Art
Abstract and Concrete THE rediscovery of the principle of synthesis—the coherent cirsembie--Twhich is perhaps the predominant characteristic, the hall-mark of modern art, has had a curious and quite unforeseen indirect effect on contemporary artists. Salutary in itself, and congenial to the considerable renaissance in painting and sculpture which has taken place during the last half-century, this insistence on the unity of a work of art has, I suggest, come very near being something of a disaster for the painters and sculptors themselves.
Perhaps one can say that the trouble really began when the contagion spread to the architects. Imbued with the same admirable spirit of synthesis, they began to create buildings which tended to be in themselves self-supporting units, and which left little or no room for those ornamental interior additions which the "fine" artists were accustomed to provide. Then they turned round on the painters and sculptors and said in effect : "The building as I have left it is virtually complete. Don't, for heaven's sake, go and clutter it up with all sorts of bric-a-brac which is going to be quite out of keeping with its spirit. Take away your woolly, atmospheric, ' painterly ' effusions, your realistic statuary, and if you must give me something let it be something austere, hard, clean, 'functional,' like my own work. In that way the continuity of the plastic idea will be preserved." The painters and sculptors, long trained in the synthetic vision, could not but acknowledge the truth of the architects' con- tention. The same activity which they had been enthu- siastically advocating and practising within the frames of their pictures or the limits of their sculptures had now spread far beyond these narrow boundaries, monopolising whole rooms, whole houses, and was threatening to push them into the street.
What was the remedy for this state of affairs ? Either to persuade the owners of modern houses to instal private gal- leries or portfolios in them, on the Chinese model ; or else to cut their coats according to the architects' cloth. The more adaptable, or perhaps decoratively inclined, proceeded to adopt the latter plan ; and the sort of work they have been producing recently can be studied in two stimulating current exhibitions, at the Lefevre Galleries and at Duncan Miller's in Lower Grosvenor Place.
The Lefevre show is the bigger and perhaps the more impor- tant, but at the other, where the work is placed in a contem- porary- setting, one can see more clearly how well the artists have succeeded in their largely decorative aim. Objects which in an ordinary gallery might look merely precious or exotic here take their place perfectly in the decorative ensemble. Indeed a purely personal feeling is that they occasionally do so a bit too perfectly. Some of the artists' productions, though undeniably chic and ornamental, appear wanting in intrinsic validity, compared to the best non- representational work. The sort of semi-abstracts that Picasso, for instance, was painting just after the War were equally chic and equally ornamental, but they had besides a timeless classi- cal perfection as pictures which sometimes seems lacking here. However, that is as it may be ; and I most strongly urge any- one interested in contemporary painting and sculpture to go and see these two shows which are perhaps the most live mixed exhibitions which have taken place in London for years.
The recent collection of paintings by Mr. Jack Yeats at the Rembrandt Gallery (some of them can still be seen there) forms about as great a contrast to these austere abstractions as one can well imagine. Here we are in an atmosphere which, by comparison, is almost old-world ; an atmosphere of impres- sionism, pictorial anecdotes and heavy impasto. Indeed, on one occasion at least we are taken right back to a thorough- going last century romanticism, complete with allegorical nudes and a misty Celtic-twilight background out of which we can make anything we like. But these " literary " character- istics, which may prejudice one against the paintings at first, are seen later to be only superficial. Beneath them there lies a very real and individual colour-sense; and the best of Mr. Yeats's pictures, though they would look quite out of place decorating a Corbusier dining-room, in a private gallery or other less exacting surroundings, would appear as the charm- ing, colourful impressionist sketches that they are.
H. R. WACKRILL.
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