Dutch Treat
ART
MORE and more July spills over into August from the point of view of activity in the London art world and it is the same in other countries except where the heat makes concen- tration impossible. There was a time when the summer mixed shows were a signal for everyone to start packing, they were so thin and tired. Now the dealers are increasing their efforts to put on definitive exhibitions, either house shows -surveys of recent works by artists that they back-or rich galaxies of great names from the Impressionists onwards. Either way, the galleries are loaded with merchandise and the shows in question are not just token signs that they are still open. The Marlborough, for example, has now established a new standard for summer shows consisting very largely of paintings often worthy of any public collection: the old days of modest bits and pieces for private collections with the ubiquitous little Boudin or late Renoir sketch seem mercifully to be over, and in their place is the real McCoy, ranging from a sumptuous late Monet of his garden pool to an early 'plus minus' or 'pier and ocean' sea piece of Mondrian. The drawing at the Marlborough is in fact at a loosely indicated stage halfway between the two: those astonishingly eloquent verticals and horizontals, fluid and separated, have not quite congealed into the plus minus notation.
I believe that this particular phase of Mondrian's development was one of the most intense and crucial moments in the entire momen- tum of twentieth-century formal exploration : every time a painting or drawing of this period appears, anywhere, I rush off to learn more about the workings of this genius. I am always only too ready to leave my office desk, but when the large Mondrian retrospective was hanging in the gallery at Whitechapel fifteen years ago no work at all was done for over a month: we were all riveted to the paintings downstairs. The trouble is that Mondrian, quite apart from the sheer sensuality, beauty and passion of everything he touched, is the perfect 'demonstration piece' for modern art. That is, it is quite impossible for the most obtuse or sceptical mistruster of modern art not to be convinced by the logic, compulsion and spiritual insights of Mondrian's evolution from willow trees by river banks, lighthouses and dunes, through to the late 'Boogie Woogie' criss- cross canvases completed in New York (where he died a poor man, in hospital, hero that he
was). And in this case, with so much at stake, it seems to be necessary to stage a major Mondrian retrospective again : to have one every fifteen years in fact. You just cannot get it from books and plates. In the meantime, a vast Mondrian retrospective assembled in Canada is now to be seen in Holland and to visit the exhibition is the most important thing anyone seriously concerned with art can do, this summer. The Dutch think of Vermeer, Rembrandt, Van Gogh and Mon- drian all in one breath, as it were, at the same altitude, and if anyone doubts the wisdom of bracketing Mondrian with these other great masters, he should go to Holland and experience conversion immediately. The process is infallible.
At the Marlborough also is an extraordinary early painting of flowers by Chagall. This is a useful and surprising discovery: it expands our knowledge of Chagall, The painting is strong in colour, notably oranges and reds, and the later Chagall type of dreaming line and shape is invigorated by a formal crispness and structural clarity that is near to cubism. Either over-praised (like Lipchitz) or dismissed as a light weight, Chagall has not yet found his true level. He has a special genius which finds its outlet in decora- tion, like Fragonard, and with equally serious and poetic undertones.
I suspect that the talent of Max Ernst lies in this direction too, but he and his admirers would see this as a relegated position: they would point to the Dada participation and the wild literary themes. This latter side of Ernst has never quite convinced me: the carboniferous forests, shadowless deserts and flowers bloom- ing in the sky seem much nearer the mark. The two paintings in this gathering contain the extreme polarities of Ernst's vision : one shows a typical wind-swept, baroque group of figures, predatory and nightmarish, the other is one of those serene but equally unrelaxed vistas, of sky and some kind of floral occurrence or event, swirling away in the blue void. The first painting seems rhetorical and forced by comparison with the second.
As a kind of built-in centre-piece to the show there is a group of sculptures by Moore, the most intriguing being a big bronze sphere placed on the floor with a small, bony, knuckly, hori- zontal bar placed tidily on top, like a pudding with a sprig of holly. The sculpture seems to have religious connotations, perhaps fortuitously, but does not compare with Pichd's earlier Sunset and Deposition big red bell with small flame shapes on top. But Moore is always up to something; we'd better wait and see.
BRYAN ROBERTSON
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