ART
Augustus John
EVERYONE is agreed on the fact that Augustus John was born with a quite exceptional talent for painting—some even use the word genius—and almost everyone is agreed that he has in some way wasted it. But when it comes to explaining exactly how he has wasted it, people become vague, and talk in general terms about a certain lack of seriousness, or an inability to resist indulging technical skill. This is very natural, for it is extremely hard to see just where John's paintings fail. For myself I find it impossible to put my finger on the point, and at most it seems to me that something can be done in approaching the truth by analysing the different tendencies in his painting at different periods and the various types of danger to which they are exposed.
The exhibition at Tooth's—the first one-man show of John's works for many years—consists mainly of recent works ; but there is also a room of earlier paintings which give one an opportunity of looking back over his development. It is fashionable to maintain that John was at his greatest in his early oil sketches of the years before the War, mostly of single figure studies. But even in this stage it is possible to trace a certain wastage, or lack of concentration, compared with the yet earlier period, represented by the portrait heads in two coloured pencils which date from the turn of the century. In these drawings John gave proof of a quality which does not seem to reappear in his work, namely, humility in the face of nature. He is not only prepared to take nature as the basis for a technical experiment, but is willing to follow her in all her tiresome intricacies. These early drawings have a sort of industrious observation which distinguishes them from all the later productions. For even in the oil sketches of the next period John is already letting himself go in a sort of mannerism, though the mannerism is so brilliant that one is at first willing to accept it as a serious basis for painting. This is the time of the oval-faced girls, with small heads and elong4ed bodies, painted or drawn with a simpli- fication which...at first seems to be justified as bringing out their essential character, but which ultimately tires, when it is seen to be only a formula which can be applied at will to any subject.
Most of John's later portraits seem to fail of the highest achievement in a different way. Seen in the setting of the Royal Academy they always stand out by the fact that they are based on a really sound technical brilliance—if that is not a contradiction in terms. That is to say, his technical brilliance, unlike that of most Academicians, will stand the most minute study, and even study over a long period, without becoming thin. It is only in his methods of dealing with the psychological problems presented by his sitters that his shorthand appears. Even in such a masterly work as the Suggia one grows tired of the over-emphatic gesture before one has finished admiring the brilliance of the drawing and brush-work. In other cases the failure is more evident, for John has in his time painted many portraits which are purely "smart," and in which he seems not to have made any attempt at subtlety of analysis.
The latest group of paintings, however, seems to mark yet another stage. The artist seems no longer to be indulging his brilliance in handling the brush, not at any rate to the extent of letting many of the forms become almost transparent as they often were in the more fashionable portraits. Many of the portraits and figure studies are relatively solidly constructed. But they have lost the brilliance of the middle paintings without regaining the meticulous care of the earliest drawings. One other curious feature appears in some of the paintings which may be connected with this apparent loss of vitality : the land- scapes are more derivative than any other works of the artist. It is not merely the similarity of subject that makes them look sometimes like Derain and sometimes like Matisse ; there is a real likeness in the whole method of painting—to Matisse in the insubstantial flatness of the objects, to Derain in much of the colour.
None of these criticisms, of course, affects the fact that John is almost as gifted as a painter can be. It is only because his gifts are so great that one is forced to judge him by the very highest standards, and it is only by such standards that he seems to fail.
AHTHONY BLUNT.
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