Jack Vettriano; what the critics don't dare to tell you.

Jack Vettriano ; The Singing Butler

 In a recent post I bemoaned the fact that critics are seemingly incapable of looking with their eyes at pictures, preferring instead to look with their brains. By which I mean they acquire prejudices through the process of their "education" (I put this word in inverted commas because it ought to mean, to draw out, whereas in fact the education of a modern art critic is far more concerned with stuffing in all sorts of approved and sanctioned opinions about what is and what is not acceptable). Nowhere is this more strikingly illustrated than by their treatment of the most famous and most successful realist artist in the UK today, the Scots artist Jack Vettriano. I will talk more specifically about Vettriano further on but its worthwhile taking a moment to speak more generally about the way modernist critics deal with realism.  All realism puts the modern critic in rather the same quandary I was in as a 13 year old who knew I would get kudos from listening to and liking Pink Floyd but was too ashamed to admit, (almost even to myself) that Abba wrote some pretty good tunes as well. The modern critic will (rightly) praise the "penetratingly meticulous observation" of Van Eyck but feel compelled to pour scorn on "academic niggling" of Holman Hunt. What is praised in an approved artist is condemned in an unapproved one. The beautiful finish of say, Corregio, becomes the "peinture laché" of Bugoureau. It is, for unexplained reasons, perfectly acceptable for a sixteenth century Venetian to be inspired by ancient Greece but totally unacceptable for a nineteenth century Londoner, despite the later actually having far greater knowledge and understanding of Greek art and culture.

 One feels a certain trepidation on behalf of the modernist critic writing about the art of the past lest he or she should inadvertently commit some ghastly faux pas by forgetting the approved list. Whistler is ok obviously as a rebel who sued Ruskin aka "the establishment" but Whistler loved Albert Moore, who painted classical nudes and exhibited at the Royal Academy and therefore is to be condemned as reactionary. The inevitable result is that Whistler's admiration for Moore is expunged from the official history and their relationship twisted to make Moore the humble but conservative acolyte of the avant-garde hero, and this despite Whistler's often stated respect and admiration for Moore's work.  When it comes to modern painting though, and here I use the term "modern", unfashionably, to denote an historical period rather than an artistic style, the critic is on surer ground. No danger of committing the terrible error equivalent to my singing "Fernando" in the playground! Rule 1 of the modernist handbook states that any figurative modern work which makes any reference to art of the past except to undercut or satirise it is strictly forbidden. The result of this rule being strictly enforced is the complete absence of modern figurative work from reviews and general art criticism in the press and on television except where it is characterized as amateur art and more or less ridiculed.

Pendine Beach: Jack Vettriano

Realism of all sorts poses a problem for critics for modernism came into being essentially to kill it off. The greats of previous centuries would remain forever in the museums but they could be intellectually cordoned off into an area called "the past", year zero was declared , sometime around 1910, to paraphrase Virginia Woolf, and art would never be, and never be allowed to be, the same again. Realist art in the late 20th and 21st centuries must be a horrible torment to modernist critics who thought they had ridiculed it into oblivion. The problem they have with an artist like Vettriano is that to discuss him at all means to accept the traditional criteria for judging art. It makes no sense to talk about his work without dealing with how he handles tonal masses, his use of colour, his method of applying paint and so forth. This poses two problems. Firstly, the modern critic is almost without exception totally unqualified to discuss these matters never having actually studied the difficult art of painting a picture. Secondly, (and more seriously, because the modern critic is a sophisticated creature and never normally lets a complete lack of qualifications weaken his belief in the rightness of his judgements) once this is admitted it is not enough to say, oh but his colour harmonies are crude  his drawing clumsy, his composition awkward, for the realist will be inclined to respond incredulously; "but here is an article where you praised Tracy Emin's drawing, or Howard Hodgkin's colour or David Hockney's composition all of which are infinitely clumsier and cruder than Vettriano's, besides, if those are the qualites you want here are fifty successful realist painters who can give it too you in spades! Where is your modernism now if all along it has been drawing, colour and paint handling you really seek rather than merely juvenile attempts to try and make us think about this or that banal concept!

Just Another Day: Jack Vettriano

The result of this dilemma is that the critics do the only thing they can do with Vettriano, which is to almost totally ignore him. A scan of the internet reveals no serious reviews of his work in which its merits and de-merits are properly discussed. No doubt much to their chagrin though, they cannot get away with the usual way of dealing with realism, (and realism of a much greater quality than Vettriano's) which is to pretend it doesn't exist. In Vettriano's case his work is everywhere, even people who don't know his name will be familiar with some of his pictures so just occasionally they have to hold their noses and take him on. Not that they deign to actually review his work, that would be opening too great a can of worms; the only time they have descended from Olympus to write about him is not to review an exhibition but to criticize a gallery (the Kelvingrove in Glasgow) for mounting one and in the case of Jonathan Jones in The Guardian to deny his right to merit the title of artist at all!

So having criticised the critics for failing to look properly at pictures with an open mind  I thought I would put my money where my mouth is and apply this concept to the work of probably the most reviled painter, (possibly also the most liked it must be added) in the UK, Jack Vettriano. Like most of us I see prints of his works all the time, in friend's houses, dentists' waiting rooms, cafés and bars and I have to say I have always thought they had a certain quality. The thing that strikes me most forcibly, a vital thing for a painter one would have thought, but a rare gift nowadays even amongst good realist painters,  is his ability to create a telling and powerful image. Regardless of how skillfully they are put down on canvas Vettriano has created images which I believe are genuine contenders for the "once seen, never forgotten" club, and that is a club of very exclusive membership. The picture at the top of this article, his most famous work, The Singing Butler is a case in point, it has, to my mind, a compelling mixture of homeliness and familiarity with just the right amount of strangeness that beauty always seems to require. Some time ago critics gleefully discovered that some of the figures were taken from a reference manual as though that fact invalidated the picture but so what,? Renaissance artists did the same, swapping studio drawings of drapery and the like, the skill as Vettriano correctly asserted, is in how the figures are used, and how they are put together, the hue and value used for them and the negative shapes around them. I say he showed a level of artistic skill in his use of these figures to create so arresting an image at least equal to anything demonstrated by that darling of the media "Britain's greatest living painter" David Hockney

The memorability of an image is dependent on much more than what is portrayed obviously. when we call a picture "good" we mean it is composed with a level of artistic skill, which in turn means simply that the right colour has been used in the right amount in the right place. That is on a technical level what is primarily  meant to paint a good picture and I would maintain that Vettriano often succeeds to a high level on this test. To take the picture "Just Another Day" above, it is made, on an aesthetic level, by the lovely red notes of the handbag and hat. Now the artistic skill here is to pick a colour to play against the neutrals which allows a high enough chroma and low enough value to give sufficient contrast but also to allow the reds to be read as part of the single low value mass of the figure and the railings. The railings incidentally also perform the task of taking the dark mass across the picture without blocking the whole thing into two and disturbing the connection between foreground and background.  A little mention too for the delicious red strap cleverly linking the two larger red masses and adding a certain symmetry by mirroring the slight curve of the girl's  body. It is this kind of judgment which defines an artist's skill and I think this one picture alone is enough to illustrate the ludicrous nature of the critic Jones' comment mentioned above.

Self -Portrait : Jack Vettriano.

This near monochromatic self portrait demonstrates more clearly still Vettriano's ability to handle values, which are the key building block of any picture, the sine qua non if you will, of good art. Judged merely in those terms this is a wonderful picture, almost Whistlerian in his handling of values and I think perhaps the general position of the figure as well as the detail of the picture frame at the top right is a nod to the American artist's famous portrait of his mother, perhaps even it is not too fanciful to read in his dejected pose a sense of self criticism in failing to live up to the masters of the past. I don't know if that is any more than my interpretation but if so I would rather praise the artist for aiming for the highest than criticise him for falling short. Because of course there are shortcomings and I wouldn't put Vettriano in the same rank as Whistler to name but one great from past centuries.  One weakness it appears to me, though I must add the caveat that I am judging only from reproductions never having had the opportunity to see an original, is that Vettriano's method of laying paint on the canvas is rather basic and misses the opportunity of exploiting the wonderful range of textures possible with oil paint, the huge extension of effects one can gain by glazing, scumbling and juxtaposing opaque and transparent or semi-transparent paint for example. In this picture for example the pillow seems rather flat and the paint, considered as paint, is generally rather dull and lifeless.

 

Mad Dogs: Jack Vettriano

This lack of technique is perhaps most keenly felt in his treatment of flesh which is rather summary and for an artist especially is rather disappointing when one considers what a master such as Titian might have made of a scene such as this. But perhaps it is unfair to use that particular stick to beat him with, to say he falls short of Titian is after all only to say he trails behind possibly the greatest exponent of oil paint who has ever lived. I prefer to dwell on the positive and an honest view of his work tells me that whilst technically not by any means a great painter he is a very talented designer one of the best at work today, far superior to the likes of Hockney  or other moderns who paint broadly within the realist tradition and frankly far superior too to many classical realists of today who too often can handle paint like angels but have precious little idea how to make a picture. And this after all is the name of the game, to have something to say and to say it as beautifully as possible. Vettriano's great and to my mind deserved success is due entirely to the fact that he knows how to compose and make an image which speaks to people, they may be songs in a minor key but they are tunes people love to whistle as they go about their daily lives and that is no little achievement and merits far more respect and admiration than the art world has shown him.

Birth of a Dream : Jack Vettriano

More on the Learned Prejudices of the Educated Mind



A favourite custom by Lawrence Alma-Tadema

During my researches for my previous post on "The Art of Cornwall" and what I can only characterize as the learned prejudices of some art historians I came across another interesting example by the maker of the Cornwall film Dr. James Fox relating to this work (above) by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema. I should say I don't believe for a moment that Dr Fox is peculiarly susceptible to this disease of wilful blindness but as he is in the fortunate position of getting to air his views regularly on the BBC they are obviously more apparent that those of his colleagues who have to content themselves with less public platforms.

Now Dr Fox is a specialist in and great admirer of modernism, particularly British modernism of the first half of the twentieth century and as I demonstrated in my earlier piece it is only possible to claim any status for most of the art of this period by appealing not to its inherent artistic qualities as would have been understood at any earlier period since the early 14th century but to the simple fact of its newness and difference from previous art. Less for what it is artistically than for what it stood for intellectually and ideologically. Purely artistic criteria for judging a work of art become useless, worse than useless in fact, as anyone with eyes and an open mind can see that the modernist work of the early 20th century stands hopelessly condemned by them in comparison to the work they superseded. So it follows that if a new edifice of modernism is to be constructed at all it must be on the ruins of the old, the old culture must be destroyed root and branch and the very possibility of comparing the new to the old must be made as difficult as possible. In this the modernists have been successful; even to complain that David Hockney's landscapes aren't a patch on Constable's for example is to risk revealing yourself as an ignorant philistine, "modern art" is not to be compared to "art", we are done with "art" we need something more "relevant" to the modern world.

Road across the Wold David Hockney

Hampstead Heath John Constable

Given this I find it revealing to examine the terms by which the old art has been removed from the discourse of modern criticism. Of course the criteria by which bad art art was identified up until the 20th century, bad drawing, dirty colour, sloppy handling, ugly line etc are not terms that can sensibly be applied to a work such as this:



Captive Andromache by Lord Leighton
 

and no modernist would dare to dismiss such a picture in those terms and then ask us to admire something such as this:



The field next to the road by Jean-Michael Basquiat

No, another way of telling us never to look at these picture again had to be found and it was a more effective way because it didn't appeal to personal taste or judgement, which can be fickle after all, but to our liberal sense of modernity, democracy and reasonableness, You were told that if you liked Alma -Tadema you weren't just a bad critic, most of us could live with that I suppose (especially considering the state of our accusers) but a bad person.
So how does Dr Fox justify his opinion that Alma-Tadema's picture "A Favourite Custom" (pictured at the top of this article) is  "very, very, very bad art"? Well first of all he admits it is "well painted", (enough in itself, one would have thought, to cut out at least one "very"), and he warns us not to be fooled by its charms. It is charming then, in addition to being well painted; most artists would be content enough with producing charming, well painted and popular works but none of this counts for Dr Fox because he informs us it is "reactionary, elitist, sexist, motivated by money alone and completely out of touch with the realities of modern Britain". Now, note that none of these words or phrases  are actually terms of art criticism, they might more logically be applied to a political speech and certainly none would ever be found attached to works of art before the twentieth century.  I would think it rather behoves Dr Fox, therefore, before using them to dismiss a picture as valueless, to make a case as to why a picture need be progressive, democratic, non sexist,  given away for free and in touch with the realities of modern Britain, which I take to be the opposite of his terms and therefore qualities he would require in an admirable painting. To take the financial aspect first as it is the most plainly ridiculous, neither Dr Fox or anyone else can ever know if the picture was painted solely for money. Alma Tadema operated in a capitalist society, he earned his living by selling paintings as did and does every other professional artist so it is plainly absurd to make this statement and then to insinuate that that somehow affects the quality of the work. And besides, where would that leave Damien Hirst?
Moving on to "reactionary" which the Oxford dictionary defines as "opposing political or social progress or reform" Really? it is very hard to see how any picture (barring perhaps a political cartoon) could  be said to oppose any reforms and I assume by the phrase "out of touch with the realities of modern Britain"  that Dr Fox acknowledges its' complete lack of concern with the issues of progress or reform, so how can it at the same time be viewed as opposing them? What right does Dr Fox have to tell artists they should paint pictures concerning the realities of modern Britain or anywhere else for that matter?

On to "elitist" - "relating or supporting the view that a society or system should be led by an elite" according to my dictionary. Well firstly all societies are, and in my view should be, led by an elite, I want the best the brightest the kindest and the wisest to lead any society of which I am a part, but again what possible reason can Dr Fox have for supposing this picture, by his own admission completely unconcerned with modern Britain, can be making a case for an elitist society? They may or may not be the Roman "elite" in the picture, the custom of bathing was widespread, but its a big step from that to assuming any undemocratic motives of the artist! One might indeed, if so minded, make the argument that Alma -Tadema was celebrating the democratic nature of Roman baths and implying a similar democratic attitude to public health would be welcome in Edwardian Britain.  Finally on to "sexist", thrown in, in a very prudish (dare I say Victorian?) manner, presumably because there are some naked women in the picture, though it is not, as he rather oddly claims, "full of them". Well the naked form is a thing of great beauty, surely those battles were fought and won a long time ago. Dr Fox must have a difficult time in most of the great museums of the world if the mere depiction of nudity causes such revulsion. The women are bathing but I hope Dr Fox doesn't infer from the fact they were keen on cleanliness that they were incapable of higher rational thought, for only something on those lines would justify the idea that Alma-Tadema was discriminating against women in any way merely by depicting them enjoying the water.

Here is another picture which might just as reasonably suffer the opprobrium of Dr Fox,

The Venus of Urbino by Titian

It certainly has nothing to do with the realities of 16th century Venice, it depicts  a goddess, how elitist! a nude female and other women who are mere servants, sexist! looks back to a mythical past, reactionary! and as a commissioned work, unlike the Alma Tadema, was painted directly for money, and yet, damn it, despite these terrible weaknesses it has somehow endured in the world's imagination as a great masterpiece for nearly five centuries.  I should say here for the avoidance of doubt that I do not consider the Alma Tadema to be great art, but it has a lot of good qualities and doesn't deserve to be dismissed so witheringly and certainly not for purely ideological reason. Burne-Jones once said "there are two reasons for painting a picture, to please or to exalt; the first is a pretty reason, the second a noble one."  Alma-Tadema's picture falls into the first category but that in itself is no little thing and worthy of appreciation and gratitude. There is no doubt in my mind that there is a peculiar prejudice amongst modernists for Victorian art, the reason being that it was the art that came directly before the modernist revolution and that to which modernism was most often and most directly compared. But it is sad that a class of people exists, and particularly when it is those who job it is to give a full and fair assessment of the story of art, who cannot or will not set aside learned prejudices and really look with an honest eye and an open mind at the work before them. It is not good enough to dismiss Victorian art just because it is Victorian any more than to praise that which came after it just because it did come after it. The modern movement has encouraged the replacement of artistic standards with political ones, the replacement of artists as the arbiters of artistic merit with writers and academics. Indeed it might be argued that this replacement is the modern movement. The proof is in the pudding however and the modernists serve us up such lumpy, dull, soggy pudding it really is time that we all learned we don't have to force it down. A far healthier and more sustaining fare will still be waiting for us when we recover our appetite.




The roses of Heliogabalus by Lawrence Alma-Tadema

A brief tour of the Musée Hébert in Grenoble



Malaria by Hébert

I recently had the pleasure of staying with some of my family in the city of Grenoble in the French Alps and of course to a devotee of 19th century art Grenoble means two things, or rather two artists; Henri Fantin-Latour and Antoine August Ernest Hébert, who, fortunately, more usually demonstrated the importance of being simply Ernest. Neither, it must be regretfully admitted, are household names nowadays, the latter probably even less well known to the general public than the former, both being overshadowed in the history of 19th century French art by ... well you know who.. but such was the richness of this golden epoch for painting that great artists abound in all areas both artistically and indeed geographically. A few years ago staying in the south-west corner of France I happened to chance upon the delicious little Musée Bonnat in Bayonne and here in Grenoble I was enchanted to discover the Musée Hébert just on the outskirts of the modern city. There appears to be a considerable element of chance in determining which artists are today commemorated with their own museum; in the case of the 19th century salon painters, it seems relatives who were quick off the mark before reputations had started their inevitable decline was a vital factor. Whilst living in Paris I was a regular visitor at the Musée Henner just across the street from Sarah Bernhardt's house but I looked in vain for any such tribute to, for example, Bougureau or Gerome.

Hébert was born in 1817 and it is his family house, bought by his mother when the young Ernest was a child of 4, which is now preserved as the museum. Apparently there is a Musée Hébert in Paris but I was relieved to discover that my complete ignorance of its existence was due to it being closed in 2004 for repairs. One has to assume that its reopening is unlikely and that its "indefinite" closure will be transmuted to a definite one before too long.

Musée Hébert, Grenoble

The house is an elegant early nineteenth century building with lovely semi formal gardens although it has been built around a much older house dating I believe to the early seventeenth century, a couple of rooms of which are preserved. Of course it is the side of the house in which the artist lived and worked which is of most interest. Hébert won the Prix de Rome in 1839 and duly set off to the Villa Medici in Rome where he studied the epic large scale history paintings of the previous three centuries to produce works such as this typical of mid century French academic painting. How one envies the artists of that epoch their splendid training, equipping them at an early age with the full technical ability to express themselves as they saw fit.

Nude male by Hébert

Throughout his life Hébert continued his love affair with Italy spending two periods of more than five years each in Rome as director of the French academy at the Villa Medici. His most famous picture is probably the "Malaria" shown at the top of the page now hanging in the Musée d'Orsay, and he took great delight in recording the everyday life and costume of the peasants and working folk of the Romagna. What a joy it must of been for painters to travel and discover beautiful and varied regional costume wherever they went! We tend to think pictures such as this are mere studio fantasies but though of course they are cleaned up somewhat photography proves that costumes of this sort were worn as a matter of course and clearly were a gift to artists on the lookout for the picturesque and charming.

Italian girl by Hébert

Moving to Paris to further his career Hébert developed a very successful portraiture practice becoming much in demand by the haute bourgeoisie of the second empire and third republic producing such sensitive examples as this:

Portrait of his father by Hébert

 

and religious works such as this even more lovely picture below which to my mind rivals Bouguereau

Madonna and Child by Hébert

Madonna and Child (in frame) by Hébert

This last picture hangs in the artist's studio, a lovely space with views over the mountains and which contains several water colours as well as oils and, of great interest to artists such as myself, a selection of his palettes, paints and brushes. These last were of particular interest in that they were all much longer than is the norm, on average about 18ins long. Long brushes are typically associated with Whistler and artists with impressionist tendencies but clearly even artists who paint much more tightly have a lot to gain by being forced to literally keep their picture at arm's length.



Hébert's painting equipment

Interior of Hébert's studio

Watercolours in Hébert's studio

 

All in all it was a lovely way to spend an afternoon and get to know a painter with whom I had previously been only on nodding acquaintance terms. Its not possible to get any idea of an artist's strength and indeed weaknesses without seeing a good range of his work and preferably under one roof, and when it is his own roof so much the better. Hébert was undoubtedly an artist of great talent
and sensitivity, an unassertive talent perhaps, not one given to making bold statements either in art or life, but a real talent nonetheless. As I have said, he is not as well known as perhaps he ought to be, he lived and worked in a period which produced more artists of a real first rate standard than any other, before or (is it necessary to say?) since. The late nineteenth century saw the last flickering of European culture before it was cruelly extinguished by the deadly assaults of war and cynicism which ushered in the new age of barbarism we are currently enduring. Hébert was a small but not insignificant part of this flickering and as such he deserves to be honoured. Hats off then to the City of Grenoble for helping to preserve his memory. I would very much recommend a visit if you ever happen to be in the area, its a great delight and what's more it is free. Finally, if you don't like his pictures I am sure you will enjoy the view from his garden. 



View from Musée Hebert

The Art of Cornwall, or, the self delusion of the educated mind

Recently I watched a TV programme on the BBC where a well educated, apparently intelligent professional art historian (Dr James Fox, of Cambridge University) claimed, in effect, that this;

 



Two Boats by Alfred Wallis

 was in every way far superior to this:

Timber Barque off Pendennis by Henry Scott Tuke


How is this possible?

There are many signs and symbols all around us that tell of the collapse of culture and to my mind the fact that a well educated person can hold such an opinion (and I do him the honour of accepting his sincerity) is most definitely one of them.

To some that may seem a harsh statement and an overly judgemental view about an essentially subjective issue. I like tea, you prefer coffee, you like Wallis I prefer Tuke, its just a matter of taste is it not? Well it is a matter of taste but a truth too little acknowledged today is that taste can be developed and refined over time, indeed not to do so is a sign of arrested development. Even in the realm of food we would look a little askance at an adult whose preferences went no further than rusks in milk but art of course appeals to the intellect and the spiritual side of humanity to a far greater extent than food and thus has even greater scope for development.

For 600 years the standards by which art was judged were more or less agreed and relatively stable. Different cultures had their own emphases and preferences for subject matter, Protestant Dutch burghers of the Golden Age on the whole had more of a feeling for domestic pictures, interiors and still life, Catholic Spanish aristocrats more interest in the lives of the Saints, but as to the manner of the thing represented there was far more to unite them than to separate. Good drawing, not merely accurate but showing a certain delicacy and sensitivity, harmonious arrangements of masses, both in terms of value and hue (what the layman calls colour), clear reference  (but not necessarily slavish adherence) to the rules and appearance of the natural world, order and arrangement, rhythm and structure. These were the tools of the artist and with them he could extol the virtues of his domestic daily life, criticise the follies and injustices of his fellow man or humbly praise his creator as he saw fit. In the whole canon of Western Art form Giotto to Sargent there was no subject matter left untouched and no style left unexplored. And yet still these criteria I have outlined not only endured but  were found to be indispensable guidelines for producing pictures that people actually wanted to look at and own and live amongst.
So we come back to the art of Cornwall, the art of Wallis, Nicholson, Wood and others. Now, by the standards by which art had been judged for the previous six centuries it would clearly preposterous to claim that this self portrait by Wood is a better picture than this portrait by Elizabeth Forbes.


Fisher Girl by Elizabeth Forbes

Self-Portrait  by Christopher Wood

The one is horrendously badly drawn, the colour is muddy and lacks any depth, the masses unbalanced, the edges handled in a very amateurish way resulting in the figure looking as though it were pasted onto the background and the table (if its slide out of the bottom of the picture is arrested) occupying an ambiguous position in space seemingly both in front of and behind the painters right leg. Forbes' picture by contrast is sensitively drawn; the girls posture and facial expression, even her positioning on the canvas hint at a touching combination of vulnerability and defiance. The beautiful color harmony of blues and greens contrasted with the red of the floor is delicious and reflects the calm mood of the girl herself. It is a lovely little painting from an artist who has been somewhat overshadowed by her more famous husband.

I return to my original question therefore, how is it possible to consider Wood or Wallis better artists than Forbes (Mr or Mrs) or Tuke? Not clearly by reference to any of the accepted standards of art up until the early 20th century. Only by inventing new standards could this judgement possibly be made. So what are these new standards which overturn 600 hundred years of culture and tradition. Ah! here their advocates become a little coy. It is fact surprisingly difficult to find a modernist actually list the criteria by which they value this

St.Ives by Ben Nicholson

more than this.

Across Mount's Bay by Elizabeth Forbes

are you surprised?

We get some hints though from the start of the film where Dr. Fox,  in order to set the scene for his heroes, rapidly disparages the artists who first came to Cornwall from the 1850's and more particularly who first created what could be described as a "school" in Newlyn and elsewhere in the 1880's. The tone is dismissive and the language subtly disparaging. These artists are characterized as "gentleman artists" that is to say, not serious professionals, they didn't need to struggle for their art as did the heroes of modernism. Yet despite this they apparently "turned out thousands of highly marketable paintings" Thousands! it was production line stuff is the subtext, no soul in it, and of course it was much to their discredit that people actually liked their work and wanted to buy it! They would have been more highly regarded no doubt had they produced very little work which nobody cared to look at. But their patrons were fools as well because they didn't realise that the pictures they bought were "mawkish and patronising", "Victorian myth making" myth here obviously used to mean falsehood and Victorian to mean, well, Victorian, It wasn't the "real Cornwall" we are loftily informed from the distance of more than a hundred years and several hundred miles, but "a fantasy. a make believe".
I presume by that Dr. Fox means the sun never shone in bad old Victorian times, pretty girls never existed and if they did  they certainly never waved their husbands and sweethearts off to sea, or sat alone on the beach waiting for them to come home. And as sometimes happened the menfolk didn't return, they never cried about or sat regretting the past in a rundown cottage. And even if all this were true, where does that leave this wonderful picture by Walter Langley?

An old Cornishwoman by Walter Langley

 "Mawkish" "patronizing"? "fantasy"?. I think it a fine picture comparable in every sense with a better Rembrandt, and I am rather inclined to believe that had it been painted in 17th century Holland and  not 19th century England Dr Fox would have agreed with me.

It seems therefore that the modernist art of Cornwall is to be valued chiefly for what it isn't than what it is. Dr Fox, like many a modernist sympathiser lays great store by the fact that his heroes were "radical" "exhilarating" and they "changed everything" He even makes the preposterous claim that they "revolutionised the way we see landscape and colour"!  Well, thank you Dr Fox but I don't see landscape  like a flat cardboard cut out without perspective or the unifying light of the sun and what is more I fail to see how in any way it could be desirable that I should. Newness, even originality is not a virtue in itself and no artist of any power has ever sought it. To do so is a sure sign of the feeble and second rate and for an art historian to elevate it to such a level that all the accepted qualities of fine art, of Giotto, of Titian, of Rembrandt, of Turner, even of Manet and Degas are overthrown and considered (if recognised at all) as being of lesser importance is really inexcusable. It takes a peculiar cast of mind to see virtue in newness without any other quality, it is unfortunately a cast of mind very commonly found in the modern age, whether it is a cause or an effect of the modern world or both is difficult to say, but the desire to overthrow the past and jettison its values indiscriminately just because they belong to the past is a very dangerous one. It has already caused great upset to modern western civilization, it may not be too dramatic to say it has helped to kill it. It is certainly one of the main reasons why most of us live in dull utilitarian houses in increasingly ugly towns and cities. I have written about this before and no doubt will do so again; to restore those broken links with the past is part of the reason why I paint and ought to be the chief concern for all of us who care for our culture. Dr Fox would regard that notion as ridiculous I'm sure but then I in my defence I would have to point out to him that his theory of modernism has rendered him by his own admission quite unable to understand wherein lies the merit of a good picture. Maybe the  pictures he admires were in their time revolutionary, but a lot of people tend to lose their heads during revolutions and later it doesn't seem quite so clear why. Modernists have constructed a theory which makes bad pictures more important than good ones.  Dr Fox is free to spend the rest of his life analysing the temporary importance of this picture

Phare by Christopher Wood

  I prefer to spend the rest of mine contemplating the everlasting beauty of these two and many more like them.

Setting Sun by Adrian Stokes.
 

On the beach at Bournemouth by Henry Scott Tuke



The Collapse of Culture

Coventry Cathedral

Well, that is quite a hefty title and this is only a  short blog post rather than a multi volume academic treatise so I had better start by explaining very briefly what I mean by it. I am talking today quite specifically about the fact that over the last 100 years or so, our artists and architects have stopped producing works which previous centuries would  have recognised as being serious works and, which is perhaps more insidious, the public at large have generally not noticed, or if they have, they have regarded the decline as inevitable and irreversible.  Of course these two facts are closely connected, artists and architects are members of the public and subject to the same prevailing cultural influences; all art is, and always has been, reflective of the social milieu out of which it came. However before taking a closer look at these cultural influences I want to add the further point that a central tenant of the modernist movement, which has become the established and entrenched dominant ideology over the last century, has been that an intellectual divide between artist and public has been not merely acceptable but positively to be sought for and encouraged.

No doubt to some "the collapse of culture" sounds a pretty damning and sweeping statement, so before I go further in trying to dissect why it happened perhaps I had better illustrate that it happened. Ok then, what I am wondering is how we went from this

Paulo Veronese
 

 and this

Giovanni Bellini

to this

Jean-Michel Basquiat

 and this

Cy Twombly

 

 Or, in the field of architecture, how is it that once we produced buildings like these:

A Cambridge College

and now we produce buildings like these:



A Modernist Tower Block 



 

 

I hardly doubt that to a reasonable mind it is obvious that there is a loss there.

 

So how did this collapse come about? Well, it seems to me that the tremendous rate of change at the end of the nineteenth century must have seemed irresistible to those who lived through it. There were huge and rapid social, technological, political and economic changes. People could see and feel their lives change almost year on year as new inventions arrived, more and more people moved into booming cities, the world started shrinking in terms of both trade and tourism, and there is no doubt that many people felt a state of change had become a new mode of life. The world was in flux; old realities and stabilities were being challenged and overthrown in so many areas of life it was perhaps inevitable that young artists should feel that art needed radical change as well.

In addition to this general zeitgeist of restless change there were further factors in the art world which were identified even at the time as encouraging a seeking out of novelty for its own sake. These were, most particularly, the huge growth in exhibitions and private dealerships and the corresponding development of an arts media and professional commetariat. Young artists needed to make a big noise to be heard, and they needed to make it quickly. Sensations had to be made and they can be made more easily by shouting profanities than talking quiet good sense. Dealers and critics were competing to find the next big thing, the Impressionists and others had already eroded the distinction between a finished work and a quick sketch, in short all the conditions were right for an explosion in the amount of art produced, and inevitably in such circumstances getting any kind of art out there was more important than its quality. Thus it suited all involved to create a new environment where "quality" as previously understood was no longer a factor in critical or commercial appreciation.

 

Here we come to the role of the critic and professional opinion former. In previous ages perhaps one or two great men had had the power to influence taste in art, Ruskin being the last such and the first to reach anything like a mass audience. In previous times the power of these people was limited to a very small circle. But at the turn of the twentieth century with mass literacy, an ever expanding class of potential picture buyers and people keen to be educated in the arts their influence grew enormously. I have written in an earlier post of the baleful influence of Roger Fry but he was only the first of a long line of critics who engaged in a cynical attempt to destroy the arts and re-fashion them in their own image.

 

For in truth the great mistake of artists, architects and their literary supporters was to suppose that art could flourish without being aware of its own past. The urge at the time was to break completely with tradition and create a sort of year zero for art and to do this it was necessary to totally subvert all existing standards and traditional criteria for excellence. I should mention at this point that the catastrophe of the First World War cannot be under-estimated. It at once seemed to justify the wholesale rejection of the cultures and societies which had produced it and made reaching back to a time before it unthinkable to the generation who grew up in its shadow.  For five centuries the work of artists such as  Bellini as seen above had been considered a standard for excellence because of the skill with which he manipulated paint, his handling of tones and colour masses, the sensitivity of his drawing, the tenderness of expression and quality of ideas. Now clearly work such as that produced by the early heroes of the modern movement, still less later efforts by the likes of Twombly or Basquiat, could not hold a candle to the old masters judged by those standards so new standards had to be invented. Chief amongst these were meaningless words like "energy" "originality"  (no real artist ever strives after originality) "freshness" and the like. In fact when boiled down the importance of these works was considered to lie in their being unlike works which had gone before.

 

 It is still a commonly expressed idea, that there is value in a work of art just because it looks different from art of previous ages and this is true of architecture too. In fact so firmly has this idea taken root that it is probably impossible for an architect now to propose to build a building for example in the Gothic style. When reference to an historic style is made, as in the  vaguely neo-classical style at Prince Charles' development at Poundbury, both the Prince and his architects received a huge amount of criticism for just this fact; for "looking backwards" or not being "progressive". Never mind that people take pleasure from living in a well proportioned and well constructed house!  From personal experience also I know how much prejudice one has to overcome if one attempts to paint pictures in a style un-influenced by modernism. This may strike some people as an obvious fact, why should a mediaeval or pre-modern style have any relevance to the modern world? but yet what is "relevance" and why should we reject work of real quality simply because previous generations were able to enjoy them as well?

 

This indeed is a poisonous idea, that historic methods and styles which have graced our civilization for centuries are no longer valid merely by the fact of their being historic. It would seem, and in fact in a way, is really so, that a great divide has been erected between the past and the present; a chasm we are discouraged not merely from crossing but even acknowledging. We are told that the "modern" is qualitively different from anything preceeding it, the very phrase "modern art" is a giveaway, why is it not just "art"? The truth is that, in cultural terms, the greatest invention, (the only invention one is tempted to add) of the modern age is the concept of modernity itself, with which catastrophic results the pictures at the top of this post demonstrate.

 

It often strikes me as odd that people are so often keen to marvel at the artistic and architectural wonders of the past and yet seemingly accept that it is no longer possible to produce work of a similar standard. When queuing for a blockbuster show of Titian or Velasquez I am tempted to ask people if they feel angry or cheated that they can not get a similar pleasure by going to a contemporary show, but I suspect many people would not even understand the question. The belief seems to be ingrained that the art of the past is one thing and the art of our time is something else. One goes to the former for pleasure, joy, spiritual uplift, to the latter (if at all) to be "challenged" or "provoked". Quite what is being "challenged" by the way is never made clear, conventional notions of something or other usually, in some banal self referential way that requires a long winded curatorial explanation designed apparently to enlighten but in reality rather to obfuscate.

 

Well, as I often say "thank God for the past!" Can you imagine a world with art and architecture existing only from after the First World War? What a mean- spirited, ugly and depressing world that would be! how childish, narrow and self-absorbed! Culture is an organic growth, it cannot long survive being up-rooted from the past, and this, for a century had been the stated aim of a small but deadly band of theorists and practitioners. We all live with the results but I believe it is the duty of all of us who work at art to try and re-establish the link with history and tradition even if at times it seems hopeless. For surely to let ourselves be cut adrift and spin in an endless whirl of degraded modernist anti art is to accept that western civilization will in future be a thing only to be observed from the outside, as it were, rather than lived and breathed and enjoyed and nourished by in the way that previous generations took for granted.

 

 

Lord Leighton
 

 

 

 

 

The Mythic School of Painting

Hope: G.F. Watts

In my last post on Burne-Jones I talked a little about the difference between his poetic style of painting by comparison with the more  realistic style of Millais and the other first wave of Pre-Raphaelite painters, and in this post I propose to say a little more about this difference both in terms of style and technique and we will see how the one can affect the other.
I have borrowed my title from a talk given by Ruskin at Oxford in the early 1880's, one of a series of six lectures published under the title of "The Art of England".  Ruskin meant by the word "mythic" the desire to represent general truths rather than specific facts. One of the examples he chooses to illustrate the  "realistic" school is a watercolour by Rossetti of  "The Virgin in the house of St.John" where Mary is depicted rising in the morning to trim her lamp. Although the incident may have symbolic value it is presented in such a way as to impress on the viewers' mind the absolute veracity of the thing actually having happened. The contrast with the mythic school thus becomes clearer; here we are concerned primarily with the presentation of symbols and personification and the two artists he chooses to represent the mythic school are Watts and Burne-Jones. He summarises the difference between the two modes of thought thus: " had both Rossetti and Burne-Jones been set to illustrate the first chapter of Genesis, Rossetti would have painted either Adam or Eve - but Edward Burne-Jones a Day of Creation.

My experience at the Pre-Raphaelite exhibition was that the "mythic" school of painting, as represented primarily by Burne-Jones, seemed to suggest a deeper truth, to be in a sense more true, than the realistic school, although I accept of course that is entirely a matter of temperament and has no objective basis in reality. Nonetheless as a painter I am always interested in how a thing is done, and so  I then move on to the thorny question of why should this be so. What is it about the mythic school which seems to me to reveal something more profound? Here we come to the point which I often come back to in the analysis of painting, ie the means of expression at an artists' disposal are in fact fairly limited. Critics will talk of abstract emotions, of the anguish, joy or sympathy with the plight of lovers or whatever it may be that a painter puts in to his pictures but as a painter I have looked in vain in the art supplies shops for a tube of paint marked "empathy". They don't exist. All an artist has is a range of colours and the ability to arrange them on a flat surface. Subject of course is important, more important even I must confess than I used to be prepared to admit, but it is not as all important as many people might think. Here to demonstrate the point are two pictures of a very similar subject






Arthur Hughes ; The Nativity
 

Madonna and Child with St.John: Bouguereau.
 

One of the most interesting points a comparison of these two pictures raises, interesting especially for a practising painter, is how does the level of realism utilised by the artist effect the response of the viewer. Or to put it in the terms of the debate about the realist and mythic schools, do the different schools demand or require different levels of realism. It is fairly obvious that an artist who is intent on emphasising the actual facts of the scene depicted is hardly able to over play the realism of his or her technique but what interests me is does a similar technique help or hinder a painter of the mythic school in his attempt to portray the general or universal rather than the specific? If we look at Bouguereau's picture we are struck by the reality of the figures, by their weight and solidity, and of the props likewise, we feel we could give our knees a nasty crack against the Madonna's marble throne. The message of the picture is partly at least therefore, "this is real, the Christ child was also a human child, very similar to any we might meet every day of our lives". In comparison, look at the little picture by Hughes, surely what is being stressed here is the miraculous nature of the incarnation, what we see is a vision of something other, the fact of such an event once having taken place in history at a specific time and place is surely of secondary importance to the universal and on-going miraculous nature of that event.

What are the technical means deployed by the two painters to help convey the different messages? The thing which distinguishes the Hughes from the Bouguereau above all is the flatness of the former. This flatness is apparent in two ways; firstly in terms of the overall composition, the figures are pushed up towards the picture plane and it is hardly possible to imagine walking around the manger whereas with Bouguereau the space is fully articulated, there is not a great deal of depth but everything is in its place. Secondly and perhaps more importantly the figures and objects in the Hughes picture are painted with the minimum amount of chiaroscuro. The development of chiaroscuro (literally light and dark) which occurred in painting around the turn of the sixteenth century was greeted as a great step forward in the quest to depict the natural world and was seized upon by almost all painters of the period. A generation or two later, the Mannerists had already come to realise that accurate depiction of natural light phenomena was a double edged sword and one great painter of the earlier period also seemed to sense the possible dangers and ignored it, to the great harm, it must be said, of his career at the time and subsequent reputation for almost three centuries. That painter of course was Botticelli, and its no accident I think, that the painter most concerned with mystery and allegory should have felt the new methods of realism would not help him achieve his aims. A picture such as this surely depends at least partly for its impact on the fact we don't pause for a moment to consider whether it depicts an historical fact.



Mystic Nativity: Botticelli



 

Compare this to the treatment of light by Raphael in his famous picture of the Transfiguration



The Transfiguration of Christ: Raphael

What we can see here is a demonstration of the interesting fact that most masters of the High Renaissance were happy to light their figures with a studio light even when they were placed outdoors, giving them a full tonal range and thus a great degree of roundness and solidity which, in fact would never be the case in an outdoor light. It is done so skilfully that the unnaturalness of the lighting tends to pass unnoticed.  Botticelli's figures on the other hand have enough chiaroscuro to prevent them looking perfectly flat like a playing card but no more. Solidity is not one of his concerns and I think it reasonable to suggest that too much solidity and thus too much reality can be counter productive for the painter who wishes to deal with allegories and archetypes.  Ruskin himself was certainly aware of the fact that too much realism could be inimical to symbolism. The critic who insisted on the minutest observation of nature for the painter of nature was also able to say :" I cannot...demand botanical accuracy in the graining of the wood employed for the spokes of a Wheel of Fortune. Indeed .... I am under an instinctive impression that some kind of strangeness or quaintness, or even violation of probability, would be not merely admissable, but even desirable, in the delineation of a figure intended to represent ... an idea or an aphorism." Well there is certainly no shortage of strangeness or quaintness in this wonderful picture by Botticelli

Burne-Jones, the starting point of this inquiry himself mused over the same problem, He once said that his pictures ended up as being "a reflection of a reflection of something purely imaginary". This wasn't merely a pretty turn of phrase but an accurate way of describing his work process. If he wanted a prop in a painting he would, if it were something complicated, have it made, armour particularly, then he would make studies from the made item and then make the final image on canvas from those studies. I can't help but feel that he was thus intentionally keeping realism at arm's length, he didn't want to get too involved in the physical matter of his pictures for fear that it would muddy the poetic matter. There is no "botanical accuracy in the graining of the wood" in this picture  below and it would seem that Burne-Jones agreed with Ruskin that that was to the pictures benefit rather than otherwise.






The Wheel of Fortune: Burne-Jones





 

In fact a quick survey of  art history (a very quick one I must admit!) appears to suggest that artists whose primary interest was of the symbolist persuasion have often cultivated a certain strangeness or vagueness of execution, Gustave Moreau is another name which springs to mind amongst a myriad of others, particularly from the nineteenth century, although as I mentioned earlier, Mannerists such as Pontormo or Rosso Fiorentino could also be included. Maybe we can introduce another duality into art history, to accompany the age old classic/romantic dichotomy, perhaps we might term it matter/spirit or fact/poetry. Either way, its a post for another day...




Hesiod: Moreau

The Pre-Raphaelites at Tate Britain Part 4: Sir Edward Burne-Jones



Sir Edward Burne-Jones: Love among the Ruins

I will finish my round up of the Pre-Raphaelite exhibition at Tate Britain with a piece about the artist, who, I must confess at the outset, I consider to be one of the very great artists of the world, Sir Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898). This estimate depends to a certain extent on what one considers to be the purpose of art and its role in the life of society and I will be discussing this in a bit more detail in later posts. Purely in technical terms though, that is to say, the skills necessary to produce any worthwhile artwork, there are few in the history of art who can surpass him in the range and extent of his abilities. You may, reasonably enough, doubt my credentials to make such a statement, but you would be foolish to ignore the opinion of such a considerable artist as G.F.Watts so I can't resist quoting a passage from the memoirs of Charles Hallé who records the following conversation in which Watts asks "whereabouts in art do you place Burne-Jones?" "Amongst the first 12 or 15" I [Hallé] replied, "I place him first of all" said Watts. "Do you really mean that you place him above Michaelangelo, Raphael, Titian and Leonardo?" "No", was the answer; "I do not mean that the men you have mentioned were not greater in many ways, but that no artist who has ever lived at any time has united in himself so many gifts of the highest order - imagination, design, drawing, colour and manipulation". Praise indeed, and one thing is for sure, if that was true in the 1890's it is certainly still true today!

 

 There are one or two small early works of Burne-Jones in the first rooms at the exhibition, but, quite rightly, they are dominated by the works of the PRB painters themselves and their early associates  and friends. The work of the later period, of Burne-Jones and Morris, are left to the last two rooms. The penultimate one contains work in the applied arts, tapestry, embroidery, stained glass and the like but it is the last room where Burne-Jones' pictures can really be seen in all their glory.

Sir Edward Burne-Jones: The Rock of Doom

Sir Edward Burne-Jones: The Doom Fulfilled

 

The special attraction of this exhibition are three works from the Perseus series which normally live in Stuttgart and are rarely seen in Britain, It is perhaps not widely enough known that the complete series of gouache paintings, 10 in all, though in various states of completion, can be seen in Southampton Art Gallery, hung together in one room and a wonderful experience it is too, to be able to absorb the whole series at one sitting. Here though we have 3 of the oils, 8 were planned, only 4 of which were brought to completion. Poor Arthur Balfour, philosopher and future prime minister, meekly went along with Burne-Jones' recomendation to re-panel his drawing room to better suit the pictures only to wait 15 years and see the artist die before the commission was completed. Along side these works we have other masterpieces from the painters's mature years; "King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid" and the "Golden Stairs" from the Tate's own collection plus the wonderful "Laus Veneris" and "Love Among the Ruins". Burne-Jones is one of those artists who are at their best when seen in large quantity, many artists suffer in those circumstances, but Burne-Jones creates an imaginary world for the spectator to enter and when literally surrounded by his work the effect, I might have said "the spell", is hypnotic.


Sir Edward Burne-Jones Laus Veneris

As my previous posts have made clear, I dearly love the paintings of the Pre-Rapahelites, I mean those paintings which truly merit that tag, the work of the Brotherhood and others such as Hughes and Brown, but looking at several rooms of their work and then passing on to these magnificent Burne-Jones's was a shock and I want to try and examine the nature of the this shock because it tells me a lot about what art can do and will I hope be instructive for others.  So, my first reaction, completely unpremeditated, and catching me somewhat by surprise having bowed the knee before Millais and the others was something to the effect of "now this is real art". I was aware suddenly that I had been looking at descriptions of the physical world and now I was contemplating something which went beyond the physical, which used the physical world as a reference point but somehow hinted that the actual material appearance of things could be just a cipher for some kind of greater and more profound truth. I know this will seem a bit airy-fairy for some and yet it is what I felt and I felt it very forcibly too, in a moment all the truthful realism of the earlier rooms, beautiful though it often was, suddenly seemed rather thin and literally superficial. I hang on to the power of that first perception because I believe it to be very important. Of course with later reflection I was aware that many of the earlier works, especially some of Millais work, "Autumn Leaves" and "The Blind Girl" to name only two of many could be categorised as being much more than just a material description of the physical world but the strength and power of Burne-Jones' work was such as to make these pictures fade from my mind.

How Burne-Jones does this, how he achieves what du Maurier called the "Burne-Jonesiness of Burne-Jones" I will discuss in a later post, insofar as it is possible to analyse at all. But for now, the point I wish to make is that it struck me, not for the first time of course but with an unusual  sharpness and clarity that if art could do this, if it could lift the veil of the material world and give us hints of something more profoundly spiritual, if it can raise our eyes from the mud and give us even a hint of a better and fairer land (a land in Burne-Jones' own words, "more true than real"), then, simply, shouldn't it? Can there be a more valuable  purpose for art than as a repository for and conduit to, the highest ideals of mankind, and if the answer is, as it surely must be, no, then doesn't it follow that the greatest art is that which fulfills that purpose to the highest degree? Of course this is not to say that all artists should try and paint pictures of this sort or that sort, each must paint whatever he or she feels compelled to do.  In Ruskin's words "you can't tell a secret if you don't know it". Not everyone has a real sense of the immaterial, I adore Veronese for example but it was clearly this world in all its mundane physicality which delighted him, and with that delight to help and guide him he produced some of the world's most lovely pictures. I would maintain my belief though that it is reasonable to reserve the highest category of art, that which is most valuable to the spiritual being which is man, for that art which goes beyond the facts of the material world and provokes a sense of and reverence for the unnameable immaterial realm which we sometimes sense but can never fully grasp. I am led back to Burne-Jones' own famous definition of his art which is so superbly illustrated by the pictures in this exhibition: "I mean by a picture a beautiful romantic dream, of something that never was and never will be, in a light better than any light that ever shone, in a land no-one can define or remember, only desire"



Sir Edward Burne-Jones: The Baleful Head