Dangerous at the time

Richard Dorment

ABOUT MODERN ART: CRITICAL ESSAYS, 1948-96 by David Sylvester

Chatto, f25, pp. 448

About modern art? I suppose you can call Brancusi, Lkger, Matisse and Picasso modem, but only in the sense that they lived and worked in this century. Other- wise, they are as much old masters as Constable, Monet, Ckzanne and Sickert all of whom David Sylvester includes in this collection of his essays and reviews. If modem art simply means contemporary art, then the only artists who just about fit that description in these pages are Richard Long, Richard Serra, and Gilbert and George — figures who emerged in the 1960s, and who long ago achieved international recognition.

But if by modem Sylvester means avant- garde, then the choice of word is character- istically deliberate and absolutely appropriate. It usually takes anywhere from a decade to a generation for art that belongs to its own time to reach beyond a small circle of artists, dealers and collec- tors. And once it has been accepted by a wider public, it is often hard to remember what the fuss was about all those years ago.

But to write about modern art at the time it is being made means taking risks. There was nothing safe about the work Sylvester was reviewing in the 1950s. It took conviction and, I imagine, a certain amount of courage to write with such insight about Giacometti and Bacon at a time when a large number of educated people still considered Picasso a charlatan. And unlike other critics who have become associated with a particular school or moment in the history of art, Sylvester con- tinues to look at new art with an open mind and an eye not locked into one way of see- ing. He was one of the first people in Britain to write about Johns, Lichtenstein and Oldenburg, and in two of the best pieces in this book he praises recent exhibi- tions by Richard Serra and Gilbert and George.

As soon as a new visual language has been accepted and assimilated, the need for criticism doesn't diminish, but the critic begins to function less as an advocate for new art and much more like an art histori- an. If he never forgets that young artists are in a kind of dialogue with the art of the past, neither does he forget how threaten- ing the old masters once looked to their contemporaries.

At the same time, Sylvester's prose has a sensuous, almost physical dimension to it. He always conveys to the reader the sensa- tion of what it is like to stand in front of a work of art, as in his wonderful description of approaching azanne's 'Grand Bathers', a vast canvas which from a distance looks calm, but as we move towards it changes completely, until the forces thrusting in dif- ferent directions 'act on us so that we almost feel we're being torn apart by a pack of dogs'.

He does something similar in his analysis of Serra's'Weight and'Measure', two solid steel blocks, each weighing several tons, which Serra installed in the central spine of It's from my dental hygienist for "exceptional flossing between appointments".' the Tate Gallery several years ago. Charac- teristically, before asking how the blocks relate to each other, to the space around them, and to himself, Sylvester steps up close to examine the physical surface of each block, concluding that the marks and irregularities have an effect analogous to that of Mondrian's brush- marks, which break up surfaces that would otherwise have been immaculate and pre- dictable, giving them relief and animation.

Nothing a critic writes about modem art has the slightest value unless time proves his judgment to have been correct. To put it bluntly, Sylvester has been right so often that when he writes about a new artist you pay attention. Compare his assessment of Jasper Johns in 1963 ('the most original, intelligent and interesting artist under 40 now working anywhere') to John Berger's assurance in the same year that the men to watch were Nicholas de Steel and Friso ten Holt.

In the biographical essay which serves as a prelude to the book, Sylvester laments not getting the one job he has ever coveted — art critic on the then influential Times. How fortunate for us that he didn't. As a freelance critic he has been able to pursue parallel careers as a fihn critic, an exhibi- tion organiser, and above all as an art historian, who spent decades compiling a magisterial catalogue raisonnee of the work of Rene Magritte.

I think this is crucial to understanding why the essays in this book rise above the category of journalism, and why in 1993 he became the first art critic to receive the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale, When selecting an exhibition or compiling a cata- logue raisonnee, you have to look at pic- tures slowly, one by one. You are constantly discriminating between a work which is inspired, another which is only so- so, and a third which is an outright fake. And this process of making concrete aes- thetic judgments, together with the experi- ence of lighting and hanging a show, keeps the eye from sliding over paintings too fast, which in turn stops the critic from making meretricious generalisations about artists who, after all, have good and bad days like everybody else. Sylvester's role as a con- noisseur infuses everything he writes with clarity and deliberation.

Three Sylvesterisms: Sickert, for all his French training, painted as Legros accused all English artists of painting, by making a drawing and filling it in.

Of all great artists Cezanne alone had the ability to recreate the density people seem to have as we look at them. Rembrandt tends to make them too heavy, Velasquez tends to make them too light.

And I love this aside about a painting by Constable which has a reputation for being badly drawn — and

probably is, if one is looking at pictures as if they were dogs at Crufts.