CONTEMPORARY ARTS
ART
Rodin. (Rowland, Browse and Delbahco.)---Twentleth Century Form. (Whitechapel.)—Mural Paintings. (R.I.B.A.) IN view of recent disturbances at the Tate, it is perhaps worth recalling another controversy from a little over half a century ago. The scene is the Salon of 1898, in which Rodin exhibited his final study for the monument to Balzac, and is described by Mirbeau: " There are indecent cries, mad angers, insulting laughs. Never did a statue see around its pedestal more disagreeable figures, twisted as they are by their hideous grimaces. Each is about to cast a little of its slime, a little of its mud, on this monument, perhaps the most impeccable that Rodin has created." Well, times have changed. Another study, differing but little from that which the Societe des Gera de Lettres, after its ten-year wait, " refused to recognise as a study of Balzac," is one of the most imposing works in the new exhibition at Messrs. Roland, Browse and Delbanco's—the first show of Rodin in this country for twenty-two years. Now the sculptor has to be defended, not on account of his innovations but because so many of his tenets have fallen into disfavour. " Every schoolboy," remarked Epstein, " now seems to be able to pick holes in him."
We find his concern with literary and poetic themes distasteful ; his lack of concern with direct cutting suspect ; his preoccupation with light and shade and colour, indeed the whole fluid imprecision of his impressionist technique, rather fusty and remote. But behind those flickering surfaces, what a powerful sense of mass, what energy, what expressiveness I Rodin's development was extraordinarily consistent, and an uncommon unity of approach makes itself felt through even a relatively small-scale show like this. His admiration for Michelangelo was profound. He sensed in Michelangelo's sculpture that restless energy which came to inform his own every work, and regarded him as the culmination of all Gothic thought. Rodin himself may be regarded as the culmination of the humanist and baroque traditions, Perhaps in a month that has seen the discovery of the earliest known portrait busts through excavation at Jericho (a group of shell-eyed plaster heads, modelled on the basis of human skulls and dating from perhaps 5000 B.C.) and the opening at the Whitechapel Art Gallery of an exhibition called " Twentieth Century Form," such reminders of the continuity of tradition as are afforded by this show, and by the selection of Michelangelo drawings in the Print Room of the British Museum, are especially valuable.
The Whitechapel exhibition sets out to demonstrate some of the affinities and influences linking architecture, painting and sculpture in this century. There are a good many parallels to be found—heads painted by Picasso and sculpted by Gaudier-Brzeska ; a wiry, linear composition by Patric Heron, springy, linear constructions by Reg Butler ; and of course the ideal unity aimed at in architecture, painting and industrial design by the geometric purists of De Stijl. At the same time I did not feel that the theme of the exhibition was sufficiently simplified and clarified to achieve its purpose with the general public. The exhibits have been excellently chosen individually, however, and do provide a good, brisk survey of the century to date.
That the relationship between painting and architecture is by no means as close as one might wish is all too clear when the problem of mural decoration comes up. At the Tate some of Mexico's great prophgandist decorations may still be seen ; at the Royal Institute of British Architects the Society of Mural Painters is holding its second exhibition. An attempt—not unsuccessful—has been made, by the use of large panels set in angled screens, to get away from the easel painting conception. All too often large-scale decoration becomes an excuse for slipshod craftsmanship and slap-happy handling; but Clifford Ellis' abstract in greys and scarlet, Dorothy Annan's mosaic for a school library, and things by Mary Adshead, Marek, Laurence Scarfe and Hans Tisdall all seemed successful.
M. H. MIDDLETON.
Previous page
