AND ANOTHER THING
Cezanne's shemales, the Brickies and a Royal Academy meeting
PAUL JOHNSON
The unanimity of critical and editorial opinion about the ridiculous Cezanne exhibition at the Tate Gallery reflects the extent to which our sad, art-ignorant nation has been brainwashed by the Brickies. Cezanne is a key figure for those who have turned high art into mere fash- ion. He was the son of an Aix money- lender and, to his credit, wanted to do something nobler with his life. For half a century he struggled to render nature as he saw it, against all the odds — lack of natural skill, inadequate training in a sec- ond-rate art school, an explosive temper which meant he had no friends and so could not learn from other artists, and a compulsive fear of women which prevent- ed him drawing from life. He failed: there was nothing he did which had not been done better by many other painters. But he was nonetheless successfully hyped by the commercial galleries even in his life- time, and so provided first proof positive that art and skill had parted company. His works became the Ur- documents of the School of Mud. The racketeers moved in and gradually cap- tured all the positions of power in the art world, which they have held now for over 50 years. Ambitious and unscrupulous and self-deluded artists learned that they can win acclaim and even make fortunes without any need for talent, let alone genius, provided they have a nose for fashion. Indeed, today in most art schools it is not thought necessary for students to acquire skills of any kind, except in self- promotion.
Oddly enough, in all the hundreds of thousands of breathless words published in the last week about Cezanne's 'master- pieces' it is nowhere explained why, pre- cisely, they are worth admiring. Nor is this surprising. It cannot be done. Even Ernst Gombrich failed, though to be fair to him his attempt was only half-hearted because he loves beauty in art and hates a racket. Virtually everything ever written about Cezanne is pretentious waffle or pseudo- theory. I recall Tom Boase, who had been head of the Courtauld and then became president of Magdalen, trying to brain- wash me in 1949, in front of 'The Card- players', with stuff about 'reverse perspec- tive' — all nonsense, as I told him at the time. No one has ever been able to explain why we should like Cezanne's women bathers, some of whom were copied from the painter's old life-drawings of male models, or from prints cut out of maga- zines, and who are, without exception, misshapen, grotesque and hideous. The only person whose liking for them was genuine was Henry Moore, who frankly admitted he had a perverted taste for enormous, brutal women-shapes and who persuaded a weak director of the National Gallery, Sir Philip Hendy, to spend half a million — a colossal sum in 1964 — on buying the worst painting in the whole misbegotten series. These dreadful daubs compel the Stakhanovites of the waffle industry to break even their records. Thus the Times, in a leading article (forsooth) of staggering idiocy, salutes them as 'strange, huge women of quite compelling mansuetude'. To be sure, these monstress- es have a certain relevance to an age of transvestites, shemales, sex-ops, transsexu- als and gender-bending.
Why, then, since the Brickies have so successfully brainwashed the nation, as reflected in the media, are they still run- ning scared ? For they are — dead scared. It is as though they are terrified that the entire outrageous imposture of Modern Art is about to collapse, suddenly and irre- vocably, just as Soviet communism did after seven decades of triumphant tyranny. I have drawn attention before to this Brickie nervousness. It explains why they cannot tolerate any dissenting voice whatever. In the past 40 years, there have been only four outstanding art critics in Britain. John Berger now lives in Swiss exile. Peter Fuller is dead — and the Brickies have had the superb lectures held in his honour discon- tinued. Giles Auty, who wrote in this jour- nal with such admirable courage, roundly rejecting all the false gods of modernism, has been forced to go to Australia to make the living denied to him here. And Brian Sewell, who has denounced Brickie excess- es in the Evening Standard to brilliant effect, was made the object of the most concentrated campaign of venom ever launched against a British critic. The Brick- ies wanted him sacked and his voice silenced. His editor, despite much pressure, stood by him. But Sewell, an unworldly fig- ure whose life is entirely devoted to aes- thetic ideals, was obviously shaken by the hate and vehemence of his persecutors.
Now a new phase begins. The object of their pre-emptive attack is the Royal Academy. This time the Brickie-in-Chief, Nicholas Serota, who normally leaves guer- rilla warfare to underlings, has chosen to show his hand. His personal power is already greater than that of any official in the entire history of painting in England. He controls the Tate exactly as he wishes and his trustees rubber-stamp all he decides. He is soon to straddle the Thames with his triumphalist Brickie palace at Bankside, the vast expense of which is to be met from the Lottery pence of the poor. His tentacles stretch to the Liverpool Tate in the North and the St Ives Tate in the West. I have no doubt he has much higher ambitions, though he denies it, and would like to be the British equivalent of the French art-supremo who, in true Napoleonic tradition, has ultimate control over every state museum in the country. A Serota dictatorship of British art is a sinis- ter possibility.
In the meantime the Brickies seems to have targeted the Royal Academy. This royal but independent foundation, run by its Members and Associates, has put up in recent decades only a feeble line of resis- tance to Brickie ideology. Indeed, the last president of the RA who stood up to the modernist juggernaut, Sir Alfred Munnings, resigned as long ago as 1949. Abstracts, daubs and other rubbish have been admitted to the RA's summer show in growing quantities. But the RA, in its own limited way, still displays works which demonstrate skill and devoted hard work as well as a belief that painting is a noble calling and not just a commercial racket and a power quest. That is what raises the fury of the Brickies. The RA, for all its lack of self-confidence, is still an outpost of the civilisation they wish to destroy. So the Brickies are mounting what looks suspiciously like a putsch. With the help of the fifth column within the RA, they are calling a meeting which could well end by putting the summer exhibition firmly in Brickie hands. The meeting is to be chaired by Julia Peyton- Jones, who runs the Serpentine Gallery, the Brickie fortress in Hyde Park. It looks like being one of the most totalitarian occasions since Hitler's notorious exhibi- tion of Degenerate Art. Anyone who real- ly cares about painting and sculpture and there are a growing number of us, despite the ceaseless brainwashing should press the RA to throw the meeting open to the public.
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