Exhibitions 2
On Classic Ground: Picasso, Leger, de Chirico and the New Classicism 1910-1930 (Tate Gallery, till 2 September)
Forbidden fruits
Giles Auty
From among 150 or so exhibitors on view at this year's Venice Biennale the number of figurative painters present could have been counted on the fingers of one `Maternity', 1921, by Achille Funi hand. Is this proportion a true reflection of what is happening world-wide in art at this moment? Of course not. What it indicates is merely the modish preoccupations of those who select artists to represent their countries.
Good figurative painting is rewarding for the viewer largely because it is inherently satisfying to make. Why is this connection commented on so seldom? I do not intend to write further about The British Art Show 1990, which has been wasting valuable exhibition space at the Hayward Gallery since last week, because I reviewed it when it opened last February in Glasgow. The only comment I would add now is on how few of the works at the Hayward look as though they would give any pleasure to make. In short, if attention cannot be gained quickly by such modish work the exercise of making it is pointless.
By contrast, On Classic Ground, the new show at the Tate Gallery, is full of paintings and sculpture which were clearly a source of considerable pleasure to their creators. In consequence, the Tate Gal- lery's exhibition offers substantial fare and richly rewards a visit. A paragraph on the back of the exhibition catalogue asserts that On Classic Ground 'offers a stimulat- ing reassessment of an unjustly neglected and important aspect of modern art'. Quite so. The catalogue is written lucidly and intelligently, an indication that organisers Elizabeth Cowling and Jennifer Mundy knew they were writing about excellent art, for which arcane apology is unnecessary. A number of artists included in this show represented their countries in those distant days when the Venice Biennale must still have been worth visiting. Such interesting figures, however unfamiliar to British audi- ences, as Ubaldo Oppi, Virgilio Guidi, Jose Clara, Carlo Carra and Felice Casor- ati all showed work at Venice, the last winning first prize there in 1938. Neither Guidi nor Oppi was included in the survey Italian Art in the 20th Century staged at the Royal Academy in the spring of last year. One imagines they did not fit conveniently into those schoolboyish notions of 20th- century artistic evolution understood by the organisers. On Classic Ground affords us the rich spectacle at last of the kind of art we have been prevented from seeing here previously largely because certain artists in it have been branded as artistic or political reactionaries.
On Classic Ground deals with reaction, admittedly — an artistic one triggered largely by the first world war. Calls to order were made by artists who had had their fill, at least temporarily, of anarchy and endless experimentation in art. Don't we all know that feeling? Nor were artists alone in glancing back wistfully at a life of assumed order and permanence. Many artists felt understandably that they wanted to belong to artistic traditions of greater duration than the last five minutes. Artistic reaction, following the first world war especially, was worldwide, but On Classic Ground concentrates on certain Mediterra- nean countries alone — France, Italy and Spain — on the somewhat unusual grounds that the classic past they reached back for was more or less their own. A number of the Italian artists in the show were mem- bers of or sympathetic to the early fascist party in Italy. This was not a route taken by many British intellectuals, of course. However, the original aims of the fascist movement in Italy remain widely and often wilfully misunderstood, the word itself being sufficient to bring out much of the media in Britain in rashes of self- righteousness. Historically this is a pity for much of the art we are looking at is outstanding. Mario Sironi and many others were excellent artists and should be judged simply as such. It is ironic to note here that the Italian artist Renato Guttoso, for long a revered idol of the international artistic left, was by no means always the commun-
ist he later became.
On Classic Ground gives us the chance to see Italian art seldom exhibited here before. Other figures from the show will be more familiar: Picasso, Matisse, Leger, Derain, Dali, Miro, Maillol. All responded in their various ways not only to the excesses of an avant-garde of which some had been a recent part but also to what was perceived as the often random ephemeral- ity of Impressionism. All were concerned with the monumental and lasting. A re- injection of their spirit is overdue today.
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