Art

Songs of praise

Michael Buhler

Cedric Morris 1889-1982 (Tate Gallery till 13 May) Paintings and Drawings by Martin Bloch

(South London Art Gallery till 3 May)

Barnett Freedman

(Gillian Jason Gallery till 18 May)

The Arts Council recently published its document 'The Glory of the Garden'. A somewhat inappropriate title as it seems that many of the younger plants will soon be living in a colder climate with little or no assistance from our state gardener. `The Glory of the Garden' would however have made a perfect title for the exhibition °f work by Cedric Morris (1889-1982) currently filling three rooms at the Tate. He comes across as an artist with a quirky individuality and a strong gift for colour whose work reached its greatest in- tensity in d fecu paintings that celebrate the beauty ndity of gardens. The larger-than- size, rudely healthy and exuberant flowers that he painted in great profusion both indoors and out spill from the can- vas es like people from a pub on Saturday night.One sees this primitive world from the Point of view of a foraging bee or but- ertly It is represented in a way that is chlsartningly simple but certainly not naive. r hese Pagan hymns to the iris and the car- fOt, the fresh-laid egg and the leek, are in- rmed by a profound i understanding of Pr ant life s this as well as their

ch and it ih ll ness of colour that makes them so oietnorable.

The exhibition starts with his early work and there are two fine portraits: of himself of his life-long companion Arthur Lett- hi2tles. Morris was largely self-taught and ,L'a style remained remarkably constant "l-Nghout his career as he focused his at- WIpItii°° on people, birds and landscape as earlys the Plants he loved. There are some experiments with abstraction and a -1

n,.2 flirtation with surrealism but these did detain ,,.a.picturehim for long. More entertaining igntanism. Painted in protest at American

'The Entry of Moral Turpitude bo° ,l‘lew York Harbour' (1926) depicts a ingatl°ad of cheery ladies in strapless even- wirewns as they disembark to play havoc ia„ the morals of the assembled Manhat- iy"crnales on the quayside. It is a charming- hrn°sY view of sin and the weakness of an nature. It is a surprise then to round 'te corner and confront the serried rows of portraits in the next room, for these people collected together en masse are downright intimidating and anything but cosy. 'Two Sisters', especially, shows the meanest quartet of boot-button eyes one is ever like- ly to see. The directness and penetration of these portraits apparently led to violence when 100 of them were shown together in London in 1938.

Having travelled and lived a cosmopolitan life together in the Twenties Lett-Haines and Morris moved to the coun- try and in 1937 founded the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing which aim- ed to encourage the individuality of each student rather than dictate a house style. It was a great success despite at one point be- ing accidentally burnt to the ground by one of its pupils, Lucian Freud, who surely learnt a lot from the Morris approach to portraiture. Morris was a great lover of the countryside and was deeply concerned about the threat to wildlife posed by modern farming. Among his paintings of birds there is one entitled 'Landscape of Shame' that most eloquently expresses his feelings on the subject. A barren field of earth is shown strewn with small feathered corpses beneath a bright blue sky. During the last years of his life he was unable to paint and it is a shame that this tribute to his vision could not have been held before his death as it would have made up for the years of neglect. Martin Bloch (1883-1954) is not only of the same generation as Morris but is also another artist whose work has been ignored in recent years. Hopefully the current retrospective of about 100 paintings and drawings at the South London Art Gallery (Peckham Road, SE5) will do something to put this right and re-establish his reputation as a lyrical colourist and painter of land- scape. He was already well established as a successful painter and teacher in Germany when the Nazis branded both him and his work as degenerate in 1933. Forced to uproot himself in mid-career he eventually found refuge for himself and his family in London where he opened the School of

Contemporary Painting with the artist Roy de Maistre. They encouraged self- expression in much the same way as did Morris but their school happily did not go up in flames. When the war broke out Bloch was interned as an alien and there is a hauntingly depressing drawing in the ex- hibition of the bleakness of the internment camp. He was later released, became a British citizen and continued to paint and teach here till his death in 1954.

Although one can clearly see that his is the work of a German artist Bloch was much more attracted to the warmth of the Mediterranean than to the angst and neuroses of his contemporaries and several of the early works show a strong influence of Matisse in subject and drawing. The luminous blues, yellows and sulphurous greens with which he depicted his essentially calm view of the world remained constant throughout his career but the manner in which these colours were deployed varied considerably from the tightly organised geometry of Berlin tramwires and streets to broad descriptions of landscape in which drawing is submerged in a mushy ratatouille of generalised forms. When the balance is right and the vision inspired, the resultant paintings glow with a quiet but resonant beauty that perfectly captures the effects of limpid English light and fog that he found so fascinating. He was also an inspiring teacher and his influence on a number of post-war English artists should not be

underestimated. This welcome exhibition affords an opportunity to reassess the im- portant contribution made by his European temperament to our insular character.

A small exhibition of work from the studio of Barnett Freedman (1901-1958) at the Gillian Jason Gallery (42 Inverness Street, NW1) shows yet another underrated talent. He was primarily an illustrator and lithographer and the assembled drawings describe life and literature with much the same gentle romanticism and charm as do those of his better-known contemporaries Ardizzone and Bawden.