Art
Whom indeed?
John McEwen
On the face of it you could hardly have two more opposed looking exhibitions than the Arts Council sponsored 'Art for Whom?' (Serpentine till 14 May) and the paintings of the late Edward Seago (Marlborough till 6 May). The walls at the Serpentine are papered with sociological documentation, the air echoes to the drone of taped interview and the click of slide carousels, in the main gallery one of the artefacts is a series of suspended trade union banners recently designed for the General & Municipal Workers' Union by one of the artists, Conrad Atkinson. Linked chains proclaim the Union's motto 'Unity is Strength', a sentiment manifested by the seventh declaration of the collective statement of the selector and exhibitors, listed as a kind of manifesto on the back of the invitation card: 'WE want artists to help create an egalitarian society by developing new ways of reaching towards the many rather than the few.' How different at the Marlborough, most notorious of the blue-chip galleries, where Seago's impressionistic views of East Anglia, Venice and other hackneyed subjects spelt political conservatism with every stroke. One can imagine what the brotherhood at the Serpentine would make of these celebrations of the property and pleasures of the rich; and one can equally well imagine Seago's distaste for some of their declared objectives, but funnily enough both exhibit, in attitude and expression, the head and tail of exactly the same coin: Philistinism.
Since, ostensibly, both shows are to be understood visually, at least in the first instance – otherwise why have them in a gallery? – it seems appropriate to start with their expression. In both cases this is mundane to a degree, but in 'Art for Whom?' it is also intolerably confusing. As a visual presentation of facts (except in the case of the banners and some murals, which speak for themselves) no one here would get a pass in graphic design even at 0-Level. The documentation related to the examination of the residents of a tower block in Perivalc, of the threatened closure of Bethnal Green Hospital, of the case-history of an asbestosis victim (though here Conrad Atkinson has made an attempt at simplification) is tacked up on the wall in written form and in a quantity that would probably necessitate a day of study, at least, to understand. With the GMWU banner and the slides, photographs and preliminary drawings for the murals painted on the walls of a school in Islington and a buttress of the Westway at Gospel Oak, at least there is something to see. However the banners add nothing to the tradition of their craft, merely echoing the designs of yesteryear in a disappointingly conservative way; and the murals, though they undoubtedly brighten up otherwise drab surroundings, are cliches in terms of design. As are, in their own way, the paintings of Seago: scenes, familiarised by famous painters, boiled of all significance and personality into the stylistic muzak of what even the artist himself called `Seagoscapes.' So much for expression, it is time to turn to attitudes, because it is here that the common ground for these variously mundane views can be found.
The critic Richard Cork is the selector and spokesman of 'Art for Whom?' and he has also written the definitive study of Vorticism, the radical variation of Cubism proclaimed in England by Wyndham Lewis just before the First War. In his introduction, which is a much less offensive document than its titular call to arms might suggest, he argues that 'Art for Whom?' carries on where Lewis and Vorticism left off. The majority of artists, as it says in point one of the collective statement, fail 'to communicate with anyone outside a small circle of initiates'. A declared democratic socialist, Cork finds this reprehensible. Social concern is what should lie 'at the core of all art', and it is this belief that links 'Art for Whom?' with Vorticism because they too 'believed that art has a definite sociological purpose': In passing it seems only fair to that great and genuine radical Wyndharn Lewis to cast a doubt on this interpretation of the movement he started, in his own words: 'there was a tidy bit of political contraband tucked away in our technical militancy. But I was not the responsible party.' ('Blasting and Bombadiering', p.253). But this is by the way. The burden of Cork's argument is that so-called modern art has disappeared up its own ass. Now it so happens that Seago's exhibition coincides with the publication of the painter's biography (Edward Seago: The Other Side o f the Canvas by Jean Goodman, Collins 0.50), and the burden of that book is much the same. From the Prince of Wales's foreword on, there are constant allusions to the high-falutin' ways of the experts of modern art, and of modern art in general. The critics turned a blind eye to Seago's exhibitions, though these unfailingly sold out and attracted large crowds of the general public even to elitist venues in the West End; and Seago himself was in no doubt that fifty per cent of abstract art was rubbish and supported in high places only because people were fearful of being 'left out'. To comfort him Noel Coward is quoted as saying: 'If you try too hard to be with it you run a risk of being without it.' Seago was a reticent and, from his diary extracts, a prosaic man, and the gentility of this biography does nothing to alleviate the boredom of either, but for all his popular success he undoubtedly suffered keenly from' the indifference of the art establishment,
What both these exhibitions demonstrate therefore is that documentation – and Seago too was a stickler for accuracy when it came to the rigging of boats and so on — however worthy, is not art. It may be the raw material of art, but what is not? Nor is art an enlightened department of the social services. It is a philistine attitude to demand that art should be widely understood in this or any other way, and a dictatorial one to suggest that artists should be bullied by Politicians into serving community interests, as Cork also hints. Whatever art is, all the best minds have been agreed down the Years that it cannot exist without the exercise of the most important of all human faculties. I shall take my cue from Richard Cork and call Wyndham Lewis to my aid: 'It seemed', he writes, describing the birth of Vorticism, and all the other intellectual movements and ferments of that extraordinarily creative time, that 'the human mind was to indulge, once more, its imagination.'
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