by David Plante
Often I do think that I don’t care at all about keeping a diary, have no interest at all in keeping a diary, so must stop.
Not less and less as time separates us from the past, but more and more, a photograph of bombed-out buildings in a magazine will make me aware that Nikos and I, he ominously, are of the after-war generation. I believe that we have inherited the consciousness of, even the conscience of, the total incomprehensibility of World War I and World War II, the history of those wars dumb-making, blind-making wars that leave one asking, What were they about? What? What? Was it something more primitive than the justification of war in defense of an ideology, so primitive it stands apart from any ideology, more powerful in its destructive domination of the world than any ideology, even an ideology intent on dominating the world, with its own overwhelming intentions far, far beyond the intentions of any ideology? What, what was the instinct that left churches bombed-out ruins? When looking at images of the devastation, the reaction is, with a helpless loosening of all one’s mind, Unbelievable, unbelievable, unbelievable.
Ossie Clark was found dead in bed, murdered, it’s reported, by a boy he picked up for sex.
Nikos has written a letter to Anthony Blunt to express his sympathy for the pain his having been exposed as a spy for the U.S.S.R. must have caused him. We have at times met Anthony – at the flat of John and James, or at the flat of the art historian John White and his Alexandrian wife Xenia, and once were invited for lunch in the flat he and his partner John Gaskill had in rooms above the Courtauld Institute in Portman Square, in an Adam-designed house. As Anthony was the Keeper of the Queen’s Pictures, she would have lunch with them in their flat, and John, the cook, would simply set an extra place for her at the table. After the revelation, they moved to a high-rise off the Edgware Road. John and James asked Nikos and me if we would collect Anthony and John and drive them for lunch to their house – now in the curiously named Ashchurch Park Villas, where they’ve moved to, and where they had given Anthony refuge. I parked the car before the high-rise apartment block and Nikos went in to let Anthony and John know we were waiting, which, as he said once they were in the car, surprised John, as others would park blocks away and ring from a distance. I suppose I anticipated Anthony saying something extraordinary, as if to have him in the car, he now notorious, was to anticipate the extraordinary, but he said nothing. His face was gaunt and his lips very thin, the upper part of his body apparently twisted in one way at the waist and his head turned the other way, and his arms twisted in different ways. John looked old and worn, unshaven. Talk at lunch – which consisted of a pie made with boiled eggs and wild rice and wild mushrooms – had mainly to do with the world of art historians, as if Anthony were still an active part of that world. He said a young man had, a few weeks back, read to him a paper about Lukács, but Anthony didn’t know who Lukács was. This was extraordinary, that Anthony Blunt hadn’t heard of the greatest Marxist critic.
Steven Runciman, at supper, mentioned that in 1963, when King Paul and Queen Fredericka of Greece made a state visit to London, he was in Fredericka’s entourage in the foyer of the Covent Garden Opera House when someone shouted an insult at her, ‘Boo, bourgeois’, so Steven stood up in her defence and retorted with, ‘No, upper class’. I think Steven toned down the insult.
Then Nikos revealed that he had been in the large company of the King and Queen when they’d made that controversial state visit to London, their train met at Victoria Station by Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip; he had even attended a reception at Buckingham Palace.
Did I think Nikos hypocritical for having been ancillary to that state visit? No, because Nikos has his own reasons, which I never judge.
What, I asked Steven, is to him bourgeois?
‘I think Beethoven the beginning of the end. Beethoven is where the bourgeoisie come in. And, as for Wagner, that’s the bourgeoisie pushed all the way to fascism. I detest Wagner, but I love Verdi.’
Richard Wollheim arranged for us to be invited to a drinks party given by friends of his, psychoanalysts, who have a flat on Primrose Hill overlooking the zoo, from which they can hear the cries of the animals at night. I’m sure we were both invited because of Nikos, who is publishing Richard’s books, the last called Painting as an Art. In the crush of many people, I was introduced to Hanna Segal, and I, with a sudden audacity and also thinking that she as an analyst would indulge my audacity, told her that my partner Nikos Stangos had gone to see her for possible analysis, and that she had told him that analysis would change our relationship in an unpredictable way, but that, when Nikos reported that to me, I was so sure of our relationship I was willing to accept the unpredictability of his analysis. I also said that Nikos was disappointed that she hadn’t taken him on but had passed him onto a Miss Richards, who had left him to go to Australia. ‘Where is Nikos?’ Hanna Segal asked. ‘I want to speak to him.’ I went into the crowd to find him, but when I did and with him returned to find Hanna Segal, she was gone.
At lunch with Stephen and Natasha, Nikos proposed that he and I give Stephen a party for his birthday. I recall Stephen once saying that he has sacrificed his poetry to his friendships, which he considered much more important. He knows he is social, sees an amused and amusing right to drop names, and is excited by parties. But, at the lunch with him and Natasha, when we asked whom he’d like to have to his birthday party, he said, ‘I have no friends.’ Natasha said, ‘Oh come now, you have so many friends.’ He insisted, ‘No, I don’t. Who are my close friends?’ Natasha went silent.
Nikos tells me I have no friends.
Nikos did most of the cooking for the party: lentils, rice, a chicken stew, salad. We bought a huge vulgar cake. And there were many bottles of wine.
Stephen had asked us to invite: Stephen and Stevie Buckley, Frank Kermode, Francis Bacon (who came with John), and, somehow, Caroline Lowell came. On our own, we invited Suzi Gablik and Germaine Greer. Then Matthew Spender and Maro Gorky, who were staying with Stephen and Natasha, came too.
I was, throughout, anxious that the people would not get on, that one of them might have said something that was not, say, in the spirit of the party. The fact is, I am not, basically, a social person, if to be social is to feel at ease among people. I kept filling glasses with wine and talking, talking, talking, and whenever there was a moment of silence I talked as though to talk for everyone all together. Nikos was at ease, but not I, and I wished, by 9:30, that everyone would go, but everyone stayed on till late, and I, drunk, had to let go of my attempt to keep all the connections vital and let whatever happened happen. And the connections did in themselves seem to sustain vitality without me straining to sustain them.
After everyone left and I hardly had enough energy to do the clearing and washing up, Nikos said, ‘Well, that was a nice party.’
What people talked about, and which person to which other person, I can’t at all recall. Did Suzi have anything to say to Germaine, Germaine to Maro? Did Frank and Francis speak to each other, and if so, about what? And whom did Stephen B. joke with apart from Stephen who likes Stephen B.’s quick wit? And Natasha, whom did she talk with? All I can recall of any talk was that of Caroline Lowell, who is finishing a book about the Duchess of Windsor that is so libelous it can’t be published as it is, and who said, ‘As a matter of fact, Edward abdicated for the reason everyone believes he did abdicate for: because he loved Wally and wanted to marry her, and he couldn’t have as king. He really was in love with her.’
Do I have a vision? Yes, I do – and the more I consider it the more it rounds out simply in the vision of all things coming together to form a whole globe, but coming together somewhere beyond my intending the coming together, it all happening of itself and suddenly occurring, and I as suddenly recognizing that it has all come together, and thinking: the joy of it, the joy of it!
I think of Richard Hamilton as a political artist.
I once told him that I believe his painting of the Northern Irish H Block prisoner, The Cit
izen, is equal in its power to Jacques-Louis David’s The Death of Marat; he looked at me, I guess, with appreciation, but also as if I didn’t quite understand.
He has long narrow teeth – teeth so long and narrow he seems to talk through them – and small eyes set high in his face, always wearing a denim jacket and a denim cap.
And it seems to me that the work of Rita Donagh, the partner and later wife of Richard Hamilton, that concentrates on the H Block makes her a political artist. Her subtle work of delicate lines and passages sensitizes that place of brutality, giving the brutality the sensitive dimensions of tragedy.
David Hockney rang from California, grumbling that no one in London was reacting against Margaret Thatcher’s Clause 28, which makes it possible for anyone to object to an exhibition or drama or book that favours homosexuality and that is supported by local government funds. It’s true that Nikos and I are not very active in promoting homosexual rights – not, say, in the way the artist Derek Jarman is – but we took up the cause and sent a letter to a number of people asking for them to sign a petition in protest. We asked R. B. Kitaj to be the recipient of the letters in response, thinking that he, unambiguously heterosexual, would make the claim more – what? – unbiased. A trick was to include in our letter the list of people to whom it was sent, so that each person would know what company he or she was signing up with it. Nikos was the one who was most responsible for the letter and the list.
I remember being with Kitaj and Sandra and Nikos in the basement of the Marlborough Gallery, waiting for a telephone call from the Sunday Times, a long time in coming, Kitaj, pacing, more and more impatient, his impatience rising to anger. Whoever the editor was should have known that R. B. Kitaj wanted to speak. The call came and Kitaj spoke in a severe tone. He was promised that our letter to the Sunday Times and the list of protestors would be published. It was, more or less as a footnote in the back pages.
As I think of my diary as a repository of what one day will be considered more than a personal diary, but an account of a certain time, I include the letter and the names of the people who signed, who in themselves represent much of what was happening during that certain time:
Fighting censorship tooth and clause.
Your editorial on clause 28 expressed the hope that the clause 28, now clause 29, ‘will prove to be unworkable as its critics predicted . . . that having been put on the statute books it will now be forgotten’.
Though we appreciate the stand taken by those against the clause, we think it must not be forgotten. The House of Commons did confirm it, and anyone who wishes to invoke it may do so if she or he feels that a local council contravenes it. Contravention of the clause is open to interpretation, both arbitrary and subjective. The mere possibility that anyone may now initiate what are in effect procedures of censorship will also result in self-censorship by libraries, galleries, theatres, and so on funded by local councils. In a country without a declaration of human rights [I must say, I wanted this in], this clause is a real threat to civil liberties.
David Hockney is not alone in perceiving the pernicious implications of clause 29. Any person who is concerned about the erosion of civil liberties in this country must agree that clause 29 constitutes a grave danger, not just to arts, but to the future of our society.
Roger de Grey PRA, Sir Alan Bowness, Neil MacGregor, Sir Hugh Casson PPRA, Sir Michael Levey, Nicholas Serota, Sir Norman Reid, The Duke of Beaufort, Francis Bacon, Frank Auerbach, Howard Hodgkin, R. B. Kitaj, Leon Kossoff, Michael Andrews, Richard Hamilton, John Piper CH, Sir Laurence Gowing, Dame Elisabeth Frink RA, Dawn Ades, Eileen Agar, Craigie Aitchison RA, Gillian Ayres, Barry Barker, Nancy Balfour, Glen Baxter, Adrian Berg, Tony Bevan, Sandra Blow RA, Lewis Biggs, Peter Blake RA, Stephen Buckley, Robert Buhler RA, H. T. Cadbury-Brown RA, Jeffery Camp RA, Fabian Carlsson, Richard Cork, Michael Craig-Martin, Trevor Dannatt RA, Richard Deacon, Jennifer Dixon RA, Anthony d’Offay, Rita Donagh, Peter de Francia, Robyn Denny, Joanna Drew, David Elliot, Anthony Eyton RA, William Feaver, Stephen Finer, Sandra Fisher, Angela Flowers, Barry Flanagan, Terry Frost, Hamish Fulton, Frederick Gore RA, Anthony Green RA, Janet Green, John Golding, Patrick George, Andy Goldsworthy, Alex Gregory-Hood, Nigel Greenwood, Tim Head, Maggi Hambling, Colin Hayes RA, Gerard Hemsworth, Patrick Heron, Paul Huxley, Timothy Hyman, Nicola Jacobs, Bernard Jacobson, Bill Jacklin, Tess Jaray, Derek Jarman, Allen Jones RA, Anish Kapoor, John Kasmin, Philip King, James Kirkman, Mark Lancaster, Catherine Lampert, Christopher LeBrun, Lillian Lijn, Kim Lim, Marco Livingston, Gilbert Lloyd, Richard Long, Peter Logan, Leonard McComb, Bruce McLean, James Mayor, Dhruva Mistry, Robert Medley RA, Lisa Milroy, Richard Morphet, Julian Opie, Maureen Paley, Myfanwy Piper, Jacqui Poncelet, Nicholas Pope, Patrick Procktor, Deanna Petherbridge, Piers Rodgers, Norman Rosenthal, Leonard Rosoman RA, Vera Russell, John Russell Taylor, Michael Sandle, Richard Shone, Karsten Schubert, Anne Seymour, Yolanda Sonnabend, Frances Spalding, Julian Spalding, Ruskin Spear RA, Jenny Stein, David Sylvester, John Titchell, Joe Tilson, Peter Townsend, Julian Trevelyan, William Turnbull, Euan Uglow, Lady Vaizey, Hester van Royen, Leslie Waddington, Richard Wentworth, Bill Woodrow, Jack Wendler, Carel Weight RA, Richard Wollheim.
Some days later, at a gallery opening, I heard David Sylvester shout at Anthony Caro, ‘Why didn’t you sign that letter?’ to which Caro replied, ‘I only sign letters I’ve written.’
I met John Gaskill in a supermarket in the Edgware Road and asked him to come to tea. He looked as if he could hardly bear the weight of his short, square body. At tea, he told me that he had had no idea, none, about Anthony being a spy, which had shocked him. Shortly after the revelation, Anthony suggested they go to Florence, which John thought would be a relief, but wondered where they would stay in Florence. Anthony said, with the British consul. John replied that they couldn’t. And Anthony asked, why not? ‘He never took in what he had done,’ John said, and shrugged and sighed. He regretted leaving after an hour, and I felt sorry to let him go.
John Golding, in charge of Anthony’s memoir, which Anthony wrote while staying with John and James, said that he has given it to the British Library with an injunction of some years. Laughing, John said that the big secret of the memoir is how boring it is.
Francis rang and asked Nikos and me and Stephen to dinner in a restaurant. I drove us to Reece Mews, and, crossing the cobbles to where he lives over a garage, I saw him look out of a window. He met us at the top of the steep stairs and kissed us all on the cheeks.
He said, ‘John wanted to come, too, but he’s too drunk,’ and he laughed his rough laugh that dismisses everything as: well, of course.
In his narrow sitting-room–bedroom, at one end with a large oval bed covered with a multi-coloured spread and a bookcase and a table by the bed piled with books, we sat at the near end on sofas and drank champagne, and we talked about drawing, and what really is drawing. While I wasn’t talking myself – and Nikos tells me I talk too much – I told myself to pay attention to the conversation of the others, which was extraordinary, and remember it all, Nikos’ incisive remarks, Stephen’s impressionist remarks, and Francis’ authoritative ones, but I’ve forgotten, but how alive the remarks were, and how alive I felt.
Stephen was very attentive to Francis, was, as I once noted he was with Auden, deferential to him. To whatever Francis said, Stephen responded with, ‘Yes, you’re right,’ to which Francis responded with, ‘Well, perhaps I’m not at all right. I don’t know how to draw, really.’
Like a son who, at a certain age, sees a weakness in his father, I saw a weakness in Stephen, and I quite consciously decided that I would not defer to Francis, but disagree with him. I no doubt said some silly things about drawing, but I had said them and I wouldn’t give them up when others – especially Francis – didn’t agree, or didn’t see my point. I thought Stephen became a little annoyed with me because I didn’t defer to Francis but was expressing something that I presumed was of interest to him. I know that Stephen can’t take seriously what I say, and is
puzzled by my – what he himself would say about himself – near success as a writer. That I should take myself seriously talking to Francis (whom Stephen considers a genius) Stephen, I feel, takes as an impertinence. Maybe I’m imagining this – imagining his disapproval of me – but his look, his eyes half lidded and his jaw set, seemed meant to stop me from talking, and I wouldn’t be stopped. Nikos didn’t stop me. At times, Francis would say, ‘David has made an interesting point,’ and only then would Stephen nod and say, ‘Yes.’ Then I thought that Stephen resented that I was paying more attention to Francis than to him, so I tried to pay as much attention to him as I did to Francis, asking Stephen questions. This is all very silly. We drank three bottles of champagne.
Then, at the restaurant, more lively talk, now about intention in art. As this interests me a lot, I, again, said what I had to say, and Francis pushed what I said as far as it could be pushed by saying, ‘I have no intentions. I don’t know what I’m doing, not at all. I have a critical sense, developed over the years, and I rely on that, a purely instinctive critical sense, but beyond that I have no idea what I’m doing.’ I said, ‘Do you count on anyone – say, some really informed critic – to say what you might be doing?’ ‘No,’ Francis said, ‘I don’t.’
I recalled seeing, on the big, plain table under the window of the sitting-room area, books by Michael Leris, the French philosopher who has written extensively on Francis.
Francis talked about Van Gogh and intention or the opposite of intention, and once again I concentrated, thinking, I must remember this, but I’ve forgotten.
Stephen said, ‘I like to think that if I’d been around when Van Gogh was painting, I’d have been one of the few to recognize his genius, but, in fact, I think that I, like most people, would have considered him an impossible mad man, and wouldn’t have wanted to have anything to do with him.’
