UNIVERSITY MUSEUMS IN SCOTLAND CONFERENCE 2004 The collection as a work of art: Jim Ede and Kettle's Yard Sebastiano Barassi Curator of Collections Kettle’s Yard, University of Cambridge [email protected] The significance of a collection depends upon a wide range of value judgements. And indeed ‘significance’ itself is a multifaceted term, which can refer to the mere quality of having a meaning as well as imply a hierarchical determination. In this paper I would like to propose a definition of the significance of a collection based upon ideas developed for art criticism and exemplified by the history of the creation of Kettle’s Yard. *** In his 1914 book Art , Bloomsbury writer and critic Clive Bell thus outlined the notion of ‘significant form’: “What quality is shared by all objects that provoke our aesthetic emotions? In each, lines and colours combined in a particular way, certain forms and relations of forms, stir our aesthetic emotions. These relations and combinations I call ‘Significant Form’; and ‘Significant Form’ is the one quality common to all works of visual art.” Bell’s definition became the founding principle of Formalism, a doctrine that has since grown out of fashion among art historians and museum professionals. However, I would like to suggest that the notion of ‘significance’ as the ability to stir emotions, can usefully be applied to collections (not only art collections) to help define their role in today’s society. I hope that the story of the creation of Kettle’s Yard will provide a helpful example. Kettle’s Yard was created in 1956 by Harold Stanley Ede, who was known to his friends as Jim. Having originally aspired to become an artist (he had studied painting in Newlyn, Edinburgh and London), during the 1920s and 30s Ede worked at the Tate Gallery as a curator, also acting as Secretary to the Contemporary Art Society. Although his art historical writings of the time focussed mainly on early Renaissance Tuscan drawing, Ede was above all interested in the work of his contemporaries. His Tate job gave him access to artists such as Picasso, Miró, Brancusi and Chagall, whom he met during frequent visits to Paris. Even more importantly, in those years Ede formed close relationships with a number of emerging British artists, among them Ben Nicholson and his two wives Winifred Roberts and Barbara Hepworth, Christopher Wood and David Jones. These friendships would prove crucial for the development of his taste and, subsequently, of Kettle's Yard. Ede himself highlighted this when in later years he was asked to give a short definition of himself and replied ‘a friend of artists’. In the 1920s and 30s Ede’s home in Hampstead became a regular meeting point for a group of intellectuals that included young British artists like the Nicholsons, Barbara Hepworth, David Jones and Henry Moore, refugees like Naum Gabo and Piet Mondrian, fellow collector Helen Sutherland and Russian ballet stars Sergei Diaghilev and Vaslav Nijinsky. It was at this time that Ede first developed the idea of his house as a place open to like-minded individuals who shared his interest in the arts. It was also then that he began to collect works by both his friends and the artists he met on Tate business. The collection soon became a well-known attraction, the highlight being the estate of Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, which Ede acquired in 1927. Following a string of health problems, Ede resigned from the Tate in 1936 to begin an early retirement, aged 41. Over the next twenty years he lived with his wife Helen in Tangiers and the Loire Valley, concentrating on lecturing and writing on art. Ede collected little during those years, but he continued to review books and exhibitions. By the mid-1950s, however, a desire to be nearer their daughters Elisabeth and Mary, who lived in Edinburgh, drove the couple to return to Britain. It was at this time that the need for a permanent home for the collection became foremost in Jim’s mind. *** In a 1956 letter to David Jones, Ede wrote: “it would be interesting to be lent a great house on the verge of a city – or a place of beauty in a town (Cambridge I have in mind) and make it all that I could of lived in beauty, each room an atmosphere of quiet and simple charm, and open to the public (in Cambridge to students especially) - and for such a living creation I would give all that I have in pictures and lovely objects.” In Ede’s vision, this was to be: “a living place where works of art would be enjoyed, inherent to the domestic setting, where young people could be at home unhampered by the greater austerity of the museum or public art gallery, and where an informality might infuse an underlying formality.” Ede wanted a ‘grand’ building to house his creation, but at the time none was available in Cambridge. The search for a suitable home for the couple and the collection continued until they found four derelict cottages in the area known as ‘Kettle’s Yard’. With the help of a local architect, the couple restored and remodelled the cottages and moved in in early 1957. The house was ready to receive visitors by the end of the year. In it the Edes had installed the collection of art, furniture, glass, ceramics and other objects that they had gathered during their peripatetic life. By this time, Ede’s art collection was of outstanding quality and importance. As well as the Gaudier-Brzeska estate, which formed the backbone of the displays, he had then the most substantial, publicly accessible collection of early works by Ben Nicholson, Winifred Nicholson and Christopher Wood. Moreover, the display of Alfred Wallis paintings helped establish the artist’s place in the history of art. During the London years, Ede had also developed an interest in found and natural objects, which was deeply rooted in the artistic milieu of Hampstead (Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore in particular). Ede was a keen collector of all sorts of natural objects, and his friends often gave him shells and pebbles, sometimes sending them from remote parts of the world. Many of these became part of the permanent display at Kettle's Yard, as Ede believed that their presence would enhance the beauty of the works of art by juxtaposition and comparison. The role of natural objects in the house is in fact so crucial that Ian Hamilton Finlay once called it the ‘Louvre of the pebble’. The core of any day at Kettle’s Yard became the holding of ‘open house’ to university undergraduates on weekday afternoons, for these were the people that Ede really sought to interest in the arts. The house was entirely open to visitors - the only exception being Helen’s private quarters - and every room, including bathrooms and bedrooms, contained works of art carefully positioned alongside found objects and everyday utensils. Kettle's Yard absorbed almost all of Ede’s time, becoming in his own words, ‘a way of life’. Eventually, however, his advancing age, Helen’s worsening health and the addition of an extension to the house in 1970, which more or less trebled its size, persuaded Ede to give the collection to the University of Cambridge. In 1973 the couple moved to Edinburgh, Helen’s home city, where they were to spend their final years. *** In A Way of Life , his book on the genesis of Kettle's Yard published in 1984, Ede wrote: “the Miró was to me an opportunity to show undergraduates the importance of balance. If I put my finger over the spot at the top right all the rest of the picture slid into the left-hand bottom corner. If I covered the one at the bottom, horizontal lines appeared, and if somehow I could take out the tiny red spot in the middle everything flew to the edges. This gave me a much needed chance to mention god, and by saying that if I had another name for god, I think it would be balance, for with perfect balance all would be well.” Ede’s notion of balance as a godly quality is crucial to the understanding of his views on the role and significance of Kettle’s Yard. In his vision, balance referred to both spiritual fulfilment and aesthetic taste, and he regarded all the disciplines he had an interest in - namely art, music, religion and the organisation of domestic spaces - as very closely related, because they are all governed by balance. Rooted in his profound belief in St Augustine’s doctrine of the divine nature of everyday tasks, the organisation of the spaces and the daily routines of the house fell almost exclusively on Jim. This pleased him because it gave him direct control over the realisation of his own vision. In fact, Ede’s sense of the sacred in daily routines went hand in hand with his idea of art as a means to spiritual growth. Since the 1920s Ede had been deeply interested in religion and had developed a particular fascination for Oriental philosophies and cultures (in particular Buddhism and Hinduism, with their notions of denial of material pleasure, willing personal sacrifice and practical help to benefit others). His friendship with David Jones, and, during the 1950s, with American painters William Congdon and Richard Pousette-Dart, also contributed to enhance Ede’s sense of the spiritual, as these were all artists whose work and lifestyle revolved around religious and transcendental concerns. Moreover, Ede’s ideas also owed much to the Christian Science he had encountered through the Nicholsons, in particular its notion of finding beauty and fulfilment in such things as shadow, light and subtle spatial arrangement.