ART
The British Artists' Congress
THE most important events of the year from the point of view of English art are the Congress of British Artists, which has just taken place, and the exhibition of English painting which has been brought together in connexion with it at 41, Grosvenor Square. The congress is significant because it shows that at last artists in this country are realising that the old methods of organisation which controlled the arts are no longer adequate to present conditions. The days of academies are over, and some other mechanism must be found if artists are to make the best bargain with society.
The academy arose as the form by which artists at the time of the Renaissance obtained recognition of the fact that they were intellectuals and individuals, and not mere craftsmen as they had been considered in the Middle Ages. At first this form, which expressed the new competitive spirit of capitalist society, was suitable to actual conditions, and it remained so as long as there were enough patrons for the system to work. But by the twentieth century the artist found that, in addition to being regarded as an intellectual, he had grown to be thought of as an intellectual freak, and so had lost all direct touch with society, which gradually withdrew its patronage from any artists who showed a determination to follow their own ideas.
It then became apparent for the first time that the artist, in freeing himself from the restrictions of the old guild system, had also thrown away the only weapon that he possessed for bargaining with the public. In the last 5o years he has been in the position of an individual, usually with little skill in practical matters, facing a public over which he has no control, but on the good will of which he is dependent for his livelihood. In consequence artists are now aware that, though they once spent their energy in proving that they were better than the ordinary worker, it is now their only hope to show that they are essentially workers and to build up an organisation on the lines of the ordinary trade unions. This is what the upshot of the Congress has been. In order to escape from the situation in which the lack of direct patrons and the tyranny of the dealers has placed them, they are at last prepared to get together and form an efficient organisation which has a purely practical aim, to try to obtain greater security for the artist and to persuade the State to take some definite action in supporting the arts and in giving definite commissions for decorative work on a large scale. It still remains to be seen whether the organisation will be powerful enough to extract any concession from the Government, but one thing is certain, that without some such scheme nothing will ever be done. It must be added that the organising of the trade union has been begun in the right way, by the election of a committee on which all points of view will be represented.
The exhibition which is running in connexion with the Congress is also a good omen, because it shows that artists of all kinds are now prepared to co-operate on matters of this kind which affect them all. It has probably never been possible to see a collection so representative of English painting.
There are the abstract painters, the superrealists, Bloomsbury, poster artists, a group of painters from workers' schools and many more or less realistic artists—everyone, in fact, except the right wing of the Academy. Further, these artists have organised themselves in groups, so that it is possible to see all the abstract or all the superrealists in a single room, which gives a certain coherence to the whole exhibition, and shows that the various groups are entities aesthetically but can be brought together for the purposes of the Congress.
Numerically the largest groups are the abstract painters and the superrealists, both of which fill an impressive room.
But scattered among the other exhibits are the elements of what is beginning to be called the New Realism, that is to say the work of those artists who wish to express with the maximum clarity their progressive view of life. Perhaps the best specimen of the style is to be found in the work of Margaret Fitton and Robert Medley among the painters, and in that of Peri in sculpture, but there are others like Nan Youngman, Busby and Brian Robb who seem to have the same aims. Let us only hope that artists such as these will get together and organise themselves as efficiently as the abstract painters or the superrealists, so that at the next exhibition of this kind they may be able to appear as a definite group with a clear pro-
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