Small Poet's Corner
By SIMON HODG SON DON'T mind your pieces,' she said, 'at least they're never about pictures.' Possibly not. But they're round-and-about most of the time, although I have avoided, I hope, that sen- sational habit of George Moore, who described in exclamatory etail a Process of painting which Whistler not ■ nly never employed, but could never and would lever have employed even if he had got no farther ast than West Point. His temperament alone vould have forbidden it, but there is a valid reason or giving a place in criticism to private evocation. t has nothing to do with painting or painters, but is one of the very few ways of conveying the act that an imagination has been kindled, that a pedal subjective reaction has carried the critic. inside every large critic there is a small poet Tying to be let out) to a new region of experience. Nis is important because the communication of :njoyment and enthusiasm is an essential aim of Titicism, a second-hand communication, if you ike, but worth making. Thus Moore's technical liscourse would have made any painter roar with aughter, but his enjoyment and admiration before r painting by Whistler were valuable; he could ense new things in himself, if he could not fathom Whistler directly; he invited people to see and to lisagree, a proper part of criticism. Far removed from this plane, criticism has also he more banal task of arranging dates and move- lents in a reader's mind, and here the past year as been notable for the assistance the Matthiesen 1allery has given to critics and public with their rrveys of painters little known and far too seldom en in London. This stylish educational body last rye us Picabia, but earlier had mounted the re- arkable collection of Odilon Redon's works hich was the real event of a year in which the ne was invaded by a horde of simpering, himpering, dead Germans (The Romantic ovement), and smaller London galleries by lung artists whose paint gets thicker and cruder direct proportion to their disabilities as aughtsmen and craftsmen; a year when the .averbrook Gallery opened in Canada enor- 'LIMY overweighted with Mr. Sutherland's gged-uP caricature sketches, and Mr. Suther- id himself, flinging good English sense out of ',window, and his good romantic English talent decided to paint Important Pictures, pick- ; on Venice (which was happily unrecognisable the result) for his first foray. It was Redon's We that he was a craftsman to his finger-tips, Which I mean to say that his symbolism may been neurotic and obscure, but the finished te or painting was beautiful, and had no anee on literary props but reflected experience A lot could be written about Redon being a 'child of his age,' being 'modern' because hag- ridden, but this is poppycock. A painting exists on its own; it is both unique and-final; it is a fact. Thus a lot of modern painters are given careful critical attention for preposterous reasons. The most preposterous example in my experience was the gallery-owner in Paris whose current exhibi- tion I had described as lacking distinction in drawing, painting, planning, size, finish, subject- matter and training, who answered me with, 'On!, mais ih sant de l'ipoque: The 'times' are now used not only to justify contemporary move- ments, but to excuse bad painting; it was not for this sort of quackery that God created joy and psychoanalysis. Indeed, it may be that this sort of thing has led good painters like Mr. Sutherland astray. With Redon they perhaps say, 'Frappez. Frappez taujours. La blessure est feconde.. But it is not enough simply to sit and suffer neuroti- cally, there are fields and streets and people out- side; nor is it enough to dismiss painters who don't seem to suffer enough as being out of step, or unendowed with the sort of political conscience which, if I read one or two of my chers colleoes aright, would send them straight into a nice productive factory in two twos.
All of this is intended to suggest that simple, good handiwork is the first thing to look for in artistic production, as in the purchase of a bed or a chair. I have described it as a sort of aplomb, and one other remarkable exhibition this year shows what I mean. The German Expressionists shown at the Marlborough Gallery were an up-to- date critic's dream; they were politically involved, and emotionally committed to the various doomed causes of the early decades of this century; but among their number, as this exhibition has triumphantly shown, there were men who were painters first, and only suffered experience to colour their work inside the rules of their art. Some of these pictures fulfil the only real test I know for. judging a great work; it is as if they actually went off, bang, bang, so final, so impos- sible to imagine in any other disposition or balance are their forms and their colours. They are well made to a degree where excellence be- comes absolute because unique. Find that, 0 critic, and then in fancier words describe your feelings. Anyway, why shouldn't you? There are very few things that need to be said about an object which is ruled by the iron limitation of two dimensions.
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