The best of all possible whirls
Adam Zamoyski
FOURTEEN LETTERS: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY by Feliks Topolski
Faber paperback, £30
Topolski does not really fit in any- where, as an artist or as a man. He is neither the classic Wandering Jew nor the typical Emigre Pole. Born in Warsaw in 1907, to an actor and a revolutionary who had met on the barricades of 1905, he grew up in a climate where the talented déclassé fitted easily into Polish society. His transla- tion into the English social scene, in 1935, was equally effortless. He was accepted as a brilliant, slightly exotic foreign artist who, since he was clearly not on the make, was presumed to have made it already. Before it became necessary for him to establish his position in the art world, war broke out, and he was commissioned as a war artist. One of the best, and certainly the most active of the war artists, he covered the Blitz, the Arctic convoys, Russia, Egypt, the Middle East, Africa, India, Burma, China, Italy, and the inva- sion of Germany.
When the dust settled, the 40-year-old Topolski, more of a bohemian grand seig- neur than an ambitious artist by nature, was certainly not prepared to start courting critics and playing the market. His popu- larity as war artist brought him civic commissions, while his reputation assured him exalted patronage, so he could afford to go his own way. But the price to pay for ignoring the institutional power of the art world was heavy. He had committed the cardinal sin of being popular as an artist without the leave of the critics, so they ignored his exhibitions and dismissed his works lightly. Having never plugged him- self into the gallery/dealer circuit, he was never priced, and remains, in his own words 'an unlabellable outsider without "market" legitimacy'. It took many years, and much effort on the part of Augustus John, before the Tate purchased any of his work.
Whatever one might think of Topolski's importance as a painter, there can be no question that he is a draughtsman of genius. He is also a perceptive and thoughtful observer. These two gifts have made him the greatest artistic chronicler of our times, and this written record is worthy of that reputation.
Topolski has a good story to tell. It takes him from antebellum Poland, which he brings to life with feeling, to the Paris of the 1930s and then London, which, intri- guingly, he found more exotic and inspir- ing. He revelled in the vestiges of the 'Old England' that so fascinates foreigners, and he was quickly taken up by one of them, namely George Bernard Shaw, with whom he collaborated on publications and pro- ductions. The war opened up new opportu- nities for travel and developed a taste for observing people in crisis. He has been indulging this ever since,setting off, sketch- book in hand, as a roving visual reporter of Royal visits, independence celebrations, revolutions, wars and happenings of every description. An infallible instinct draws him to the right place at the right time. It is characteristic that he should be sketching the Pope's coronation in St Peter's the day after attending the Alternative Miss World Contest on Clapham Common, and that he Should find himself sightseeing at the Bay of Pigs with Graham Greene. But the interest is not confined to exotic locations, and Topolski's London is cu- rious to behold as it metamorphoses itself from the Café Royal crowd of the 1930s, through the `Blitzy bon-viveurism' of war- time, the Chelsea set, to beatnik and hippy coteries. His Little Venice studio drew a rich mixture — Augustus John, Nye Bevan, John Rothenstein, Claud Cock- burn, Michael Redgrave, Christopher Fry, Hugh Casson, Herbert Read, Malcolm Muggeridge, the list is endless. It was also, apparently, a hotbed of sexual activity, through which passed not only a presti- gious number of Topolski's own conquests, but the whole of Stephen Ward's stable as well. Topolski is a great lover of women, and his sexual encounters, whether scanda- lous, bizarre or hilarious, are recounted with charm and lyricism, never jarring. The apotheosis of Topolski's Period' came in 1952, with a huge party for Picasso. The studio's finest hour followed a year later, when, in spite of eminent protest and string-pulling, the council con- demned it. Topolski held a great exhibition and sale to the accompaniment of crashing masonry and shattering glass, and the demolition squads would pause to stare as starlets and socialites, cabinet ministers, and even Prince Philip picked their way through the rubble. With his move to the arches of Hungerford Bridge on the South Bank, Topolski and his work entered a new and less obviously 'smart' phase. For a book which bristles with names, from GBS to Michael X, there is a remark- able absence of fatuous name-dropping. Every one of the dramatis personae is integrated into his memoir, and Topolski's verbal sketches are no less brilliant than his drawings. His style is a curiosity in itself. Impressionistic and immediate, it alter- nates between staccato lines and great swirls of baroque prose which would fall down if it were architecture. This style is well suited to his method of observation, to his tendency to jump from an image to an aesthetic or philosophical statement. It also facilitates a candour about himself which might sit uneasily if couched in more manicured prose. When recounting sexual experiences, for instance, he often slips into the third person, to observe himself as a sort of Candide.
The analogy with Candide is apt. Although it is Topolski's remarkable per- sonal qualities, his intelligence and sym- pathy, which furnish him with a safe- conduct into dangerous and hostile zones that the most ubiquitous reporters might envy, it is a certain innocence and willing- ness to try literally anything which provides him with his experience. When he notices that all London's homosexuals have reap- peared as officers in wartime Cairo, he seizes on the opportunity to explore their world. Twenty years later, he is experi- menting with LSD under the direction of Timothy Leary. It is surely not irrelevant that, having ranged over an incredible variety of human experience, having approached with the same ease captured concentration-camp guards, Cuban revolu- tionaries and drivelling hippies, Candide turns up at Greenham Common only to find all his human reflexes and advances repulsed by a brick wall of exclusion, and that, for the first time in his life, he is completely paralysed.
Undoubtedly the most important section of the book is that which covers the second world war, of which Topolski had an unusually global experience. A multitude of images great and small add up to a powerful picture. He is very good on the Blitz, on how it enervated people and upset normal rhythms, acting as a strong stimulant, making people behave in un- characteristic ways (Peter Quennell slumped on the floor of the Gargoyle after a punch-up over a woman is only one of the more unlikely examples). Watching sol- diers at the front, he reflects on their attitudes and reactions, and on the liberat- ing qualities of the experience for them. Unlike the Great War, which crushed its participants, he muses, this one gave them a wealth of experience and a good time, and taught them what they were capable of, not merely in terms of suffering, but in resourcefulness and assertiveness. After surveying the war's peripheries, he touches on its obscene core, and the most moving and chilling passages are written during the invasion of Germany and the liberation of concentration camps. This great vision of the war is given a powerful conclusion with the Nuremburg trials, and a scarcely less obscene, though farcical, epilogue in the shape of the 1948 Congress of Intellectuals for Peace in Wroclaw. Behind the innocent observer there lurks a wise old man whose deadly humour spares no human folly. The editors deserve no congratulation, having made this book as difficult to read and handle as they could, cluttered it with unnecessary illustrations, and priced it prohibitively. For it is a book that many should read and enjoy. It tells us a great deal about our times.
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