommodation, manage and quickly became
Terryrising
of most of those people in financial assistance and often known as a primitive artist, a kind
Terry Smith's stale and vulgar Mr Smith's article at that time. even the passage to England for of German Bombois or Vinvin.
marxist-like attitudes reveal the Roger himself, quoted a Dutch many refugees who, once arrived, Paul Westheim, editor of the
mediocrity of his thought and painter, Constance — I guess the tended to use the house as a German art magazine Das
perception and are a convenient roots of the ideas on painting debating and social club. Kunstblatt, met Uhlman in Paris,
crutch for his chronic came from the `De Stijl'. I still Fred Uhlman was a German encouraged him greatly and
inarticulateness. think Hilton's 1953 paintings are himself, a lawyer-turned-painter wrote a glowing article about his
Formalism, in its worst sense, it fantastic. who, having early sniffed a work. Uhlman had also begun to
seems to me, indicates an arid The evil ramblings of Terry change in the wind in his native make friends with other artists
dependence on dogma and rules Smith on Matisse, to quote — Stuttgart, had arrived in England especially at the Dome Café
in any activity, including Matisse is conjured up, his via France and Spain well before where he met Léger, Othon
criticism. One of the ambitions of (utterly Bourgeois) life is the outbreak of war. Uhlman's Friesz, André Lhote, de Chirico,
modern painting has been and acclaimed as the essential spirit. fascinating autobiography 'The and Giacometti, who was a
still is, the constant fundamental To answer this schoolboy Making of an Englishman' regular there. LhOte wrote an
questioning and regeneration of Marxism — what correctly (published in 1960 by Gollancz) article after Uhlman's first
the language of painting, and this defined Bourgeois could push and tells his unusual story in detail. exhibition called 'Douanier
ambition is not reduced by the bear down on work to the extent Uhlman, a member of the Social Rousseau, Constantin Guys et
relative successes or failures of its that Matisse did (he was certainly Democratic Party and a friend of Fred Uhlman'.
practitioners. on his own) and make the the great Kurt Schumacher, spent Such tributes did not make it
Mr. Smith would do well to contributions Matisse did at 80 to much of the time in Stuttgart easier to earn a living and Uhlman
examine his own form of 85. To quote correctly, for once defending in court people accused was forced to look for work
criticism and realize how utterly please! Matisse wrote in 1908 of various crimes by the Nazis. which, since he was a refugee, had
mealy-mouthed, unoriginal, 'I am unable to distinguish As Nazi power grew Uhlman to be something the authorities
conventional and dogmatic it is. between the feeling I have for life found it necessary to change his believed no Frenchman could do.
Gareth Williams and my way of expressing it — address more often and even to The answer, improbably, was
St Martin's School of Art expressing to my way of thinking carry a gun in court. In March tropical fish breeding which
London does not consist of passion 1933, after an eleventh hour Uhlman practised (if that is the
mirrored upon a face or betrayed warning that his arrest was word) with a partner in a large
Terry Smith with his journalistic by a violent gesture — the whole imminent, Uhlman fled to Paris. factory in Menilmontant. The
sinister, occasional eighth truths, arrangement of my picture is Although Uhlman had always partner turned out to be a rogue
his Formalistic attitudes — expressive.'
Dictionary quote: Formalist Gillian Ayres
`Careful adherences to external 14 Beverley Road
form without spiritual reality'— Barnes, S.W.1 3
leaves me in a state of suggesting
it would be fine if he wrote for
Monty Python — but replying to
one more who hates abstract
painterly painting.
Painting has rules and limits to
its two dimensional visual Fred Uhlman
language — its own nature. To its
own light space, not literary space,
the sensational effect of colour A Profile by Frank Whitford
itself.
To its own surface or area It's a mystery to me why there
chosen and materials and colour, is still no book about the
invented or discovered at the intellectuals, artists and
time. Painting is itself an art scientists who sought refuge from
medium. the Nazis in Britain. Their story
Back to Cave paintings or is both heartening and tragic,
Egyptian painting it can only be hilarious and depressing; it also
looked at or read for these values. incidentally provides numerous
Through Art Mediums man will footnotes to the history of modern
always attempt to express his art. Kurt Schwitters, interned on
sublime state — eternity, or infinite the Isle of Man, sometimes
universal space above and pretended to be a dog and barked
moral law within. The confidence, himself to sleep at night. John
energy, questioning and optimism Heartfield, committed to the
in this century for abstraction in Communist Revolution, lived in
painting is not going to be axed by one of London's smartest streets,
Terry Smith. But it is quite clear evaded payment of rent and was
he has no idea that painters also acutely embarrassed when
have humility — don't get me visited by his son in G.I. uniform
wrong, not the kind he could who had fled to America with his
touch. mother. Ludwig Meidner, the
Again and again painting will visionary Expressionist painter,
look as it's never looked before — seemed to find it impossible to go
not that I am emphasizing looks where he wanted to in London
in the non-painterly sense, there unless piloted by a friend. Lazlo
was too much of that in the Moholy-Nagy who, like Gropius
sixties. and Mondrian, eventually left
With Smith's statement on the Britain for America, designed
surrender to the Super Star window displays for Simpsons,
hierarchization of the New York Piccadilly. These are incidental
Art world — to me, there is no details but they give life to that Fred and Diana Uhlman,
photographed by
definable élite — only an brief period when London Rowland Scherman
15!