ZHnbMJXY

1The 
2
3Demon of Progress 
4in the Arts 
5
6
7
8By the same Author 
9
10★ 
11
12TARR 
13
14ROTTING HILL 
15THE REVENGE FOR LOVE 
16THE WRITER AND THE ABSOLUTE 
17SELF CONDEMNED 
18
19
20
21The 
22
23Demon of Progress 
24in the A rts 
25
26by 
27
28WYNDHAM LEWIS 
29
30
31
32METHUEN & CO. LTD LONDON 
3386 Essex Street , Strand, WC 2 
34
35
36
37
38First published in 1954 
39
40
41U 
42
43CATALOGUE NO. 5710/u 
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45
46PRINTED AND BOUND IN OREAT BRITAIN BY 
47BUTLER AND TANNER LTD., FROME AND LONDON 
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49
50
51CONTENTS 
52
53
54PAGE 
55
56
57INTRODUCTION 1 
58
59PART I — HOW THE ARTS DIFFER IN THEIR EXTREMISM 11 
60
61I Music less Extreme than Fine Arts 13 
62
63Ilf A ^rake on Musical Extremism 16 
64
65III What it Costs to have Music 18 
66
67IV The Irresponsible Freedom of the Visual Artist 20 
68
69V The Cause of the Heterogeneity in the Fine Arts 
70
71in Our Time 21 
72
73VI Amateur Artists 26 
74
75VII Those who are Accessible to an Extremist 
76
77Glamour 28 
78
79VIII There is a Limit, beyond which there is Nothing 30 
80
81IX The Ability to See the Limit 34 
82
83X ‘The Unknown Political Prisoner’ and After 36 
84
85XI The ‘Progressive’ Slave 40 
86
87PART II — THE PAINTING ANIMAL AND THE PUNDIT 41 
88
89XII The Painting Animal 43 
90
91XIII The Pundit-Prophet 47 
92
93XIV When the Painter is least Free 51 
94
95XV The English Way 53 
96
97XVI The, American Way 55 
98
99v 
100
101
102
103vi The Demon of Progress in the Arts 
104
105PAGE 
106
107PART III — THE PART OP VANITY 59 
108
109XVII Flattery of the Artist 61 
110
111XVIII Today the Contemporary = the Extreme 63 
112
113XIX The Glamour of the Extreme 68 
114
115PART IV — ERRORS OP MALRAUX 71 
116
117XX ‘A Compact Exclusive Clan’ 73 
118
119XXI The Coming of non- Humanistic Art 76 
120
121XXII Superficiality of Cultures 82 
122
123XXIII The Diabolical Principle 86 
124
125PART V CONCLUSION 89 
126
127POSTSCRIPT 93 
128
129PLATES 
130
131Between pages 50 and 51 
132Bombelli 
133Engel-Pak 
134
135Between pages 58 and 59 
136Michael Ayrton 
137Francis Bacon 
138Robert Colquhoun 
139John Minton 
140
141
142
143INTRODUCTION 
144
145
146
147
148Introduction 
149
150I 
151
152
153E XTREMISM is not easy to define or to describe. It is a 
154disease like foot and mouth disease, which disastrously 
155visits, not cattle, but artists. It is a disease which appeared, 
156for the first time, among European artists, not more than fifty 
157years ago. The kinds of artist among which the symptoms were 
158most easily identified were the painter and the sculptor. It is 
159not, however, a virus to which the visual artist, and no other, 
160is susceptible. It was an accident that it was among them that 
161it first manifested itself. The first case to be reported in these 
162islands was mine, around 1913. You may imagine the sensation 
163created — it was like the first Colorado beetle to be spotted in 
164our rich brown fields, clinically free of odious sub-tropical pests. 
165
166Fortunately, with me the disease did not have time to 
167mature. Another scourge, namely war, intervened. While, in 
168one way and another, suffering from this martial pestilence I 
169began to think a little. I recognized that, prior to the war, I 
170had been visited by a complaint of a most unusual kind. I saw 
171that it was irrational to attempt to transmute the art of paint- 
172ing into music — to substitute for the most naturally concrete 
173of the arts the most inevitably abstract. So of course I re- 
174covered my reason. This did not mean that I abandoned a 
175twentieth-century way of seeing. I escaped — that was all — 
176from reaching a point, very soon, where I should have ceased 
177to be a visual artist at all. For what I was headed for, obviously, 
178was to fly away from the world of men, of pigs, of chickens 
179and alligators, and to go to live in the unwatered moon, only 
180a moon sawed up into square blocks, in the most alarming 
181way. What an escape I had! 
182
183But to take up the question of this disease again: its identifi- 
184cation is not always by any means easy, which is one of the 
185
1863 
187
188
189
1904 
191
192
193Introduction 
194
195
196most dangerous things about it. It is difficult not to mistake it 
197for something else. It has nothing whatever to do with art, but 
198it resembles so closely one of the most common conditions 
199experienced by artists. 
200
201There are, indeed, several intellectual excesses in no way 
202pathologic — strainings towards the untried, which must have 
203existed in paleolithic times as much as in our own. For extrem- 
204ism , this deadly disease about which I am writing, very closely 
205resembles, at first sight, and to the untutored eye, that healthy 
206originality by which an artist is properly exhilarated when he 
207notices it — that sort of deep and honourable difference which 
208marks out a Franz Hals, a Magnasco, a Goya, among all his 
209fellows — which is a hallmark as real as a birthmark; and which 
210is the only advantage over others which is worth having. 
211
212I hope you will believe me when I say that I am quite sure 
213that the English school making its appearance during World 
214War Two, and just after, is actually the finest group of painters 
215and sculptors which England has ever known. I do not refer to 
216achievement; I refer to the existence of so many people who 
217understand painting, and who have revealed a high order of 
218attainment. The Pre-Raphaelites (the only other comparable 
219collection of artists) were parochial by comparison; this group 
220is European. 
221
222Let me name a few: Ayrton, Bacon, Colquhoun, Craxton, 
223Minton, Moore, Passmore, Richards, Sutherland, Trevelyan . 1 
224Except Henry Moore the sculptor, and Graham Sutherland 
225(though older, an integral part of this school), all of these are 
226still young enough for me to be able to say perhaps the maxi- 
227mum effort has not been put forth: so let me only speak of the 
228quality of which there has been unmistakable evidence in all of 
229these painters. A combination of the MusSe Sans Murs and of 
230the Golden Arrow, which so quickly wafts one to Paris, has 
231made all these artists as good as Paris-trained. This may 
232
2331 There are others, but I select those with whose work I am very 
234familiar because of my 4 Round the Galleries* articles in The Listener, 
235
236
237
238Introduction 
239
240
2415 
242
243
244account for a quality which is as mature and well-equipped 
245as if this were a band of Bretons rather than merely Britons. 
246In looking back upon my weekly tour of the shows at the time 
247of my Listener articles, hundreds of canvases are crowded to- 
248gether in my memory, from each of which I received authentic 
249delight, which only a work of the first order is capable of pro- 
250ducing. I remember with what enchantment I came upon a 
251group of paintings by Trevelyan at the Galleries of Gimpel Fils, 
252for I was not very familiar with his work; Ceri Richards’ 
253pianoforte pieces; Craxton’s tank for bathing at the foot of a 
254steep hotel; Ayrton’s superb portrait of William Walton com- 
255posing, the striations of the figure rhythmically associated with 
256the vertically striated cliff — a portrait which should find its 
257place in the National Portrait Gallery; a Colquhoun portrait, of 
258a splendid density, in the hall of the late D. Macdonald’s flat, 
259which is still vividly present to me; the water-colour vegetation 
260of the grandest quality, a small thing by Minton; Passmore 
261(now in great danger), a snow-lighted Thames expanse, a glit- 
262tering vibration, an invention of the first order; the bitter 
263verdure of the gallows-tree, in preparation for a Crucifixion, by 
264Sutherland. 
265
266Now, for the average gallery- goer, each and all of these 
267painters is an extremist — an authentic extremist. In a sense, 
268of course, they are; but not in any way the kind of extremist 
269I am talking about in this book. None of them is touched, even, 
270by that contagion that hurries an artist to zero and to the 
271death of talent. And here is where the gallery-gazer has to 
272sharpen his wits and see the gulf that lies between painters of 
273this sort, and those who are passing over into the rocky path 
274upon the edge of the abyss — that ultimate advance-of-all- 
275advances, where there is no more advance because there is 
276nothing . 
277
278When I consider this gifted mass, not one but a dozen 
279superb image-makers, capable of almost anything, I shudder 
280at the thought of that withering disease which might at any 
281
282
283
2846 Introduction 
285
286moment attack them (the pictures of one are already turning 
287to wood, but he is a man of heroic mould, and I believe that 
288he will, one day, set fire to his carpentry). But an apocalypse 
289takes shape in my anxious mind. I see with horror Francis 
290Bacon’s elephants being stricken with extremism, grown ashen 
291and transparent, their trunks drooping, and falling in a heap 
292of white ashes at the foot of their canvas, livid and vast and 
293blank. That is not all. Mildly monumental, grandly sculpted, 
294I perceive, aghast, some work of Moore’s, as beautifully de- 
295fined as a thundercloud, suddenly dissolving into an absurd 
296abstraction, until at last there is nothing left of it but a 
297phantom sausage, convulsed and withering into a white head- 
298less worm, a beginning of nothing. Everywhere the beginnings 
299of nothing. I see the noble form of a Pompeii of Minton’s silted 
300up with the volcanic void, the concrete nothingness that comes 
301from the fires beneath the crust. How terrifyingly destructive! 
302— I could behold with more equanimity an apocalypse of hops, 
303a blank desuetude ensuing from the consumption of that 
304British national drink closely resembling urine. I could be an 
305unmoved witness perhaps, of this generation, blossoming in 
306many images, dissolving in a dull orgy of British beer. Perhaps 
307I could stolidly observe this brood of brilliant painters stricken 
308with a black vomiting which I recognized as the plague. I have 
309experienced so much that is exceptionally tragic that, were 
310they all gathered in the Festival Hall, by some mischance, to 
311listen to a new symphony by Mr. Britten, and should the hall 
312be struck, and set on fire by a meteorite, and should they all 
313perish in the flames, I should be horrified, but I should see 
314that God did not mean England to have painters, and I would 
315accept this, perhaps, as another example of those actions of 
316the divinity which we find it impossible to comprehend. 
317
318But there is something which would affect me quite differ- 
319ently. I should be terribly moved if I had to be present at the 
320spectacle of the graven and painted riches of the work of their 
321hands blotted out; all their subtly imagined forms engulfed in 
322a pretentious intellectualist abstraction. There is something 
323
324
325
326Introduction 7 
327
328peculiarly diabolic about all the concentration of selective 
329energy, all the beauty of the mind embalmed in some great 
330carving, deformed in the name of art, ‘abstracted’ into nothing 
331to satisfy some collective vanity. 
332
333II 
334
335A last preliminary elucidation concerning this mad bug 
336which has entered into the body of the arts. The first and the 
337last thing to say to make my meaning clear is that the ex- 
338tremism in question has nothing whatever to do with progress 
339— with advance. In this essay I have made use of the word 
340extremism because that is how it would be described by most 
341people. It may help a little if I provide the reader with a 
342parallel taken from another department of life, one of purely 
343mechanical creation. Suppose the best-known firm of aeroplane 
344manufacturers began advertising the first model of a wonder- 
345plane, one which would far excel any it had so far produced. 
346After months of boosting and plugging, at last this hush-hush 
347wonder-plane comes on the market. Everywhere it comes to the 
348test: test pilots everywhere are testing it out — and all die — 
349within five minutes of taking off. And naturally the most 
350infernal uproar ensues. 
351
352This wonder-plane is now subjected to an examination of 
353the most elaborate kind, and it is not long before a report is 
354issued, sensational in the extreme. It has been established that, 
355in the heart of the mechanism, there is a fault, almost im- 
356possible to detect, which absolutely guarantees that the plane 
357will rise easily into the air, and then, once it is there, will, in 
358the same moment, turn over and plunge earthwards, into a 
359crash in which both machine and man are utterly consumed. 
360
361The ingenuity of this death-trap amazes all the experts. The 
362newspapers, we can easily imagine, print no other news until 
363the explanation of this ghastly event is forthcoming. 
364
365Only one solution can be found; that alone is sufficiently 
366awful to correspond with the awful facts. Not only the designer 
367
368
369
3708 
371
372
373Introduction 
374
375
376of the plane, but the managing- director of the aeroplane works, 
377and every expert in this great establishment, is obviously 
378criminally insane. 
379
380Imagine what the newspapers look like at this point! All the 
381psychiatrists in the country are asked to provide an explan- 
382ation of how this mass lunacy (as, in banner headlines, the 
383press describes it) could have occurred. The most brilliant and 
384resourceful of the massed mad- doctors, while admitting that 
385no case of collective homicidal lunacy of quite this order has 
386ever been recorded, comes forward with a theory. He would 
387say, ‘What, to start with, does this fearful crime oblige me to 
388agree as the only possible motive?’ The learned doctor can see 
389nothing for it but that an intense , an insane hatred of flying was 
390at the bottom of this diabolical action, involving the certainty 
391of at least a dozen men being gripped by this phobia, and 
392revealing to one another how they loathed their occupation; 
393how they detested the air, and everything to do with it. That 
394they conspired together to abolish flying, once and for all, is 
395quite evident. Finally, there is universal speculation as to 
396whether flying will be responsible, in future, for other examples 
397of this contagious mania. Should I add that the twelve con- 
398victed engineers and contractors will be confined, en masse, in 
399Broadmoor. 
400
401Now painting, alas, may be productive of manias just as 
402rabid as one can imagine flight might lead to (or, if you wish 
403for a more obvious possible incentive for dementia, the manu- 
404facture of the atomic bomb). The question of human life is not 
405involved. Even if it could be proved that many people were 
406possessed of a consuming hatred of art in general, and of oil- 
407paintings and of sculpture of figures in stone and wood in 
408particular, no conviction would ensue. There is nothing in 
409criminal law, I believe, to send a man to the gallows for plotting 
410the wholesale destruction of works of art; or, more compendi- 
411ously, planning the abolition of all culture, and all man’s 
412historic &rts. 
413
414If, in the windows of the art dealers, all that were to be seen 
415
416
417
418Introduction 
419
420
4219 
422
423
424were a few white empty canvases (and it may not be long before 
425that is precisely what we shall see), and if, in answer to the 
426enquiries of the newspapers’ representatives, the dealer were 
427curtly to reply that “this is the latest kind of ‘movement’,” 
428all this should evoke no surprise. I am explaining to you in 
429these pages what is occurring, and why. 
430
431Ill 
432
433Finally, let me give you an illustration of how painting is 
434productive of aberration, even in a powerful mind. Let me 
435quote a little from a well-known passage in Ruskin’s Stones of 
436Venice , in which, in the most violent manner, he is denouncing 
437all the painting from and including the Italian Renaissance. 
438
439Instant degradation followed in every direction — a flood of folly 
440and hypocrisy. Mythologies, ill-understood at first, then perverted 
441into feeble sensualities, take the place of the representation of Chris- 
442tian subjects, which had become blasphemous under the treatment 
443of men like the Caracci. Gods without power, satyrs without rus- 
444ticity, nymphs without innocence, men without humanity, gather 
445into idiot groups upon the polluted canvas, and scenic affectations 
446encumber the streets with preposterous marble. Lower and lower 
447declines the level of abused intellect; the base school of landscape 
448gradually usurps the place of the historical painting, which had sunk 
449into prurient pedantry, — the Alsatian sublimities of Salvator, the 
450confectionery idealities of Claude, the dull manufacture of Gaspar 
451and Canaletto, south of the Alps, and in the north the patient devo- 
452tion of besotted lives to delineation of bricks and fogs, cattle and 
453ditchwater . 1 
454
455This unrestrained onslaught of Ruskin’s, ending in the 
456magnificent ‘cattle and ditchwater’, is an excellent example 
457of the extent to which painting may produce in a man a bitter 
458hatred of entire schools, and the art of a number of countries. 
459Now, believe it or not, all representation — all pictures, not 
460only of cattle and ditches, but of every visual scene or image, 
461
4621 Stones of Venice , Vol. I, p. 38. 
463
464
465
46610 Introduction 
467
468end by enraging some men, until they denounce every picture 
469and every statue in the world. It is not only Plato who is 
470moved to hatred by imitation in the arts. On the contrary, such 
471an objection to all imitation of nature, to all those arts which 
472conjure up a scene, or make a person stand before you, either 
473in paint or stone, is lunatic, I think, but as common as 
474homicide. 
475
476Is this extremism about which I have been speaking the 
477result of an aberration such as I have described above? Is it 
478a case in which only zero is tolerated — in which nothing is 
479preferred to something? It would, I am afraid, be flattering all 
480the pundits and painters engaged in those enterprises if we 
481explained what they did in that way. It is where there is no 
482excuse of this kind, but only vanity and silliness, that one is 
483moved to curse these impostors for the death of art which 
484they are attempting to achieve. 
485
486
487
488Part I 
489
490HOW THE ARTS DIFFER IN THEIR 
491EXTREMISM 
492
493
494D.P.A. — 2 
495
496
497
498
499I 
500
501
502Music less Extreme than Fine Arts 
503
504M USIC in England is not so dominated by the snobisme of 
505what is ‘advanced’ as are the visual arts. There is no 
506‘advanced’ musician, dodecaphonic or otherwise, who has 
507attained to anything like the pre-eminence among musicians 
508that Picasso occupies among artists. The visual arts are a form 
509of expression more remote from the popular than is music or 
510indeed any other art; and so the visual arts have been able to 
511proceed with ‘advances’ of an extreme and spectacular kind in 
512a way that music could not, even if it wanted to. 
513
514At the present moment the most generally acceptable 
515musician in England, is, I suppose, Benjamin Britten. Ben- 
516jamin Britten compares himself with Purcell and with Mozart; 
517although these two great masters of music would no doubt be 
518vastly surprised, in listening to Billy Budd , to learn that its 
519author considered himself closely akin to them, nevertheless 
520there is the will to be classic . He is not a man claiming to have 
521far surpassed and outdistanced the great classics, and to have 
522attained to distant regions of expression in a different dimen- 
523sion altogether from that of the old masters, as do contem- 
524porary artists. No, no one (either other musicians or the public) 
525expects that of him. They are satisfied that he should be as 
526good as Purcell or as Mozart. Whereas painters and sculptors 
527are whisked away into an arcanum by a host of pundits, a wild 
528competition of ‘advancedness’ takes them entirely out of sight 
529of the public. Their position is a far less natural, and, I believe, 
530a less healthy one than is that of the musician. 
531
532If it were on the basis of competitive and snobbish ‘ad- 
533vancedness’ that we were to look for the most contemporary 
534musician in England, I suppose we would take Mdtyas Seiber. 
535
53613 
537
538
539
54014 How the Arts differ in their Extremism 
541
542But he is largely unknown to any but musicians. If contempor- 
543ary, in matters of music, signified the kind of ‘advancedness’ 
544which is accepted as a criterion of value in the visual arts, then 
545one would have to place William Walton higher than Benjamin 
546Britten, simply because Walton’s compositions had been nearer 
547than are Britten’s to the dodecaphonic school of Germany. 
548Upon a line of advance of that kind, if it were accepted as an 
549ascent, Hindemith (Walton’s particular inspiration), although 
550miles behind Alban Berg, is higher up than Purcell or Mozart 
551(those poor old classicists at the bottom of the scale) — and 
552therefore more acceptable as a ‘contemporary’. Upon this ver- 
553tical scale of valuation Benjamin Britten could reach no higher 
554— be no more contemporary — than a follower of Richard 
555Wagner, say Erich Korngold. 
556
557Let me say that, when I say popular, I mean snobbishly 
558accepted ; for, in all the arts, what we term popular signifies a 
559selective audience, removed from and very much smaller than 
560the general public. 
561
562Confining ourselves to the English cultural scene, we have 
563an extremely vivid illustration of the phenomenon I have been 
564discussing in the small-time promoter and pundit, Mr. Edward 
565Clark, and what was, until recently, the London Contemporary 
566Music Centre, of which he was chairman. Clark, who for five 
567years studied in Germany under Schoenberg, was probably the 
568main and sole adherent of extremism in music in this country. 
569If he could have his way composers of the type of Alban Berg 
570would have the same standing as such artists as Henry Moore 
571have in the visual field. As long ago as the ’twenties, Mr. 
572Edward Clark organized a series of chamber concerts in the 
573Aeolian Hall at which Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire and Stra- 
574vinsky’s Histoire du Soldat were performed. He is the most con- 
575sistent and persistent would-be mobilizer of musical extremism 
576in England. Had the musical world in England been as much in 
577agreement with him as the art-world had been in agreement 
578with Sir Herbert Read, Mr. Edward Clark would have been Sir 
579Edward Clark, he would have had at his disposal considerable 
580
581
582
583Music less Extreme than Fine Arts 
584
585
58615 
587
588
589sums of money, he would have been the president of an insti- 
590tute, predominantly musical. As it is, what do we see? The 
591London Contemporary Music Centre and its chairman have 
592disappeared, or rather have been swallowed bodily by the 
593Institute of Contemporary Arts, the president of which is Sir 
594Herbert Read (knighted last year). This is a glaring confirm- 
595ation of what I have been expounding above, regarding the 
596respective positions of musical extremism and of extremism in 
597the fine arts in Great Britain. 
598
599To summarize: to be musically 4 contemporary’ in England 
600is to be something like Benjamin Britten; unless you wish to 
601ignore entirely the majority trend. And what the pre-eminence 
602in music of Benjamin Britten — backward-looking, classicist in 
603intention — signifies, can perhaps be best seen by considering 
604what the visual arts would look like, who would be the domin- 
605ant figure, if the conditions there were the same as in music. 
606In that case Augustus John (backward-looking and in intention 
607classicist or at least traditional), or some artist of that kind, 
608and with as much power, would be cock of the walk, as John 
609was forty years ago. It would be an incredibly different scene 
610from that presented by the London art world today, which has 
611just caught up with continental extremism. 
612
613
614
615II 
616
617
618A Brake on Musical Extremism 
619
620T HE great disparity between music and the fine arts, in the 
621matter of advancedness, is a circumstance which, person- 
622ally, I have not seen discussed, though I am sure it must be 
623something that musical extremists like Mr. Edward Clark are 
624well aware of, and must be very sore about. As to an analysis of 
625the reasons for this disparity, I know of none, and yet it is 
626of very great interest to anyone investigating the history of 
627extremism in the various arts. 
628
629To undertake a complete analysis of this would be a big job. 
630In the first place, any expressive sound, like music, has a great 
631deal of psychological affinity with the human voice. The 
632painted image, sculpted wood or stone is quite a different 
633matter; it has no direct emotional appeal. Everything that 
634follows and is connected with this central fact would have to 
635be examined first. 
636
637Economics provides a very substantial asset towards the 
638solution of this problem. It may weigh more heavily against 
639extremism than anything else, that there is a vast army of 
640instrumentalists, which we may call the rank-and-file army of 
641instrumental music. The interests of this horde of instrument- 
642alists are protected by a powerful trade union. These instru- 
643mentalists are essential to many theatres, to great numbers of 
644hotels, to dance halls, to performances of all sorts, to opera, to 
645ballet, broadcasting, etc. Now the rank and file of all these 
646orchestras, large and small, favour what is normal and popular 
647in music. Their bread and butter depends upon music which is 
648normal and popular. Their livelihood would be menaced if 
649most musical composers indulged in types of composition 
650calculated to drive away the public. 
651
65216 
653
654
655
656A Brake on Musical Extremism 
657
658
65917 
660
661
662Imagine the habitues of the Proms being assailed during 
663every concert by dodecaphonic numbers. Or think of lunchers 
664and diners having to listen to the compositions of Schoenberg 
665or of Berg or something even more cacophanous, more wounding 
666to the ear. They would protest to the management that if such 
667displeasing sounds continued to be made by the hotel orchestra, 
668they would go for their meals somewhere else. This would be 
669the reaction in every case where dodecaphonic austerities were 
670substituted for music: very soon all the orchestral players 
671would be on the streets, earning their living by regaling the 
672passers-by with delightful tunes. 
673
674Here we have, I feel quite sure, one compelling reason for 
675the normality — the lack of extremism — in contemporary music. 
676Musical composers are restrained from giving rein, for what- 
677ever reason, to their harsher impulses. That enormous army of 
678hungry instrumentalists is a very big factor in holding music 
679back from ‘advances’ of the type of Reg Butler. 
680
681How much more expensive an art is music than painting or 
682sculpture is proved by the budget of the Arts Council, the 
683details of which are set down in its annual report. In the 
684departments into which the Arts Council is divided, the annual 
685expenditure of the department of music far exceeds that of all 
686other departments. The subsidy set aside for financing the 
687ballet and the opera is four or five times as much as the 
688quite modest sum required for the upkeep of the visual arts 
689department. 
690
691
692
693Ill 
694
695
696What it Costs to have Music 
697
698T HERE is no parallel at all between what it costs the State 
699to fill the gap caused by the vanishing of private patronage 
700in the case of the fine arts, and in that of music. The reason for 
701the colossal expenditure involved in putting on a ballet, or 
702making an opera possible, is easy to understand, when you 
703consider the cost of the rent of the theatre, the weekly salaries 
704of a large orchestra, the even greater expenditure in the 
705combined salaries of a massive cast of performers, with the 
706necessary quota of stars, not to mention the choreographers, 
707producers, etc., the costumes, the scenery, the heating and 
708lighting, box office and theatre staff, advertising, etc. etc. No 
709such expense as this is involved in keeping a painter at his 
710easel, or providing a sculptor with a piece of wood, a lump of 
711clay, or a block of stone. There are not many of these artists 
712worth supporting, painters or sculptors. No state in its senses 
713would wish to support more than a couple of dozen of them. 
714The only material they use, that has any value at all, is marble. 
715There is no art so independent of money as the visual arts. 
716
717If we turn to another art, that of the cinema, we have at 
718once a kind of creation which is fabulously expensive, right 
719from the start. I refer, of course, to what is, for the cinemato- 
720graph, the same as paper or canvas for the painter — namely 
721celluloid. There is no more expensive basic material for an 
722expressive art in the world. I once listened to Mr. Grierson, 
723king of documentaries, expounding the economic problems 
724confronting any man who used the cinematograph camera. I 
725was amazed and horrified to learn what it cost to produce even 
726a short documentary film. 
727
728In contrast to this a great masterpiece of one of the visual 
729
73018 
731
732
733
734What it Costs to have Music 
735
736
73719 
738
739
740arts, an exquisite water-colour by J. W. Turner, or of Edward 
741Lear (better known as the nonsense rhymer), costs nothing to 
742make — a few shillings. Such facts as these are of the greatest 
743significance in understanding the line of development of the 
744fine arts in our day, in contrast with the other arts. The fact 
745that a painter can embark upon an easel-picture of considerable 
746size with an expense of only a few pounds — that the creation 
747of a major work of art presents no economic difficulty — gives 
748him an extraordinary freedom. It is not unreasonable to regard 
749this as a dangerous freedom, seeing the uses to which it has 
750been so often put in recent years. The restraints put on a 
751creator whose medium is the cinematograph are so great that 
752he may be said to have no freedom at all — which is a bad thing 
753too. He can only make a film if it is satisfactory in the view 
754of his public; which is of course why there are so few good 
755films, and equally why there are no extreme ones. 
756
757Both cinema and theatre, at the present time, in the Anglo- 
758Saxon countries, produce almost nothing but the most tire- 
759some and vulgar plays, in part on account of this terrifying 
760costliness of the material and of theatre rents. The theatre as 
761much as the cinema suffers. It is necessary to mention this, 
762but do not let us be confused by it. The opera and ballet, even 
763more than the theatre, would suffer from this most tremendous 
764handicap were it not for the subsidies which, at the present 
765time, both enjoy. 
766
767
768
769IV 
770
771
772The Irresponsible Freedom of the Visual Artist 
773
774A T first sight the beautiful freedom of the painter appears 
775to make his art potentially superior to any other. But in 
776practice it is not quite like that. The nineteenth-century 
777artist was lavishly paid for his work, ‘art’ being a valuable 
778commodity. The last fifty years, however, has seen a steady 
779decline in the value of a newly painted picture, and, since 
780World War Two and the ensuing impoverishment, and with 
781the coming of the welfare state, the virtual disappearance of 
782the picture-buying rich-man, the collector of new pictures, the 
783artist no longer has the temptation to grow rich. At the start 
784of his career, he knows that what he paints has, as it were, no 
785commercial value. There are various semi- charitable institu- 
786tions, and now there are institutes, from which he can derive 
787support if he pleases or impresses by his extremism. But there 
788is nothing to be gained by painting a pleasant, a recognizable 
789or comprehensible picture (unless he be so inferior an artist, 
790and so unimaginative a man that the Royal Academy is, in 
791fact, his natural home). 
792
793It would be thought, at first sight, that this was an ideal 
794situation for the artist (provided he could keep alive). As it 
795works out, however, it possesses a disadvantage of a very 
796serious kind. Not measureless freedom, but a new and insidious 
797compulsion is what results for the artist. This has been 
798described as a ‘new academy’. The public naturally find it 
799difficult to understand this paradox. I will endeavour in the 
800next few pages to provide the public with the information that 
801is necessary: then it should be possible for them to appreciate 
802how the artist may have imposed upon him an obligation to be 
803free — which is not freedom. 
804
805
80620 
807
808
809
810V 
811
812
813The Cause of the Heterogeneity in the 
814Fine Arts in Our Time 
815
816I F you go through the picture-galleries of Italy or of Germany 
817where old masters are hung, ranged according to period, 
818there is a great homogeneity in the paintings of each period, 
819so that you know at once when you are among the canvases of 
820such-and-such a school. This homogeneity of the works of 
821any time, or school, continues up to French Impressionism. 
822You then find yourself among painters so different as Manet 
823and Monet, as Degas and Whistler (nocturnes). Within a few 
824decades you reach Yan Gogh, John Sargent, and Gauguin. A 
825few decades more and you would be surrounded by Cubists, 
826Futurists, religious pictures by Rouault and Augustus John. 
827As you advanced from decade to decade the confusion, the 
828lack of homogeneity would grow. In England today (1954) 
829you would be among pure Impressionists like Coldstream, those 
830who prefer carpentry to paint, like Passmore, traditionalists 
831like Augustus John, Post-Impressionists like Trevelyan. We 
832have reached a point at which there is not much money to be 
833extracted from the painting of pictures, and artists pursue their 
834fancies: so you find side by side painters of all sorts of schools. 
835There is still a certain amount of mild excitement when a few 
836people are under the impression that they are des avant-gardes , 
837and still exhibit a little superiority about those who are not 
838so far ahead as themselves. The I.C.A. provides them with a 
839rallying ground. 
840
841Now, the proliferation of schools began with the bitter hos- 
842tilities between the classicists and the romantics at the begin- 
843ning of the nineteenth century. This was a war between the 
844new and the old. The battle between the new and the old has 
845
84621 
847
848
849
85022 How the Arts differ in their Extremism 
851
852continued up to the present moment. The only difference is 
853that for a long time almost any group is denounced as ‘old’ 
854at the end of about ten years of life. Since this group of noisy 
855denouncers is in its turn denounced in a decade, or half a 
856decade, or even twelve months — this has meant that very soon 
857there were dozens of schools and groups claiming to be le 
858dernier cri , the quintessence of revolution, so much the latest 
859thing that they are almost out of sight, as are some of the 
860dimmest of the Abstractists in post-war Paris. 
861
862This heterogeneity is not an explosion of rugged individual- 
863ism, but, on the contrary, quite the opposite. The personality 
864is surrendered to some small well- disciplined group: it is always 
865as groups that they advance to the attack upon the obsolete. If 
866the contemporary scene could be confined to any one of these 
867groups, it would seem a very homogeneous period. 
868
869What is the explanation of this universal disunion? In the 
870eighteenth and in the seventeenth centuries there was the 
871homogeneity of discipline, the like-thinking of a classical norm. 
872The turning-point was political; the age of political revolution 
873was followed by the era of perpetual revolution in the arts. 
874Halfway through the last century the revolutionary zest, the 
875turmoil of schools, the roaring of slogans and watch- words 
876began to assume a crazy intensity. But at present, halfway 
877through the twentieth century, revolution, of a visual kind, 
878appears to have become stabilized at a point which is as far 
879as it is possible to go technically, without disappearing alto- 
880gether — without the visual arts committing suicide. There are 
881several abstract schools on the continent which the slightest 
882push would tip over into the blankness of the great zero. It 
883is my belief that we are approaching the point where there 
884will be no visual arts at all, of a serious kind. On the one hand, 
885the ‘advanced’ gestures, the project-foolery, will become stabil- 
886ized; on the other hand, something like the Royal Academy 
887will survive (unless there happened to be an authentic social 
888revolution), trying to be a little vapidly go-ahead here and 
889there, but still remaining a market-place for portraits of people 
890
891
892
893Cause of the Heterogeneity in the Fine Arts 23 
894
895who regard an oil-painting as a symbol of the sitter having 
896arrived. Real whole-time painting, of the kind practised by the 
897old masters, will not even pretend to exist any longer. This is 
898not quite yet more than speculation. 
899
900All these pretentious little crusades, or gestures of revolu- 
901tion, certainly date from the period of the French Revolution 
902at the end of the eighteenth century; although receiving their 
903first impetus from a social revolution, the subsequent up- 
904heavals related purely to technical modifications. In the first 
905decades of the last century painting, to start with, merely mir- 
906rored the mighty battle of the new and the old; so there was a 
907grand cleavage into two schools of painting, the classicism of 
908Ingres standing confronted by the romanticism of Delacroix or 
909G6ricault. A new factor becomes apparent after that: namely 
910the invasion of the visual arts by the spirit of scientific dis- 
911covery — the French painters were seized by the desire to make 
912their imitation of nature more scientifically exact. They studied 
913the theory of colour and this eventually led to the following 
914system: (1) the colours were, as usual, squeezed out upon the 
915palette; (2) the colours were not mixed with one another, 
916neither on the palette nor on the canvas; small dabs of each 
917colour were transferred intact from palette to canvas; (3) the 
918theory was that the colours would mix in the eye of the 
919spectator — they must never be allowed to mix anywhere else, 
920but to preserve their original purity. The Pointillistes adhered 
921most rigidly to this rule, and were the culmination of these 
922experiments. A borrowing of a quite different kind from science, 
923in the present century, was jeeringly named Cubism. So, from 
924the middle of the last century, a pseudo-scientific impulse has 
925been apt to start some school; reflected from science, there has 
926been the impulse incessantly to perfect, constantly discarding 
927what has been bettered, like yesterday’s model in the motor- 
928car industry; and last, but not least, the fiery millennial zeal 
929of the social revolutionary emotionally galvanizing everything, 
930and instilling the painter with a quite irrational belief in the 
931rightness of his latest mannerism. 
932
933
934
93524 How the Arts differ in their Extremism 
936
937For the last hundred years the art-student has found himself 
938at the centre of a brawl between old and new, assailed by the 
939claims of schools or of leading artists to be ahead in the race, 
940or to possess some secret of technical up-to-dateness. When I 
941was an art-student in Paris in the first years of the century, it 
942was reported that leading artists, like Picasso, had passed into 
943a new ‘period’. Picasso had begun his career with a ‘blue period’, 
944for instance. No student would be in the swim who did not 
945develop, himself, a green period, say, or a saffron one. To 
946eliminate from the palette all but one colour appeared to these 
947people the most easily recognized way of having a ‘period’. I 
948can give you another illustration of what period means in the 
949life of the painter. Once a week, I think it was, a group of 
950painters formed the habit of meeting in the large first-floor 
951of ‘The Newcomes’ in Fitzroy Street, not long before World 
952War One. I remember, on one occasion, Walter Sickert dra- 
953matically announcing, in a rhyme which still rings in my ears: 
954
955Mr. Ginner’s 
956Painting thinner. 
957
958Mr. Sicker’s 
959Painting thicker. 
960
961This meant of course, that the painter, Charles Ginner, was 
962entering upon a ‘thin period’; whereas Walter Sickert was 
963going thick — was having a ‘thick period’. 
964
965The pictures of the more authentic masters of the past did 
966not suddenly develop curious rashes — you do not find Rem- 
967brandts or Titians of certain years all of a crude green or a 
968crude blue colour. But the mercurial masters of the budding 
969century had to give the student-mass a new sensation every 
970few years, or even, sometimes, if they felt they were losing 
971ground, every few months, by going red , or by going blue . Then 
972the students would follow suit and in the Salon des IndSpen - 
973dants the fashionable colour would appear everywhere. 
974
975Let me return, now, to the question of the heterogeneity of 
976the arts in the modern age. We have not one manner, as in the 
977
978
979
980Cause of the Heterogeneity in the Fine Arts 25 
981
982past, but dozens of ways of expressing ourselves. It will be 
983obvious from this that the individuality of the artist is the last 
984thing you are likely to find. Each artist conforms to one or 
985other of the violent orthodoxies of the moment. Women are 
986obedient to the annual fiats of fashion from Paris, and an 
987artist has no more individuality than has a woman, whose only 
988desire is to conform to the fashion. So when I speak of the 
989freedom of the artist in my next section, it cannot mean that 
990the artist is personally, or individually, free. That is not a 
991thing that could possibly happen anywhere today. 
992
993
994
995VI 
996
997
998Amateur Artists 
999
1000O URS is an age, inevitably, of amateurism in the fine arts: 
1001
1002there are a countless number of people who are identified 
1003as artists, and most of them, even where they have had a little 
1004training, remain amateurs. Thirty years ago, for instance, 
1005while the middle-class still had money, ‘art’ was very often 
1006chosen as a career by a young man who had nothing in par- 
1007ticular he wanted to do. It was an attractive way of doing 
1008nothing. It did not mean that any talent whatever was pos- 
1009sessed by this young man; if he had told himself to start with 
1010that he had talent, he very soon found that he had been mis- 
1011taken. These conditions were productive of a great number of 
1012what passed as professional artists. As the British Empire be- 
1013came a less and less attractive place to do nothing in (to be a 
1014soldier for instance), such a ‘profession’ as this became an 
1015obvious refuge. But this no longer could be regarded as a solu- 
1016tion, I suppose, when the welfare state took over, and the 
1017middle-class family no longer had the money to pay for so 
1018expensive an education. 
1019
1020This accounts for quite a few of the amateurs technically 
1021professionals. Then, at the end of World War Two, upon de- 
1022mobilization (when the State stepped in, with a lavish financ- 
1023ing) a number of young soldiers adopted the career of an artist. 
1024Quite apart from either of these two classes of artist, there is 
1025the enormous quantity of young men of all classes who find 
1026their way every year into provincial art-schools or into the 
1027Royal College of Art and other large metropolitan academies. 
1028There are, of course, nearly as many women as men studying 
1029to be some kind of artist. Talent is not often met with; but a 
1030great number of more or less youthful people are trained as 
1031
103226 
1033
1034
1035
1036Amateur Artists 
1037
1038
103927 
1040
1041
1042artists: and it is from among this horde that the stunt crusades 
1043are recruited — the more violently untalented would no doubt 
1044soon drop out, if it were not for the opportunities offered the 
1045dud in extremism. 
1046
1047The army of technicians required by commercial art (which 
1048has turned the art-schools into a group of specialized classes, 
1049dressmaking, poster-art, or what not), this today is the most 
1050solid cause of the swarming of young men and women to which 
1051I have referred. But if there were, instead of these conditions, 
1052a small number of professional artists, for the most part 
1053lucratively employed, then there would probably be no ex- 
1054tremism. Extremism is symptomatic of a vacuum — a time in 
1055which there is no rationale for visual expression. It would be 
1056quite impossible to persuade any professional artist (at a time 
1057when such a profession was intact) to indulge in unpopular 
1058adventures. 
1059
1060For quite a time it has been so unwelcome to point out the 
1061realities of the present period that a sort of conspiracy of 
1062silence has developed. Everyone pretends, including the horde 
1063of impoverished artists, the professional pundits, the picture- 
1064dealers and so on, everyone pretends that we enjoy normal 
1065conditions, and even that art is flourishing. This is the neces- 
1066sary background for what I am shortly to examine — the insti- 
1067tutional unreality, as also the costly ‘cultural’ bluffs inaugu- 
1068rated by the state, to conceal the growing absence of culture 
1069behind these imposing facades. 
1070
1071
1072D.P.A. — 3 
1073
1074
1075
1076VII 
1077
1078Those who are Accessible to an 
1079Extremist Glamour 
1080
1081T HE visual artist, alone in his studio, if of a technically 
1082inventive disposition, is easily tempted to go back and 
1083imagine himself a primitive, or to go forward into the future 
1084and imagine himself in a society far more intellectual, and 
1085sensitively receptive, than the one in which he finds himself. 
1086Then naturally, works will be produced which may seem very 
1087queer indeed to the public. 
1088
1089If technically a brilliant performer — as was, for instance, 
1090Pablo Picasso — the artist will be unwilling to abandon tradi- 
1091tional achievement entirely. The great skills he has acquired 
1092it will give him delight to employ, and he will continue exist- 
1093ing, to some extent, upon the plane of Leonardo or of El Greco, 
1094he will have a dual personality. In the case of Picasso, we find 
1095him producing, side by side, works as abstract as a coloured 
1096rug, and others quite naturalistic, if strongly marked with his 
1097personal idiosyncrasies. Otherwise, if there is no inducement 
1098of that kind to cling to naturalistic form and colour, if the 
1099artist’s power is very moderate, an artist may use his paint 
1100and brush, or his chisel, to create forms and combinations 
1101reminiscent of the rough sketches of the engineer and the car- 
1102penter rather than the artist; indulge himself in ‘advances’ 
1103which are so far removed from normal sensuous experience as 
1104to alienate him entirely from any possible public, except, in 
1105such a time as ours, the snobbish patron or pundit, not neces- 
1106sarily an intelligent or sensitive man, who cares to spend his 
1107life among very strange images indeed. But the readiness on 
1108the part of an artist to step over into a type of fanciful engin- 
1109eering is usually due to the fact that the visual arts have no 
1110
111128 
1112
1113
1114
1115Those Accessible to an Extremist Glamour 29 
1116
1117very great attraction for him, he has no roots in the sensuous 
1118reality, or he would not be willing to desert them. Whatever 
1119he did in the way of experiment (and let us remember that the 
1120word experiment is the word used to account for these depar- 
1121tures from the practice of visual art that we inherit from all 
1122past ages, whether Greek, Far-Eastern, or Italian Renaissance), 
1123that experiment would be within the regions of visual sensibility 
1124— never outside them . 
1125
1126It is all a question of whether the individual artist is one of 
1127those rare ones who are greatly gifted, and if he has acquired, 
1128in the course of a long training, a great deal of traditional 
1129power; in a case of that kind there would be no chance that he 
1130would allow himself to be dragged off into the problematical 
1131wilderness of the future. He would be too satisfied to find him- 
1132self where he was, to listen to the aesthetic excursionist. It is 
1133unimaginable that the man who painted the portrait of Thomas 
1134Carlyle and that of Miss Alexander, were he today of vigorous 
1135middle age, would break up his perfection, and launch out 
1136into the abstract. With a young man, not yet fully trained, it 
1137is another matter. If the glorious reality of his gifts is not yet 
1138visible, present to his eyes, he might do anything. Neverthe- 
1139less, it is usually those of very little talent who furnish the 
1140little crowds of people painting empty abstractions, or stick- 
1141ing together lengths of heavy iron, or platinum, or tin, which 
1142goes under the name of sculpture. 
1143
1144
1145
1146VIII 
1147
1148
1149There is a Limit, beyond which there is 
1150
1151Nothing 
1152
1153I AM writing this not long after the death of Stalin, and there 
1154is a general feeling that, perhaps, the new rulers of Russia 
1155are going to modify the aggressive policy of the old leader. For 
1156the time being to speak of a third world war would be un- 
1157popular, but it still, unfortunately, is something which might 
1158happen at any moment. In the case of a third disaster of this 
1159kind, and one of unspeakable ‘totality’, the position of the 
1160fine arts, and the other great civilized forms of expression, 
1161would be profoundly changed, if the arts did not disappear 
1162altogether. So anything one says about the future is provi- 
1163sional: and anything one says about the present must have a 
1164certain unreality because of the ‘cold war’, which dislocates our 
1165national economies, and always has implicit in it the hottest 
1166war yet. 
1167
1168Having made this necessary statement, let me proceed. In 
1169the last section I spoke of Picasso’s great traditional power, 
1170in painting and drawing, which he acquired when he was 
1171young. That was a period over fifty years ago; it was a time 
1172when Europe was at peace, and when it was possible labori- 
1173ously to prepare for the career of a painter in a society unable 
1174even to imagine impoverishment, disposed to patronize all the 
1175arts and to spend considerable sums of money at the picture 
1176dealers and at the annual exhibitions. How vastly different 
1177that was from the present time goes without saying: all one 
1178need say is that an art student had leisure to build up the 
1179technical abilities which he required. Does he enjoy those con- 
1180ditions today? He certainly does not, and that solid mastery 
1181
118230 
1183
1184
1185
118631 
1187
1188
1189A Limit , beyond which there is Nothing 
1190
1191is not to be looked for in a time like the present. Artists are 
1192able to conceal the fact that this power is not possessed by 
1193them: to become an extremist of the most irrational stamp is 
1194one of the most obvious ways. Eighty years ago French impres- 
1195sionism offered a concealment of the same kind for the incom- 
1196petent; blit it was not a tenth as good a means of evasion as 
1197that provided by the arid bluff of Realties Nouvelles , and all 
1198similar extremism. 
1199
1200Now, if you will consider the case of a young Englishman of 
1201eighteen or nineteen today, who feels he has an aptitude for 
1202painting; if, with me, you will examine the influences shaping 
1203his young mind, I believe you will find out a great deal about 
1204the position of the fine arts at the present moment. First of all, 
1205he will have visited the dealers’ galleries, the R.A., have read 
1206the contemporary art journalism, possibly have gone to Paris. 
1207If he is a bright young man, he will imagine himself in the 
1208future an extremist: youth is always attracted by extremism. 
1209But it is not only that. What else is there for a bright young 
1210man to imagine himself? There is no painting today worthy of 
1211consideration between extremist painting and the Royal Academy . 
1212This is the essential fact that you must try to understand if 
1213you want to put yourself au courant. So a long traditional 
1214training would be the last thing he would think about. The 
1215fact that Reg Butler received four thousand five hundred 
1216pounds 1 would be an enormous advertisement for extremism, 
1217suggesting to the bright young man that even economically 
1218extremism was a good bet. So there would not be much likeli- 
1219hood that he would do more than learn how to be a very 
1220extreme painter, or a frightfully advanced sculptor. 
1221
1222What is being done in England on a small scale, is being 
1223done in France in a big way. If you go to Paris and try to find 
1224a painter not an extremist, and not the French equivalent of 
1225the Royal Academy — one who is highly thought of — you will 
1226be disappointed. There is no such painter. There is a rash 
1227of total abstraction, and of near-abstraction. Under these 
12281 Cf. Section X. 
1229
1230
1231
123232 How the Arts differ in their Extremism 
1233
1234circumstances, it is safe to assume that in France the bright 
1235young man will think the same thoughts as the bright young 
1236man in England. 
1237
1238What does this mean? It means, I think, that there will be 
1239no more artists (painters or sculptors) possessing the great 
1240traditional accomplishment which is possessed by Pablo 
1241Picasso, or, in this country, Augustus John or Jacob Epstein 
1242may be cited as possessing, or, to take an advanced artist, 
1243Henry Moore. 
1244
1245I will end this section by saying that, as far as I personally 
1246am concerned, I do not object to the extremism of Henry 
1247Moore or of Graham Sutherland. In my own work I pushed at 
1248all times to that limit, although doing fairly traditional work 
1249as well. Having made this statement, let me add that ex- 
1250tremism is not necessary . It is all right; some people tend to be 
1251extremist, and some are not extremist. There is no merit in 
1252extremism: although at the present moment it is a universal 
1253fashion. What I am arguing about in this book is that an easily 
1254defined limit exists in painting and sculpture, in music, in the 
1255theatre, in literature, in architecture, and in every other human 
1256art. There are daring drivers who enjoy driving along the edge 
1257of a cliff, whenever the opportunity offers. All I am saying is 
1258that there is such a thing as driving too near the edge of a cliff. 
1259There is no sense in shooting over it. It is quite simple; beyond 
1260a certain well-defined line — in the arts as in everything else — 
1261beyond that limit there is nothing . Nothing, zero, is what 
1262logically you reach past a line, of some kind, laid down by 
1263nature, everywhere. 
1264
1265As you must understand, we have reached the point at 
1266which a quite final position has to be taken up. It is where you 
1267have to say yes or no. 
1268
1269Because of its intricacy, and because, in the second place, 
1270I run the risk of putting in danger the effectiveness of my 
1271general line of argument, what I now have to say is particu- 
1272larly difficult. 
1273
1274Infantile extremist sensationalism (as a by-product of self- 
1275
1276
1277
127833 
1279
1280
1281A Limit , beyond which there is Nothing 
1282
1283seeking) is the curse of the pundit. What every artist should 
1284try to prevent is the car, in which is our civilized life, plunging 
1285over the side of the precipice — the exhibitionist extremist 
1286promoter driving the whole bag of tricks into a nihilistic 
1287nothingness or zero. 
1288
1289
1290
1291IX 
1292
1293
1294The Ability to See the Limit 
1295
1296O YER thirty years ago I was teaching extremism, and I 
1297was myself an extreme artist. The extremist modes in 
1298European painting and sculpture of that time have not been 
1299exceeded, for the very good reason that there is no way of 
1300exceeding (developing a more spectacular extremism) Mon- 
1301drian’s geometric frames, Brancusi’s eggs, or Kandinsky’s 
1302atmospheric inventions or explosions. I have mentioned Henry 
1303Moore and Graham Sutherland as artists of the extreme whose 
1304adventures I do not look upon with a critical eye. Here is the 
1305great difficulty in such an anti-extremist argument as I am 
1306developing in this study. The trouble is, of course, that the 
1307extremism of Moore and Sutherland appears excessive to the 
1308majority of people; and my own work has offended, in the past, 
1309by its unorthodox character. The objection that will be made 
1310is that an extremist cannot be allowed to say, ‘So far, but no 
1311farther!’ It is quite arbitrary, fanciful, and irrational — so 
1312it must seem — this line beyond which there must be no 
1313advance. 
1314
1315Now the difficulty really is that no one not an artist can ever 
1316in fact see this line. He does not know enough about these 
1317matters to understand how, once you have accepted some- 
1318thing described as ‘extremism’, there can ever be a limit . If 
1319a painter uses his thumb as a palette knife, and, jabbing it into 
1320various colours upon his palette, rubs them one after the other 
1321upon a blank canvas, and sends this ‘picture 9 to the RealitSs 
1322Nouvelles exhibition in Paris, that logically should be accept- 
1323able to anyone describable as an extremist. This is the conun- 
1324drum which I have to tackle. 
1325
1326Now I must ask you to believe that I see the line beyond 
1327
132834 
1329
1330
1331
133235 
1333
1334
1335The Ability to See the Limit 
1336
1337which the extreme is the nonsensical. But in any such dis- 
1338cussion, those who are not painters will have to take a good 
1339deal on trust — simply because they cannot see what differenti- 
1340ates a highly logical piece of ‘extremism’ of Picasso’s from an 
1341average work hung in the Realites Nouvelles exhibitions. How- 
1342ever, I hope you will continue with me, and much later in these 
1343pages I will make a final attempt to overcome this obstacle to 
1344comprehension. 
1345
1346
1347
1348X 
1349
1350
1351* The Unknown Political Prisoner ’ and After 
1352
1353I N England, the last example of militant extremism was the 
1354collection of works at the Tate Gallery, representing ‘The 
1355Unknown Political Prisoner’. A touch of the old excitement 
1356was conjured up: first of all a prize was given, to the young 
1357sculptor, Reg Butler, of the most sensational kind, namely 
1358four thousand five hundred pounds. This small model of a pro- 
1359posed monument upon the white Cliffs of Dover appeared a 
1360very insignificant piece of eccentricity to those who had been 
1361reading in the papers, with amazement, of the vast sum it had 
1362gained for its creator. All the newspapers contained a photo- 
1363graph of this oddity. Then came the second sensation: a young 
1364Hungarian went to the Tate, and, seizing this little joke by 
1365its spine of wire, doubled it up and threw it on the floor. 
1366As a result of this demonstration the young Hungarian 
1367spent some time in gaol, lost his job, and at last the case was 
1368dismissed. 
1369
1370Because of these well-advertized events, Reg Butler became, 
1371for the public, a symbol of outrageous ‘advancedness’. But 
1372this intellectual toy of his is not at all a novelty, since many 
1373thousands of similar things have been produced, over and over 
1374again, for the last thirty or forty years in every part of Europe 
1375and America. 
1376
1377Let me here make use of Reg Butler’s name, then, as it will 
1378be familiar to most people. The interested spectator of these 
1379goings-on will no doubt enjoy a pleasurable expectation of 
1380what next will happen in this funny old game the artists keep 
1381on playing. 
1382
1383So, what next? Well, there is nothing much beyond this 
1384
138536 
1386
1387
1388
13894 77ie Unknown Political Prisoner ’ and After 37 
1390
1391simple little stunt — that is the odd thing. The same thing, 
1392more or less, has served to focus the popular mind for a long 
1393time now. There is nothing new to be expected; we shall, I 
1394assume, see Reg Butlers and the fanatical sterilities of Realitis 
1395Noutoelles for a long time to come; for, as a matter of fact, the 
1396advances of the last forty years have about reached the limits 
1397of the visual. There is not much more that can be done in 
1398senseless progress. 
1399
1400In the end, of course, the pundits will be shamed out of 
1401stopping at Reg Butler. Someone will invent something or 
1402other which will seem a new departure. What ultimately must 
1403be expected is that a step will be taken outside or beyond 
1404nature. They will not be in a hurry to take this step — for it is 
1405a much better bet for these gentlemen to keep on marking time, 
1406as long as people will stand it, in the same spot more or less. 
1407For if they take Art over the edge, what will happen to them ? 
1408But they are really so irresponsible, and probably have not 
1409thought out all this. So it is incumbent upon everybody to halt 
1410them here and now. 
1411
1412So there is no tomorrow, there is no new sensation to be 
1413expected. The rational limit has already been overstepped — 
1414there is nothing more to be anticipated. Indeed, what has been 
1415reached is hardening into a canon, behind which everything 
1416is described as bad. 
1417
1418All artists today, and art-critics, are familiar with what a 
1419painting, or a piece of sculpture, looks like when it has reached 
1420the ne plus ultra line. For thirty years, we all have become 
1421sickeningly familiar with these formulae. Even originality-in- 
1422extremeness is not encouraged: the new extremists must repro- 
1423duce what is there already, what has been done many times 
1424before. You would think that that sickening feeling of which 
1425I have spoken would be felt by the newcomer, the young ex- 
1426tremist, just as much as by everyone else. The curious thing is 
1427that he seems to think he is being wildly ‘advanced’ when he 
1428is reproducing, in reality, something done for the first time 
1429thirty or forty years ago. But there it is; there are certain set 
1430
1431
1432
143338 How the Arts differ in their Extremism 
1434
1435ways of doing things, it has all been laid down some time 
1436ago in the Anglo-Saxon countries. The young artist, when, at 
1437whatever point in his progress, he decides to go abstract, has a 
1438rigid and fixed number of directions he can take. All he can do 
1439is to pick such and such a well-trodden approach to zero, and, 
1440then, within that well-trodden approach to the Great Blank, 
1441he can indulge in a few minor and insignificant variations. 
1442Or, shall we say that he is like a performing white mouse enter- 
1443ing a carefully defined and ingeniously worked out maze. No 
1444originality is possible any longer; what he paints or what he 
1445carves must look very much like thousands of other things 
1446we all have seen. The only original artist was he who pioneered 
1447in this elaborate game; who blazed the trail, marked out the 
1448paths to be taken, and reached the limit beyond which it was 
1449impossible to go. He was like the man who discovered the 
1450Pacific, ‘silent upon a peak in Darien’. Well, there is only one 
1451Pacific. Once you have discovered the Pacific you can draw a 
1452map of this region, and show how other people can come and 
1453discover the Pacific too. After that, naturally, there is the 
1454Pacific to cross, its islands must be charted, the shores of 
1455Australia and of Asia reached; and from there you just, stage 
1456by stage, come back to where you began, to the point from 
1457which you set out. All ‘advancedness’, in this kind of advanced- 
1458ness, is merely a repetition of this circumnavigation. The earth 
1459is round, and, in the technical ‘advance’ in the fine arts 
1460initiated in the second decade of this century, it is a question 
1461merely of going round and round. The young artist soon, now, 
1462reaches the ‘peak in Darien’. Then, without having to be a 
1463very daring fellow, he crosses the Pacific; he reaches the Spice 
1464Islands and Asia; from there is a journey home that seems as 
1465old as the camel-route across Asia. To perform this journey 
1466the ingenious Calder has provided you with all the wire you 
1467will need, if you are travelling in the third dimension; Picasso 
1468and Braque, and hundreds of other initiators, have hammered 
1469away billions of models required by the Abstractist, from 
1470which you select if you are a painter. This is hard tack, or it 
1471
1472
1473
14744 The Unknown Political Prisoner ’ and After 39 
1475
1476may be thought of as pemmican, but anyway it is all the young 
1477‘adventurer’ will need in his journey. 
1478
1479Now, the painter ‘travels light’, as I have pointed out. The 
1480material he needs to be a painter costs him practically nothing. 
1481Theoretically his freedom should be very great. But as an 
1482‘advanced’, Abstractist, painter or sculptor in our time, his 
1483freedom is merely theoretic, his originality nil. Everyone has 
1484been original before him. He is handed a guidebook, a set of 
1485rules, a lot of ‘uplift’. He has to paint as he is told, he has to 
1486register his adherence to the laws of advance. What he eventu- 
1487ally turns out must conform to what is by this time a well-tried 
1488formula. 
1489
1490Apart from the pundits, like Herbert Read, who provide 
1491books of ‘advanced’ theory, there are naturally, a great 
1492number of instructors in the art- schools (like the Central, the 
1493R.C.A., etc., in London, and similar places in all the large pro- 
1494vincial cities) who can teach any student how to become an 
1495‘advanced’ artist. These teachers can provide all the for- 
1496mulae of painting of the Rialites Nouvelles type, or of sculpture 
1497of the Reg Butler type; or, if ‘mobiles’ attract, it can be shown 
1498how this is done. If some kind of infantilism is what the 
1499student appears to be marked out for, encouragement and 
1500instruction are supplied. It is just the same as in the days 
1501of Frith, when students were given instruction, after they 
1502had gone through the preliminaries, in how to paint a ‘Derby 
1503Day’. Thirty or forty years ago there were instructors in art- 
1504schools who would put a student on the road to produce a 
1505typical Van Gogh ‘Sunflower’; but this is vieux jeu , literally, 
1506almost as much so as the ‘Derby Day’, for Van Gogh was no- 
1507where near the limit of technical ‘advance’. 
1508
1509Near the limit of technical advance — the Twentieth Century 
1510front line. 
1511
1512
1513
1514XI 
1515
1516
1517The ‘ Progressive ’ Slave 
1518
1519T HE other day I was talking to one of those extremist 
1520painters whose work I greatly like. In the course of our 
1521conversation I was somewhat surprised to hear him speak as 
1522follows. ‘It is strange,’ he observed, ‘but we have to struggle 
1523just as hard today to do something . . . well, like painting a 
1524recognizable portrait ... as formerly we had for years to 
1525struggle to be allowed to do something “extremist” or what- 
1526ever you like to call it. Today it is just the same thing the other 
1527way round. One’s dealer raises his eyebrows, frowns upon a 
1528more or less straight portrait when one sends it in. It has be- 
1529come like a religious orthodoxy. Yet, when we began to depart 
1530from the traditional norm, it was not a departure that had 
1531anything religious about it — it was not a catholic doing some- 
1532thing anti-catholic. It was just a desire to experiment in the 
1533medium one was using, no more than that, was it?’ 
1534
1535I was delighted to learn that even the most successful ex- 
1536tremist (of the rational kind) did not find it necessary to con- 
1537ceal the difficulty he encountered in defying the canon of 
1538advancedness. Under similar circumstances I am quite sure, 
1539of course, that Pablo Picasso did not have to ask permission 
1540of his dealer to paint a portrait, of a naturalistic kind. But then 
1541he had attained, long ago, to such a pinnacle of worldly success 
1542that to him all was permitted. To the rank and file extremist 
1543nothing is permitted. He is a slave of the great god Progress, 
1544who is a very jealous god indeed. 
1545
1546
154740 
1548
1549
1550
1551Part II 
1552
1553THE PAINTING ANIMAL AND 
1554THE PUNDIT 
1555
1556
1557
1558
1559XII 
1560
1561
1562The Painting Animal 
1563
1564T HE public for the visual arts is (i) that part of any culti- 
1565vated society specially interested in the visual arts; and 
1566(2) the more numerous body of people who form the public for 
1567every art, but with no especial leaning for one art more than 
1568the other. In both of these publics some quite erroneous ideas 
1569prevail as to what goes on behind the scenes; they see the 
1570painting or the sculpture, but that is all they know about it. 
1571What makes the painter tick, as the late Mr. Roosevelt would 
1572have put it, is hidden from them. Of the way pictures are pro- 
1573duced they have the haziest notion; what picture dealers are 
1574like, or what newspaper art-critics are like, they know no more 
1575than the personal appearance of the dealer who walks about 
1576in a gallery where pictures are being exhibited in one of the 
1577dozen picture shops. Since one of the functions of this book is 
1578to help the public to understand pictures, and since, in order to 
1579do this it would be of the greatest use to understand, first of 
1580all, the man who paints them, I will attempt to throw some 
1581light upon the painter’s mentality. There is one feature of this 
1582which is of first-rate importance for the outside world to know. 
1583I have never seen this explained to the public, and regard it 
1584as a serious omission on the part of those who spend their time 
1585in acting as self-appointed guides. 
1586
1587Perhaps the first thing to remember about the artist, then, 
1588is that it is quite essential that he should begin his training 
1589at an early age. If he does not do this, then it is rather as if the 
1590ordinary learning of a school and university had to be started 
1591at the age when men normally graduate. It would of course 
1592be intensely difficult to start your schooling at the age of 
1593twenty-two. It could, I suppose, be done, but a man so unfor- 
1594tunate as to have to do this would be called upon to make a 
1595d.p.a.— 4 43 
1596
1597
1598
159944 The Painting Animal and the Pundit 
1600
1601quite unnatural effort. It is really just the same with a painter 
1602who enters an art-school at that age, and very few successful 
1603painters have done so. 
1604
1605Well then, as schoolboys they begin learning how to draw 
1606and paint, instead of studying history and algebra, Latin and 
1607French. As to philosophy, higher mathematics and things like 
1608that, which are studied before the university is reached, they 
1609miss that level of ordinary learning. Add to this the fact that 
1610most painters have always come from working-class families, 
1611it is not surprising that they are ill-equipped to cope with the 
1612pundit, or the man of letters who comes over into their field 
1613and proceeds to teach them their own business. 
1614
1615The painter has a tendency to regard himself as some- 
1616what of a ‘dumb ox’, as a painting animal . The painter will 
1617relish enormously the life of Cezanne by that master’s dealer, 
1618Yollard. It is really a very admirable biography, and intensely 
1619amusing — amusing at the expense, of course, of Cezanne, who 
1620was a perfect ‘dumb animal’. Vollard’s account of him makes 
1621it quite clear that C6zanne fully understood the position — 
1622knew that he was a divine idiot, and that he greatly resented 
1623those men, trained in universities, who meddled with his craft. 
1624Whenever the word ‘professor’ was uttered, Cezanne would fly 
1625into a rage. If this occurred at mealtimes, the master would 
1626exclaim violently ‘Ah, les professeurs!’, spring up, and leave 
1627the table. He objected to all professors, since he had met 
1628several whose goings-on almost drove him mad. He was a case 
1629of a painter who resisted the inroads of the man of letters, but 
1630knew it was no good, and that his hatred was unavailing 
1631against the word-man. 
1632
1633So Cezanne was an instinctive, and that is something which 
1634is aggressively prized by the typical painter. To arrive, by 
1635some intuitive process, at his great technical discoveries, at 
1636his remarkable innovations, rather as the peasant-mystic 
1637arrives at his religious intuitions, that is an order of things 
1638very much favoured by many painters (who, on the whole, 
1639could not arrive at anything in any other way). Perhaps they 
1640
1641
1642
1643The Painting Animal 45 
1644
1645are conscious of their own cultural limitations, owing to the 
1646necessity of having to acquire their training in the techniques 
1647of their craft at an age which precludes the acquisition of any 
1648of those useful things which lift a man above the helpless level 
1649of the labourer. 
1650
1651But it is not only that; the fact is that painting and sculp- 
1652ture are things which can only be known d fond by a man 
1653trained as a painter; so painters feel themselves locked up in 
1654this mystery, in this knowledge, this secret craft. They have, 
1655and quite rightly, a contempt for any opinion about a picture 
1656by people who have not been trained as painters; for it is a 
1657mystery, and it is ultimately painters who settle the values of 
1658pictures — who dictate whether they are masterpieces or not. 
1659The critic knows quite well that his judgement cannot be final, 
1660that it has to be taken to some painter, or sculptor (naturally 
1661the one considered by him the most gifted — however idiotic), 
1662it has to be laid before him, and if it is not accepted by the 
1663artist, there is an end of the matter. 
1664
1665All painters, the most mediocre, understand this situation 
1666very well, and can look the critic haughtily in the eye, and 
1667cause him to feel his place, if he does not know it already. All 
1668those who paint regard the painter of genius with awe, as a 
1669man who has, in the highest degree, the mastery of the secret. 
1670They rejoice, with exultation, at the farcical stories, such as 
1671those of Monsieur Vollard, about their hero, showing what a 
1672dumb, stupid, if you like, creature he was. For he was not as 
1673other men; he was a heaven-sent idiot, the essential painter, 
1674and nothing else. He was not a man, he was a painter. 
1675
1676In every high craft a consciousness of isolation, similar to 
1677this, exists. More than in any other, I suppose, there is in 
1678higher mathematics a sense of apartness conjoined with superi- 
1679ority. The mathematician is a man who, in his highest flights 
1680of imagination, is familiar with realities so augustly remote 
1681from the daily round of human life, and is the master of a 
1682craft as inaccessible as painting or sculpture, that he must 
1683regard himself, to some extent, as privileged among men as 
1684
1685
1686
168746 The Painting Animal and the Pundit 
1688
1689is the artist. Also, all those occupied in the most abstruse 
1690mathematical fields are bound to experience a sensation of 
1691electness, and can hardly escape twinges of superiority — and 
1692with much more justification than any but the greatest artist. 
1693
1694But there is no craft so humble but the craftsman derives a 
1695certain satisfaction in knowing that there is no man alive (not 
1696of his craft) who can do what he can do, whether it be a piece 
1697of fine cabinet-making, or the growing in a hot-house of a rare 
1698plant. 
1699
1700This craft-mysticism is a very important thing to know 
1701about, for those outsiders who have never painted pictures, 
1702but who interest themselves in them, and wish for a little more 
1703competence than merely those who say ‘I know what I like’. 
1704A real grasp of this situation (for it deserves the name of 
1705situation) is enormously valuable to a person trying to under- 
1706stand the inner workings of the visual arts in our time. It takes 
1707a rather different form today, but it has always existed; for the 
1708painter and sculptor have always been confronted by the same 
1709difficulty, that to do a thing well , the way they wanted to do it, 
1710and felt that it should be done, was not the way that would 
1711be most satisfactory to the patron or to the public. There must 
1712always have been among these craftsmen a feeling — indeed, a 
1713knowledge — that only they were capable of judging their work; 
1714of giving an opinion as to whether a piece of work was good, 
1715bad, or indifferent. I am sure that the people that they had to 
1716deal with, three or four hundred years ago, were not only far 
1717more accommodating, but far better able to understand. The 
1718senses of those earlier publics had not been vulgarized and 
1719demoralized, as ours have, by camera and a hundred other 
1720devices. Also mass-life today is the worst kind of thing for an 
1721appreciation of the arts, or of any cultural product. One must 
1722go much farther than this, however. The absurd things which 
1723are happening in the visual arts at present are what must hap- 
1724pen when an art becomes almost totally disconnected from 
1725society, when it no longer has any direct function in life, and 
1726can only exist as the plaything of the intellect. 
1727
1728
1729
1730XIII 
1731
1732
1733The Pundit-Prophet 
1734
1735N OW that I have given the general reader some idea of this 
1736strange being who lives for painting, wrapt away at the 
1737heart of an inaccessible universe of values not shared by the 
1738rest of the world — now that you know something of the mind 
1739of this animal whose carvings or whose pictures you go and 
1740look at, let me turn to another figure, namely the pundit who 
1741has recently promoted himself ‘art historian’, but who is more 
1742generally known as art-critic. 
1743
1744This, at its most energetic, is a figure of the utmost impor- 
1745tance in the art world; and as he battens parasitically upon 
1746that painting animal I have just been describing, and in one 
1747way or another (even more, perhaps than the dealer) affects 
1748his destiny, he merits immediate attention. 
1749
1750First of all, this is a word- man. He is a writer, usually 
1751attempting, to begin with, to be a poet, a philosopher, a fiction- 
1752writer, or what not; but not succeeding in any of these direc- 
1753tions, he goes and lives with the artist: rather in the way that 
1754a man who is not getting on very well at home, emigrates. 
1755
1756One must consider, at this point, how different the literary 
1757world is from the art world. The life-form of a book is starkly 
1758dissimilar from that of an oil-painting or a piece of sculpture. 
1759The visual arts and literature differ profoundly physically and 
1760that involves a great difference in the way literature reacts to 
1761the influences of the time. Words are more powerful than 
1762images; they have the advantage of the civilized man over the 
1763primitive man. There is that. And so, naturally, a book can look 
1764after itself a great deal better than can an oil-painting, and a 
1765writer can look after himself far better than can a painter, 
1766because, to start with, he knows a great deal more. If you 
1767
176847 
1769
1770
1771
177248 The Painting Animal and the Pundit 
1773
1774remember this simple fact, you will understand how it is pos- 
1775sible for the writer to come over among the painters and to 
1776make of the products of the painter’s art his specialization. He 
1777dazzles this ignorant craftsman with his words. When he has 
1778learned enough about painting, by carefully listening to what 
1779his painter friends say about it, listening in to their disputes, 
1780and when he has absorbed enough of the literary work, tons of 
1781which collects around modern painting, he writes a book. 
1782
1783One may simplify this story, and say that a book has come 
1784over among a lot of paintings, and eventually climbs on their 
1785backs, and perhaps rims away with them. But the functions 
1786of the book and of the painting are quite different. For so it is; 
1787a painting cannot go over among the books, climb on their 
1788backs, mesmerize them and misdirect them, and stampede 
1789them in this direction or that. A book, however, can very easily 
1790do this with paintings. So a book may be parasitic, it may 
1791inflame a thousand paintings and lead them off to the moon, or 
1792anywhere else it fancies. But I should not have said it fancies; 
1793for these technical crusades which get the painter’s creations 
1794whirled off to some remote no man’s land, are initiated among 
1795painters and, in the first instance, are concerned purely with 
1796questions deriving from the artist’s material, the problems 
1797of the painter’s art. But when adopted by a man of letters, 
1798this will become a slightly different crusade. It may for 
1799instance, by its absolutist tone, by its irrational fervour, 
1800appear rather as the crusade of a religionist or of a millennial 
1801politician. 
1802
1803The writer may be thought of as a Viking, as a man of prey 
1804— though, Heaven knows, the specimens of this Viking that 
1805we meet with are usually hardly impressive enough to live up 
1806to so fiercely predatory a name. The painter, by the way, 
1807would be inclined to laugh at this analysis of what happens 
1808to him, for he may be conceited as well as ignorant; but I can 
1809vouch for its accuracy. 
1810
1811When I see a writer, a word-man, among a number of 
1812painters, I shake my head. For I know that he would not be 
1813
1814
1815
1816The Pundit- Prophet 49 
1817
1818there unless he was up to something. And I know that he will 
1819do them no good; but the reverse. When I was young I was 
1820approached by these pirates; but when they found that I was 
1821an intelligent painter, they moved away. I was never popular 
1822with the pundit. My encounter with Mr. Roger Fry was an 
1823excellent example. 
1824
1825But I have no intention of calling myself in as a witness. 
1826And there are exceptions to what I have said of the predatory 
1827pundit: I think of John Ruskin, who was not only a very great 
1828writer, who had a remarkable influence upon the prose style 
1829of his contemporaries, and who was so many-sided a man 
1830as to have astonished later economists by his originality, but 
1831who, by his prophetic activities in the field of art, was a 
1832benefactor. 
1833
1834The books of Ruskin were holy writ for several generations 
1835of painters. And in this age of crusades there is always some 
1836writer attempting, successfully or not, to occupy this role, 
1837— wonderfully eloquent like Ruskin, a great user of words, or 
1838just a journalist, a pedestrian prophet, it is all one. There must 
1839be some such writer there at hand. 
1840
1841In the last century John Ruskin was the most outstanding 
1842example of the literary man who goes over and lives with the 
1843artists, stimulates their activity, interprets them to the rest 
1844of the world, and, in a word, exploits the visual arts as I have 
1845described, Ruskin did more than this, and himself painted, in 
1846a limited way. Though he is the archetype of this kind of man 
1847he nevertheless is in a very different class from those writers 
1848who, in the present century, belong to the same group in 
1849literary history — the writers whose subject-matter is the visual 
1850arts in violent evolution. 
1851
1852There was, first of all, Roger Fry, the prophet of Post- 
1853Impressionism, a term invented by him. He possessed a con- 
1854siderable literary gift, and his books have an eloquence and 
1855grace which elevate them above the average of writers of this 
1856genre . Sir Kenneth Clark, who was Fry’s literary executor, in 
1857a mild way followed in his footsteps, without however offering 
1858
1859
1860
186150 The Painting Animal and the Pundit 
1862
1863himself as a prophet. Sir Herbert Read is the most recent 
1864writer of this class. He is the pedestrian sorcerer, a Mister 
1865Abreast-of-the-Times for Everyman who paints or sculpts; he 
1866is the writer who has led the Salvation Army into a Promised 
1867Land, into an Institute. And, if you will tolerate any more 
1868imagery of this kind, he has done his best to lure Mammon into 
1869this tabernacle. 
1870
1871In the foregoing pages I have, I hope, introduced you to a 
1872novel figure, of whose real nature you had, up to now, no con- 
1873ception. But I am only able to speak very briefly of all these 
1874central figure^in the art drama, who, each of them, play a part 
1875which is surprisingly unlike what is supposed to be their role 
1876by anyone who has not had access to life behind the scenes. 
1877Fully to substantiate my view of these goings-on I should have 
1878to write about all these people in much greater detail. All I can 
1879say is that I am sure that anyone penetrating to the intimacies 
1880of the art-life would, after a very short time, bear me out. He 
1881would soon encounter, I expect, the pundit-prophet of iriy 
1882recent descriptions — encouraging, or inflaming the waverer, 
1883supplying him with arguments, and luring him on to pursue 
1884the visual path towards an abstraction so stern as to resemble 
1885zero, or to be its brother in emptiness. This is the contem- 
1886porary P.P.: he possesses no eloquence, but he has, in place of 
1887that, a kind of naive persistence, a dogged conviction that the 
1888road to near zero is the right road . This is the contemporary 
1889type. 
1890
1891
1892
1893Explanatory Note on the Plates 
1894
1895O F the six illustrations, only two (numbers 1 and 2) are 
1896designed to illustrate the terrible pictorial aberration 
1897whose idiot name Real cannot be tolerated outside of the 
1898pathologic clinic. These are the only two photographs I have 
1899been able to obtain, owing to the death, this year, 1953-4, 
1900of the man apparently responsible for the promotion in Paris 
1901of the Realties Nouvelles exhibitions. I wish I could have mar- 
1902shalled a few more; but it matters less than it would had any 
1903other type of picture been involved, since there is a deadly 
1904monotony about all ‘New Real’ canvasses. The fc New Real’ 
1905dogma imposes this terrible sameness, just as the Moham- 
1906medan religion restricts the visual arts of Islamic countries 
1907to a lifeless monotony. What you see in numbers 1 and 
19082 is depressingly like any other Realties Nouvelles pictures. 
1909
1910
1911The other four pictures, 3, 4, 5 and 6 (between pages 58-59), 
1912are works of an opposite kind — belonging to the sort of paint- 
1913ing that Realties Nouvelles seeks to supersede — of the same 
1914pictorial order as the pictures to be seen in all our Galleries 
1915from the Roman heads and from Cimabue down to Augustus 
1916John and Pablo Picasso. 
1917
1918Mr. Francis Bacon’s picture, number 4, may seem to the 
1919uninitiated not to belong to the traditional order. This, of 
1920course, would show how greatly the prospective reader was in 
1921need of the instruction contained in this book; for I cannot 
1922believe that after reading these pages it would be possible to 
1923make such a mistake. The fact is that the Caprichos of Goya 
1924
1925
1926
1927Notes ( contd ) 
1928
1929and pictures by the Flemish artist Hieronymus Bosch, are very 
1930like the grotesqueries of Francis Bacon. Also, the ethical and 
1931literary impulses throughout the work of Bacon constitute him 
1932an artist at the opposite pole to the pretentious blanks and 
1933voids of Realties Nouvelles. 
1934
1935The splendid portrait of Sir William Walton, by Michael 
1936Ayrton (number 3), would take its place anywhere in a collec- 
1937tion of great historic portraits; the stylistic idiosyncrasy, 
1938identifying it as belonging to our time, is made a happy use of. 
1939The symbolic power of John Minton’s picture (number 6) 
1940requires no comment; and the early portrait by Colquhoun 
1941(number 5) shows well the powerful formalizing character of 
1942the work of this very gifted young artist. These are only a few 
1943of the many fine contemporary English pictures from which it 
1944was possible for me to select. What the reader should under- 
1945stand is that these four pictures are all of them styled 
1946‘progressive’ and ‘modernistic’; but in order to make them 
1947more so — for them to ‘advance’ still further — there would be 
1948no sense in their ‘advancing’ into the nothingness and nullity 
1949of the ‘New Real’. 
1950
1951
1952
1953
1954
1955
1956
1957
1958
1959XIV 
1960
1961
1962When the Painter is least Free 
1963
1964I T is a great mistake to think of the painter as free. He 
1965could be free, to a certain extent, but he is not. His most 
1966harebrained ‘experiments’ are not wild and daring acts of free 
1967adventure; on the contrary, he is probably least free when most 
1968eccentric. One has to think of him as a figurine in a ballet, 
1969advancing with an identical 61 an, with a score of men exactly 
1970like himself, in a studied rush. 
1971
1972No, the painter is pushed along paths which are not neces- 
1973sarily his paths, and all artists today submit to a will which is 
1974not necessarily theirs. They have their programme of work 
1975presented to them (as though they were performers in a highly 
1976eccentric ballet) by a man who is not himself an artist, but a 
1977theoretician who has not that love for the medium, the 
1978material, la matihre , which we find in the born artist. It is this 
1979love for the material which anchors the artist, in some ways 
1980and to some extent, in a manner unknown to the theoretician. 
1981In the case of a master-artist, there is no question of his aban- 
1982doning the delights of the material, and going to make scare- 
1983crows in the wilderness; and with any man who is an authentic 
1984painter, or sculptor in a lesser degree, the same repugnance for 
1985the purely abstract obtains — I mean for absolute, as it were 
1986islamic, shunning of the natural. 
1987
1988To be specific, whoever is able to create upon a canvas or a 
1989piece of paper a human figure containing the reality of life, 
1990or in stone or clay, or to bring into the world the vital reflec- 
1991tion of a farm-yard, a ship’s deck, a lake in the mountains, or 
1992a storm at sea, is not likely to go off* and satisfy himself by 
1993drawing with a ruler a lot of strips upon a canvas or paper, 
1994filling them in witty colour, or producing a number of squares 
1995
199651 
1997
1998
1999
200052 The Painting Animal and the Pundit 
2001
2002and circles or a few triangles filled in with white or blue, or 
2003mixing these things together. That would be like a man, 
2004accustomed to the warmth and variety of the world outside, 
2005going and shutting himself up in a bare stone or concrete cell. 
2006Only a profoundly austere religionist would want to do that. 
2007Visual abstraction is like a form of suicide, or a form of rigid 
2008personal seclusion, or an isolation from life like the existence 
2009of the Trappist monk. 
2010
2011Again, however, it may be recalled, I showed how even 
2012the greatest artist born today would never be given time to 
2013develop his powers; as for instance Picasso was able to. But 
2014had he had this opportunity, and become a sort of magician, 
2015he would never be likely to throw away his wand. 
2016
2017One of my principal objections to the pundit-prophet is that 
2018he is always an agent of the Zeitgeist , whose function it is to 
2019‘inspire’ (to drill and to discipline) a generation. The Zeitgeist 
2020means fashion; and I do not think that the best work is done 
2021when the compulsion of fashion is at its intensest. The fact 
2022that this pundit has first to learn all his tricks from the painter, 
2023and then to dragoon him according to a theory which is often 
2024independent of painting, is an unsatisfactory situation. The 
2025pundit has interests of his own and is apt to look at things 
2026fundamentally differently from the painter, or sculptor, or 
2027other visual artist. Often he knows very little about the craft 
2028of painting. So, as an interpreter, he is not to be trusted. The 
2029picture dealer is apt to know more about painting than does 
2030the ‘critic’. But there are times, nevertheless, when the pundit 
2031has his uses: even if it is only to regularize an absurdity — or 
2032to be responsible for a good funeral. 
2033
2034
2035
2036XV 
2037
2038
2039The English Way 
2040
2041T HE State bestows its legendary chivalrous honorific upon 
2042somebody who stands the human intelligence upon its 
2043head and, with a solemn frown, addresses his remarks to its 
2044footwear. This is a paradox such as is met with by Alice in the 
2045reverse regions the other side of the Looking Glass; and the 
2046State is to be congratulated for honouring something so 
2047divorced from vulgar common sense. And this is not irony. No 
2048other nation, as we know, enjoys such things as the Mad 
2049Hatter’s tea party; and here is yet another illustration of how 
2050the English find Alice, and all her kind, irresistible as a model 
2051and exemplar. In Sir Herbert Read we have a man who has 
2052been very recently knighted for being so ‘contemporary’; for 
2053having been for years ready to plug to the hilt, to trumpet, to 
2054expound, any movement in painting or sculpture — sometimes 
2055of the most contradictory kind — which was obviously hurry- 
2056ing along a path as opposite as possible from what had 
2057appealed to civilized man through the ages. This is a story of 
2058the snobisme of the advanced. The definition of the ‘contem- 
2059porary’ for this distinguished pundit has been the farthest pos- 
2060sible from anything that has been seen before . Accepting this 
2061definition, a man would be assured of contemporaneity 
2062who was highly uncontemporary with practically everyone 
2063alive. 
2064
2065Crowning this career, was the securing of the institutionaliz- 
2066ation of what is intellectualized beyond the sensuous regions 
2067of the fine arts, by the foundation of an institution, to be an 
2068anchorage for projects aimed at attaining to some metaphysi- 
2069cal reality, after dismissing all of nature except the linear 
2070dream of a two-dimensional, white-blooded centipede. The 
2071
207253 
2073
2074
2075
207654 The Painting Animal and the Pundit 
2077
2078institute to which I refer is, of course, ‘The Institute of Con- 
2079temporary Arts’ — quite a small affair, but, for reasons I shall 
2080indicate, it does not have to be very large: only firmly cemented 
2081into its fairly expensive site. It is, as you see, named an 
2082institution, and also it is necessary to note that it is called 
2083‘contemporary’. It is an institute for the contemporary : the 
2084‘contemporary’ being somewhere in the future, so far away 
2085as to be very remote from the present. 
2086
2087Money has been poured out in order to make this institution 
2088a reality. The State has smiled upon this budding institution 
2089and always been ready to help with what is public money. 
2090But the dream was Sir Herbert’s. As a matter of fact, what 
2091Sir Herbert dreamed of to begin with was a museum of modern 
2092art; what he got was the institute of which he is president. 
2093
2094An institute is really much more rational than a museum. 
2095A ‘museum’, for such a purpose, can only be described as a 
2096hoax; whereas an ‘institute’, as interpreted in Dover Street, is 
2097airy enough to satisfy the insubstantial conditions of the time. 
2098It is very accurately in conformity with the floaty character 
2099of the Zeitgeist. Let us take, for instance, the last ‘institu- 
2100tional’ manifestation of the I.C.A. Eleven thousand pounds, 
2101distributed in a gallery lent by the Tate for a number of pro- 
2102jects, is better than a ‘museum’, with thousands of projects 
2103masquerading as works of art. Metaphorically speaking, this 
2104sculpture exhibition, in the Tate Gallery, may be regarded as 
2105a kite. Here we become conscious of nationality. The English 
2106way to deal with this intellectual extremism, in an unintel- 
2107lectualized world, is to humour it, to leave it all floating in the 
2108air like a mysterious kite, anchored to an institution (which is, 
2109not a bogus, but a metaphysical institution) to the creation of 
2110which the state has contributed; into whose modest coffers 
2111whoever wishes to may throw a cheque for a thousand pounds 
2112or two — or eleven if he likes — and so a vaporous emanation of 
2113the institute, which I have called a kite, floats for a while in 
2114that airy art-palace, the Tate. 
2115
2116
2117
2118XVI 
2119
2120
2121The American Way 
2122
2123T HE American way is not to humour, but to take very 
2124seriously, this pioneering in an abstract future: to build 
2125an enormous museum in the centre of a major city, to purchase 
2126for it anything that anyone likes to project (with strips of wire, 
2127bits of tin, aluminum, slate, plastic, wood, or which is ‘pro- 
2128jected’ in paint upon a canvas, or a lump of stone with some 
2129bits of wire protruding from it): and to pretend that this is a 
2130rarely significant work of art to preserve for future ages, some- 
2131thing like the pictures of Leonardo, Signorelli, El Greco or 
2132Van Eyck. 
2133
2134Centuries hence (I fear it will not be before) someone will 
2135burst out laughing at this museum, like the child and the 
2136naked king in the fairy tale. Taking literally is the American 
2137way: building massive walls around a hazy idea; enshrining on 
2138granite foundations a little squinting image of zero. 
2139
2140Needless to say the English way is absurd, most absurd, too . 
2141But it is essential to realize that everything in life is absurd, 
2142and eleven thousand pounds or eleven billion pounds is the 
2143same thing: in art eleven thousand is what we get; in politics 
2144eleven billion . The only thing that is not absurd is what is 
2145found where the earth conditions are stable and peaceful 
2146enough to allow of the production of such great classical works 
2147as those of Leonardo, Michelangelo, Van Eyck, El Greco. 
2148
2149In England we will, I feel sure, be sufficiently mature at no 
2150time to collect for posterity a quantity of bric-&-brac, of childishly 
2151pretentious shorthand notes of structures, which claim that not- 
2152to-be-understood is meritorious, that not-to-be-there except 
2153as a cipher is better than to be there, with the authority of the 
2154rational and the easily-read, the easily- seen, the easily-heard. 
2155
215655 
2157
2158
2159
216056 The Painting Animal and the Pundit 
2161
2162We in England shall always prefer to leave such things 
2163floating about in some public gallery where they are not bought 
2164(that would be absurd), but eleven thousand pounds is col- 
2165lected and sprinkled over them as ‘prizes’ — as gifts to good 
2166little boys and girls who have the right idea. They stop there 
2167just long enough to collect a little dust, to produce a little 
2168flutter (and perhaps some outraged foreigner will oblige by 
2169attacking an exhibit, the brute); and then they are carted away 
2170and will eventually evaporate. 
2171
2172Evaporate — it can be guaranteed that they will do that. 
2173For what do you suppose happens to the thousands of toiles 
2174which are annually assembled in the RSalitSs Nouvelles exhibi- 
2175tions in Paris? They fill the vast halls, hired for the purpose, 
2176in the Avenue President Wilson (which are always empty), 
2177and, the exhibition over, they are returned to the artist, who 
2178may dwell anywhere in the world from Patagonia to Pakistan. 
2179
2180These distant — do not let us call them painters, but dia- 
2181grammatists of zero, probably paint over their oeuvre, and, 
2182upon the pure white ground, paint another diagram remark- 
2183ably like the one they have obliterated. A year hence they will 
2184again despatch it to Paris, to ‘R6alit6s Nouvelles , Avenue 
2185President Wilson, Paris, France’. 
2186
2187How many of us accept Sir Herbert’s interpretation of the 
2188word ‘contemporary’? Not more, perhaps, than one thousand: 
2189which is quite a lot, but, among forty million people, an almost 
2190invisible minority. In support of what is contemporary for 
2191Sir Gerald Kelly, P.R.A., would be a minority, five, or perhaps 
2192ten times as numerous as Sir Herbert’s. In making use of the 
2193word ‘contemporary’ one must realize, to begin with, how 
2194many differing contemporaneous groups there are — some mil- 
2195lions strong, and others with no more than a thousand, or even 
2196a hundred adherents. It is extremely confusing; but there you 
2197are; if you wish to achieve clarity regarding the term ‘con- 
2198temporary’, you cannot proceed without allowing for these 
2199multiple varieties. 
2200
2201Culturally , of course, there are not forty million people in 
2202
2203
2204
220557 
2206
2207
2208The American Way 
2209
2210England. The great majority are not culturally later than the 
2211Paleolithic. The higher functionary of the gas company who 
2212has occasionally visited my domicile is probably Neolithic (he 
2213reads my books). The taxi-driver I met this morning is cer- 
2214tainly Paleo-something — no contemporary of mine, I protest. 
2215Could we say there are a hundred thousand of the cultured in 
2216England? To arrive at statistics of this sort you would have to 
2217decide what you were going to include under the heading 
2218‘cultural’. What proportion of the people making use of all the 
2219public libraries in Great Britain take out books which have 
2220any claim to be ‘cultural’? What proportion of the graduates 
2221of Oxford and Cambridge have anything to do with culture? 
2222The moment you propose to draw up a rough table of cultural 
2223groups, with their appropriate numbers, you see how vain it 
2224is. All I need do is to remind the reader of the difficulties latent 
2225once one proposes to be a little particular in one’s use of terms. 
2226
2227To confine oneself to England is a rule one must observe. 
2228For, difficult as it is to avoid going astray in England, if you 
2229attempt to include the continent of Europe, from Cherbourg 
2230to the Bosphorus and so on, in your contemporaneity, you 
2231would end in such confusion that you would very soon tear up 
2232what you were writing. What is contemporary in culture in 
2233places so near together as are France and England is chrono- 
2234logically very different, and never (allowing for the fact that 
22351914 here is roughly 1884 in Paris) does their contemporaneity 
2236coincide. For one hundred years the Anglo-Saxon countries 
2237have acquired their musical and their visual authority and 
2238directive from France and Germany. The spring fashions 
2239ordained by Dior are transmitted to the Anglo-Saxon 
2240countries immediately, and they are only valid for half a year. 
2241Yet what you see in London and New York is never the same 
2242as what you see in Paris: the fashion sent out from Paris is 
2243transmuted into something else, and the Parisian contem- 
2244poraneity never coincides with what is contemporaneous in 
2245England or in North America. In the same way, to some ex- 
2246tent, the authoritative creations in the fine arts or in music 
2247
2248
2249
225058 The Painting Animal and the Pundit 
2251
2252never reach England or America intact. They are received and 
2253accepted in atmospheres which considerably modify them, at 
2254a date much later than their original creation. The Pavane pour 
2255une Infante Dtfunte of Ravel, or the Pierrot Lunaire of Schoen- 
2256berg, when they reach these atmospheres a process of insem- 
2257ination occurs; the English or American flowers, the musical 
2258blooms, which are eventually produced conform to local laws 
2259which do not coincide with the laws prevailing in their places 
2260of origin. They suffer a change as does a gown or a hat. It is the 
2261same with the pictures of Modigliani, Bonnard, or Braque, or 
2262the sculpture of Brancusi. 
2263
2264
2265
2266
2267The Leicestershire Education Authority 
2268
2269
2270
22714 
2272
2273
2274Man in a Chair by Francis Bacon 
2275
2276The Hanover Gallery Ltd. 
2277
2278
2279
2280
2281
2282Portrait of a Young Woman 
2283by Robert Colquhoun 
2284
2285Lefevre Gallery 
2286
2287
2288
2289
2290The Gamblers by John Minton 
2291
2292
2293
2294Part III 
2295
2296THE PART OF VANITY 
2297
2298
2299D.P.A. 5 
2300
2301
2302
2303
2304XVII 
2305
2306
2307Flattery of the Artist 
2308
2309O NE of the features of contemporary art criticism is un- 
2310doubtedly the amount of flattery the artist comes in for. 
2311He is the hero of a thousand monographs; but less and less 
2312what is of solid advantage to him comes his way. I am now 
2313going to speak of the notion of a painting animal: and in that 
2314may be detected a good percentage of self-flattery. This notion 
2315of the painter’s ultimately led to a recognition of his right to 
2316exist in a world of his own, and to enjoy a unique autonomy. 
2317In its simplest form the glorious theory of the autonomy of 
2318the painter was adopted in England by Sir Herbert Read . 1 
2319Such a licence as that imagined for the painter was never 
2320enjoyed by any other craftsman; and the more arcane he can 
2321make his work the more the painter feels himself of a race 
2322apart — a kind of chosen people. And if he gets poorer and 
2323poorer, is not that the destiny of the elect? 
2324
2325Extremism, or such extremism as we meet today, is patho- 
2326logic. Certain theories or notions are naturally generated in a 
2327period when extremism is almost universally accepted. The 
2328ideal autonomy imagined for the painter, the tendency to 
2329speak as though what is seen enjoys a privileged position on 
2330the earth, is characteristic of a time in which theories are sub- 
2331stituted for anything real and solid. What, after all, is the 
2332ghastly autonomous privilege, the splendid isolation, about 
2333which I have been speaking, except a private latitude to 
2334do whatever one likes, provided no one else suffers any in- 
2335convenience? Such licences as this, in a time of grandiose 
2336
23371 ‘But art, I shall maintain, is an autonomous activity ... as a mode of 
2338knowledge at once its own reality and its own end.* Sir Herbert Read, 
2339p. 2, Art and Society . 
2340
2341
234261 
2343
2344
2345
234662 The Part of Vanity 
2347
2348make-believe like the present, the artist becomes accustomed to, 
2349though ultimately he must begin to wonder whether there is 
2350no material equivalent for so much hot air. Men who trumpet 
2351such theories live in the van of ‘culture’; they belong to the 
2352camouflaged section of the public services, where with fanfares 
2353and resounding words, the absence of culture is gloriously con- 
2354cealed. But this is not the first time I have made it my business 
2355to draw attention to the sinister fairy-tale existence lived by 
2356the artist, and to show how a palace is built around the 
2357starving artist, and a large staff directed to wait upon him, 
2358feeding him with praise in place of food. 
2359
2360I began by speaking of the extraordinary amount of flattery 
2361the painter absorbs (the pundit, and the rest of the well-paid 
2362busy-bodies buzzing around the visual arts responsible, of 
2363course, for this). If one were to set about analysing the causes 
2364for the present trends in painting and in sculpture, and to 
2365catalogue the inducements which are so irresistible that a 
2366painter departs from the human society in which he lives and 
2367sets himself up in an idealistic desert, vanity and snobisme 
2368would be the first things to which one would direct one’s 
2369attention. I am only able to glance at this subject in the 
2370present study; but let me take the magnetic word contemporary , 
2371and analyse a few of its possibilities. Even so habitual and 
2372harmless an expression as this contains unsuspected potencies 
2373when cleverly handled. In the foregoing section this significant 
2374word was introduced, and a few of its paradoxical possibilities 
2375already indicated. But as I was writing what I did it occurred 
2376to me that Contemporary was one of those expressions which 
2377deserved a good deal of attention. 
2378
2379
2380
2381XVIII 
2382
2383
2384Today the Contemporary = the Extreme 
2385
2386H OW did it come about, you well may ask, that entire 
2387generations of painters have gone to school with abstrac- 
2388tion, have acquired a peculiarly barren technique, in which 
2389there are none of the natural delights of interpretation of 
2390nature which have always made painting and drawing and 
2391sculpture so delightful a discipline? A very great part is played 
2392in the conversion to extremism by vanity and snobisme. The 
2393desire to be in the swim, to be up to date, to be in step with 
2394fashion in a mild way, is so ordinary a human impulse that a 
2395man need not be called vain, or snob , if he gives proof of a 
2396weakness of that kind, especially in a decadence. To like to be 
2397contemporary , to be abreast of the Zeitgeist , is surely quite a 
2398harmless weakness, and there is no one who is not, in some 
2399degree, its victim. 
2400
2401Not that contemporaneity is such plain sailing as all that. 
2402Two persons born, on the same day, in the same year, in 
2403Aberdeen and in Canterbury (this is taking an extreme case, 
2404for one might as well say both born within a hundred yards 
2405of one another), are only contemporaries in a very limited way. 
2406Some people mature, and some do not; people’s interests differ 
2407so widely as to make it impossible to think of them as con- 
2408temporaries, seeing that the interests of one may have an 
2409extremely Victorian flavour, and the interests of another be- 
2410long specifically to the present day. Their endowments are very 
2411unequal, and a gifted man does not keep in step with a dull 
2412one. It is quite easy to see how the use of the word contemporary 
2413cannot be confined to any one kind of man. 
2414
2415Now the snobisme of which I have been speaking causes the 
2416addict to be exquisitely sensitive about the use of that word, 
2417
241863 
2419
2420
2421
242264 The Part of Vanity 
2423
2424indicating that he belongs to the class from which the avant- 
2425garde is drawn, namely the word ‘contemporary’. Therefore it 
2426is an understandable lever, which is why we see that adjective 
2427‘contemporary’ so often employed in the naming of societies, 
2428centres, institutes, etc. 
2429
2430To promise that something will be ‘contemporary’ is like an 
2431assurance of unfailing youth. 
2432
2433And the extremism in the arts — most of all in the visual 
2434arts — is a pathological straining after something which boasts 
2435of a spectacular aheadofness — looking upon the art in question 
2436as a race . In scientific techniques — in the manufacture of any 
2437machine, an automobile, an aeroplane, today more than ever 
2438it is a race against the rival manufacturer, because things are 
2439so quickly outdated. The press tells us today how our military 
2440aeroplanes are lagging behind in the armament race, how we 
2441really have no war-plane which is a match for the Russian 
2442MiG 15 jet. But one does not have to turn to war industry; 
2443wherever machines are being manufactured, there is the atmo- 
2444sphere of a breathless race, where up-to-dateness is a matter of 
2445unremitting urgency. And the art-extremist, or, more accur- 
2446ately, the promoters of extremism in art who urge on the 
2447painter to more and more extravagance, are behaving as though 
2448they mistook the nature of the arts, whose problems are in 
2449every way different from those of technology. There must 
2450always be competition. That can be seen in the pages of Vasari, 
2451and you may recall that, as Van Gogh was approaching his bed 
2452with a razor in his hand, Gauguin woke up, and said, ‘Vincent, 
2453what are you doing? Return to your bed.’ Which the Dutch- 
2454man immediately did. Gauguin possessed great skill, which 
2455Van Gogh had not been able to acquire; hence the razor. 
2456
2457All that is natural enough; but a race — a race to put as much 
2458distance as possible between himself and what everyone else 
2459understands or enjoys, that is terribly silly. 
2460
2461Now I will return to the word contemporary. I do not mean 
2462the use of the word involved when someone says to you, is he 
2463your contemporary? That of course refers to age. Or here is 
2464
2465
2466
2467Today the Contemporary = the Extreme 65 
2468
2469another instance in which the word contemporary is not the 
2470mot juste . I read the other day Mr. Angus Wilson’s interesting 
2471book Hemlock and After . There are as many homosexuals in its 
2472pages as there are normal lovers in a volume of Casanova. Now, 
2473it is self-evident that this is a contemporary book , because in no 
2474novel published in the ’forties, the ’thirties, or the ’twenties 
2475would you find homosexuals treated in this way — with amused 
2476toleration. It is obvious what kind of a contemporary it is. 
2477
2478This identity with a period is not at all what is meant by 
2479cultural contemporaneity: cultural contemporaneity signifies, 
2480according to the painting-extremist, how far you can displace 
2481yourself from the cultural centre of things, sticking your little 
2482flag up in the iciest and loneliest regions of the intellect. 
2483
2484If you had to frame a definition of the word ‘contemporary’ 
2485you would find, with some surprise, how complex your answer 
2486had to be. First, you would ask yourself what was purely con- 
2487temporary. You would have to disentangle it entirely from the 
2488past. You would carefully exclude the large volume of some- 
2489thing which is always going on, and which is much the same in 
24901854 as in 1954. Then you would have to eliminate anything 
2491which just happens to be occurring now; for the contemporary 
2492should be something which is essentially of today. 
2493
2494It must be your problem to isolate what is nineteen-fifty- 
2495fourish. But you will be apt to find that, after the most 
2496laborious analysis, all you have left is something with the face 
2497of yesterday, turning, sometimes quickly and sometimes the 
2498reverse, around in a circle. 
2499
2500You will find that your task is often complicated by the 
2501intrusion of some material from outside England — for, of 
2502course, in defining the contemporary you naturally confine your- 
2503self to England. If you notice an idea of French origin floating 
2504around at a given moment, that cannot be excluded — it is part 
2505of the contemporaneity with which you are confronted. It is 
2506then necessary to recall that what is contemporary in France 
2507in 1910 finally reaches the shores of England by about 1950. 
2508
2509
2510
251166 The Part of Vanity 
2512
2513That is always likely to put a strain upon English contem- 
2514poraneity, and it has to be fitted in with great care. Since the 
2515contemporaneity of France and of England do not coincide, at 
2516a time when there happens to be more Gallic influence than 
2517usual it would be found almost impossible to arrive at a 
2518definition of what is ‘contemporary’. 
2519
2520I will leave your supposed attempt to define what is con- 
2521temporary, however, and simply enquire what in your view is 
2522the most contemporary kind of painting in England at the 
2523present moment. It would be quite impossible to answer that 
2524unless one had agreed on a definition of the contemporary. If 
2525one had agreed that the answer to the question would be found 
2526by identifying the artist who, in his practice, was most distant 
2527from, let us say, Picasso — most distant in a direction never 
2528trod by human foot before — then that could be automatically 
2529ascertained, and there would never be any problem at all. But 
2530if a less mechanical fashion was in vogue, and to be con- 
2531temporary could not be decided in that simple way, one’s task 
2532might in that case be very difficult. 
2533
2534There is one thing which has not so far been mentioned, and 
2535that is, how many people have any claim to the status of con- 
2536temporary ? For instance, ‘are the fifty million English alive in 
25371954 more contemporary because of Sir Herbert?’ This is another 
2538way of putting the question. Another question of the same 
2539sort: ‘Is France more contemporary because of the existence 
2540in its capital city of la RealitSs NouvellesV The answer to any 
2541such question is that France possesses no contemporaneity, 
2542and that England does not either. Contemporaneity is so small 
2543a thing, applying to so limited a number of people, that it 
2544cannot be spoken of in connection with a nation. 
2545
2546On the other hand, there are, perhaps, five or six thousand 
2547contemporary people in Great Britain; which means that there 
2548are that number who aspire to be contemporary. The ‘con- 
2549temporary’ is a cultural 61ite. The elite of 1950 in England is 
2550the same as the 61iteof 1916 in France, and of Germany in 1920. 
2551And a very restricted amount of Eliteness is always existing 
2552
2553
2554
2555Today the Contemporary = the Extreme 67 
2556
2557everywhere. So the ‘contemporary’ has nothing to do with 
2558time, nor with age. The ‘contemporary’ of Sir Herbert’s insti- 
2559tute has been in existence, in one place and another, for the 
2560entire century; which is why it has nothing to do with time, 
2561although it is generally supposed to mean today . 
2562
2563Extremism = contemporary. I do not see how you could get 
2564nearer to the meaning of contemporary than that. Although 
2565one thinks of extremism as something perpetually moving for- 
2566ward (violently progressing), that is an illusion. Extremism 
2567may be doing that, but far more often it is stationary. Or there 
2568may be some inconsequential movement, just enough to create 
2569the illusion that something is happening, although in reality 
2570nothing is happening. In both sculpture and painting, when 
2571extremism has been standing still for two or three decades, it 
2572gets to look more and more academic, less and less extreme. 
2573It will only be when that childish sport is abandoned that 
2574something really new will appear in the visual arts. 
2575
2576
2577
2578XIX 
2579
2580
2581The Glamour of the Extreme 
2582
2583E XTREMISM in all its forms, and in every department of 
2584life, has a glamorous attraction for a certain type of man, 
2585as it has everywhere that attraction for youth. In politics is 
2586where this glamour proves most dangerous. 
2587
2588I have a friend who is a natural bourgeois. He was the son 
2589of a minor Eminence. At the university, during the fellow- 
2590travelling decade, he got in the habit of talking big and bloody 
2591about social revolution. He was not intelligent or mentally 
2592mature enough to understand the guillotine and the firing- 
2593squad; he had not even read Karl Marx. But for the rest of 
2594his life, and he is now over fifty, he has remained a sort of 
2595undergraduate communist, simply because it secured for him 
2596a claim to superiority which he coveted, and could obtain in 
2597no other way, anything like as easily as that. 
2598
2599My friend is a little monster of vanity. He is always showing 
2600off; if there were a fire he would jump about among the little 
2601flames where he thought it was safe, and would order every- 
2602body about as if he were a Fire Captain. At least no one could 
2603fail to understand what made him a pseudo-communist. 
2604
2605Extremities of thought or of feeling may almost scorch the 
2606paper upon which something is printed, but in literary expres- 
2607sion the form remains intact, the words cad or unspeakable 
2608blackguard get printed with as much decorum as please pass the 
2609salt . In literature, I am very happy to say, there is no danger 
2610so far of a crusade to stampede the entire writing world into 
2611an uproarious dumbness, or the next thing to it. Miss Stein did 
2612her best with an infectious stammer. One would have thought 
2613she would have misled a few dozen weak-minded young men 
2614in her native land; but as far as I know there were no followers. 
2615
261668 
2617
2618
2619
262069 
2621
2622
2623The Glamour of the Extreme 
2624
2625If, however, you see some literary man ‘go abstract’ and begin 
2626writing dumb, pay no attention, any more than you would to 
2627a child going ‘Puff Puff!’, imagining himself a locomotive. 
2628Vanity is responsible for a good deal of youthful homicide. 
2629Some late-teenaged boys were arrested not long ago ‘in con- 
2630nection’ with the death of a twenty-one-year-old. It might be 
2631an extra-young racing gang, or it might be the outcome of a 
2632desire-to-shine in the gutters of some suburb. An extremist, 
2633perhaps, who needs a corpse to bolster his reputation for 
2634toughness, and to show himself a fellow who is prepared to go 
2635as far as anyone can. 
2636
2637But I am not putting down to a desire-to-shine all extremism 
2638in painting or sculpture. Sometimes an absence of talent may 
2639wish to conceal itself; any fantastic mess will serve the purpose; 
2640or it can masquerade in a rhomboid and a bunch of triangles. 
2641And then there is (an even rarer bird) a man of the golden 
2642mean. But in that there is no advertisement. However, I have 
2643sufficiently illustrated this little point, and shall wind up by 
2644observing that excess or extreme and vanity are closely related. 
2645
2646
2647
2648
2649Part IV 
2650
2651ERRORS OF MALRAUX 
2652
2653
2654
2655
2656XX 
2657
2658
2659‘ A Compact Exclusive Clan * 
2660
2661I N the visual arts the extremism of the first half of the 
2662twentieth century is, ostensibly, a continuation of the experi- 
2663mental character of painting during the second half of the 
2664nineteenth century. In fact, however, the new twentieth- 
2665century advances are quite different in character from that 
2666of the period of which they are supposed to be a logical con- 
2667tinuance. For instance, the Cubism of Picasso is spoken of as 
2668a development of the work of Cezanne. If it were only thof, we 
2669should still be at the heart of painting, instead of outside and 
2670beyond it. 
2671
2672In the future, the historian will immediately be struck by 
2673the abrupt change that came over painting in the second of 
2674these groups of fifty years, successive and continuous as they 
2675were in time and space. To that historian the first of this pair 
2676of half-centuries, beginning with Manet and Monet, and ending 
2677with Gauguin and Vuillard, will seem to be in a sunlit stretch 
2678of time, given over gloriously to the art of painting; whereas 
2679the half-century which has just come to a close will appear a 
2680dark and feverish march of new schools, at its heart meta- 
2681physical, and far from the sunlit earth of ‘Le bon bock’, or of 
2682Monet’s ‘Boulevard des Capucines, Paris.’ This stark difference 
2683might be explained by the fact that in the twentieth century 
2684the guiding spirits in painting were not Frenchmen. Picasso, 
2685at one time, was almost everything in France; when someone 
2686asked him what the young men were doing, he answered, ‘La 
2687jeunesse c’est moi,’ which was a quite accurate description of 
2688the situation. I merely mention this; the change from the 
2689national to the international could hardly afford a full explan- 
2690ation for the metamorphosis. 
2691
2692
269373 
2694
2695
2696
269774 Errors of Malraux 
2698
2699It is an interesting speculation to ask oneself to what the 
2700above historian would attribute the nineteenth-century fer- 
2701ment in the visual arts. It does not seem to me that there is 
2702anything obscure about the causes of what happened in French 
2703art in the last century. But there are theories about this, held 
2704by ‘art historians’ of the present day, which seem to me to 
2705apply, possibly, to our own half-century, and not to that which 
2706began roughly with the French Impressionists. This mistake, 
2707as it seems to me, may be the result of regarding our century, 
2708visually, as a mere continuation of the last. 
2709
2710An admirably illustrated, two volume, art-historical study 
2711by the novelist, Andr6 Malraux, has recently appeared. The 
2712date of publication in France was 1949; it will be from the 
2713translation of this work, published by Pantheon Books, New 
2714York 1 that I shall be quoting. Malraux has a lot to say on 
2715the subject of the insulation of the visual artist, and at this 
2716point I should like, accompanied by rather extensive quotation, 
2717to examine what he says. 
2718
2719At several places in the course of these two volumes, 
2720Malraux refers to artists as a ‘sect’ or as a ‘caste’. Thus, on 
2721page 134, Vol. I, where he is speaking of the period of the first 
2722great artistic innovations in France, he writes, ‘For now the 
2723artists were becoming a caste.’ And a little lower down on the 
2724same page, ‘From the end of the eighteenth century, though 
2725the various arts diverged, the artists themselves formed a com- 
2726pact, exclusive clan and launched concerted attacks on the 
2727culture of which they disapproved. Art had changed its char- 
2728acter; from being a mere adornment of civilization, it was 
2729becoming what we now mean by art.’ 
2730
2731Here you have the specifically political explanation of this 
2732phenomenon — the large and aggressive sect of craftsmen of the 
2733visual arts, ‘a compact, exclusive clan’, on the march against 
2734
27351 The English edition of M. Malraux’s work, The Voices of Silence , is pub- 
2736lished in London by Seeker & Warburg, Ltd. and represents the author’s 
2737recension of Le Psychologie d'Art . 
2738
2739
2740
27416 A Compact Exclusive Clan ’ 75 
2742
2743all the cultural standards of their time — against bourgeois 
2744standards, according to Malraux, as if their attack were 
2745political. More and more, their pictures were looked upon as 
2746bombs, to hurl at the possessing class. In my view the nine- 
2747teenth-century painters were not a political sect, but a com- 
2748munity of painters; the explosive nature of their pictures was 
2749not destined to blast society, but to destroy the pictures of the 
2750school which preceded theirs. Like other men, they thought 
2751about politics, about what was going on around them: and, 
2752since there was nothing to cause them to arrange their think- 
2753ing, they no doubt had a very low opinion of the politicians 
2754of the republics and empires succeeding to the Napoleonic epic. 
2755On the other hand, whatever their view of the regime, that 
2756played no part in their experimenting with pointillisme , or of 
2757the Impressionist theories of which that was a development. 
2758
2759The men of letters were, to a large extent, on the march also, 
2760but they did not form anything that could be described as a 
2761compact and considerable body of dissidents like the artists, 
2762and they were never technical extremists in the way the 
2763painters were. The same might be said of musicians — who, for 
2764the kind of reason indicated in Section III, were less disposed 
2765to defy the society to which they belonged. 
2766
2767The passage quoted above ends with the words ‘what we 
2768now mean by art’. What exactly ‘we’ refers to here is un- 
2769certain; but Malraux is inclined to endow the visual arts with 
2770mystical revolutionary attributes. He casts ‘art’ for the role of 
2771destroyer of bourgeois values. It is necessary to recall that 
2772Malraux has himself played the part of an extreme kind of 
2773fellow-traveller; which, of course, in a general way, does not 
2774invalidate his criticism, these two volumes of his containing 
2775much excellent popularizing, of special use where he is writing 
2776of the art of classical Greece and its influence in the Orient. 
2777Then, after all, ever since the French Revolution, in things 
2778even as remote from politics as pictures of apples or sun- 
2779flowers, there are no doubt vibrations originating in the Terror. 
2780
2781
2782D.P.A.— — 6 
2783
2784
2785
2786XXI 
2787
2788
2789The Coming of non-Humanistic Art 
2790
2791W HATEVER our view of these things may be, in the 
2792fine arts the nineteenth century began with the rise 
2793of a militant romanticism, unquestionably (1) reflecting the 
2794violences of the Revolution, and (2) imbued with iconoclastic 
2795fire and defiance of all authority. Opposed to this were such 
2796classicists as Ingres (pupil of David), standing for the old order 
2797and for the cultural inheritance of Europe. So, from the start, 
2798there was a civil war from one end to the other of the studios. 
2799Then, mid-way in the nineteenth century, began, with the 
2800Impressionists, that definitely quite new attitude of painters 
2801towards the pictures they painted. They no longer painted 
2802them in order to please patron or public, but to please them- 
2803selves, and imbued with a belief in the missionary destiny of 
2804painting (the gospel of Vart pour Vart , which is a gospel hostile 
2805to politics). I agree that to give proof of religious zeal where 
2806nothing but art was at stake is very odd, for they depended 
2807upon these pictures for their bread and butter, but there it is. 
2808With the greatest enthusiasm some of them began an attempt 
2809to paint the sunlight; the public laughed angrily at the result, 
2810looking upon their pictures as incomprehensible daubs. And so 
2811the revolt began; and from the time of Monet, Pissarro, and 
2812their friends, almost without a break, down to the present day, 
2813to Picasso and his followers, painters have apparently done 
2814their best to displease and startle the public instead of painting 
2815pictures which had a reasonable chance of selling. 
2816
2817Artists persuaded a limited number of people to buy their 
2818canvases, critics and picture dealers insisting upon the likeli- 
2819hood of these revolutionary canvases selling for vast sums of 
2820money in the immediate future, and, apart from that, being 
2821
282276 
2823
2824
2825
282677 
2827
2828
2829The Coming of non-Humanistic Art 
2830
2831great works of art, which a man should be proud to hang upon 
2832his walls. So, for about a century, painters, in spite of their 
2833unaccommodating attitude, have succeeded in making a pre- 
2834carious living (a small number a very good living, even). 1 But 
2835the world-wars and revolutions which began in the second 
2836decade of this century have, at last, so shattered the economies 
2837of Europe and modified the outlook of those societies which 
2838remain, that the artist, painter or sculptor finds it increasingly 
2839difficult to make anything like a regular living (from painting 
2840increasingly disagreeable pictures or producing more and more 
2841eccentric pieces of sculpture), and Andr6 Malraux, as a sup- 
2842porter of universal revolution — and not himself a painter or a 
2843sculptor — regards this situation with unquestioning approval. 
2844
2845Humanism is for Malraux an arch-enemy; as a critic he 
2846stands squarely in the centre of the anti-human bloc. He 
2847describes how formerly artists were satisfied to co-operate with 
2848humanism, but now they will co-operate with absolutely noth- 
2849ing, for there is nothing there which a true artist would 
2850touch with a barge-pole. But let me quote. 
2851
2852Humanistic art had made much of the culture to which it be- 
2853longed, but with the coming of non-humanistic art, which stood on 
2854its own rights, artists were drawn together all the more intimately 
2855as a result of art’s estrangement from the culture, and the society, 
2856of their time. In this oasis of art — without a precedent, even in 
2857Florence — art became an activity for which life furnished no more 
2858than the raw material, and a man made good his status by his 
2859power of bodying forth a world created by himself. So there came 
2860into being not so much a religion as a fanatically devoted sect . . . 
2861regarding its saints (and its eccentrics, too) as the Salt of the Earth; 
2862more gratified, like all sects, than its votaries admitted by the 
2863clandestine nature of their activities, and prepared to suffer, if 
2864needs were, in the Cause of a Truth none the less cogent for its 
2865vagueness. (Vol. I, p. 135.) 
2866
2867As you will see from this, there is, in the view of this 
2868
28691 Where I use the word artist or painter I refer to serious artists; I use the 
2870expression pot-boiler for the commercial variety. 
2871
2872
2873
287478 Errors of Malraux 
2875
2876observer, something very peculiar about the visual artist. 
2877Imagine if writers, or if musicians, formed themselves into a 
2878‘clandestine’ sect, dedicating themselves to some ‘truth’, pre- 
2879pared to suffer the hardship which this must entail. Imagine 
2880if they always wrote books which were either displeasing or 
2881incomprehensible to their fellow-citizens. For, according to 
2882Malraux, these technical extremisms of the painters and 
2883sculptors, the visual artist, are not, as is generally supposed, 
2884a question of ways of painting pictures , but of ways of thinking, 
2885of political belief. They desire to overturn the ethos of the 
2886nation to which they belong. 
2887
2888I was a painter, a visual artist, and at the beginning of my 
2889career I began by painting pictures of an extremist nature, and 
2890indulging in propaganda for visual extremism. What I thought 
2891I was doing was developing new methods of pictorial expres- 
2892sion; but I should have been told by the critics who think like 
2893Malraux that all this was much more to do with something 
2894quite untechnical, and not concerned specifically with the 
2895visual arts. 
2896
2897These critics would, of course, be writers, journalists prob- 
2898ably, and all they knew or cared about the painter’s art would 
2899be nil; it would naturally be impossible for them to imagine 
2900anyone valuing more highly a few dabs of paint, or a few 
2901scratches of a pen, than the battles for the mastery of the 
2902world. It is quite understandable that they should think you 
2903were fooling if you disowned any political aim. When I read 
2904Malraux I know that his observation in matters concerning the 
2905visual arts must necessarily be defective. It would be natural 
2906to him to suppose that a painter was (like himself) fired by 
2907politics, when this painter was, in reality, ‘mad about drawing’, 
2908as was Hokusai, or mad about certain combinations of black 
2909and white, as was one of Malraux’s favourites, Franz Hals. His 
2910is a defect like a defective ear, which might lead a man to 
2911think that Hindemith was harbouring some secret design (not 
2912musical at all), instead of existing in a dimension similar to 
2913that of the mathematician, and equally incorruptible. From 
2914
2915
2916
291779 
2918
2919
2920The Coming of non-Humanistic Art 
2921
2922long experience I am able to say that, while artists are naturally 
2923prone to experiment, and to try new methods of expression, 
2924there is, identifying himself with the artist, the promoter and 
2925inspirer of ‘movements’, who is often motivated by political 
2926enthusiasm. The artist is apt to be credited with the politics of 
2927the promoter. Lastly, for the picture to be complete, instances 
2928can be found of painters who are politically very active. 
2929Camille Pissarro, one of the most perfervid inspirers of Im- 
2930pressionism, and then of the movement which followed it, was, 
2931certainly, a politician; but Degas, Manet, Toulouse-Lautrec, 
2932Gauguin, on the other hand, to name only a few, were actuated 
2933in what they did by art first and foremost, and with the great 
2934majority of painters this was the case. Manet, to whom Malraux 
2935is constantly referring, and who is regarded by him as the first 
2936of the new kind of artists, was a great traditionalist, setting up 
2937Velasquez as a model, in opposition to the vulgarity and bad 
2938painting of the Salons. Gauguin was a pure romantic, going 
2939Indian, and claiming to be, through his mother, half Indian 
2940himself. And I cannot help thinking that Malraux, as a critic, 
2941has been too much influenced by his friends among the painters 
2942of what we call the Ecole de Paris . 
2943
2944Another very important point is that Malraux entirely 
2945ignores various factors, counting for a great deal in the life of 
2946the visual artist during the past hundred years. In the last 
2947century, for instance, the coming of the photograph was an 
2948event of far greater importance for the visual artist than has 
2949been the cinematograph, in the present century, for the actor. 
2950Malraux writes (with reference to the new attitude of the 
2951painter dramatically illustrated by the Impressionist Move- 
2952ment), ‘Now all that was changed; firstly, because the spec- 
2953tator, who asked for ‘finished’ pictures, would have none of a 
2954way of seeing which was just seeing and no more; and especially 
2955because the Impressionists, far from desiring the spectator’s 
2956assent, disclaimed it. Like the Byzantines, they disowned 
2957the public. . . And this is quite true; but Malraux gives the 
2958wrong reasons for these phenomena. As a fellow-traveller, the 
2959
2960
2961
296280 
2963
2964
2965Errors of Malraux 
2966
2967eighteenth century was for him the French Revolution, only 
2968that. For the historian of the future the Industrial Revolution 
2969will overshadow the great political explosion in France. The 
2970artists of the second half of the nineteenth century had moved 
2971deep into the industrial age, of which the invention of the 
2972camera was an integral part. Along with the aftermath of the 
2973French Revolution (which affected things for the bad as well 
2974as for the good), the Industrial Revolution rapidly resulted in 
2975a vulgarization of the whole of society from which we still 
2976suffer — the Hollywood cinema is something which could not 
2977have existed prior to the industrial age. The culture against 
2978which, according to Malraux, the visual artists were violently 
2979reacting was, certainly, in a sense, the vulgarity of the bour- 
2980geoisie (the communist bogey, for which the French language 
2981is de rigueur ), and the vulgarity of those artists who pandered 
2982to it, and to the vulgarity of everyone else and everything else. 
2983But what was the cause of this vulgarity? It was the natural 
2984result of the industrial age ; and that fact is completely ignored 
2985not only by Malraux, but by every other art historian of the 
2986same political bias as his, who much prefer to point to the 
2987French Revolution. 
2988
2989Let me conclude my criticism of this part of Malraux’s study 
2990by commenting upon what he describes as the ‘Elect Order of 
2991World-forsakers’. We all at some time have read O’Shaugh- 
2992nessy’s poem about the ‘world-losers and world-forsakers’. In 
2993it this romantic Irishman asserts that the poet, solitary and 
2994unworldly, is in fact ‘the mover and shaker of the world forever 
2995it seems’. In the course of the poem you may read the words, 
2996
2997We... 
2998
2999Built Nineveh with our sighing, 
3000
3001And Babel itself with our mirth. 
3002
3003Now it is well enough to see in the man of words, words that 
3004possess so magical a power, the man ideally solitary, world- 
3005losing and world-forsaking, but possessed of a power to shake 
3006the earth from one pole to the other. Jean- Jacques Rousseau, 
3007
3008
3009
301081 
3011
3012
3013The Coming of non-Humanistic Art 
3014
3015with his books, certainly did that — tore up society by the roots. 
3016But an oil-painting, or, however beautiful, an ink-drawing, 
3017cannot do things of that kind. Paul Cezanne can revolutionize 
3018the manner of painting of a generation or two of painters; but it 
3019is quite impossible for his canvases to have any effect outside 
3020of the technique of painting. The man who wrote the words 
3021of the song used in the French Revolution, Saint Nicholas a 
3022trois cUriaux , can set men chanting with diabolic glee around 
3023the guillotines; but a plate of Cezanne’s apples could not even 
3024stimulate a man’s hunger. 
3025
3026
3027
3028XXII 
3029
3030
3031Superficiality of Cultures 
3032
3033A MONG the various types of creator, the visual artist is 
3034certainly one of the most inaccessible to the man in the 
3035street. I mean by this, that, in looking at what he has done, 
3036the painter sees one thing, the public another; and to train 
3037up the public so that they see the same thing is impossible. 
3038This is because what the painter sees is in another dimension 
3039altogether. 
3040
3041I will now turn again to Andr6 Malraux, to that part of his 
3042work where he declares that the population at large has not, 
3043in the modem age of Europe, participated in cultural change. 
3044He repudiates the notion of a Gothic, a Renaissance, or a 
3045Baroque period — when everyone, butcher and baker and 
3046candlestick-maker, was Gothic-minded, or Baroque-minded, 
3047and so on. He asserts that the vast majority of the European 
3048population has, during the past millennium, continued just the 
3049same, quite unaltered by the fact that scholar and priest were 
3050enthusiastically occupied, for instance, with the literature, 
3051philosophy, the visual arts of Greek antiquity, and the fact 
3052that painters, sculptors, and architects were busy building up 
3053the style, later to be known as the Italian Renaissance. 
3054
3055Now, it was quite unnecessary for Malraux to repudiate the 
3056theory in question, for it is self-evident that no culture in the 
3057modern age has penetrated very deep. We are not a Pacific 
3058Island population. We exist in layers, and have done so since 
3059a semi-primitive time; if a culture suffused the inferior layers, 
3060it would certainly not be dominating the upper layers. But let 
3061me appeal to history. 
3062
3063The historian assures us, to take what Malraux would, I 
3064think, accept as a parallel case, that the Wars of the Roses, in 
3065
3066
3067
3068Superficiality of Cultures 83 
3069
3070England, was a matter in which the nobles were interested, but 
3071nobody else. Indeed, international trade prospered to an 
3072unusual extent. 
3073
3074In European history such paradoxes are rather the rule than 
3075the exception. For instance, Napoleon’s invasion of Russia pro- 
3076vides an excellent example. Without referring to history one 
3077would be inclined to think that the Russian people must have 
3078been shaken from top to bottom by that sensational event, 
3079including the occupation of their principal city. In fact , 1 this, 
3080apparently, was not the case. Only the court and the army 
3081and the countryside through which the Napoleonic columns 
3082advanced and retreated — and Moscow, of course — paid any 
3083attention to it. The balls and festivities of the aristocratic life 
3084proceeded as usual, in all parts of Russia out of reach of the 
3085French army. 
3086
3087If a military invasion of a country, or if a civil war, are 
3088events in which the majority of the population do not partici- 
3089pate, then certainly it is easy to understand how a cultural 
3090‘re-birth’, or renaissance, and the development of a new style 
3091in painting, did not influence the butcher, the baker, and the 
3092candlestick-maker. Where a style in the visual arts, like the 
3093Gothic, is identified with religion, it is to some extent a dif- 
3094ferent matter, at a moment of universal belief, in an ‘age of 
3095faith’. Nevertheless, the particular style involved, in the matter 
3096of architecture, or the other visual arts, would not very greatly 
3097concern the bulk of the population. 
3098
3099We may agree that the general run of men are a fairly con- 
3100stant factor, going on with their lives unaffected by such things 
3101as Romanesque, Baroque — or Impressionist, or Surrealist 
3102styles in art. There is no difficulty about conceding that the 
3103craftsman, in one of the more intellectual forms of art, will, in 
3104the nature of things, pay very little attention to the majority 
3105of the population. That he should be a ‘law unto himself’ is 
3106only another step, but this final step, realizing an absolute auto- 
3107nomy for a craftsman, is quite different from all the other steps. 
3108
31091 Cf. War and Peace , Leo Tolstoy. 
3110
3111
3112
311384 Errors of Malraux 
3114
3115As I have now restored this question of the autonomy of 
3116the craftsman in a fine art to its realistic status, let me, before 
3117concluding, list the ultimate issues. (1) There is the question 
3118of whether the visual artist is alone in the world. (2) As to 
3119whether a craft, like any other human activity, completely 
3120inaccessible to other men, is of any value, superior to that of 
3121a private amusement? (3) Whether this boast of absolute 
3122autonomy could be advanced (by pundits) for an art or craft 
3123at any period except one in which the art or craft is defunctive, 
3124and has nothing further to expect of the rest of the population, 
3125and is now an academic showpiece, in a propagandist sideshow 
3126marked CULTURE? 
3127
3128Let us examine question (1). The craftsman of one of the 
3129visual arts is not economically independent. This is a separate 
3130question, since it is intellectual or craftsmanly autonomy 
3131which is involved. Yet to be an artist at all — seriously, which 
3132means all the time — a man’s economic requirements must be 
3133assured. 
3134
3135Next, the visual artist cannot be regarded as alone, in any 
3136sense, for he lives in society, and if the work he did were looked 
3137upon as dangerous or in any way as objectionable, or anti- 
3138social, he would be forcibly discouraged. 
3139
3140If your view is that the artist’s life is similar to that of a 
3141bird (as it were a painting sparrow) as is the case with some 
3142people, then his mental faculties are not in question. But the 
3143painter and the sculptor think , in a way unknown to a sparrow; 
3144they read books — optical treatises, like the Impressionists; 
3145books of physics, like the Cubists; books of Surrealist theory, 
3146or of Freudian psychology, like the Surrealists. And all artists 
3147of this century have been catered for by an unflagging stream 
3148of books about themselves, or to satisfy their special interests. 
3149The modem artist may be said to find the literary atmosphere 
3150as necessary as is oxygen for the mountaineer engaged in 
3151high-altitude climbing. 
3152
3153Then, is he indifferent to the public? As women are said to 
3154dress purely for other women, does the artist never think of 
3155
3156
3157
315885 
3159
3160
3161Superficiality of Cultures 
3162
3163anything but other artists? This is, of course, not the case. If 
3164it is true, as we have seen, that artists live in one world, and 
3165the butcher, the baker, the candlestick-maker in another, that 
3166is not the end of the story: for they are not the only kind of 
3167people in the world. The artist, or the craftsman — sculptor or 
3168painter — is not alone in the world with the butcher, the baker, 
3169the candlestick-maker, as if they had been shipwrecked upon 
3170an island. 
3171
3172No. There is not only a Gothic, a Renaissance, — a ‘classic’ 
3173or a romantic — painter, sculptor, or architect. In these cul- 
3174tures, when a cultivated public exists, the artist may be quite 
3175independent of the butcher, the baker, the candlestick-maker, 
3176but not otherwise. The cultivated public is often very large, 
3177for the businessman, the politician, the man of science, the 
3178product of the universities, the courtier (where there is a 
3179court), monasteries (when there were monasteries), etc., swell 
3180it, each in one degree or another. In our own time, the visual 
3181artist and the writer, these two classes of citizen alone, provide 
3182a (more or less) cultivated public formidable in size. And with- 
3183out the members of this cultivated class no art could exist. If 
3184the only people in the world were the butcher, the baker, the 
3185candlestick-maker — the small businessman (creative or un- 
3186creative), the mass of the labouring class and so on, there 
3187would be no fine art or any other art. Malraux rather tends to 
3188forget this supremely important fact. 
3189
3190
3191
3192XXIII 
3193
3194
3195The Diabolical Principle 
3196
3197I T must have seemed that I could find nothing in Malraux 
3198to agree with. But there are indications throughout the two 
3199massive books from which I have been quoting that Malraux 
3200does not always think quite the same; indeed, he does at times 
3201seem (at least at first) to be thinking very much as I do. Let 
3202me quote a passage of brilliant insight, where he seems to be 
3203saying the last word about the collective movements which 
3204have dominated this century. It is from Volume II, page 124, 
3205and it refers, among other things, to the diabolical principle 
3206(a title I have used for one of my earlier books). 
3207
3208Artists attacking all humanistic values (i.e., all engaged in total 
3209attack upon humanistic values) challenge implicitly the civilization 
3210which gave them birth or brings them back to life. That, indeed, is 
3211the link between the naive and the early mediaeval artist; between 
3212the madman (sometimes the child as well) and the primitive. And 
3213that is what makes each of these arts a weapon in the armoury of 
3214modern anti-humanism. The artist who goes to school with the 
3215primitives obviously seeks more than a mere discovery of forms. In 
3216a culture like ours every recourse to primitivism implies a fellow- 
3217ship with what our culture lacks. And our revival of these forms, 
3218like our appreciation of them, carries with it an appeal to forces 
3219latent below the conscious threshold. . . . Raphael’s world — the 
3220world of man at peace with God — had, since the death of Ingres, 
3221become an alien, hostile world, and the School of Bologna . . . strikes 
3222us ... as an imposture. . . . But already the gods of the day — which 
3223their art ignored — had mustered their attendant devils; history, 
3224whose importunity now obsesses Europe, much as Buddha’s pyr- 
3225rhonism disintegrated Asia, was coming into being. No longer was 
3226it mere chronology but an anxious investigation of a past for any 
3227light it might throw on the dark vistas of the future. Western culture 
3228
322986 
3230
3231
3232
3233The Diabolical Principle 87 
3234
3235was losing faith in itself. The diabolical principle — from war, 
3236that major devil, to its train of minor devils, fears and complexes — 
3237which is present more or less surreptitiously in all savage art, was 
3238coming to the fore again. . . . That diabolical principle stands for 
3239all in man that seeks to compass his destruction. The powers of 
3240darkness of the Christian past, the Freudian devil, and the devil of 
3241Bikini — all wear the same aspect. And the more ground these new 
3242demons gain in Europe, the more her art tends to hark back to the 
3243mood of earlier cultures plagued by their appropriate devils. . . . 
3244By contrast with the nineteenth, our century stands for a Renais- 
3245sance of Destiny. This Europe of phantom cities is not more devas- 
3246tated than is the idea of Man that once was hers. 
3247
3248Malraux analyses very well the art-scene of our time. He 
3249groups primitivism (African, Sumerian, etc.), infantilism, the 
3250art of the lunatic, as well as that of the Child. He sees the 
3251diabolic principle inhering in the grouping. I could not, myself, 
3252have dissected with more understanding the major impetus 
3253responsible for much of the painting, sculpture, and design in 
3254our time. God is dead, Sartre asserts; and so does Malraux. 
3255But the latter perceives the Devil brought in by some of the 
3256contemporary artists and he applauds the coming back into 
3257currency of the diabolic. This is not surprising, seeing that, in 
3258much of his literary work, he rather preens himself, one feels, 
3259upon his diabolism. Where Malraux and I differ is that I am 
3260not one of those who climb upon the band wagon of the Fiend. 
3261But I applaud Malraux’s advertisement of the true position. 
3262As I read this I was delighted to find how almost identical was 
3263his analysis of this period of concentrated decadence with my 
3264own. But I laughed, of course; for, both of us seeing the same 
3265thing, I had found it bad (seeing that I am the reverse of a 
3266diabolist); whereas Malraux registered how all these tendencies 
3267and sub-movements cohered, as I would group the virtues of 
3268a man for whom I had a good deal of esteem. 
3269
3270
3271
3272
3273Part V 
3274
3275CONCLUSION 
3276
3277
3278
3279
3280Conclusion 
3281
3282
3283E XTREMISM — or the affectation of extremism — is no 
3284longer disapproved of by any member of that public who 
3285before the last war could be depended on noisily to disparage 
3286anything violent and displeasing in any of the arts. After all, 
3287the people who buy pictures to hang on their walls grow fewer 
3288and fewer. Taxation has put that little habit out of reach of the 
3289great majority; yet undiminished crowds visit the exhibitions 
3290of the Royal Academy, and the shows to be seen at the various 
3291dealers. There is still a surprisingly large class of people who 
3292are known among their friends as knowledgeable about pic- 
3293tures, and liable even to buy some juicy little millstream, or 
3294summer-scene on the Norfolk Broads. The buying has almost 
3295stopped (though the prices of contemporary pictures have 
3296become disgustingly reasonable), but the ‘interest’ persists. 
3297Now I do not say that this large class of ‘art-loving’ bour- 
3298geoisie approves of the extremist fashions, but quite recently 
3299it has been noticeable how a new toleration has crept into their 
3300attitude. The fact is that this impoverished herd does not 
3301wish to be held responsible for keeping art going. If all 
3302that is dynamic in art, and so seeming to claim support, 
3303hanged itself by the heels, or hid in some distant cave, or 
3304sailed away like Hiawatha into some unknown region, then all 
3305would be well. The ‘art-lover’s’ conscience would be at rest. It 
3306is much the same thing if the modernists pushed themselves 
3307so far out of reach of the human norm that no one could be 
3308expected to accompany them. 
3309
3310If the RSalittis Nouvelles exhibitions in Paris were generally 
3311accepted as ‘Art Today’, well, that would be a solution. No one 
3312could reasonably be described as barbarous, and wanting in 
3313all artistic sensibility, if he did not immediately rush to the 
3314Avenue President Wilson and purchase two or three of these 
3315pictures. They are rigidly abstract, and that is admittedly only 
3316for the extreme initiate. Why this would be a happy solution 
3317
331891 
3319
3320
3321
3322Conclusion 
3323
3324
332592 
3326
3327is, among other things, because no one has the money or even 
3328the will, to buy pictures, and yet no one is prepared just to 
3329say ‘the arts belong to the past, and especially easel-pictures — 
3330oil-paintings’. 
3331
3332You see, all this is fitting in very nicely. The more intelligent 
3333dealers understand very well that in the welfare state — the full 
3334welfare state — there will not be much for them to do. If 
3335capitalism disappears, the picture dealers disappear too, and so 
3336it is not so surprising as it may at first seem that many of these 
3337gentlemen take a plunge into zero, as it were; hold exhibitions 
3338of pictures which are so abstract, and often tamely and dully 
3339so. It is in Paris that this chiefly occurs; otherwise dealers of 
3340course just go on selling the ‘gilt-edged’ or some pretty little 
3341line which they hope may still attract the gilded passer-by, 
3342American or other, from what has been called the ‘bankers’ 
3343republic’. 
3344
3345So much for the public. What of the governments? Oh, they 
3346ask nothing better than that the vital principle in the visual 
3347arts should fly away to some equally repulsive and inaccessible 
3348regions, where it would no longer be anybody’s responsibility. 
3349They are even prepared to regard as a benefactor any Pied 
3350Piper, or Mad Hatter, or anyone else who leads the troublesome 
3351sect of artists away into the wilderness, and there persuades 
3352them to remain, scratching a little image, or rather some 
3353symbolical figure in the sands. 
3354
3355So who on earth is such a book as this written for? The 
3356general public, I trust, will not begin by reading this con- 
3357clusion. It will, I hope, be interested to see the true meaning 
3358of extremism in the visual arts put on record by an artist: for, 
3359however much it may tolerate the extremist absurdities re- 
3360sorted to by the painter or the sculptor, nevertheless a good 
3361fund of malice is always stored up against the artist, as much 
3362demented as in his right mind. I must rely on this, and for the 
3363rest my book is written for that small number of artists whose 
3364interests lie in the van of the true advance, but who would 
3365sooner see the great civilized art abdicate in the presence of 
3366chaos, rather than commit a clownish suicide. 
3367
3368
3369
3370POSTSCRIPT 
3371
3372
3373
3374
3375Postscript 
3376
3377W E are told that it is now so costly to print a book in 
3378New York, that no publisher dare risk the production of 
3379an unorthodox or non-best-selling type (which are apt to be 
3380the most worth while to publish). That results in the book 
3381trade having now fallen to the same abysmal level as the 
3382cinema, where, as we know, the celluloid is so fabulously 
3383expensive that only the films of the vulgarest type can be 
3384undertaken in Hollywood. 
3385
3386In England things have not reached the same level as in the 
3387United States in those industries upon which some great 
3388cultural activity depends. But there is an exception to this, 
3389namely the theatre. The rental of a theatre in London at the 
3390present moment entails so enormous an expense that the 
3391quality of stage performances is restricted to plays of the most 
3392insignificant and popular kind, with rare exceptions. For any- 
3393one interested in this subject I recommend a recently published 
3394book. The Unholy Trade , by Richard Findlater, 
3395
3396Bearing all this and much more of the same kind in mind, 
3397it is not difficult to foretell what the cultural standards of our 
3398sons, and still more grandsons, will be like. 
3399
3400If the cost of living must forever rise, it is equally a law of 
3401this time that the cultural standard must continue to fall. As 
3402you see a pound of coffee rising in price, you may be sure that, 
3403at the same time, the quality of painting or music is taking a 
3404drop downhill of the same amount. Therefore, anything one 
3405may say about the declining vitality in one art can be applied 
3406to every other art. The arts I have chosen for analysis in the 
3407race towards disintegration may be far ahead of some other 
3408art; but that will only be momentary. 
3409
3410If things were to go on evenly and uneventfully it would 
3411be easy to predict what point the world would have reached 
3412in one hundred, or two hundred years from now. But no man 
3413
341495 
3415
3416
3417
341896 Postscript 
3419
3420can predict anything at this stage of the world’s history, no 
3421politician, no financier, no technician. We live in the period of 
3422the great suspense. Why I can say no more than what is to be 
3423read in the above treatise is because of the laws obtaining in 
3424the great suspense. 
3425
3426We seem to be running down, everywhere in life, to a final 
3427end to all good things. Compared to fifty years ago, when the 
3428supreme and ultimate rot began, our food — our milk, our 
3429cheese, our bread, our concocted foods, everything, in short, 
3430is inferior, and there is every reason to suppose that it will get 
3431more so, decade by decade. The cloth our clothes are made of 
3432has declined in quality, not only in beauty but in durability, 
3433to such an extent that no tailor would have the face to deny 
3434it. The furniture at present manufactured, the materials with 
3435which our houses are built, the bricks, the mortar, the wood, 
3436the fittings, are notoriously inferior to what they were a short 
3437century ago. Paper is not what it was, in our newspapers, 
3438our books, our writing materials and so on; steel products, such 
3439as scissors, pins, etc., become less and less reliable; the gut used 
3440in surgical stitching is no longer graded; but it is not necessary 
3441to enumerate this decline in detail. Everything that is sold in 
3442the shops is necessarily inferior to what it was so short a time 
3443ago as twelve months. Why? For the very good reason that the 
3444word business may be defined as buying cheap and selling 
3445dear. Mr. Franklin Delano Roosevelt insisted that ‘The business 
3446man is a crook.’ He is, by definition, dishonest. The board 
3447meetings and conferences in every business establishment con- 
3448cern themselves always with some essentially dishonest device 
3449for putting more money in their pockets; in the case of the 
3450manufacturers, the subject discussed is how, in manufacturing 
3451their speciality, they may cheat the public — to make the public 
3452pay the same price (or more) for an article composed of less 
3453valuable ingredients. This must involve a progressive deterior- 
3454ation of everything we buy, from the gas in our meters to the 
3455socks on our feet. 
3456
3457
3458
3459Postscript 97 
3460
3461Meanwhile, the great suspense is a factor of daily, unrelent- 
3462ing ruin. The enormous cost entailed by the fabulous arma- 
3463ments imposed on both sides in the preparation for the next 
3464war is alone sufficient to bleed us white, to maintain a danger- 
3465ous fever in all our blood; and, since the arms we are now 
3466manufacturing are potentially so destructive that when at 
3467length they are used they may entirely alter our lives, they 
3468are responsible for the great suspense. 
3469
3470Well. Unless human beings are going to experience the same 
3471deterioration in the very tissues of which their bodies are 
3472composed, unless their skins are to lose their resilience, their 
3473warmth, and all the other qualities which make them so high 
3474class a covering for a man to have; unless nature is to begin 
3475to take less trouble over our nails, our hair (that may disappear 
3476altogether), our wonderful shining eyes, which may become 
3477dull and myopic, so that spectacles must be provided for all 
3478from the cradle onwards — unless all this is to come about there 
3479will have to be some great revolution. That is why talking 
3480about the alarming outlook for the fine arts appears so trivial 
3481a matter when one has finished writing about it. It is infected 
3482with the triviality of everything else.