Clark’s interest in post-war design led him to join the nascent Council of Industrial Design in 1944 and to chair its Design Committee. The Council, which aimed ‘to promote by all practicable means the improvement of design in the products of British industry’,19 was established by the Board of Trade to increase exports, and had both a commercial and an aesthetic purpose. It promoted the kind of simple modernistic design that Clark later described – not entirely flatteringly – in his ATV programme What is Good Taste? (see this page). Clark was only a half-believer. On 12 January 1945 he attended the Council’s inaugural meeting, at which he hoped it might be able to influence the designs of the new pound note and the new firemen’s helmets. He even wrote to the chairman of BOAC about the fitting out of planes.
In 1946 the Council put on an exhibition at the V&A, ‘Britain Can Make It’, which the wags dubbed ‘Britain Can’t Make It!’. The members of the selection committee were only too aware of the conflict between themselves, the metropolitan elite, and the northern manufacturers, a tension not dissimilar to that Clark would encounter at the Arts Council. When he resigned from chairing the Design Committee he enclosed a quote from Ruskin: ‘Efforts having origin only in the hope of enriching ourselves by the sales of our productions are assuredly condemned to dishonourable failure…because that peculiar art-skill can never be developed with a view to profit. The right fulfilment of national power in art depends always on the direction of its aim by the experience of ages.’20 The meaning is that good taste and design will not be advanced exclusively by the profit motive, a discouraging message for those he left behind at the Council. Clark also instinctively fought against a pure, clean and functional view of modern design, and insisted that art must also include invention, mystery and passion.*5
In 1942 Clark had gone on behalf of the British Council to lecture in Sweden, and was impressed by the country in several ways. There was a strong political component to the visit, which it was hoped would help to keep the neutral Swedes out of the Nazi embrace. On his return Clark told the press that Britain’s greatest assets in Sweden were the Prime Minister, whose photo seemed to adorn every home, and the RAF. He generally found the country pro-British, but subject to German propaganda. He would enthuse on The Brains Trust about the Swedes’ high standard of living and design, and told one correspondent that ‘in working conditions, housing and everything of that sort they are far superior to any other part of Europe. But the people are growing almost uneasy at having solved their material problems so well,’ and were wondering ‘how to satisfy the needs of the spirit’.21 He was sufficiently inspired to outline a Ruskinian tract entitled ‘To Hell with Materialism’, which would have addressed the balance between material comfort and the satisfaction of the spirit.22
In fact Clark’s tour of Sweden had been very difficult. At first his transport could not be organised, so his departure was delayed by two weeks. When he finally arrived he found that the British Council had mislaid his slides, and he therefore had to rewrite his lectures according to what was available from the National Museum in Stockholm – which, as the lecture was about British art, was very limiting. He had a punishing schedule of sixteen lectures, travelling, cocktail parties and large dinners accompanied by interminable speeches. A British Embassy report on the visit concluded: ‘The lecture tour was unquestionably a very great success in spite of the delays…Sir Kenneth has an imperturbable temperament which enabled him to meet all these mishaps unruffled, and the kind of iron constitution which is necessary to carry through such a programme…it has been reported from Uppsala that there is quite a Kenneth Clark craze as if he had been a popular film star.’ The writer reported that Crown Prince Gustaf Adolf invited Clark to lunch, and personally conducted him around the royal palace for two hours. They also spent a whole day driving out to see old churches together: ‘At a time when the royal family is very careful not to associate publicly with foreigners such hospitality is so exceptional as to be worth recording.’23 Clark was to return to Sweden in 1944 and deepen his friendship with the Crown Prince, who was also a friend of Berenson.
After the liberation of Paris in 1944, Clark visited the city with John Rothenstein, the Tate director, under the misapprehension that there would be rich pickings. They believed that American art dealers were scooping up bargains, but in fact the art market was booming, and nothing was cheap. They flew in a bomber in October, and Rothenstein described how ‘In the pellucid air, silent at midday, just freed, Paris was a spectacle to linger long in memory.’ Lacking transport and a working telephone, they trudged the length and breadth of the city on a fruitless quest for art. Clark visited his friend Georges Salles, now head of the Louvre, but the highlight of the trip was a meeting with Picasso at the apartment of the artist’s patron and friend Madame Cuttoli, where Clark showed Picasso a book on Henry Moore: ‘He sat for the rest of the meal, turning the pages like an old monkey that had got hold of a tin he can’t open.’24 The following day Clark paid a visit to Picasso’s studio, and described the successive layers of people to be negotiated before arriving at the large upstairs studio, furnished only with two green park benches. Clark was never an unequivocal admirer of Picasso, and saw some of ‘the worst landscapes I have ever seen’, but also some beautiful drawings of Cupid and Psyche. The original purpose of the trip, to acquire art, was a failure, and the only thing Clark brought back to London was a wodge of notepaper from the Hôtel de Crillon bearing the insignia of the German High Command, which he thought would amuse his children to use for writing letters to their friends. On his return to London he wrote a review of the Paris art scene for the New Statesman in which – Picasso apart – he described the soil as temporarily exhausted, with nothing much coming up.25
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‘The end came suddenly,’ was how Clark remembered the close of the war. As soon as peace was declared he brought the National Gallery’s pictures back from Wales and filled three undamaged rooms. The King and Queen came to reopen the gallery, and Louis MacNeice wrote his poem ‘The National Gallery’ about the paintings’ return:
Aye; the Kings are back from their caves in the Welsh hills,
Refreshed by darkness, armed with colour, sleight-of-hand and imponderables,
Armed with Uccello’s lances, with beer-mugs, dragons’ tongues, peacocks’ eyes, bangles and spangles and flounces and frills.
Clark had already decided that he was not the man to put the gallery back on its feet after the war, and resigned his position. The National Gallery had had ‘a good war’ – damaged but not irreparable, it had kept the flame of high culture alight under difficult conditions. Clark had also had a good war, and had more than recovered from his weakened position vis à vis the staff and the ‘Giorgione’ controversy. He thought it was the right moment to leave, telling the editor of the Spectator: ‘I have resigned from the Gallery in order to read, ruminate and occasionally write.’26 He wanted to concentrate on writing books and lecturing. He was also worn out by the hostility from the art world. Myfanwy Piper wrote to him: ‘My paper tells me that you have resigned from the N.G. I look for a great flowering my dear and pray hard that you may have the strength of mind to be a little selfish.’27 Berenson, by now back at I Tatti, wrote: ‘Rumours reach me that you already have resigned the N.G. I congratulate you. You will now be able to devote yourself to tasks more worthy of your gifts and I look forward to the results.’28 Clark gave a final wireless broadcast, on the return of the paintings from Wales; this appears to have been particularly successful, with many strangers writing to express their appreciation.
Clark had one last task to undertake for the gallery, which was to go to Portugal and try to secure the Gulbenkian collection. Gulbenkian invited the whole family out to Lisbon, a welcome holiday away from war-torn Britain, and requested that they bring with them four boxes of Shredded Wheat breakfast cereal, which was difficult to obtain in Lisbon. Colette recalled: ‘We arrived at the Aviz Hotel and very unusually Mr G was in the hall to greet us
which was a great honour. He was like a little owl. We loved this holiday as we had good food and fruit which we had been denied for so long and Portugal was full of colour and Mediterranean life, from which we had been so starved.’29 But as far as Gulbenkian was concerned, the National Gallery had become a less attractive option for the future of his collection, as he had a deep sense of injustice about the way he had been treated by Britain during the war. If Clark had stayed at the gallery it is possible that this might have tipped the balance – but unlikely, given the tax problems of leaving Gulbenkian’s estate in Britain. As it happened, Clark’s successor, Philip Hendy, was not sympathetic to Gulbenkian’s constant enquiries about whether his ‘children’ were being properly cared for, when he had more pressing problems of reinstating the gallery. Gulbenkian wrote a melancholy letter to Clark: ‘It strikes me that Mr Hendy is not very keen about my pictures in the Gallery. As you know I am very sensitive and I may be all wrong. If I am not, it will sooner or later be very unpleasant, and I shall therefore have to consider what other steps I ought to take so that my dear “children” should in no way remain in sufferance.’30 Clark would continue to act for Gulbenkian after he left Trafalgar Square, and made several trips to Portugal; these served to convince him that Lisbon was a better location for the collection, where it would always be the main attraction.
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At the same time that Clark resigned from the gallery, he also gave up his post at Windsor. During the war he had appointed Ben Nicolson as his deputy, but the King and Queen were not impressed by Nicolson’s shambolic manner. Clark therefore pressed the claims of a sharper candidate, ‘Major Blunt’, as Anthony Blunt was then described. Owen Morshead told Clark, ‘I like A. Blunt. He’s the goods.’31 The Royal Collection had thrown up one last surprise. Clark was astonished to read one day in The Times about an exhibition of the King’s pictures to be held at the Royal Academy. The Lord Chamberlain was also in the dark, and asked Clark for an explanation. He replied that he suspected – correctly – that the Academy had gone behind their backs to the Treasurer of the Royal Household. It was a traditional right of the Royal Academy to approach the King through this route, but Clark thought the situation ‘improper and highly discourteous’.32 He was furious, and rightly concluded that the Academy wished to run the exhibition without the intervention of any art historians or court officials, although – as he told Eric Maclagan at the V&A – ‘they find their members are both too lazy and too ignorant to do so, and they are waiting to find a way out of this difficulty’.33 As it happened, the resulting exhibition (staged while Buckingham Palace was being redecorated) was a huge success, especially with the King. Morshead wrote to Clark: ‘You likey Exhibition? It’s almost the first time I’ve ever known my Employer pleased – for He is ever more prone to carp than praise.’34
Clark attended his last trustees’ meeting at the National Gallery on 13 December 1945, and a generous minute records regret at his departure, gratitude and appreciation for his services and skills, and wishes him ‘good fortune wherever his path may lead’. John Pope-Hennessy was one of the many who wrote to him: ‘May I say how really sorry I am that you are leaving the Gallery? Everyone who is interested in pictures owes an immense debt to your work there, and I can imagine no successor whose record over a comparable period will prove to have been at once so progressive and so sound.’35
Most commentators agree that Clark was a brilliant wartime director, but his peacetime record – despite great achievements and additions to the gallery – has always been overshadowed by the ‘Giorgione’ episode and his difficulties with the staff. Views on his directorship will always be coloured by views on the man. When he asked himself whether he had been a good director he answered, ‘Not very, but better than my predecessors in this century.’36 But for many, Owen Morshead summed up the feeling at the time: ‘a deepfelt sigh at your departure from the National Gallery. I can hardly bear to contemplate it, my very dear friend…CUJUS DULCIS MEMORIA IN HIS LOCIS SPIRAT ET HABITAT*6 if that makes sense. It is very true in sentiment, dear K. You have made those bones live for countless thousands of people, who feel the pulse of a living organism the moment they enter the premises – whether for music or pictures.’37 Clark had strongly supported the appointment of Hendy as his successor, but soon became disillusioned, first over Gulbenkian and then by differences over cleaning pictures.
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Clark meant to concentrate on his writing, but would that be enough for him? Mary Glasgow of the Arts Council later wrote a memoir in which she left the most perceptive assessment of Clark at this time: ‘He always seemed to me to be two people, each fighting the other. He is intellectually a giant, with a well-stocked mind and administrative powers to match. He ought to have taken a leading part in the affairs of the country at large, let alone the cultural ones. Yet whenever he has approached the centre of things, as when, early in the war, he went to the Ministry of Information, he has shied away, saying to himself something like, “All this is dust and ashes; I must devote myself to things of the mind.” Then he would retire, to think, write and contemplate; until the pendulum swung back and he would say; “What am I doing in a vacuum? I must go back into the arena.” I think he has suffered all his life from not being himself a creative artist, knowing so much while never producing original work or painting or sculpture.’38 After Clark said goodbye to the National Gallery to concentrate on writing, the tension between the vita activa and the vita contemplativa was to become ever more evident over the next forty years.
There was one last terrible shock for Clark at the end of the war – the dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima ‘filled me with despair about the future of mankind from which I have never wholly recovered’.39 He realised that this was the end of humanist science, and it imbued him with the pessimism, as well as the horror of machines and computers as instruments of power, that were to make themselves felt in Civilisation.
* * *
*1 ‘It seems rather paradoxical that one member of a body that should be devoted to the spreading of light gives his whole time to the bolstering of superstition’. Draft letter to Harold Nicolson, 23 April 1942 (Tate 8812/1/1/30).
*2 Clark and Greene were not close friends; the only letter in the Clark Archive from Greene is c.1950, when the novelist and his wife were taking a holiday on the Isle of Wight and wanted to see the Winterhalter portraits at Osborne House. Could Clark help? Unfortunately not (Tate 8812/1/2/2601–2651).
*3 The Pilgrim Trust was the gift of Edward Harkness, an American millionaire who in 1930 gave £2 million to help preserve ‘the Britishness of Britain, land, architecture, artefacts and society’.
*4 The 1941 CEMA report states that in two years its art exhibitions attracted more than half a million visitors, the plays performed under its auspices were seen by a million and a half people, and a staggering eight thousand concerts were put on. It was the first time there had been a mass audience for drama, music and song in Britain.
*5 See ‘Art & Democracy’, manuscript published in 1945 in Cornhill Magazine, July issue (Tate 8812/2/2/42). See also a 1949 lecture on ‘Taste’ (author’s collection): ‘But functionalist propaganda has been so specious and relentless that the doctrine of salvation through exclusion is still to be found in the persuasive leaflets of the Council of Industrial Design and similar bodies.’
*6 ‘Whose sweet memory breathes and dwells on in this space’.
23
Writing and Lecturing
For some unknown reason my mind worked better from 1945 to 1955 than it had ever done before.
KENNETH CLARK,The Other Half 1
Clark had given up a high-profile position, but during the next decade he was never to be out of the limelight. With his appointment as Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford, and the publication of two of his finest books, Landscape Into Art and Piero della Francesca, this was to be one of the most productive periods of his life. Moreover, during this time he established himself as the country�
��s most sought-after lecturer. As the art historian Hugh Honour put it: ‘One can’t think of the 1940s and 50s without him. He made people think that you could write about art without being pedantic.’2 Clark himself did not interpret this as a shift away from the public sphere; rather he saw lecturing as a renunciation of scholarship, telling one critic, ‘I only changed from scholarship to lecturing in 1946, when I was made Slade Professor.’3 He could never understand how, whereas literary criticism could attract a wide general readership – he used to cite Robert Gittings on Keats – no equivalent existed for books on art: he would assert that art historians only published their books to impress each other.
Clark was not alone in his Oxford generation to address himself to a broader public, a path also followed by John Betjeman and Cyril Connolly. John Rothenstein witnessed the change in Clark’s outlook: ‘Scholarship for scholarship’s sake – did he not once compare it to knitting – has held diminishing attraction, while his urge to share his knowledge and experience with a very wide public has correspondingly increased.’4 Rothenstein attributed this to the influence of Ruskin, which is undoubtedly accurate, but there were other factors at play. The war years had shown that a broader public could be made receptive to art, and Clark had come to enjoy his power to open people’s eyes. The July 1945 general election had delivered the socialist government that he had hoped for, and a new educative enthusiasm was now sweeping the country. This was a period of relative stability and calm in his own life; as Colette put it: ‘At Upper Terrace he was at his happiest and most fun. He was released from the National Gallery and Mama was still sane.’5
However, post-war British socialism turned out to have its limitations, as Clark observed to Berenson: ‘It seems incredible that anyone can exist except in service of the state – like Tang China, or business in America. This makes it all the more necessary to fight a rearguard action on behalf of the individual.’6 Having himself just left the comfortable umbrella of the state – he had never had to pay for his own office and secretary before – Clark was now anxious about his income, and in 1945 he became involved in talks with a building firm, Prebuilt Constructions Ltd, about a possible directorship, to promote the design possibilities of a new material called ‘Plimmer’. For Clark, the main attraction was an office at 44a Dover Street in which he could store books and receive visitors in the West End.*1 Given that Clark was still advising him on works of art, he suggested that Gulbenkian might pay for a secretary, but was firmly rebuffed, ‘as it may create complications for both of us’.7 However, his financial anxieties were soon resolved. He was called to his mother’s deathbed in Cheltenham, where he was surprised to find himself so moved: ‘She spoke to me with a love and understanding she had never shown before. What mysterious inhibition had prevented her from talking to me like this before?’8 In addition, Alice Clark left her son her remaining shares in Coats, worth some £66,316.
Kenneth Clark Page 30
