by Archie Hind
Mat shook his head as if to show bewilderment.
‘Why?’ The young man smiled knowingly. ‘Are they too’ – he hesitated for the word – ‘modern for you?’
Inside himself Mat gave a contemptuous ‘Huh!’ and stared at the man. He was sitting fastidiously straight in the seat holding the book with his finger in his place. He was very dark with a funny narrow beard, which looked as if his sideburns had grown down and hooked themselves under his chin. He was wearing a loose crew-necked jersey and bedford cords. Mat was able to read the name of the author of the book he was reading though it was upside down. O-Z-E-N. Ozenfant. I hope he’s reading it, he thought.
‘It’s not that . . .’ Mat said, then was silent. He didn’t know how he could go into what he felt, and was hesitant about using the artist’s pathetic failure as the occasion for a bit of art chatter. ‘It seems to me that what we mean by modern art was, at first anyway, a rejection, it was all meant to be shocking and wild, like with the Fauvists . . .’ Mat spoke deferentially from his usual feeling of the inadequacy of saying anything. ‘I suppose that’s all right. But the whole style of modern art comes from rejection. That’s all right. At the first blows – you know – from science, politics, industrialisation and the depreciation of the artist’s resources – it, I mean Art, puts on its bitter ironic smile. Then we have two world wars and the hydrogen bomb and we’re not laughing any more – anyway, who can we shock?’ Mat stopped abruptly, then he blurted out in explanation, ‘You see, I’m against art.’
‘Against art!’ The young man put his head back and laughed heartily. ‘It’s the first time I’ve heard anyone admit it. Against it!’ He laughed again. ‘Usually what they say is that they’ve a wean at hame who could draw better than this, or that a blind man with a wooden arm could paint better. Or they want to know if the artist would like a job as a plumber. But they don’t usually come right out and say that they are against it – and we get all kinds.’ He spoke as if he was addressing not Mat but some third party.
‘Perhaps you’ve misunderstood me,’ Mat said. He felt a vague hostility towards the man which was aggravated by his contemptuous dismissal of him as being just another brand of philistine. ‘Aside from the fact that it is dangerous to have these stock responses to people’s remarks – don’t you think that it might make for – complacency? Aside from that, I think my own attitude is a bit different. I mean social problems . . .’ His voice trailed off. He was about to talk of the social problem as being something over and against art, as something more important than art, or at any rate more urgent than any artistic question. But when the sudden image had come to him of the flowing bustling street outside and he had blushed with shame on the artist’s behalf he had felt that the absence of little red stickers was an awful confirmation in actuality of some mistake, omission or absence on the purely artistic side. He gave a name or a category to this feeling – ‘the relation of art to actuality’ – but the phrase was a mere indication of a whole rich complex of confusion and ideas and feeling. From under his feet he felt a slight vibration from the floor caused by the rumbling of the traffic outside, and he had a peculiar sense of the heavy weight of the building, of the physical presence of the city, the masses of stone, the tangled complex of wire and piping, the crowds, the smoke and steam and electricity, the traffic, the river, the ships, the warehouses and yards and factories and calloused grimy tradesmen, the housewives and activity and pubs and slums – the whole untidy ruck which was Glasgow. Social problem! He looked round the wall at the paintings and replaced them in his mind with some beautiful bitter canvases which would attract the crowds with an insidious irony and snare them in a delusion. Even that would be better. He waved his hand at the young man.
‘Och, never mind . . .’
The young man stretched himself then yawned delicately with the back of his hand to his mouth. ‘The social problem.’ He paused for a second or two. ‘But to get back to your idea of painting being all – what was it you said? – rejection?’
‘And mockery – it adds a new dimension.’
‘Quite. It does indeed. Surely that’s exemplified in Picasso’s parodies. You know them?’
Mat nodded. ‘I agree that they lack seriousness.’
The young man gave Mat a gley look. ‘But anyway, you’re missing out half, no, nine-tenths of modern art – cubism, expressionism,’ he glanced at his book, ‘constructivism, which have all tried to come to terms in some way with the twentieth century, whether through expressing modern feeling, or the scientific viewpoint, or coming into line with the shape of modern life, becoming interested in technology-design. The account which they have taken of modern things implies more than mere rejection. In cubism for instance – the creation of a genuinely new form.’
During the whole of the conversation Mat had been half backing out of the door. Then he realised that the man was bored sitting there all by himself in the quiet hall and was now quite enjoying talking to him. Mat stepped forward a little, remembering the book which the man was reading.
‘In that book which you are reading, it says . . .’
‘In this book?’
‘Yes.’
The young man opened a packet of cigarettes and pushed them towards him, then leant backwards and took a folding chair that was propped against the wall and, unfolding it, shoved it towards Mat. Mat took the chair, sat down and lit a match. While he was holding the match towards the young man he felt a strange pausing sensation. There was nobody left in the hall and the noises drifting in from the street seemed much further away. A feeling of calm and quiet took over from his previous restlessness. The young man wanted to know who he was and Mat told him his name. Then the young man introduced himself as Sam Richards. He was a writer who had published some poetry, some short stories in the literary magazines, had written occasional features and short plays for the B.B.C. He had also been a student of literature at Edinburgh University but had left of his own accord after finishing his second year. This struck Mat as bizarre, the idea of anyone leaving university. But Sam gave Mat a plausible account of the indifference and stuffiness of the English lecturers and of the other students. Mat didn’t quite believe all this but he didn’t demur. Sam, however, was interested in Mat. He wasn’t at Art School, nor was he a student. What did he do?
‘I work in the slaughter-house.’
‘In the what?’
‘In the slaughter-house.’
‘You mean you – tchkk!’ Sam drew his finger across his throat and made a face expressive of disgust.
Mat laughed. ‘More or less.’
‘And you’ve read Ozenfant and you know Picasso’s parodies and you have ideas about modern art?’
For some reason Mat thought of Jimmy Aitken and his remark about a rather stupid young man whom they both knew. ‘But he must be clever, he’s got his Highers.’ There was a lack of integrity, something patronising in Sam Richards’ tone as if he had decided to view Mat as some kind of rough diamond. Mat knew that in fact there was nothing in his background to prevent him from having read Ozenfant, or even to prevent him from falling into the habit of sophisticated discursiveness. He thought of the long evening he had spent as a boy reading Schopenhauer and it all seemed fitting, coming as it did from his need to pacify and explore the world. And he thought of all the violence and absurdity and fear and precariousness which had precipitated him into this exploration and which he still had in him preventing him from ever being anything else but – sophisticated. Mat, however, dismissed Sam’s question.
‘What I meant to say was that in your book it mentions somewhere that the thing about Picasso was the drama of his inventiveness, the drama of fertility and ease so much encouraged in him by Cocteau.’
‘Where?’ Sam opened the book, he hadn’t come to that bit yet. Mat took it and turned the pages until he found the part he was looking for. He read it out to Sam. ‘“But actually, what matters to the writers in question is less Picasso’s oeuvre than Picasso the phenomenon. We
will not enlarge further on the ‘drama’ of the painter” – but Ozenfant’s comment is interesting.’ Mat read further from the book. ‘“Indubitably his influence on Picasso was not all for the best, for by giving particular appreciation for his inventive qualities, the possession of so much invention at last came to seem altogether too much.”’
Sam agreed delightedly. He seemed altogether taken by the idea.
‘I should imagine,’ Mat said, ‘that this refers to the process which goes on between Picasso and the picture; inventiveness itself cannot be the character of an individual work but exists between one picture and another in the relationship between them and the change which takes place. As if the distinguishing artistic-ness of the man was something which took place outside his work. Take the Da-daists with their insistence on the wayward, contingent and accidental arrangement of things. All this bizarre juxtaposition and construction is like an analogue of nature, for accidents occur in the natural world and have nothing to do with the world of art. Attention is turned away from the work itself towards the processes that we call actuality, by exposing them to chance, by denying intention and purpose. You have a similar situation in atonal music, in serial composition and in the whimsicality of certain kinds of modern writing.’
‘My God!’ said Sam. ‘You’re a real horror. You really are against art. I think you bloody well mean it.’ He seemed excited and incredulous. ‘You mean you’d really throw out the lot – lock, stock and barrel?’
Mat decided that he would in a way – Picasso, Schoenberg, Ionesco, Ernst, Webern, Stravinsky – definitely Stravinsky, Kafka, Joyce, Kandinsky, Pound, Virginia Woolf – the lot. Then he laughed. ‘What am I saying?’ He knew that with the first cheap jibe at Picasso, the usual, a wean could draw better, or Schoenberg, Christ! what’s that noise? and his fingers would itch to strangle the joker. He was always rejecting art and yet at the first sneer he would fly into a consuming rage to defend it. ‘Oh, Lord, no!’ he said to Sam. ‘I’m attacking you. I’m sorry.’
Sam waved the apology aside and sat puffing at his cigarette, waiting for Mat to continue, but as Mat kept silent he eventually leaned forward and raised his eyebrows in inquiry. ‘Well?’
Mat went on then to try to explain his feelings, repeating his list to Sam – ‘but the point about these people is that they are like – you know, the kind of life you get in the South American jungle – full of parasitism, hermaphroditism, savagery, illusion like those little fish which enter into the cavity of any animal body, or the butterfly with the savage face painted on its wings, or the insect which looks like a twig or has a foul repellent odour or a virulent poisonous colouration – all this aberrant protectiveness, evolutionary cunning and tour de force shows a kind of vitality, a wish to exist at all costs. And yet, consider the rigid formalism of these organisms. All the adaptive energy which goes into the evolutionary process is denied, in fact is positively taken away from the individual animal. Art, too, is like this in that viewing it historically is often more interesting than seeing its individual works. Nevertheless, if art as a last resource, in order to exist at all, has to become unlike itself, to protect itself by taking on the appearance of actuality, then,’ – Mat flapped his hand about, then rubbed his brow with his knuckles – ‘then, I admire it. Just as I admire Duchamp’s silence.’ He pronounced this last with an air of fiat and looked aggressively at Richards.
‘I’ll bet you’re a writer.’ Richards was wagging his foot up and down over his crossed legs and scrutinising Mat with a sarcastic smile on his face.
‘It surely follows,’ Mat said stiffly, pursing his lips. ‘No.’
‘A failure then,’ Richards said. ‘You can always tell a frustrated writer by the way he talks – too much.’
‘All right.’ Mat blushed, he could feel his face turning hot. He turned away from Richards, crossed his hands over his chest and started to rock back and forward. He could feel the anxiety and the sharp tingle in his limbs again. Then he straightened up. ‘As long as it is understood that my failure is not a question of talent.’ His lips were pursed again.
‘Wow! You’re a honey!’ Richards put his head back and laughed. His whole body shook. ‘However, I can’t say I didn’t ask you.’
‘You did ask me, right enough. But I didn’t answer you. You wanted to know what I thought of the paintings. But that’s useless unless I set my reactions to them into a context.’
‘Well, you’ve given me the context. What about the reaction? Do you see these’ – he waved his hand towards the pictures – ‘as – eh! – aberrations?’
‘One of the reactions I haven’t fully mentioned, it’s not properly a reaction – more a mere result of the sufferings of modern art . . .’
‘Whoops, he’s off again.’ Richards spoke with mock admiration. Mat ignored him and went on.
‘. . . is exhaustion, devitalisation.’ He waved his hand about to indicate the pictures on the walls. ‘Not conscious silence, which has dignity, not exoticism, which has life, nor whimsicality, which may have irony, but banality, meagreness, a thin, screaming, hysterical void.’
‘Steady on, lad. He’s a pal of mine.’
Mat still went on. ‘The worst, the most painful judgement we can make of an artist’s work.’ Then he grinned at Richards.
Richards shrugged then sat in silence. Mat threw him a cigarette. They lit up and Mat asked him for the time. Richards looked at his watch then showed it to Mat. ‘Are you in a hurry?’
‘Not particularly.’
There was another silence. When Richards spoke again he used a deliberate light tone to show that the weight of the discussion had now been dropped.
‘What do you think he should do? Get a job?’
‘No.’
‘Give up painting?’
‘Oh, look, if his failure is a question of talent there isn’t very much either you or I can say or do about it, except to look at the whole thing with a wee bit humanity.’
Richards stuck out his lower lip and considered, then nodded his head. ‘All right. I agree with you. As a matter of fact it’s all a question of loyalty. You commit yourself to a certain way of life – so – you have to accept it in all its manifestations. Like these . . .’
‘It seems to me that you could find yourself too often in a false position. I mean commit yourself to being – overtly – an artist. To belong to the art world socially. To wear its badges. I couldn’t – I don’t think I could commit myself to anything – perhaps I’m a coward – except doubt.’
‘Ah, well,’ said Sam, ‘at least this one’s a worker, he really beasts into it, churns the stuff out. And incidentally’ – Richards pushed some of the newspaper clippings towards Mat – ‘this is quite ironic. The critics don’t agree with you.’
Mat was struck as he read through the clippings by the kind of language that was used. A formal jargon which was supposed to describe the paintings, yet there was no connection between what was written and what Mat saw on the walls. What most of the writers had tried to do was write about their feelings and make evaluations as if they were in fact describing the paintings themselves, so that their writing was full of heightened-up phrases which really only denoted a whole set of hidden assumptions. In one article there was a homily on the neglect which this local and very talented artist had suffered in his own city. It was probably true, as the man said, that a Scottish artist, whether painter or writer, would have difficulty in finding somewhere to sell his work. What was more important to Mat were the difficulties native to Scottish art itself, the pure creative difficulties which made it so nearly impossible to produce anything at all.
While Mat was reading the clippings there were footsteps on the stairs, then a wee man came bustling into the exhibition hall. He was dressed all in one colour – brown shoes, chocolate-brown slacks, fawn pullover, khaki shirt, light-brown tweed jacket with reddish tints in it, and a dark orange tie. He was small, stockily built, and his clothes looked baggy and bulky, particularly his h
eavy tweed jacket which, being unbuttoned, stuck out in front of him like an unshut double door exposing the stretch of fawn wool on his chest. His complexion was brick coloured, coarsened by the network of capillaries which could be seen beneath the skin of his jowls and cheeks. Mat thought he saw a family resemblance between the wee man and the paintings on the wall.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ the wee man said, and looked anxiously around the room. ‘Has anybody been in?’
Richards shook his head and the man stood breathing heavily from his hurried flight up the stairs and looking expectantly from Richards to Mat. Richards sat for a while looking at him then he slowly introduced Mat.
‘Mat.’ He waved a hand in Mat’s direction. ‘This is Charlie.’ He glanced at Mat then meaningfully round the hall at the paintings. ‘Mat has ideas about painting – he even had some interesting things to say about your paintings.’
Mat had guessed right. This was Charles Dick, the man of whom Mat had thought ‘poor bloody fool’, but he had the disconcerting sense that the wee man’s anxious bustle precluded any scruples about his own work. He was right again for Dick completely missed the malicious sarcasm in Richards’ voice. Instead he immediately turned towards Mat, taking him for an admirer.
‘It isn’t worth it,’ he said, ‘you can’t get people interested.’ Then he started to talk. He was, it seemed, a ‘political artist’. That is, he held to the conventional left-wing sympathies with the proletariat. But unfortunately the proletariat were not interested in his work. Neither were ‘these people’. These people, for whom he held the most hatred, were the academics, the men associated with the various art bodies – the art schools, the art galleries, the R.S.A. – and who refused to show his work. Because, he implied, it was so shockingly modern. He implied so much, confidentially assuming that Mat not only agreed with all his attitudes but that he was familiar with all the ramifying complexities of art politics and with the names, habits and prejudices of all those concerned with these. The long and short of it was that he, Dick, as a true and pure artist was a danger to the established social, political, artistic and sexual order. There was therefore a conspiracy against him, a subtle indirect conspiracy. ‘These people’ were afraid to come out into the open against him, they were tired, dishonest and disappointed men whose work had gone stale, artists manqué who were hotly jealous of his productive energies.