ART
The Relifists Fall In
THE title of the exhibition at Messrs. Wildcnstcin's—" A Cross-section of English Painting, 1938 "—is misleading. For only 12 artists are included, and they do not nearly cover the whole range of the art that is being produced in this country at the present time. There are whole areas of painting which are unrepresented : there is no abstract painting in the show and no specimen of Super-realism. But, though for this reason the exhibition cannot claim to be complete, it would not be an exaggeration to say that it gave a good idea of the most important type of contemporary English painting.
The significance of the paintings shown can be made clearer if we compare them with the works on view at Rosenberg's, where there are canvases by Picasso, Braque, Matisse, Bonnard and Rouault. Mr. Coldstream, who is the leading exhibitor at Wildenstein's, himself provoked such a comparison when in a recent debate organised by the Artists' International Association on the relative merits of Realism and Super- realism he pointed to the works shown by the Realists and said that there was among them, of course, no artist comparable in quality with Picasso. Now, since he was pointing to works produced by himself and his immediate friends, this was a very proper piece of modesty. But I am prepared to main- tain that the modesty, though undoubtedly genuine, was unjustified.
It would unquestionably be true to say that there is no indi- vidual among the Realist painters today who is so marked a personality or who has so much talent for painting as Picasso. None of the Realists knows so much about the tricks of the painting trade as he, and certainly none of them plays on the organ of painting tunes so varied or so obviously novel. But this has nothing very much to do with the quality of Picasso as an artist. Those who defended Super-realism in general and Picasso in particular in the debate in question constantly used the words novelty, originality, surprise and shock to express their admiration. But is it, after all, so important that a painter should produce a shock in the spectator ? May he not make his appeal by less violent and more serious means ? After all, Rembrandt must have seemed a dull stick to those of his contemporaries who were used to the cultivated sensibility and wit of later Mannerism, or the flamboyance of the baroque. But it would be hard to say that Rembrandt was a less important artist than other painters of his time. So let Mr. Coldstream take courage.
In the heaven of painting there are many studios, and, though it is unlikely that he will have to share one with Picasso, he will be in company no less distinguished. And even now he has his consolation : the future belongs to him, but Picasso belongs to the past.
To the system of shocks, ingenuities, obscurities, with which the Super-realists work, Coldstream opposes, above all, the quality of honesty. In art, as in morals, honesty is often unexciting at first sight. But the test comes not at the first but at the fiftieth view ; and it is not so obvious which will look duller then—a Picasso or a Coldstream. However, the whole ques- tion is silly, since the qualities of the two painters are not com- mensurable, and it is no more possible to say which of these two artists is the duller than to say which is the better. And so the question raised by Coldstream's modesty when faced with Picasso also becomes unanswerable. We can give historical reasons why each of them paints as he does, and we can perhaps give an indication how far he has attained his end. But we cannot make a final judgement of quality between two artists with such fundamentally different aims.
The importance of the exhibition at Wildenstein's, however, does not lie in the actual quality of the work—though as a personal opinion I would say that Coldstream's Portrait of Mrs. 3urger gives me as much pleasure as any painting that I can :ecall being produced by an English artist since the War. The exhibition is significant because it shows that at last the Realists ,re organising and are beginning to form a group instead of a ;amber of isolated individuals. Mr. Coldstream is already a chef supported by able lieutenants. From this stage the velopment of the school, though slow, is assured.
ANTHONY BLUNT.
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