Art
Artist's eye
John McEwen
The fascination even of other people's personal anthologies, lists and miscellanea normally arises from our own selfobsession. If we cannot parade our own tastes then the comparison offered by someone else doing it is the next best thing. Hence the evergreen success of Desert Island Discs and, in the world of picture exhibitions, the growing reputation of the annual 'Artist's Eye' show at the National Gallery (till 19 August).
The idea of inviting a well-known British artist to make a mini-exhibition of his favourite works in the collection began with a rather unresolved selection by Anthony Caro three years ago, assumed more shape and personality in 1978 under the direction of Richard Hamilton and now comes of age with a choice by Howard Hodgkin. This latest news, of course, should be no surprise. Hodgkin, as a trustee of the Gallery, a scholarly collestor ; arid a painter of extra.4gafil .etle&ioism, is almost perfectly equipped for the task. His first improvement is in presentation.
The idea of a specially created room has been embellished by the introduction of a vestibule and made more domestic by a further lowering of the ceiling, walls lined With royal-blue felt and the addition of potted plants. The format for the catalogue — small and fully illustrated with relevant extracts from the official guide juxtaposed with brief observations in bold by the artist — is finally solved, Overall the show now has a structure that will surely guarantee its permanence as a prestigious annual event.
As for Hodgkin's selection, it is catholic in taste and intention but admirably coher ent nonetheless. Personal preference is Ted Whitehead tempered by the demands of ideal presenta tion. His own style, in the form of two recent pictures, can be traced most easily to a Vuillard and a superb Mughal gouache, specially admitted from a private collection because of his particular interest in and debt to this school of Indian painting. But derivations of the more theatrical side of his painting are perhaps less consciously indicated by a taste for pictures in which the viewer is encouraged to feel privy to the event he sees, through the artist's cunning deployment of the foreground of the composition to embrace an onlooker's physical point of view.
The reassembly of the three fragments of Manet's 'Execution or the Emperor Maximilian', previously hung individually, now gathered to make compsoitional sense within a single frame, is the highlight of the show — but it is almost matched by the promotion from the basement of Velasquez's poorly conserved but extraordinary 'Philip IV hunting Wild Boar'; the restoration of Tiepolo's 'Allegory with Venus and Time' to its correct overhead position; and Renoir's enunciatory dancers no less correctly placed as caryatids to the entrance.
The only disappointMent is the slightness of Hodgkin's catalogue comments. Their brevity is admirable but they are not communicative enough. 'Presumably the boy is a portrait as he's so ugly' is good ot the Tiepolo, and so are the explanations of his own pictures, but to say of the Vuillard that it is 'clearly painted from a photograph' requires elaboration and an early 15thcentury predella panel of a female saint on the verge of being beheaded passes without mention.
Someone too should have carrecied him for citing Auden, not Spender, as continually thinking of those who were truly great. Such imperfections, and the Department of the Environment's failure to light Delacroix's 'Baron Schwiter' to advantage, deprive the exhibition of a fullscore out of ten, but it is still worth an easy nine.
Corot and Courbet enthusiasts are well served by a microcosmic exhibition of their heroes' oeuvres in the form of 22 paintings mostly from the holdings of the Artemis Group at David Carritt (till 13 July). The most acclaimed pictures on view by both artists are large figure studies, but the landscapes are the real quality of the show, particularly two or three stunners by Courbet. In analysing successive aspects of the same plein air subject Courbet anticipated Monet by 30 years. One of the best of his Trouville seascapes is here and a superb example from the series devoted to the gorge of the Puits Noir.
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