- ART THE dissolution, of which I wrote last week,
of that durable image which the great cubist revolutionaries struggled to construct, has nowhere been more clearly evident than in the exhibition of paintings from France which has just ended at the Leicester Galleries. It was particularly marked in this case because the collection was really a piece of special pleading by M. Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, who is not only one of the most lucid writers on art in Paris but, as the dealer who first supported Braque, Gris, Leger and Picasso, has his own place in history. He set out to show a continuity of tradition springing from the work of these artists and informing that of a younger generation in Paris, but what first struck the visitor was inevitably that the slightness, the softness, the evanescence of the younger painters appeared completely to contradict the aims of the older. There was nothing by those dribblers and splashers who attack their canvas without ..preconceived notion, so that the act of painting becomes, in the words of Soulages, "a total engagement, a poetic token from the world where judgment is left to the spectator," but the same climate of opinion which makes them possible was clearly at work here. Besides the best-known masters, an older painter like Beaudin continues to exercise that linear architecture beloved of Villon and Feininger, though without Villon's oversweet colour; but the extraordinarily tasteful free abstrac- tions of Kermadec already represent a release from discipline, while Masson's sharp and spiky forms have disappeared completely in a shower of orientalised mist and spray. The younger men Roux and Rouvre could hardly be said to set the Thames on fire; the confident decorative arabesques of Frangoise Gilot were infinitely
more rewarding.
* * *
Ripples from the same stone have by now disturbed the pond in Italy. Santomaso, at
what a queer kind of cabinet government it h. Unlike Ministers in the Gold Coast and Nigeria, the Members in Malaya are in no Way responsible to the legislature, which remains wholly nominated. Moreover, until recently, the MCA-UMNO Alliance, the most powerful political force in the country, was quite unrepresented. Even now, it has only two of the quite arbitrarily selected eleven Members. Again, Mr. Corry talks of the " big extension of citizenship rights." Yet it is officially estimated that, despite the 1952 amendment to the citizenship law, only 53 per cent. of the Chinese and 27 per cent. of the Indians are eligible for citizenship.
Mr. Corry charges The Times correspon- dent (a) with listening too much to a few frustrated Asian intellectuals whom Mr. Corry dismisses as an unrepresentative minority, (b) with being " a pink intellectual " and therefore an unreliable political commentator. With regard to the first charge, he seems to overlook the fact that most revolutions, I including those of Asia, have been carried ) through by tiny minorities, and that most of those who sit in the seat of power in Asia today are precisely those intellectuals who pre- ferred to oppose, rather than co-operate with, past colonial governments. The Times' corres- pondent was right over this. Tho'se intellectuals who have not been locked up as politically dangerous, or drifted to the jungle, or gone abroad as political emigres, are waiting as neutrals for the ending of the Government's emergency powers. But it looks as though they will have to wait for some time yet. It is significant that Mr. Corry in his catalogue of Government achievements did not question The Times' correspondent's statement that the jungle communist force is now twice the size it was when the insurrection started five years ago. Does this suggest that the " Anti-Com- munist Crusade" has been quite as successful as M r. Corry claims ?
Finally, his contention that The Times' correspondent was " a pink intellectual" and therefore an unreliable political correspondent is only too typical of the growing and dis- turbing tendency of Malayan officialdom to damn any critic of the Government " line "
as a Fabian " trouble-maker." Simply because Malaya is such a " problem " and the present situation so fluid, there can be no undisputed version of the truth. Mr. Corry's version, I know, is widely held in official circles. It is that of a senior officer of the Malayan Civil Service with long and devoted service to the `country and with obviously pronounced right-wing political convictions. But if Malaya is ever to be a democracy, there must be far wider toleration of other points of view than exists at present. It is well known that The Times' correspon- dent, because of his critical approach, was persona non grata in certain influential quarters.
I suggest that Mr. Corry may perhaps be a little too complacent about the future and that the despatches of The Times' corres- pondent, who Mr. Corry will no doubt be relieved to know has now left Malaya for Delhi, were candid and constructive appraisals of a complicated situation.—Yours faithfully, FRANCIS CARNELL Sumtnertown House, Oxford
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