ART
The Elect v. The Rest
AMONG all the angry disputes which the international exhibition in Paris has aroused one of the moat remarkable has been that over the show of paintings by van Gogh in the pavilion of the city of Paris. Feelings have run high over this question, not on the problem of whether van Gogh is a good artist, but on the method of presentation of the exhibition.
The attacks have mainly focussed on one particular feature, which is in some sense an innovation. In two out of the three rooms of which the show consists the paintings have not been displayed alone, as is the usual practice of galleries, but have been supported by notices containing passages from the artist's letters.
Those who attack this show do so on the grounds that this " explosion of quotations, photographs, nad reproductions " serves no useful purpose, merely distracting the attention of the visitor from the paintings themselves and lessening the appeal of the canvases by making the general effect of the wall less attractive. The defenders of the method on the other hand say that without such documentation it is impossible fully to understand the paintings.
This difference of opinion springs from a much de !per difference of view about the correct approach to the arts. Those who attack the exhibition do so on the assumption that art is an activity entirely cut off from the other activities of life, and that works of art are objects to be appreciated without reference to anything outside themselves, whether it be a docu- ment about the life of the artist, or a statement about the source of the design or content of the painting. From this point of view the main object of the organisers of an exhibition must be to make the presentation of the paintings as attractive as pos- sible. This is, of course, a point of great importance—and it may be said in passing that in this respect also the van Gogh show is admirable—but there are other considerations to be taken into account.
If one believes that a painting is the product of a man and that it can only be fully understood as such a product, then it becomes important to know as much as possible about the man who produces the painting. The more fully we understand his character, the more fully we can understand what he pro- duces, whether it be in paint or in writing. Therefore for any- one who approaches art in this way quotations from the artist's letters will be material of immediate use in the understanding of the works of art presented.
The highbrows who attack this exhibition maintain that this
method of presentation " is no doubt useful for persuading people that they understand painting when they don't." This superior and ungracious attitude is the result of the belief that the writer is himself peculiarly and, as it were, by divine inter- vention, equipped with a talent for appreciating art, and that those who are not so favoured may as well give up art as a bad job. and not clutter up the limited space in the galleries. But by what right do these writers speak as if they were the elect and all the rest damned ? Why must we all approach art by means only of that mysterious organ, the sensibility ? Why is- it wrong for those whose first interest is in general human questions and not in refinements of aesthetics to approach paint- ing from their point of view, and why should the pleasure which they finally derive from art be inferior to that limited enjoy- ment to which' the purist's approach leads ?
In his defence of the exhibition, published in Beaux-Arts, M. Rene Huyghe, the organiser, draws a picture of a man visit- ing the show without ever having heard of van Gogh. He passes baffled through the big room where the principal paint- ings are shown, and then, looking at some of the letters, feels that these are the works of a man with whose aspirations he can sympathise, and, after reading more, goes back and begins to make contact with the paintings which before were unintel- ligible to him. This is the natural way for the layman to approach the highly complicated products of modern art. For an artist like van Gogh uses in his paintings a method of expression so sophisticated that, for anyone unaccustomed to it, it will be far more baffling than the simpler mode used in the letters from which he may be able to get the hint which will put hint on the track of the subtler and more complete pleasure to be derived from the paintings themselves.
ANTHONY BLUNT.
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