Page 20 - Studio International - May June 1975

was little competition in its field.
Produced extraordinarily good colour
reproductions. Took an early interest in
Ave Atque
photography, the Arts & Crafts
or, a potpourri of random reflections on putting a movement, interior decoration, the
activities of, for example, Rennie
magazine on to the presses month after bloody Mackintosh and Voysey. Provided
month instruction in gesso work, embroidery,
the design of bookplates and all sorts of
other useful activities for young and
middle-aged cultured ladies and
gentlemen unable to afford the tail end of
the Grand Tour. And then declined into
the academic art of the First World War
and the 1930's. Hard to find in its pages
any mention of Cubism, Dada, Duchamp,
the later Matisse, Picasso. Of Munnings,
Conder, Sargent, yes. Occasionally there
was a remarkable intrusion, a mention of
Nicholson for example, or coverage of
Francis Bacon as an interior designer.
With this decline went a decline in
circulation, but simultaneously it was
building up a fairly profitable book
publishing side. Publishing, for example,
O NCE UPON A TIME, many years was, I suspect, a fairly raw deal. The same Corbusier's book on aircraft.
Somehow it survived, perhaps because
sort of raw deal which, during my time
ago, I went to visit Harold Cohen,
the artist, in his London studio. I went with Studio, has been handed out to competition in the English-speaking
at the instance of my brother, William Mario Amaya and Charles Spencer of world was still fragile, perhaps because
Townsend, who was then teaching at the Art & Artists, Tom Hess in New York the provincialism it exhaled was well-
Slade School of Art. My brother, I and, most recently, Jean Clair of L'Art suited to the frightened between-war
should add, was very much against my Vivant, the Paris-based journal. This is years. Once it has been a powerful
having anything to do with Studio; when not to make any value judgement; simply influence, particularly in the
I ignored his advice he proved very to note that editors of art magazines are dissemination of Art Nouveau. Early on
supportive, helped to give this magazine a journalists, and as likely as any other its reproductions of African masks, Pre-
continued interest in Canadian art, and journalists to be cooked in other people's Raphaelite paintings and Beardsley
along the line advised me to get whatever juices. drawings had been studied by the young
suggestions I could from professionals in Picasso in Barcelona and by Munch in
the visual arts. Now I myself have been doing just the Norway. It still exercised influence, in
That was at the point when I became same sort of work for ten years, and with the UK, Australia, Canada,
editor of this magazine, and I spent a this issue leave it; because of this I want Scandinavia. I remember Brodzky
good deal of time going round to critics, to write briefly, personally, and to an saying how, as a boy, he would search it
artists, art historians, people working in extent at random, about editing an out in an Australian public library. Many
museums and galleries and so on in order `elderly' art magazine. others must have done the same. But one
to find out just what kind of magazine the Ten years ? Well, not quite; more like has the feeling that it was steadily
then (it was 1965) art world felt it needed. 9.6, but who's counting ? Ten-year becoming less concerned to have direct
It was a necessary but in retrospect spans are very convenient, even in the art communication with the professional, and
perhaps a somewhat naive kind of world; they provide such excellent more concerned to keep its place as an
exploration. Certainly along with much boundary hedges for exhibition easily-digested appetizer for the cultured
good advice I got plenty of naive answers. organizers, and simultaneously excuse amateur.
So it was that I looked in on Harold, so many distortions. Even during the Second World War,
who was working at the time in a but by then reduced in size, it managed
studio off Holloway Road in north I've used the word 'elderly' with to find enough paper stock to continue
London. You approached it through deliberation, because age and the publication, and to enjoy an occasional
a passage beside a near-derelict tradition accumulated over a long period lapse into jingoism. In one of Nevil
house. Then you went across an may well affect even an art journal, and Shute's novels there is a reference to a
overgrown garden. I noted willowherb, indicate not only what it has been but copy of Studio dropped, along with other
dog-rose and untrimmed buddleia what it is capable of becoming. Perhaps provisions, to an officer in a fighting unit
crowding across the pathway. At the back, the best way to do this is to sketch on the Burma front, a very gentleman's
in a sort of studio/shed, Harold was something of Studio's past history. Since gentleman of a magazine.
working on large canvases spread on the time-span is long, one has to do it
the floor, pouring out on them what one almost in 'A' Level notation. Someone, With the end of the Second World
could perhaps, at this distance of time, somewhere, might find Studio's history a War the going became rougher. The
call maps of the mind. He didn't get up; convenient subject for a thesis. There are family which had founded and edited the
from a crouching position he turned to so many gaps in the record that it should magazine sold it. One member went off
me and said, 'You know, your magazine be an easy one to complete. to Mexico to become a potter-craftsman;
stinks'. another settled into publishing in New
(Much later he designed one of our Born 1893. Sired by Charles Holme, York. Editors changed (Bryan
covers, and we ran a long article by him Far Eastern trader, a man with a yen for Robertson once told me he had a sort of
on the use of computers in art, and the fin de siècle Japan boom, out of Bing recollection of being editor for about 72
published notes on his paintings; but I with his Parisian shop selling Japanese hours). The journal itself passed through
remember particularly that morning, its prints and artefacts, and Art Nouveau. the Hulton empire and into the hands
mild rain, and its salutary douche of Moved smartly into Symbolism. Built up of the then Rev. Timothy Beaumont, who
quirky honesty.) a circulation which at one point totalled hived off the book publishing side into
about 60,000 (exact records were what is now Studio Vista, and re-sold the
In giving this criticism I realize that I may destroyed by a fire bomb in Leicester magazine, to William Randolph Hearst's
appear to denigrate my predecessor, Square during the last war). Was able to National Magazine Company.
G. S. Whittet, which I would not wish to do this because improved printing Eventually, after some years, and having
do. After a 13-year pretty honourable stint methods suddenly made long magazine given it a slightly different and bigger
without too much back-up he had what runs possible and profitable, and there dress and tacked 'International' on to
168