Exhibitions
Mr and Mrs Andras Kalman Collection of English Naïve Art (The Fine Art and Antiques Fair, Olympia, till 24 November) Norman Blarney (Victoria Art Gallery, Bath, till 28 Novem- Tony Foster (Bruton Gallery, Bath, till 25 November)
Beauties of Bath
Giles Auty
On a cool, clear October day, the city of Bath can provide a great uplift to the spirit. As the light faded on the day of my visit, a glowing sunset provided a theatrical backdrop to architecture that proclaimed resoundingly how civilised this country was visually in former times. I imagine anyone who saw the Channel 4 programme on aspirants to this year's Turner Prize, trans- mitted on 3 November, will need such reas- surance badly. My first impression was that many of those who took part in the pro- gramme were heavily sedated, while the
particular participant who pronounced `banal' to rhyme with 'anal' may have revealed more unconsciously than he knew. Before I depress myself further even think- ing about the matter, I should say that the Turner Prize and the liberal totalitarianism that ensures a deathly tyranny of taste in British living art will be the subject of a later article by me.
My visit to Bath was prompted by three things. First was to remind myself of the excellence of the collection of English naive art formed over a long period by Mr Andras Kalman and exhibited usually at the Museum of English Naive Art 1750- 1900 (The Countess of Huntingdon Chap- el, The Vineyard/Paragon, Bath). The col- lection will form a special feature of the Fine Art and Antiques Fair at Olympia in London, which runs from 18 to 24 Novem- ber. Those many who have not seen it in Bath should make the effort to do so now in London: the experience is a wonderfully humorous and enlivening one. More to the point, the collection provides a unique his- torical record, much of it from an era which antedates photography, of the occu- pations and preoccupations of ordinary English folk: rat-catching, bear-baiting, prize-fighting, making merry in general. Champion bulls, dogs, rams and the coun- try's fattest man vie for attention with ship- wrecks, cock-fights, agricultural pursuits and superb insights into the topography of our towns and villages. Original inn and shop signs and weather-vanes add three- dimensional interest. Here is the rude Eng- land of Smollett and Fielding rather than of Jane Austen.
No comparable collection exists in Britain, while America boasts several such, founded by families such as Dupont, A Midsummer Night's Dream, from the Kalman Collection of English Naïve Art Havermeyer and Rockefeller. I was lucky enough to visit and report on the Abby Aldridge Rockefeller Centre for American Naïve Art at Williamsburg during my visit to Virginia last summer. For reasons of health and family, Mr Kalman's collection is offered for sale in this country as a com- plete entity. As such, it would be impossi- ble to replace. The alternative seems to be that it would be sold piecemeal in America where there is a very keen market in histor- ical artefacts made by members of the pop- ulace. Ideally the collection could form the core of a National Museum of Naïve Art in Britain, which would be a major attraction for visitors wherever it was housed.
The second reason for my trip to Bath was to see the exhibition of paintings by Norman Blamey RA at Victoria Art Gallery (Pulteney Bridge, Bath), which has moved on from Norwich Gallery at Norfolk Institute of Art and Design where it was originated, presented and written about intelligently by Lynda Checketts, one of the few independent-minded, non-brainwashed curators this country possesses. I realise that to be praised by me probably consti- tutes a severe blot on the career records of curators in the public gallery sector, who must live their professional lives in fear of the liberal totalitarianism alluded to by me already. Lynda's show, now in Bath, cele- brates the work of a fastidious, masterly and deeply idiosyncratic British painter who makes two to three works only per year. Blarney is a skilled if sombre por- traitist, brilliant organiser of pictorial space, knowledgeable, shy and Christian man. Any time other than our own appallingly ignorant one would cherish him. Typically, the Royal Academy, of which he is a distinguished member, declined to put on this show — at the behest of the resident Obergruppenfiihrer there, I imagine — which will come there- fore to the Fine Art Society in London on 8 December instead. Paintings such as Blarney's are so far beyond the mental and pictorial scope of pretenders to this year's premier British award for living art that astronomical terms would be needed to describe the distance. Blamey is 78, admit- tedly, but just the same could be said,
with equal truth, of the paintings of Christopher Bramham, say, or a number of other artists well under 50.
While in Bath I visited also the show of Tony Foster's Rainforest Diaries — Water- colours from Costa Rica 1991-2 at Bruton Gallery (35 Gay Street, Queen Square). Here are topographical watercolours made on the spot with exquisite care. Foster blends the ideas behind the journeyings of late 20th-century conceptualists such as Richard Long, Hamish Fulton and AndY Goldsworthy with a 19th-century determi- nation to do rather more than wield a cam- era or rearrange a twig or two as a means of conveying his excitement. Fosters colour may be a touch sharp but his sinceri- ty is total.
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