Eye witness
BRYAN ROBERTSON
Painters on Painting edited by Carel Weight (Cassell lOs each) The Bauhaus Hans M. Wingler (ma £19 15s until 31 January, £25 lOs thereafter) ._ Kandinsky: The Language of the Eye Paul Overy (Elek 126s) Vincent van Gogh Marc Edo Tralbaut (Macmillan 12 gns) Ben Nicholson: Drawings, Paintings and Reliefs 1911-1968 introduction by John Russell (Thames and Hudson 10 gns) Colour in Turner: Poetry and Truth John Gage (Studio Vista 90s) The cheapest, most useful and thoughtfully considered addition to art book publishing this year has been the long series planned by its editor, Carel Weight, for Cassell: Painters on Painting at ten shillings each paperback volume. Practising artists always have original insights into painting and the capacity to express them clearly; the twin virtues are notably reinforced by persuasion when the commentator selects a work of art, as in this series, for which he feels particular affinity. Among the best illustrated texts to appear so far are Robert Medley's essay on The Ascent of Calvary by Rubens, Peter de Francia on Leger's The Great Parade, Maurice de Sausmarez on Poussin's Orpheus and Eurydice, and Peter Green-i ham's tribute to Velazquez' Portrait of a Buffoon. There are many others; but all have a special probity and distinction of thought and make a splendid counterblast to a proliferating field of high-prised con- coctions.
Fire should be withheld, however, from the expensive but monumentally in- dispensable symposium devoted to the Bauhaus by Hans M. Wingler, which pro- vides a scholarly record and series of com- mentaries on all the art and design that flowed from this great powerhouse of ideas, as well as the principles of design and teach- ing which lay behind it. Kandinsky, Klee, Gropius and their illustrious colleagues are all given an extra, qualifying, dimension by the contents of this huge book. Essential for libraries and professionals, or a mesmeris- ing prize for any art student.
The work of one of the main protagonists of the Bauhaus can be studied in detail in Paul Overy's Kandinsky, in which an ex- ploratory intelligence is kept in check by fac- tual documentation and continual reference to Kandinsky's own writings. Overy acknowledges his debt to Will Grohmann's_ vast biography, which is also a catalogue raisonne; but the intellectual sympathy he has brought to bear on what is an especially intricate, in some ways heavy, subject is con- sistently accurate in insights and com- parisons. The result is something altogether leaner than Grohmann's book which, though filled with the equipment of art scholarship, is in the end more for the general reader—though, again, its copious illustra- tions make it indispensable for anyone who really wants to know what Kandinsky made. Overy's illustrations are more selective, in line with his whole approach which, fair enough to all the phases of this artist's evolu- tion, pays particular attention to the later, more rigidly constructed, stages in painting from the early 'twenties through to 1944, when Kandinsky died. The amount of reading, properly digested, that has fed the arguments in this book (covering the difficult field of colour theory, for example) deserves high praise.
Back among the heavies, but justifiably and very usefully so, is Vincent van Gogh by Marc Edo Tralbaut which, in presenting every facet of the copious documentation now in existence on the subject, manages also to establish its special tone as a work of love—perhaps because firm contact is kept throughout the book with Van Gogh's marvellous letters. The illustrations alone are worth the price of the book: they include 117 in excellent colour. This is a definitive work which will not intimidate by manner or presentation any lover of Van Gogh's art who might normally retreat from the analyses of scholarship. You end the book with a real sense of this artist's life, his historical context, and a sharper awareness of what makes his paintings and drawings so much a part of our relationship to the world. And somehow the book also removes whatever may seem hackneyed, through countless reproductions, to the ultra sophisticated : a considerable achievement to clear the air so resoundingly.
There are also countless reproductions in the huge volume, essentially a picture book, devoted to Ben Nicholson: 117 in black and white, 78 in colour, to be precise. The phrase 'coffee table book' has become dangerous of late because certain monographs or studies of a period have to be large (and therefore heavy) in format if the repro- ductions are to have any meaning, or definition, in terms of scale; at other times, the label is only too accurate for certain arbitrary compilations 'bulked up' to look impressive.
The reproductions in the Nicholson book are exceptionally fine, and wide in range. If their chronology and selection appear to have an element of capricious- ness it is only because the personal choice, indeed imprint as a whole, of the artist himself hovers over the book, determining its contents which, most usefully, supple- ment rather than duplicate works already reproduced in the existing monograph pub- lished by Lund Humphries. John Russell's short essay does the artist a signal service by placing him, through a number of valid arguments and references, firmly within the context of the international art movements of this century. But the book's essential distinction resides in its appearance: as the most magnificent publication ever to be concerned with a living British artist, it makes history and deserves encourage- ment.
Last is a difficult but highly original study of Turner as an intellectual, which he was—however erratic and eccentric his con. elusions may have been—and as a colour theorist: Colour in Turner: Poetry and Truth by John Gage. This is essential reading for anyone seriously concerned with the work of our greatest painter and it charts, for the first time, areas of thinking and practice which have not previously been considered. To the separate contributions made by Martin Butlin and Jack Lindsay to our knowledge of Turner, Dr Gage adds much diffuse material: I am not sure whether his presentation is always helpful—he is sometimes too near the wood to see the trees—but, on balance, the book is both important and convincing.
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