Get the tube down to Brixton and exit the station straight into the usual vibrant chaotic noisy energetic mayhem that I remember so fondly from when I used to live here not so many years ago. But then I cross the road, get the P4 bus and by the time I disembark, about fifteen minutes later, I find that I’ve been magically transported back to what feels like the middle of the countryside sometime in the 1950s. And the only sound that can be heard above the leaves in the trees being gently rustled by a balmy breeze as it wafts through the bucolic scenery is the contented murmuring chatter of the middle classes as they enjoy an exchange of pleasantries during the course of their morning peregrinations. All of which may sound like a bit of a sarcastic dig directed by me towards the charms of Dulwich Village and its genteel inhabitants but is, in fact, merely a piece of direct reportage. This place really does always seem to be an unchanging haven of peace and politeness and while it’s perhaps just a little too nice and twee to make me want to live there permanently – not that I could afford the house prices and think that maybe the other residents would probably blackball me on account of my oikish lineage – it’s certainly somewhere worth visiting for a brief respite from the complications and confrontations of the real world outside. Although, of course the main…well, the only, reason for actually visiting the place is to call into the famous Dulwich Picture Gallery which has an interesting enough permanent collection but also puts on temporary displays that are often a cut above the average. And that explains my current visit. I’ve come to take a look at the retrospective of works by Vanessa Bell, an artist who was, as the accompanying gallery leaflets points out, a pivotal player in the development of 20th century British art.
It’s a fair claim, I suppose, but only because for the first half of the century, when she was most active, there was so very little other pivoting going on in this country with regards to Modern Art. And while I hate the thought of coming to Shangri La and disturbing its consensual tranquility, I’m afraid it would be an appalling contravention of the blogger’s code of honour if I failed to point out that, very sadly, for all Bell’s unquestionable devotion to the cause of art and her unwavering dedication to the act of painting, she just wasn’t ever very much good at it. It’s quite clear looking at all the art in the exhibition – and there are around a hundred paintings, photos and fabric samples to look at along the narrow corridor of galleries – that she only had a very limited natural talent. And that despite all her best efforts she never really managed to acquire the skill necessary to produce any works that rose above those which might have been achieved by any enthusiastic amateur. In short, she couldn’t paint for toffees.
Of course, that’s very much my own jaded opinion although in this case I feel that I can speak with some authority – the authority of a kindred spirit in that I, too, once laboured mightily in the fields of the plastic arts and, while I could draw a little, I knew that when it came time to get out the oils. I couldn’t quite cut the mustard, or mix the balsamic or whatever the most appropriate salad dressing metaphor is meant to be. I couldn’t really paint. Fortunately, I was able to step back and be self-critical enough to see the problems in my work that must have been so apparent to anyone else having a look at what I was producing. Unfortunately, I don’t think Bell was able to do that and I assume that no one else had the courage or inclination to inform her of her obvious deficiencies or, maybe, she had an inkling something wasn’t quite right but just didn’t give a damn. Which is a reasonable enough position to take, especially if you are a member of such a self-sustaining bunch of arty intellectual as those within the Bloomsbury Group. Or, for the sake of allowing me the chance to replay the famous old jibe, the Bloomsbury Circle – who lived in square and loved in triangles, not that I can ever remember with whom Vanessa chose to share her equilateral charms. Anyway, to continue with the trigonometry and get back to the art, I feel obliged to repeat that Bell’s paintings always fall a bit flat whatever stylistic mode she’s working in – figurative, Post-Impressionistic or totally abstract – and whatever genre she’s playing with – portraits, still lives, interiors or landscapes.
The exhibition has examples of combinations of all of these and the curators are to be congratulated on gathering together such a large body of representative work, even if it’s a pity that the more evidence they accumulate, the more it confirms poor old Bell’s lack of any real talent. The show is hung thematically rather than chronologically and I confess that I got a bit bored going back and forth trying to collate dates with styles but, as far as I could make out, she started off with straightforward attempts at figuration and then dabbled in much looser colourful stylisations, before returning to her particular idiosyncratic attempts at a version of realism. The constant factor in all her output, however, alongside the specific, obvious flaws, is a general awkwardness and clumsiness and what might be called a lack of flow. It’s clear, for instance, that she felt so unconfident when it came to painting hands that she often decided just to give up and just lets the anatomy blur out at the extremities. And she always seems to have had trouble trying to complete the backgrounds to her compositions and so frequently resolves the problem by simply applying great random blocks of colour, as if she was a hurried housepainter coming to the end of a shift. Indeed, she often gives the impression that she’s completing one of those painting-by-numbers exercises and just mindlessly filling in areas of colour, presumably after having found it too, too bothersome to master the normal conventions of using changing tones and shades to convey the requisite sense of space and depth. And while even this lack of technique can, in the hands of a true artist, result in works ranging from those of naïve charm right up to the violent, explosive energy of some of the early Expressionists, with Bell everything seems to have been suffused with, and dulled by, the complacency of the comfortably well off. The idea that artists need to suffer to produce good work is a bit of a daft cliché but it’s hard not to think that maybe Bell was never quite hungry, angry or mad enough to be able to make proper art.
When not living and loving and lying around in their London town houses, members of the Bloomsbury bunch and their various acolytes and acquaintances would often congregate at Charleston, their charming house stuck in the middle of the Sussex countryside. Nowadays the place is a sort of museum-cum-gallery and open to the general public to enter and root about admiring examples of the original ornamentation and ephemera along with bits of the furniture and fittings decorated by Bell and her slightly more talented chum Duncan Grant. The building is located roughly in the centre of a sort of golden historical hub stretching from Chichester in the west to Hastings in the east, that seems to have been something of a magnet for attracting artists and artistic groups, especially during the early years of the last century. At least, that happy geographical coincidence is the hook upon which hangs an entertaining and interesting little show currently running at Two Temple Place. Sussex Modernism: Retreat and Rebellion has been organised by Dr Hope Wolf working under the auspices of the Bulldog Trust and, while the names of both the coordinator and charity might sound like creations to be found within the covers of an Evelyn Waugh comic novelette, the show is a serious enough affair allowing for the opportunity to display a diverse mix of works from the likes of the sculptors Eric Gill (who ran a commune in Ditchling) and Henry Moore (who befriended Roland Penrose and Lee Miller who lived together at Farleys House) to the painters Edward Wadsworth (who produced a mural for the De La Warr Pavillion at Bexhill) and Edward Burra (who affectionately referred to his hometown of Rye as the ‘ducky little TinkerBell towne). To emphasis the special creative nature of the South Coast locale, works have also been borrowed from Pallant House in Chichester, the Jerwood Gallery in Hastings and the Towner in Eastbourne. And it’s good to see that Brighton Museum have generously loaned their super Surreal sofa that mimics Mae West’s lips and that was co-created by Salvador Dali and his British patron Edward James, who also lived in the region in West Dean.
Prize for the most covetable item on show goes to the small marble box ornamented with a simple carved figure by Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, while that for the most bizarre is awarded to the very curious documentary film about the lifestyle of the lobster made by Moholy Nagy after the great Bauhaus teacher had emigrated from Nazi Germany and formed an unlikely friendship with the fisherfolk of Littlehampton.
