Prehistory from the Air

 

In the late 1930s comparisons were often made between new art and ancient landscapes. In British Art: Ancient Landscapes Sam Smiles cites an essay by John Piper which refers to the work of Ben Nicholson, Henry Moore, who 'has landed us back in the stomach of pre-history' and Paul Nash, who 'leaves us with the bare sea-washed bones of it.' A Barbara Hepworth catalogue compared her work to menhirs and in an article about her work in Circle, the journal that promoted 'constructive art', she included photographs of Stonehenge. One of these images was taken by Carola Giedio-Wecker, who had recently written a study of contemporary sculpture featuring Stonehenge, the Table des Marchands and the stone alignments of Carnac. Perhaps the best frequently cited example of this is 'Prehistory from the Air', the article Piper wrote for the Winter 1937 edition of Axis, edited by Myfanwy Evans (his new wife). This can be read online, so I thought I'd quote from it here, beginning with his thoughts on flight and landscape art: 

Because flying has not created any new consciousness about spaces or vistas or anything else, it has simply served the new consciousness, and has been forced on in its development by it. It has grown up with it in fact, which is the only reasonable way for an invention to work. So the horizon line vanishes, from the air. It has also vanished (nearly) from painting. Instead of being the end-all of landscape, it is now there on sufferance. It is not really strange that air photography began in the '80's, and that about the '80's the horizon in landscapes (with Courbet or Cézanne) was getting much less conscious of itself—no more self-conscious than the foreground, or the background, or the middle distance, ail of which were becoming parts of the same consistent parcel. For contrast, think of Claude's skyline castles in the scenery of his wonderful natural theatre. At its simplest, the change is one from elevations to plan. The picture has tipped over backwards on to the floor, and in being raised again it has brought part of the floor with it. Picasso, Braque, Klee, Matisse have painted elevations of wineglasses, gardens and windows at Nice which have the added richness and meaning of plan-patterns.

Piper's essay is followed by a colour reproduction of a Miró painting and in the composite image above I've juxtaposed it with what he put on the previous page, two images of Silbury Hill - very different but equally interesting. The top one is from William Stukeley 1724 publication Stonehenge and Avebury. 

Stukeley, above all, wanted to record the effort and the feeling for shape of the men who built it. Size and contour are all-important. The story of the size is well told, and as to the shape to jump, run, walk, or struggle up each slope with Stukeley in his drawing is as real and as sharp an experience as to take a journey round a wineglass with Picasso. The air-photograph is flat and subtle. The effect of suddenness that the mound gives in the plain, and the sense of size that the surroundings try to contradict, is as strong as that of ail Stukeley's fold-explorations. Both these representations of Silbury Hill are beautiful—and together they give a very fair idea of this large and curious mound— but so different that it is hard to realise that each gives a reasonable account of the same monument.

Piper doesn't talk about that Miró painting, but the Spanish artist does feature in a later article in this issue of Axis, Anthony West's 'No Revolution.' In talking about abstract art he mentions an early painting done in a vary different style.

Hemingway writes about Miró's picture, The Farm,"It has in it all that you feel about Spain when you are there and ail that you feel when you are away and cannot go there." Perhaps it was possible to give this reading to the picture and to think about happy days in the sun instead of looking at the picture. Perhaps Miró thought so too, for his paintings are no longer like postcards to hold in your hand while you think about the days when you were younger. It is the design in his mind not the memory in yours which he wants to express.  

Joan Miró, The Farm, 1921-22

It is always fascinating to leaf through an old journal or magazine (if I can say 'leaf through' about an online PDF) and here it was impossible not to be drawn to a review by the artist Robert Medley of Hitler's degenerate art show in Munich. Medley found modern paintings by Klee and Kandinsky had been badly hung, without frames, and packed in with second-rate work. Meanwhile, the Approved Art show nearby was full of pictures of Hitler, all hung in a line, along with 'boys and maidens beating drums and waving banners. Gigantic sculptures of nude men striding forward, the artist taking so much care that they should not look pansy that they ceased to be men at all— symbolism had made them inhuman. Pictures telling you what a fine thing war is...' There were also more unassuming paintings, but these were monotonous. 'I had the impression of a number of artists pleased to work quietly, with their minds relieved from having to cope with modem aesthetic or social problems. ... I was pleased to leave.'