THE HUMAN CLAY




















AN EXHIBITION SELECTED BY RB KITAJ
ARTS COUNCIL OF GREAT BRITAIN, 1976

 

 

 

excerpts from THE HUMAN CLAY:

Hockney likes to quote the line from Auden's
long poem Letter to Lord Byron which reads,
"To me Art's subject is the human clay."

 

SCHOOL OF LONDON

I have felt very out of sorts with my time. It is no great comport to hear from one of the three or four poets writing in English (Creeley) that "poetry feels like a shutter banging in the wind . . . vague and diffuse." I hardly know why I agreed to buy pictures for the Arts Council. I should have stayed in bed like Oblomov. Anyway, the shutter banging in the wind did not defeat what became a labor of love and I'm glad I did it.

I told them I would only but pictures representing people . . .*

. . .Don't listen to the fools who say either that pictures of people can be of no consequence or that painting is finished. There is much to be done. It matters what men of good will want to do with their lives.

The bottom line is that there are artistic personalities in this small island more unique and strong and I think numerous than anywhere in the world outside America's jolting artistic vigor. There are ten or more people in this town, or not far away, of world class, including my friends of the abstract persuasion. In fact, I think there is a substantial School of London (with lines in this exhibition from Much Hadham, Edinburgh, Durham and the Brotherhool of Ruralists).

There are artistic personalities in the small island more unique and strong and I think numerous than anywhere in the world outside America. There are ten or more people in this town, or not far away, of world class, including my friends of the abstract persuasion. In fact, I think there is a substantial School of London. If some of the strange and fascinating personalities you may encounter here were given a fraction of the internationalist attention and encouragement reserved in this barren time for provincial and orthodox vanguardism, a School of London might become even more real than the one I have construed in my head. A School of real London in England, in Europe . . . with potent art lessons for foreigners emerging from this odd old, put upon, very singular place. *

 

PEARDIVING

The singe human figure is a swell thing to draw. It seems to be almost impossible to do it as well as maybe half a dozen blokes have in the past. I'm taking about skill and imagination that can be seen to be done. It is, to my way of think and in my own experience, the most difficult thing to do really well in the whole of art. You don't have to believe me. It is there that the artist truly 'shows his hand' for me. It is then that I can share in the virtue of failed ambition and the downright revelation of skill. . .

 

AGAINST THE GRAIN

 

YES AND NO

 

MONDRIAN

 

POPULAR FRONT

Do not take this exhibition as a tightass presumption for one kind of holy art or what Auden called a "moral landscape." Some argument may be suggested here but argument within the art, within a Popular Front, a grand old concept which is being revived in southern Europe in a beautiful way. No one will own the truth - as Pound said once, "despite all the hard-boiled and half-baked vanities of all the various lots of us" - there will always be various lots of truths according to the odd lives we lead. Everyone is built differently and artistic, like political, argument will only be suppressed at our peril.

 

RB Kitaj
London, 1976

 

 

* From revised text written by Kitaj in 1979 for the "This Knott of Life" exhibit.

 

 

LIST OF ARTISTS

  • Michael Andrews (b. 1928) 6
  • Frank Auerbach (b. 1931) 4
  • Francis Bacon (b. 1909) 1
  • Adrian Berg (b. 1929) 3
  • Peter Blake (b. 1932) 3
  • Frank Bowling (b. 1936) 1
  • Olwyn Bowey (b. 1936) 1
  • Stephen Buckley (b. 1944) 3
  • Rodney Burn (b. 1899) 1
  • Richard Carline (b. 1896) 1
  • Anthony Caro (b. 1924) 1
  • Patrick Caulfield (b. 1936) 1
  • William Coldstream (b. 1908) 1
  • Richard Cook (b. 1947) 2
  • Peter de Francia (b. 1921) 4
  • Jim Dine (b. 1935) 1
  • Sandra Fisher (b. 1947) 1
  • Lucian Freud (b. 1922) 6
  • Patrick George (b. 1923) 1
  • John Golding (b. 1929) 1
  • Lawrence Gowing (b. 1918) 1
  • Maggi Hambling (b. 1945) 3
  • Richard Hamilton (b. 1922) 5
  • Nigel Henderson (b. 1917) 1
  • David Hockney (b. 1937) 4
  • Howard Hodgkin (b. 1932) 5
  • Allen Jones (b. 1937) 3
  • R.B. Kitaj (b. 1932) 1
  • Leon Kossoff (b. 1926) 1
  • Helen Lessore (b. 1907) 1
  • John Lessore (b. 1939) 3
  • Kenneth Martin (b. 1905) 1
  • Robert Medley (b. 1905) 4
  • Alexander Moffat (b. 1943) 2
  • Henry Moore (b. 1898) 2
  • Leonard McComb (b. 1930) 3
  • Eduardo Paolozzi (b. 1924) 3
  • Philip Rawson (b. 1924) 4
  • William Roberts (1895-1980) 2
  • Tony Scherman (b. 1950) 1
  • Peter Schlesinger (b. 1948) 1
  • William Scott (b. 1913) 1
  • Colin Self (b. 1941) 1
  • Stella Steyn (b. 1907) 1
  • William Turnbull (b. 1922) 1
  • Euan Uglow (b. 1932) 2
  • Elizabeth Vellacott (b. 1905) 1
  • Carel Weight (b. 1908) 2

    • Numbers represent the works exhibited by each artist.

     

     

    LINKS:

    • THE NEW REPUBLIC: AMERICAN REAL
      by Jed Perl on Art, November 11, 1996

      ". . . with abstract painting losing its allure, American museumgoers who want to get back to nature have been inclined to embrace the School of London, which is presented as a realist alternative to New York. In 1994, Lucian Freud's retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum became dinner party conversation all over Manhattan. Freud's high bohemian London, with aristocratic ladies and a drag queen all undressing in the artist's barren atelier, had a hard bitten documentary impact. And New York succumbed. . ."   (read more)

    • Art News: The School of London

      THE SCHOOL OF LONDON IN PARIS - A selection of works by the artists of the School of London is being held at the Dina Vierny Foundation in Paris until January 20th 1998. It is the first time in France that such an exhibition of British figurative paintings has been taking place.

      Works by Francis Bacon (1909-1992), Lucian Freud (born in 1922), Frank Auerbach (born in 1931), Léon Kossof (born in 1926), Michael Andrews (1928-1995), Paula Rego (born in 1935), Tony Bevan (born in 1951) and Celia Paul (born in 1959) are being shown in the small and attractive museum set up by Dina Vierny who was Maillol's favorite model.

      All these artists are Londoners and there works have been placed alongside those of expatriate artists such as Stephen Conroy (born in 1964 and now working in Scotland), Raymond Mason (born in 1922) who has been living in Paris since 1946, Bill Jacklin (born in 1943) now in the U.S and Ron Kitaj (born in 1932) who left London in 1997.

      It was Kitaj who was the first to refer to the School of London during an exhibition titled "The Human Clay" at the Hayward Gallery in 1976. On this occasion Kitaj noted that while abstraction, happenings and transformations were triumphant there was a special trend towards figurative painting as well as a kind of obsession for the human figure among most London painters. Each of them instilled a personal style in their works dissecting reality and the morphological attitude of models, expressionist and violent for Auerbach, haloed with dream and mystery for Andrews, colored and graphic for Kitaj while Kossof seems much attracted by thick materials.

      Bacon, now a legendary artist, was much concerned by human condition using derision to depict human figures always shown distorted so as to express anguish and solitude. Contrary to Bacon's nudity of the soul, Lucian Freud seems fascinated by the nudity of bodies and proves to be a master in expressing sheer intimacy with no restrictions.

     

    INDEX

     

    redarrow

     

    ron kitaj

    RETURN to SCHOOL OF LONDON ARTISTS

     

     

     

    Hosted by www.Geocities.ws

    1