Putting the clock back
Sir : I am aware that it is often wiser to ignore the wilder and more prejudiced forms of criticism but since the ICA exhibition has roused Mr Robertson to expose his personal opinions and offer his paternal advice in 'Putting the clock back' in your issue of 19 April, with such heat—a tirade in which remarks of mine in the catalogue come in for scorn and distor- tiorl—he has succeeded in provoking me into making one or two comments.
Everything he says about 'The Obsessive Image' is venomous, from the architecture of the gallery which somehow reminds him of a 'rather grand Australian sheep station' to the choice of artists and general trend of the exhibition, which earns his unreserved dam- nation.
However, I do not wish to discuss an arbitrary problem—whether Mr Robertson's selection would have produced 'a far higher level of critical discernment' or not—it is his concern for the lc% and his moral advice that need comment. He accuses the ICA of a breach of faith with the artists who have supported it, inferring that certain painters who were not even asked for support are not included in the show. This question of gifts from artists is irrelevant to us in all activity such as this which relics on the selection of the organiser. That any exhibition that limits itself to a theme must be restricted in its choice must be obvious to him. He should also know, from past occasions when he has himself contributed to our activi- ties that our exhibitions cover a wide field of expression and that our move to larger pre- mises does not imply a change of front or an exclusivity in our activities.
That Mr Robertson should have lost all con- fidence in the ICA so rapidly is sad and un- accountable, but I am grateful to him for his paternal advice on how we should 'redeem' our good name. His warning that `so much that is fine and good is congealed by so much that is fake and bad' could make us run to him for definitions if he were not so categorical in dismissing the whole exhibition as having `no relevance whatever to the central concerns of ' modern art.' The purpose of the exhibition has been quite simply to give a survey of the con- temporary artist's vision of man. With that in view those artists whose work has been of importance in the present decade have been chosen. The inclusion of Arp and de Kooning, of Picasso and Hamilton, of Bacon and Lindner are proof of the intention to override the cramping considerations of style and schools in order to emphasise the fundamental likeness beneath the variety in man's disquieting or tranquil visions of himself.
Perhaps Mr Robertson was looking for a more didactic presentation of carefully graded sheep, but this was not our purpose and the interest shown by those who come to the show daily in large numbers seems to indicate that others do not consider our conception to be viettx jeu. _ Roland Penrose Hon Director, Institute of Contemporary Arts, Nash House, 12 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1 Bryan Robertson writes: Another stricture which should have found a place in my list is the way in which Andy Warhol is misrepre- sented at the ICA by a single self-portrait, in- itially shown at Expo 67 as a set of differently coloured and repeated images seventeen feet high in overall dimension. The effect had an in- tegral force which one excerpt, in isolation, utterly fails to convey. I wish the ICA well in the future, but the seriousness of its objectives, when they are revealed, should be matched by scrupulous attention to details of this kind.
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