The controversial paper explores Kenneth Clark's hostility and outspoken opposition to modern art in the 1930s; then his qualified support for several artists during the war years. Several direct attacks against modern art he made in the... more
The controversial paper explores Kenneth Clark's hostility and outspoken opposition to modern art in the 1930s; then his qualified support for several artists during the war years. Several direct attacks against modern art he made in the 1930s British media are cited and discussed.
Identifying specific artists, the paper shows who Clark railed against (including Nicholson & Mondrian) and how it affected their lives; and who he chose to promote, using his official position during the war to advance certain artists he was friendly with (Piper & Sutherland).
Turning to Henry Moore's underground shelter drawings made during the London Blitz, the article suggests how the artist coped with Clark's narrow views while trying not to compromise his own strengthening modernist work.
9pp.
‘What is a Poem?’ Herbert Read asked at the close of his final volume of poetry, Collected Poems (1966). This question was to preside over the later years of his career as both a poet and a critic, and to reach its most intriguing... more
‘What is a Poem?’ Herbert Read asked at the close of his final volume of poetry, Collected Poems (1966). This question was to preside over the later years of his career as both a poet and a critic, and to reach its most intriguing conclusion in his often-overlooked poetry collection ‘Vocal Avowals’. First printed in 1959 in Encounter, Read revisited this sequence throughout the final decade of his life, revised and reprinted for the 1962 collection Worte sagen aus, and then as the final section in Read’s Collected Poems. Misidentified by critics as the invention of a ‘supremely subjective romanticism’, these poems were composed at a moment of great philosophical curiosity and artistic ambition. Through Read’s contribution to an evolving ‘language of non-vocal signs’, his vocalizations on behalf of abstract art and his vital and incessant experiment in the realm between poetry and painting, these poems were to contribute to a stirring of the ‘drift’ of modern poetry in post-war Britain.
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In the early springtime of 1959 a curious instance occurred across the pages of the literary magazine Encounter. Poetic utterances of a peculiar nature, Herbert Read’s ‘Vocal Avowals’ were announced with no more than the sequence title... more
In the early springtime of 1959 a curious instance occurred across the pages of the literary magazine Encounter. Poetic utterances of a peculiar nature, Herbert Read’s ‘Vocal Avowals’ were announced with no more than the sequence title and a fragmented prefatory paragraph ‘Notes for a Preface’, that offered a small number of his own pithy single line reflections as well as quotations from sources as culturally diverse as Mallarmé, Elizabeth Sewell, and P. M. Møller. Provided as a means of explanation for his new radical poetic, this list of short declarative statements volunteered a framework by which Herbert Read’s ensuing ‘abstract’ verses may be read. ‘You don’t write sonnets with ideas, but with words,’ Read intones through Mallarmé.
There is so little written about this odd moment in the poetic industry of Read’s later years for it to be particularly compelling. This paper will approach this late moment in Read’s literary career, misidentified by critics as the invention of a ‘supremely subjective romanticism’, as a moment of great curiosity and artistic ambition.
