Art History Today

A Decade of Decadents (2)

The Rise of the Aesthetes & Bohemians.

“…bound in yellow paper, the cover slightly torn and the edges soiled.” The Portrait of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde.

In addition to his technical innovations Whistler brought to England a certain attitude that owed much to the life of artistic Paris. This was Bohemianism which was captured in such novels as George du Maurier’s Trilby (1894) which featured the artist Joe Sibley, actually modelled on Whistler who threatened to sue but thought better of it. Bohemia was often associated with a socially indeterminate life style, epitomised in the vagabondage or wandering life of Gypsies. Growing up in South Wales, the young Augustus John would discern in this lifestyle a raw energy and crude honesty that was at odds with the bourgeois existence of his family. Something of the bohemian persona is captured in his Slade colleague William Orpen’s portrait of John who may have deliberately cultivated this image of a modern British artist modelled on the French professional- but John would find himself culturally adrift with the coming of Cézanne and the moderns. Both John and Orpen would frequent, and in the latter’s case, paint the Café Royal in London which was a bohemian den attracting the marginal of London. Sometimes confused with the bohemian was the dandy, but the latter should be seen as more of a mental attitude adopted by those with an aristocratic cast of mind, which was only partially reflected in their outward sartorial appearance. The dandy type evolved slowly, but it became more associated with painters in the city thanks to Baudelaire’s important essay on the Painter of Modern Life which appeared in 1863. Many intellectuals and trend-setters alike would be influenced by Baudelaire’s ideas, especially in the 1880s and 1890s. One of the most well-known smartly-dressed, aesthetically inclined individuals was Des Esseintes in J. K. Huysman’s novel A Rebours (1884) which significantly features in Oscar Wilde’s Portrait of Dorian Grey (1884)- the infamous book “bound in yellow paper.” A keen collector of art, Des Esseintes owns such decadent pictures as Gustave Moreau’s Salomé who was an object of fascination for Symbolist painters and writers in France and England, including Wilde. The Irishman was an avid fan of A Rebours and even wrote a play about the erotic siren Salomé, controversially illustrated by an art associate of Wilde- Aubrey Beardsley. Admired for his mass of black and delicate line on virginal white, Beardsley was persuaded to illustrate the English version of Salome though Wilde complained that “Aubrey’s drawings were “too Japanese”, whereas “his play was Byzantine.”[1] As Martin Fido explains, Beardsley and Wilde represented two different kinds of decadence present in varying styles: Beardsley was “technically clean, precise and direct” but Wilde’s was “lush, ornate and heavy.” Though the “Yellow Book” was predominantly connected with the decadent world of the aesthetic adventurer, its contents were artistically and textually broad. In one of the earliest editions, one could enjoy drawings by R.A. artists such as Lord Leighton (who survived into the 1890s), and Slade educated William Rothenstein, as well as Walter Sickert, pupil of Whistler, and later a member of the NEAC. As we shall see, Sickert would assert himself as one of the most significant purveyors of the realist style in twentieth-century English art. Beardsley may have been the dynamo behind the “Yellow Book” project, but his astringent line contrasted starkly with the styles of the other “Yellow Book” artists whose art had been formed in different traditions.

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[1] Martin Fido, Oscar Wilde, 95.

A Decade of Decadents (1)

A New Era in British Art: The Coming of James McNeil Whistler.

“With Whistler something happened in English art which was new to the nineteenth-century but had been most characteristic of earlier centuries. A foreigner arrived, as Holbein and Van Dyck, Lely and Kneller had arrived. But Whistler was more than a foreigner: he was a cosmopolitan; and he was not respectable. A new epoch began, in which English art was again open to foreign influence, became “Bohemian” and poor. A new legend began.” Anthony Bertram.

There are several routes into the terrain of late nineteenth-century and early modern British art. One of the most conspicuous is the trail of the American James McNeil Whistler from Paris to London in the late 1850s. Whistler is highly significant for British art because he ushered into the country certain views about art and painting that were to undergird several developments in art and aesthetics; these were to have lasting consequences for British painting. The most important idea was “art for art’s sake,” known through the writings of the French poet Theophile Gautier who introduced the term into cultural life. Fresh from Paris where he met artists like Henri Fantin- Latour who immortalised him ( along with Manet, Baudelaire and others) in his Homage to Delacroix, Whistler brought a number of styles and influences, particularly Japanese woodcuts and interior decoration which led to a shop in Regent’s St opened by Mr Liberty. What art met Whistler’s eye in his first year in London? The American found the medievalism of William Morris and the stale Victorian academic style not to his taste. Neither of these met with Whistler’s approval since he aimed for a manipulation of the painted surface; and he shunned the subject matter of the English schools for a style which he conjured up out of Impressionism, old masters such as Vermeer and Velasquez, and Japanese art. Refusing the “Western plastic tradition,” Whistler imported the “flatness of the East” though he dispensed with its line to produce a luminous ethereality that suggested visual thoughts or musical themes rather than realistic, descriptive art. During Whistler’s time in England he was famously libelled by the redoubtable Slade Professor of Art, John Ruskin who memorably characterised Whistler’s experiments as “flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face” thus anticipating debates about abstract and non-figurative painting. The libel trial resulted in Ruskin paying a farthing damages, but Whistler suffered the martyrdom of bankruptcy. The libel trail laid bare a number of themes about painting that were re-emerge in the early period of modern art in Britain. Most importantly, Whistler’s explanation of such pictures as Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket in which he said that he aimed for an artistic interest in his, “arrangement of line, form and colour” rather than any external interest outside the picture would populate debates about the “meaning” of modern art by later critics such as Roger Fry and Clive Bell. Such pictures were to influence Edward Burne-Jones (a witness at the trial) whose pictures of the 1890s established him as “a kind of Symbolist.”[1]

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[1] Charles Harrison, English Art & Modernism, 16

Point Counter Point

Finished "Point Counter Point," which travels far beyond convenient categories like the "Novel of ideas." It's difficult to fathom Huxley's intention with this novel. Published in 1928, it owes much to that jaded, post-war view that seized the consciousness of the literary elite in this period. Huxley admits to the upper tier of society, and he presents an intellectual  dramatis personae each of whom stands for some specific world view. for example, Quarles (partly a self-portrait) represents the cerebrotonic, socially disengaged thinker who operates on the principles of Pyrrhonism; Rampion (modelled on D.H. Lawrence) personifies the élan vital of the educated noble savage; Spandrell ( model unknown) is Baudelairean spleen updated for 1920s London; Lucy Tantamount (real life equivalent Nancy Cunard) is the over-sexed flapper, but with sociological curiosity towards the men she attracts. As the title suggests, characters and ideas are set in opposition to each other with interesting, and sometimes startling results. Spandrell metamorphoses into the dark other of Rampion by committing murder, ( hitting Webley, the Oswald Moseley fascist, on the head) almost as a kind of aesthetic exercise; his suicide is portrayed as a kind of Beethovian striving for the infinite. What makes the novel distinct from the novels of the beau monde, say Anthony Powell, is the lavish inclusion of scientific concepts and terms which Powell, Waugh and co would steer well clear of. In his early career Huxley espoused the mixing of science and literature, much against the Modernists like Bloomsbury who equated it with technical progress, mass society and the "violence" of democracy.

To his credit Huxley rejected this view of the intellectuals and the masses, though his turn towards mysticism encouraged him to distance himself from social democracy. His psychedelic quietism in California has been seen as a flight from the troubles of the modern world, though maybe that is too unfair. The mysticism isn't too pronounced in this novel, not yet; but there are fascinating clusters of concepts which give the impression of living in the realm of ideas rather than real life. Quarles is pure intellect in the world, and even his wife is hyperintelliigent, enough to distinguish her husband's cardinal defect. Huxley learnt about visual art too, from Roger Fry and there are painters in his fiction. Here, we meet John Bidlake, who is supposed to be based on Augustus John; old and devitalised, Bidlake succumbs to cancer of the pylorus, but paints one final canvas before his demise. From the description of Bidlake's art, it sounds like it was in the mould of Rubens and Renoir. Rampion is an artist too; perhaps the modernist foil to Bidlake, though his themes and style recall the Victorian materialism of Darwin rather the  geometrical abstractions of Cubism. All in all this is the kind of novel one reads if one wants intellectual over-stimulation- but that could stand for much of Huxley's fiction which is the product of " ubiquitous intelligence", to steal a description of his alter-ego- Quarles.

I’ve written on art in Huxley’s novels before.

Augustus John Remembers Peter Warlock at the Café Royal.

AJ writes of one "Philip Hesiltine", better known as Peter Warlock. Described as a "tall blonde young man, usually accompanied by two or three young females bearing portfolios and scrolls". Man's face "pale handsome face always wore a smile, but not a reassuring smile; it was more of a derisive smile and made one feel rather uncomfortable." Gets to know the "owner of the smile" later in the company of Cecil Gray, Scottish music critic and composer. Says it was Philip Hesiltine, better known as "Peter Warlock." Says he was busy editing "The Sackbutt", "a musical journal he had founded." Says he "displayed remarkable conversational powers and a fund of curious knowledge." Cecil Gray said that Hesiltine's "delicate and vulnerable sensibility was carefully hidden under "Peter Warlocks's" armoury, but it was impossible to remain unaware of the deeper side of the man's nature, try as he might to dissumulate it under a show of uproarious wit and effrontery." AJ ends by saying that if they had set on a tour to Wales they had planned, "that hour might have been deferred, when, having put his cat out, he locked the door and turned on the gas."

How strange to come on this just after Brian Sewell's death. The critic revealed that Warlock was his father in his "Memoirs."

This painting of the Café Royal is by William Orpen and AJ is shown on the right .

Sickert’s Definition of the Art Critic.

 

"There is, in the second place, what anyone who can get our ear may find to say on the work, as it is placed before the public. That is the critic. We give him as much rope as he wants, wherewith he may either hang himself, or on which he may, if he can, cross the dangerous falls, wheeling a barrow, whose contents, when they arrive, we are again at liberty to take or leave on their merits."

Farewell Brian Sewell.

I first heard of Brian Sewell via Ned Sherrin’s witty culture review, “Loose Ends” on Radio 4 back in the 1980s. This was a vehicle for rising media stars like Stephen Fry who contributed hilarious pastiches of various styles- and a lot of other movers and shakers whose names have been wiped from my memory. Then there was Sewell as resident art critic: his voice was the cause of much hilarity amongst the guests, and of course the audience out in Radioland. A sort of Noel Coward type voice, though not as extreme as that. “That’s a great accent, Brian.” “I bet the Queen has a laugh” and similar. The man himself with always synonymous with that voice which was really his trademark with the general public. Sewell would eventually migrate to TV where he would be in demand as a debunker of the latest piece of creative genius such as walls of chocolate and other marvels of modern civilisation.

My next Sewell spotting was when he successfully riled the London art history intelligentsia by trampling their modernist idols beneath the dust. A petition was drawn up by a number of eminent art historians protesting at his views. These comments and the various reviews were collected in a book called “The Reviews That Caused the Rumpus” which had the art critic perched naked on a bed in imitation of the disturbing, nocturnal imp in Fuseli’s “The Nightmare.” This compendium of reviews on everything from traditional art, art education to contemporary art, was hugely enjoyable and amusing; but at the same time there was the indisputable learnedness, perspicacity and evidence of a well-read man, though untainted by the academy and its doctrines. He had complete conviction in his judgements too; his dishing of Gilbert and George, the Chapman Brothers and others enfants terribles were against prevailing trends- but he was right.

Educated at the Courtauld Institute after turning down a place at Oxford, Sewell was a part of that generation of art historians, art critics, scholars who were taught by Poussin scholar Anthony Blunt. When Blunt was unmasked by Margaret Thatcher and hounded by the press Sewell befriended him, and shielded him from the glare of the media. The best account of Blunt and what was really the golden age of the Courtauld is Amanda Carter’s book on Blunt, though Sewell refused to be interviewed, a decision he later regretted.

I never actually met Brian Sewell- but on several occasions I watched him studying art in places like the British Museum when I chanced to be there. He was a picture of concentration and clearly was able to draw out certain hidden mysteries of the brush and pen that escaped many another “critical” eye. As art critic of the Evening Standard, Brian Sewell was always worth reading because of that unselfconsciously educated tone in his exhibition reviews: he believed that one should not dumb down to the public, but encourage them to rise up, go out, find out more about the artist, read books etc. Unfortunately, this educational philosophy is being abandoned at all points of the cultural compass, a trend which he deplored as in his protestations against the current anti-intellectualism of the BBC and Radio 3.

Wether Sewell was reviewing Leonardo at the National Gallery or Modern Art on the South Bank, he was invariably interesting, brilliant at putting an artist in their historical context, and unflinchingly relentless in hitting the critical nail on the head nearly all of the time. He also cared about language too: he was fond of the long, weighted sentence, and would protest if editors tried to browbeat him into short, punchy art sound bites. To me, Sewell was about the only art critic in the London press worth reading; more in the flâneur tradition of Baudelaire and Sickert, the discerning man on the spot who could see through falsity and pretention- but was willing to award the palm when it was due. He wasn’t hostile to all modern art.

With his disappearance from the Standard due to cancer and its complications, the newspaper art scene just wasn’t the same. Now he’s gone for good and the sane man weeps for the future of art journalism. In the words of the Evening Standard, “Simply, Brian was the nation’s best art critic, best columnist and the most brilliant and sharpest writer in recent times.”

RIP Brian Sewell. Thanks for all the insight , humanity and wit.

Yeats & Poussin

It may be the case that in his poem “News for the Delphic Oracle” the famous Irish poet, W.B. Yeats, turned for inspiration to an early mythology by Nicolas Poussin, hung in the NG of Art, Dublin. This is Acis and Galatea, an excellent example of Poussin working in a full-blown Venetian style before he would find a more sedate manner in the 1630s. The picture dates to about 1628-9.

Reading the final verse, there are similarities between Yeats poem and Poussin’s picture. The final verse of Yeats’ meditation on the “after-life according to neo-platonic doctrine” (A . Norman Jeffares, Yeats: Selected Poetry ) describes the erotic play in the foam which is also happening in the painting:

Slim adolescence that a nymph has stripped,

Peleus on Thetis stares.

Her limbs are delicate as an eyelid,

Love has blinded him with tears;

But Thetis' belly listens.

Down the mountain walls

From where Pan's cavern is

Intolerable music falls.

Foul goat-head, brutal arm appear,

Belly, shoulder, bum,

Flash fishlike; nymphs and satyrs

Copulate in the foam.

Why no mention of Acis and Galatea? Because Yeats was thinking of an early identification of the picture as “Peleus and Thetis” that was eventually shown to be incorrect. Yeats seems to be mistaking Polyphemous ( jilted lover of Galatea) for Pan according the earlier title and the two lovers for Peleus and Thetis. The love-making in the surf could relate to either subject I suppose.

It is known from Poussin’s correspondence he was thinking of a project of the subject of the “Marriage of Peleus and Thetis” for his first important patron Cassiano dal Pozzo, but it hasn’t survived if it was ever executed. 

In his CR of 1966 Blunt notes that the picture on “various ocassions” was called Peleus and Thetis”. I don’t know if Blunt knew of the link between Yeats and Poussin- but he would hardly have approved. AB was famously reluctant to see Poussin as an erotic painter, still less as raw material for a modern philosophical poet with erotic leanings.

The portrait of Yeats (1907) is by Augustus John and is in the Tate. 

Jeremy Corbyn’s Statement on the Arts.

 

 

Corbyn. What’s in it for the Arts? Well, read this…..