TWELVE months ago I suggested that we were in for
an invasion of action painting, !'art autre, tachisme, abstract expressionism, the most fashionable experiments emerging from New York and Paris. The assault has, in fact, been made, but another twelve months must pass before the depth of penetration can he judged. The exhibition of American art at the Tate in January gave the English public a belated introduction to painters such as de Kooning, Kline, Rothko and above all Jack- son Pollock, whose death later in the year—in a motor accident like James Dean—removed from the movement one of its few natural and inspired practitioners. The ICA displayed that accomplished exhibitionist, George Matthieu, the result of whose frenzy proved to be tress chic. Alan Davie, the leading British exponent of all this, the climax perhaps of Romanticism, gained a further success in New York and, in an account of his work, related art to two crazes of the mornent, jazz and Zen. The movement has in fact already, like `rock 'n'_ roll,' stamped itself upon all kinds of things and achieved a number of absolute conversions, the most notable being Patrick Heron. On the other, the realist, front the most challenging exhibition was the remark- able display of virtuosity and eclecticism offered in the spring by the French painter Rebeyralle. Bratby, Greaves, Middleditch and Smith appeared in the British pavilion at the Venice Biennale and with others gave a slightly new look to the summer exhibition at the RA, where Sir Alfred Munnings showed his own type of action painting during the year. Two large exhibitions invited us to look into the future. One, arranged by John Berger and called Looking Forward, tried to define a realist Eesthetic: the other, This is Tomorrow, at Whitechapel Gallery, flung down a series of challenges. This, one of the most interesting shows of the years, provoked the impression that if experimental exhibitions appeared more frequently here, they would not need to be so aggressive as this. The prevailing note was one of nostalgia for the nineteen-tens and -twenties, but it must be remembered (and I find this as intriguing a phenomenon as the present dewy-eyed enthusiasm for jazz which has hit even the more cautious and tasteful of our Sunday papers) that the art of the first three decades of this century has now become subject to an art-historical gaze and analysis, so that many look at German expressionism and Vorticism as offered by outstanding exhibitions at the Tate as sources for new revivals.
Sculpture provided me with the outstanding surprise of the year—that Lynn Chadwick should, at this stage in his career, be considered worthy to win a major award at Venice. The year has also brought exhibitions by Marini and Manzu, the two immensely gifted Italians who, with unerring eloquence and certainty. have combined modernity with a deference for the contemporary taste in archeology and art- history. I recall with gratitude the excellent sequence of shows at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, unequalled anywhere in this country, and a number of exhibitions by artists who continue to evolve with a modest assurance and without fuss, Ceri Richards, William
Scott, Keith Vaughan, Robert Adams, Charles Howard. At the Biennale Ivon Hitchens did not receive the acclaim given previously to Sutherland or Bacon but did properly impress a number of foreign critics. Internationally, Henry Moore was one of six chosen to decorate the new Unesco building in Paris, and Ben Nicholson won the top award in the Guggenheim competition. I would like to regard these successes, together with a recent rediscovery of the architectural partnership of Connell Ward and Lucas, as a tribute to the quality of the best English art of the Thirties, for that is their period. The year has ended with one of the most disappointing of the Academy's long sequence of Winter Exhibi- tions and after twelve years of knock-about, bad language and rabble-rousing the electiOn of a modest and tactful President.
BASIL TAYLOR
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