Contemborary Arts
Art
MOORS AND SPENCER
THIS month brings exhibitions by two of our most distinguished and controversial artists: the one, Henry Moore, who has, since the war, gained an international reputation such as no other English artist has enjoyed during his life- time; the other, Stanley Spencer, who, at the age of sixty-four, would be regarded by many as an eccentric and essentially local painter, only to be understood, let alone appreciated, by an English public. Moore's work has been interpreted, discussed, analysed, by a host of critics. A second monumental volume on his art is about to appear, and his ideas on sculp- ture arc well known. Spencer can reasonably begin his delightful, revealing introduction to the catalogue of the Tate Gallery exhibition, 'At last I can say my say about my painting.' Moore's art demonstrates many of the most sacred orthodoxies of twentieth-century art. Spencer, quite without deliberation, I believe. is in fact the more nonconformist of the two, and has persuaded me that he is, besides, the more original artist. These three shows—for there are also Spencer drawings at the Arts Council—deserve the most detailed attention, but can only comment upon one clement in the work.
Moore's latest exhibition, like the last, demonstrates the two significant changes which his sculpture has undergone since the North- ampton Madonna and the three figures in Battersea Park—his readiness now to model as well as carve, and his present habit of ex- perimenting in a greater range of style than was his custom in the Thirties. The show is dominated by two large works—one in wood, Upright Exterior and Interior Forms; one in bronze, Reclining Exterior Form — both of which develop themes familiar to those who know his earlier sculpture. Both display his admirable craftsmanship and the fertility of his sculptural ideas, but both seem to me op- pressively inert. The surfaces have a marvel- lous refinement and the cavernous interiors offer something of the mystery of natural caves, but the surfaces are not tense with an inner vitality, the interior spaces not alive as they should be. These weaknesses, which have always been apparent in his sculpture, are shown in the very early life drawings which are also on view. No one can deny that these have that powerful solidity, that sense of the third dimension, upon which Moore has always insisted; but it is the elementary solidity of a pebble rather than the exciting vitality of other natural forms, plants or crystals, or, indeed, the human figure. In this respect he is inferior to many other contemporary sculptors whose reputation is not so great and who are far less adventurous in their technical experiments or their imagery. In this respect, too, his work is far less impressive or affecting than the best paintings of Spencer. The immensely detailed surface of Spencer's pictures, his often rootless and uninspired distortions, the dryness of his paint, cannot disguise the deep-seated energy of his forms. As the painter himself is only too ready to admit, his vision has been inter- mittent and often incomplete; but when he is possessed by 'joy' — the word he uses to describe the condition in which his finest works have been produced—then his paintings have a poetry and a humanity unexcelled in twenti- eth-century English art. When the work is not inspired, it may be grotesque and frequently unpleasant, but even then he never loses his power to feel into the physical structure and presence of the human figure. Even his intensely literal landscapes and portraits, in the 'context of the present exhibition, seem more distinguished than they have appeared on other occasions; they are more exciting than the similar exercises in facsimile by Lucien Freud, for their design is more inter- esting and they are not so consciously in- scrutable. it is this essential gift of empathy which will, I believe, ultimately place Spencer above Moore, for the latter has always seemed to feel most powerfully into his material and its associations—and that, in the long run, is not enough.
BASIL TAYLOR
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