On Art and Artists

T.G. Rosenthal

Description

These critical essays on art and artists by T.G. Rosenthal, chosen by the author from his considerable output over more than fifty years of writing and reviewing, focus mainly on what has come to be known as 'Modern British' art - art from the 20th century. Rosenthal knew many of his subjects personally and some became friends: Michael Ayrton; Arthur Boyd; Ivon Hitchens; Thelma Hulbert; L. S. Lowry; Sidney Nolan; Paula Rego. There are also essays on Wyndham Lewis, Jack B. Yeats and the paintings of August Strindberg. There is a profile of Walter and Eva Neurath, founders of the art-book publishers Thames & Hudson, the author's first employers; an essay on Anti-Semitism in England; and an obituary of Matthew Hodgart, who at Cambridge, influenced and developed Rosenthal's knowledge and passion for literature.

Sujets

• History of art

Informations

• Publié par: Andrews UK
• Date de parution: 02 janvier 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781906509842
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Title Page
ON ART AND ARTISTS
Selected Essays
T.G. Rosenthal
With a Foreword by
William Boyd



Publisher Information
First published by
Unicorn Press Ltd
66 Charlotte Street
London W1T 4QE
in association with the Bridgewater Press
Digital edition converted and distributed in 2014 by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
© T. G. Rosenthal 2013
Foreword © William Boyd 2013
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.



Dedication
With love for Ann, Adam, Daniel, Bruno and Arne, who for many years sustained an always difficult human being through failing health which has resulted in my coffee mug bearing the legend ‘Grumpy Old Man’.



Acknowledgements
A publisher can rarely have a more difficult author than one who is himself a publisher and who is, on grounds of age alone, even more experienced although not wiser. I therefore apologize to Hugh Tempest-Radford for all the hoops I made him jump through.
Having edited other people’s manuscripts for over half a century I salute Emily Lane, an old friend and former colleague, who repeatedly saved me from error in her meticulous editing of my essays.



Foreword
by William Boyd
Vladimir Nabokov, no lover of critics - and yet no mean critic himself - had this to say about the profession: ‘The purpose of a critique is to say something about a book the critic has or has not read. Criticism can be instructive in the sense that it gives readers, including the author of the book, some information about the critic’s intelligence, or honesty, or both.’ It’s the second sentence that has most bearing on this wonderful collection of essays by T. G.Rosenthal (whom we will dub TGR for the purposes of this introduction). The title says it all very straightforwardly: these are critical essays on art and artists TGR knows or admires (sometimes both). Their focus is largely on what art auctioneers term ‘Modern British’, a loose term that covers most British art of the 20 th century, now that we are firmly into the 21 st . ‘Contemporary’ is reserved for the currently faddy and briefly new - to paraphrase Robert Hughes. British 20 th -century artists have not fared well when measured against their peers and rivals on the continent of Europe or across the Atlantic. Where, in the first few decades of the 20 th century, is the British Picasso or Matisse, one might wonder? Or even the British Edward Hopper or Jackson Pollock? British art has always seemed somewhat parochial and safe - a bit like British music of the 20 th century: competent but not mould-breaking; thoroughly enjoyable but not blood-stirring; technically assured but not challenging or controversial in any way.
These are generalisations, of course, and there are no doubt a few exceptions that could be advanced to attempt to argue otherwise. But such plaintive voices are rare and I think it would be fair to say that this mildly patronising attitude reflects the consensus of international artistic opinion - perfectly good but not outstanding, being the broad note. British art is a placid oxbow lake when set beside the wide foaming torrent of creativity to be found abroad.
Personally, I’ve always felt that this demotion into the second division of the artists’ league table has been unfair. British art of the 20 th century deserves a more studious and forensic examination. It has consistently been under-appreciated and therefore undervalued (sale prices being the great initial arbiter of a work of art’s worth). One of the delights of reading TGR’s essays is to see that this is a point of view he powerfully upholds - even though, I have to remind myself, that of the ten artists that are the subjects of the bulk of the essays in this volume two are Australian, one is Portuguese, one is Irish, and then there is August Strindberg. Arthur Boyd, Sidney Nolan, Paula Rego and Jack B. Yeats are not British, true, but it’s fair to say their reputations were made in this country, to a large degree, and so they can be included in the conspectus of British art. It’s through that lens that they are scrutinised and evaluated. What makes TGR’s thinking about these artists more rewarding is that in many cases he knew the subjects personally or had an acquaintance with them that goes beyond the tunnel-vision of critic commenting on artist. TGR, as these essays testify, is a man of wide culture, as well. There is nothing of the pinched academician about his world-view, nothing of the vainglorious aestheticism of the scholar possessively ring-fencing his small area of notional expertise. TGR loves art, literature and music, but he also relishes society’s gossip, sport, fine wine and a good cigar. He can write a sentence about Benjamin Britten, Sidney Nolan and Patrick White (in the context of an unwritten opera) with effortless authority and, equally, pass assured judgment on the elegance of David Gower’s off-drive. There is an urbanity and a worldliness (not the same thing) about his take on art and artists that is extremely rare in this day and age, and these essays illustrate the huge advantage of being fully engaged in the world and its multifarious business. ‘More is more’ in this case - to contradict the usual adage. Art seen in its full cultural and human context is all the better for the wide-screen view: Panavision, in this instance, is far more discerningly revealing than the pinhole camera.
However, to read a critic whose opinions you largely share can be a little dangerous, on occasion - the complacent reader seeing the critic’s judgment as a confirmation of his own excellent taste rather than a common disinterested appraisal. In my case this is particularly true when I read TGR on Michael Ayrton. I’m a great admirer of Ayrton (and own a few of his drawings and small oils) yet I’m fully aware that Ayrton is still something of a controversial, not to say pariah, figure in the history of British 20 th -century painting. The envious, pusillanimous sneers that affected his reputation during his short lifetime can still be heard today. TGR’s essay on Ayrton is both the best defence and the best vindication of this complex artist’s superabundant gifts and his posthumous merit that I have read. Ayrton’s real and original donnée , it seems to me, now that some time has passed since his death, was in his sculpture - though he was a brilliant and idiosyncratic draughtsman as well. His drawings are as incisive and individual as Schiele’s. TGR sums up the Ayrton problem with great insight and shrewdness. Ayrton was a ‘Painter - sculptor - draughtsman - engraver - portraitist - stage designer - book illustrator - novelist - short-story writer - essayist - critic - art historian - broadcaster - film-maker ... he had also prodigious gifts as a clubman, a wit, a conversationalist and a friend.’ But of course in ‘Pudding Island’, as Laurence Durrell referred - with understandable bitterness - to the British Isles, to be a polymath in the Ayrton mode was a kind of artistic suicide. Maybe this is our cultural problem as a nation, and maybe this explains why our artists labour under slights and misconceptions, whereas elsewhere such burgeoning, rich profligacy would have been seen as an incredible boon. ‘Versatility’, as TGR refers to the capacity to excel in different media, is a question of individual artistic temperament, surely, and one is baffled as to why it should be deplored. Would we have preferred Picasso not to have spent time in Vallauris, for example, dabbling in ceramics? Would we have wished that Hockney had never picked up a Polaroid camera? Or, as TGR shows in his essay on Strindberg, the playwright’s reputation is indeed enhanced and underscored by the fact that he was a painter as well. TGR analyses the problem with dry acuity: ‘as any student of English culture and society knows, the greatest crime is to be too clever by half. ... If you really are brighter than the other fellow you’d better not show it and if you want to get ahead, keep your talent under your hat for as long as you possibly can.’
Jack of all trades, master of none. TGR’s essay on Ayrton proves the lie here; and in his essay on another underrated English painter, Ivon Hitchens, he shows how, for another type of artist, dogged persistence - the constant reworking of a familiar theme - is equally exemplary. Both studies are models of the essay as corrective reassessment. TGR knew both artists personally and so brings a level of understanding to his analysis that the common-or-garden art critic simply cannot. Both artists bloom afresh in the light cast by TGR’s particular revisionism; both artists can be seen anew in the glow of such constructive criticism.
But there is another test for the TGR aficionado. I happen to admire almost all of the artists TGR treats in this selection of essays. Almost all. Heretical statement though it may be, TGR’s taste and mine diverge when it comes to the case of L. S. Lowry. I’m wholly with him on Ayrton and Hitchens; I concur in his reassessment of Wyndham Lewis (another polymath); Paula Rego - super artist; Arthur Boyd (no relation) and Sydney Nolan - yes, absolutely. Jack Yeats - I see what he’s getting at. But... Lowry...
Lowry is one of those artists who suffer terribly from over-familiarity. From tea-towel to greeting card, from wrapping paper to tourist brochure, from placemat to oven glove, the Lowry world has become as omnipresent as Mickey Mouse’s. No benefit accrues to the artist’s reputation thereby. The same problem is sometimes apparent when any artist’s work is viewed collectively, as in a retrospective. Works of