Art history as anecdote
Andrew Lambirth enjoys the stories connecting London’s leading post-war artists, but wishes for more analysis of their work
Biography
Modernists & Mavericks Martin Gayford (Thames & Hudson, £24.95)
The territory covered in this book is art in London from 1945 to 1970, and the narrative revolves around a handful of familiar figures: Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, David hockney and Frank Auerbach. Martin Gayford has been interviewing artists since 1990 and his text is enlivened with quotations from some 26 of them, ranging from Anthony Caro to John Wonnacott. The result is described by the author as ‘a collective interview, or multiple biography’, and it has the potential to be a full and exciting account of a key period in Modern British art.
it just misses this brief, because Mr Gayford is more interested in anecdote than in analysis (a much more difficult task) and he has decided that art is best approached by telling interlinked stories. he does this very well, being an agreeable prose-writer and able to deploy his material effectively. Anyone who can orchestrate the art of 25 years so clearly in a book of about 300 pages and manage to make apparent sense of a multiplicity of styles is much to be admired. however, the clarity comes at a cost: too many artists are sacrificed to the story and inclusion of things they’ve said is preferred to discussion of their work. here is art history as anecdote, but perhaps this is the way to make it appeal to a larger public. it’s revealing that the first line of the introduction deals with an auction record—a subject much loved by journalists.
one of the book’s chief pleasures is the amount of space given to the late Gillian Ayres, an abstract painter of vivid sensuality and lustrous paint-handling, and Mr Gayford is also good on Dennis Creffield, Richard hamilton and Dick Smith. however, his simplified view of the art world leads too often to a simplistic interpretation of its denizens. Among his more serious errors of judgement are passages in which he disparages Ben nicholson, over-rates Pauline Boty and observes that William Coldstream ‘clearly believed that the world looks like a photograph’. This last remark betrays a lack of comprehension of Coldstream’s very particular aims and achievements.
in its round-up of the usual suspects, this book reminds me of another recent volume, A Crisis of Brilliance by David Boyd haycock. This traced the overlapping stories of Paul nash, Stanley Spencer, Mark Gertler,
‘As a highly readable account, it is difficult to beat, yet so much is missed out
Dora Carrington and C. R. W. nevinson—all students together at the Slade School of Art, who had to deal with the First World War cutting across their lives. The two books share a similar approach to group biography and both left me wishing for more. As highly readable accounts of already well-documented artists, they are difficult to beat, and yet so much is missed out.
in Mr haycock’s book, the reader is tantalised by glimpses of such artists as Adrian Allinson, John Currie and Maxwell Gordon Lightfoot. in Mr Gayford’s, the reader hungers for more on Prunella Clough, Craigie Aitchison and Roger hilton, and wonders why an artist such as Adrian Berg—so important in hockney’s development, but also a brilliant painter in his own right—has been left out altogether.
Modernists & Mavericks is an impressive conspectus of the post-war British art world, but inevitably, it’s a partial view, neglecting some artists and promoting others. What is needed now is a companion volume that focuses on some of the best of the lesser-known figures.