Notes that spring from

“Sussex Modernism: Retreat and Rebellion”

Two Temple Place, London 28th January – 23rd April 2017

including Michel Remy’s talk

The Flying Pig: An Introduction to Surrealism

given Thursday 2nd March at Two Temple Place

As the visitor moves upstairs, a very different aesthetic to that of Bloomsbury’s Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant (see Note 1) takes over: the Mae West Lips Sofa by Edward James & Salvador Dali (1938) leads us into the world of Surrealism…

Upstairs, there is a corner of Surrealist Delight – a display that brings as much intrigued joy to the eye and the heart as Michel Remy’s complementary talk The Flying Pig did.

British Surrealism is so often forgotten under the great weight of its continental (indeed global) compatriots; yet from the mid-1930s through to the mid-1940s it was an incredibly powerful force in British Art History as Remy’s book “Surrealism in Britain” (Lund Humphries, 1999) establishes.

One of the first artists to join the London Surrealist Group after the 1936 International Surrealist Exhibition was John Banting – now an almost unknown figure, yet there is an extensive archive of his work at Tate Britain, and his paintings regularly come up for sale through the auction houses. The 1930s were probably the decade for John Banting – he was known as much for partying in Bohemia as he was for his radical-Left political stance; both aspects combining in paintings that can be searingly satirical of bourgeois mores on the one hand, or joyous representations of musicians, music and the Jazz that he adored.

The painting on display at Two Temple Place is a late one, from 1954 (in the Jerwood Gallery Collection): One Man Band

Indeed, it might be seen as one of a serial project that reaches back two decades: the fusion of the musician’s body (hands) with the instrument (keyboard and strings) suggesting a metamorphosis through the rhythms and sounds of the music; indeed the very texture of the painting – colours layered, stippled and scratched – suggests the texture of the Jazz: bold, vibrant and powerful in dominant black and red.

The exhibition also includes John Banting’s “Accordion” (1962) from the Farley’s House Archive, which had been given as a Christmas gift to Roland Penrose.

Edith Rimmington, another extraordinary artist is also recognised here by way of a collection of ‘seaside photographs’ – brilliant images that reflect the strangeness of the natural/ everyday world. These are all from a private collection and so – as far as I can tell – not published anywhere. However, there is a remarkable quote that can only inspire the creative imagination: it is from a letter Edith Rimmington sent to John Banting in 1971, where she describes the sea as “a vast water-brain” of secret knowledges.

Notes that spring from

“Sussex Modernism: Retreat and Rebellion”

Two Temple Place, London 28th January – 23rd April 2017

Duncan Grant’s “Bathers by the Pond” (1920-1) from the Pallant House Gallery collection.

Vanessa Bell moved to Charleston Farmhouse, escaping London during WW1, bringing with her the complicated friendships, family & children of the Bloomsbury Group and a visual aesthetic that continues to entrance and resonate a century on. Part of the reason for her move was so that the young men of Bloomsbury who were pacifists and conscientious objectors – including her by then lover and companion Duncan Grant – might find farm work nearby whilst also having the time to paint.

It is this context that Dr Wolf presents Grant’s painting “Bathers by the Pond” 

“…the bodies of beautiful young men are open to the world and gleaming in the sun” (catalogue, p.21)

The man in the foreground is astonishing; his beauty is in the curvaceous line that flows from his foot through to his elbows and loops back around to sculpt the body of rich golden colour tones.

It exemplifies the Bloomsbury style and aesthetic: line and colour are sculptural and decorative. Both Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell were able to paint bodies that were vital, vibrant with rhythm – here is Bell’s “Nude with Poppies” (1916; Swindon Museum; image c/o ArtUk).

Ducan Grant’s painting of bathers echoes Georges Seurat’s “Bathers at Asnieres” (1884; National Gallery, London) – from the concept of the scene to the pointillism of grass and water. And note the little dog in each. 

But so much had changed since 1884.

Men had been made into machines (CRW Nevinson: La Mitrailleuse [1915; Tate]).

The Great War had killed, maimed and destroyed millions of young men’s bodies across Europe; a tragedy that would haunt society and its people for years to come. Still, Grant’s painting presents us with these beautiful young men naked and stretched in the sunshine, apparently without a care in the world.

Surely he cannot be ignoring what has happened can he? How could so much death and madness be forgotten? 

It isn’t, I would argue. Grant’s gaze re-evaluates men’s bodies: he shows us strong, self-assured, virile, taut and tanned masculinity, but these men are not warriors-in-training, they are simply themselves; happy in their skins. And see how inter-related they are. Whilst Seurat’s figures are all individual and isolated (and Nevinson’s are boxed into tight compartments); Grant’s are connected, overlapping, in-communication, in touch.

It seems to be a call for beauty, freedom and new social relations..

If Duncan Grant is seeking a vision of men’s bodies outside or beyond the narrative of war-masculinity that had been so dominant for a decade, then he is also rebelling against – rejecting – the cultural mainstream with his homoerotic gaze (and it would be another half-century of course until homosexuality was decriminalised).

It’s an extraordinary painting that deploys all the decorative qualities of post-Impressionism to suggest a radically queer new way of looking.