The Avant-Garde in Interwar England: Medieval Modernism and the London Underground

The Avant-Garde in Interwar England: Medieval Modernism and the London Underground Michael T. Saler Oxford University Press THE AVANT-GARDE IN INTERWAR ENGLAND This page intentionally left blank \\\\ THE //// AVANT-GARDE IN INTERWAR ENGLAND medieval modernism and the london underground Michael T. Saler New York Oxford Oxford University Press 1999 Oxford University Press Oxford New York Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogotá Buenos Aires Calcutta Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi Paris São Paulo Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto Warsaw and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Copyright © 1999 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Saler, Michael T., 1960– The avant-garde in interwar England : medieval modernism and the London underground / Michael T. Saler. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-19-511966-5 1. Modernism (Art)—England. 2. Art, Modern—20th century—England. 3. Avant-garde (Aesthetics)—England—History—20th century. I. Title. N6768.5.M63S26 1998 709′.42′09041—dc21 98-10996 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper To Benson and Joyce And in memory of Roland Marchand This page intentionally left blank preface It is at least provocative, and it may be historically illuminat- ing, to regard modernism provincially, as it were—to set modernist culture back in its context and to see it as a lim- ited and local enterprise. louis menand1 HIS BOOK TRACES THE RECEPTION AND assimilation of modern visual art in TEngland during the interwar period and examines the implications such a local, contextual study has for the broader histories of European modernism and of modern England. It focuses on a debate about the nature of art between modernist “formalists” who sought to define art as autonomous and self-reflex- ive, and avant-garde “functionalists” who reacted against this definition by ar- guing that art had direct social, economic, and spiritual functions. The debate set the terms by which visual modernism was to be legitimated to a bewildered and often suspicious public. The formalist conception of art was indebted to the writings of Roger Fry and Clive Bell, members of London’s Bloomsbury Group; the functionalist conception of art was propounded by an informal network of individuals, many from the industrial North, whom I have called “medieval modernists.” When it comes to the visual arts, “English modernism” might seem like a contradiction in terms, particularly when one considers the country’s venera- tion of the past, as well as its Protestant bias against images, which continued well into the early twentieth century. In England, however, it was precisely cultural standards like the past (especially the “medieval” past as concocted by nineteenth-century romantics like John Ruskin and William Morris) and the Protestant ethic of service that were drawn upon in order to legitimate visual modernism. I will argue that the formalist aesthetic was strongly challenged throughout the interwar period and that the reception and assimilation of modern art through the late 1930s owed as much to the romantic medievalism of Ruskin and Morris as it did to the formalism of Fry and Bell. The continued influence of Ruskin and Morris’s ideals in interwar En- gland is itself surprising: it is usually thought that the arts and crafts movement inspired by the two faded into a feeble antiquarianism after Morris’s viii preface death in 1896. Morris’s craft revival was intended to restore a common art “by the people and for the people,” but the elegant handicrafts he and his follow- ers created were simply too expensive for most consumers. The influence of Morris’s aesthetic on modern design and architecture has been noted, but histories of painting and sculpture usually present Ruskin and Morris’s Victorian social aesthetic as being eclipsed by modernism’s formalist aesthetic.2 This perception has only been reinforced by influential arguments that nineteenth- century romantic medievalism itself was shattered by the impact of the First World War, which transformed prewar expressions of chivalric idealism into postwar statements of ironic disillusion.3 Thus a recent history of modernism in interwar England implies modernism was antithetical to nineteenth-century romantic medievalism: “Modernism means many things, but it is most fun- damentally the forms that ...artists found for their sense of modern history: history seen as discontinuous, the past remote and unavailable, or avail- able only as the ruins of itself, and the present a formless space emptied of values.”4 These views neglect the aesthetic of the Victorian romantic medievalists, which was reinvigorated in the twentieth century by the medieval modernists and affected the reception and assimilation of visual modernism in England. Unlike many of their nineteenth-century predecessors, however, the interwar medieval modernists did not spurn modernity as they embraced the medieval ideal. Rather, they sought to spiritualize capitalism, infuse mass commodities with soul, and reshape an increasingly fragmented and secular culture into an organically integrated community of the faithful. In pursuing these aims, En- glish medieval modernists were instrumental in introducing modern visual art to the nation. They also made a substantial contribution toward establishing the visual arts on a par with the literary arts in a country that had, since the Reformation, privileged the word over the image. And just as such quintessentially “English” cultural shibboleths as the past, Protestantism, and utilitarianism were used by the medieval modernists to legitimate modern art in the interwar period, modern art and the medieval ideal were themselves associated with broader questions of English national and regional identity, economic direction, educational philosophy, and social planning. Arguments that claim the arts and crafts movement remained mired in the past and had little influence on twentieth-century England need to be rethought.5 From its inception, the arts and crafts movement was complex, consisting of both antiquarians and progressives; it continued to adapt and thrive in the interwar period as medieval modernism. The term should be un- derstood as referring to a specific discourse in which ideas about aesthetics, society, science, and religion were interfused, a conceptual framework about art and its relations to life espoused by an informal network of individuals at a discrete historical moment. It was a distinctive formulation of modernism— one among the many “modernisms” in Europe and America identified by scholars—which associated the new art with venerable national traditions as well as with contemporary social concerns. Thus, while this narrative focuses on the ways in which visual modernism was defined and legitimated in interwar England, it intersects with broader questions of twentieth-century English history, including contested concep- preface ix tions of national identity between London and the provinces, ongoing pro- cesses of secularization, and conflicting attitudes toward commerce and the “industrial spirit.” The story of English medieval modernism attests that aesthetic theories are historically specific and provisional: that definitions of art reveal as much about their time and place as the artifacts they attempt to cir- cumscribe. In order to analyze this critical historical debate about the social role of art—one whose central tension between formalism and functionalism contin- ues to be felt today—I use the life and thought of Frank Pick as a touchstone. A visionary businessman who managed the London Underground, Pick was the most significant member of the avant-garde network of medieval modernists who sought to integrate modern art with modern life during the twenties and thirties. The London Underground was known as the “people’s picture gallery” due to his patronage of modern artists for the Underground’s posters; Pick also used the transport system to introduce the public to modern architecture, sculpture, and design. Through his work as a chief executive with the London Underground, as chairman and president of the Design and Industries Association (DIA), and as chairman of the government’s Council for Art and In- dustry (CAI), Pick’s projects often converged with those of other medieval modernists (notably those of his Yorkshire compatriots William Rothenstein and Herbert Read, who also receive extended treatment). His thought and activities were central to both the formulation and the dissolution of medieval modernism. While this is the first study to examine Pick’s influential aesthetic views and activities within the wider context of English modernism, it is not strictly a biography. I am interested in Pick primarily as a conduit for the narrative of medieval modernism. The course of his life provides the thread for the broader story of the cultural contest over the definition of modern art in interwar En- gland, and of how the English avant-garde distinguished itself

Load more