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The Art Criticism of David Sylvester James Finch Word Count The Art Criticism of David Sylvester James Finch Word Count: 99,908 A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements of the University of Kent for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of the History and Philosophy of Art, the University of Kent, Canterbury September 2016 2 © Copyright James Finch, 2016. All rights reserved. 3 Abstract The English art critic and curator David Sylvester (1924-2001) played a significant role in the formation of taste in Britain during the second half of the twentieth century. Through his writing, curating and other work Sylvester did much to shape the reputations of, and discourse around, important twentieth century artists including Francis Bacon, Alberto Giacometti, Henry Moore and René Magritte. At the same time his career is of significant sociohistorical interest. On a personal level it shows how a schoolboy expelled at the age of fifteen with no qualifications went on to become a CBE, a Commandeur dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and the first critic to receive a Leone d’Oro at the Venice Biennale, assembling a personal collection of artworks worth millions of pounds in the process. In terms of the history of post-war art more broadly, meanwhile, Sylvester’s criticism provides a way of understanding developments in British art and its relation to those in Paris and New York during the 1950s and 1960s. This thesis provides the first survey of Sylvester’s entire output as an art critic across different media and genres, and makes a case for him as a commentator of comparable significance to Roger Fry, Herbert Read, and other British critics who have already received significant scholarly attention. I take a twofold approach, analysing both the quality of Sylvester’s writing and criticism, and its function as a catalyst for furthering the careers of artists and instigating significant exhibitions. Common to all of these strands is Sylvester’s distinctive critical sensibility, which placed an emphasis on his own aesthetic experiences and how they could be articulated through criticism. 4 Contents List of Illustrations 7 Acknowledgements 8 Introduction David Sylvester, Criticism and Art History 9 Thesis Structure 17 The Sylvester Archive 21 Chapter 1: ‘By Indirections Find Directions Out’ Introduction 24 1.1 Religion 25 1.2 Experience 28 1.3 Literature 36 1.4 Bohemia 40 Chapter 2: The Critic Introduction 56 2.1 Publications 57 2.2 New Realism 70 2.3 Art and the Public 77 2.4 Film and Photography 83 2.5 Abstract Expressionism 89 2.6 Pop and Minimalism 100 Chapter 3: Broadcasting Introduction 109 3.1 Radio Talks 110 3.2 ‘The Critics’ 116 5 3.3 Film and Television 124 Chapter 4: Interviews Introduction 137 4.1 Reasons for Interviewing 138 4.2 Sylvester as an Interviewer 147 4.3 The Editing Process 156 4.4 The Interview’s Influence 169 Chapter 5: The Monographs Introduction 177 5.1 Henry Moore 178 5.2 Alberto Giacometti 193 5.3 René Magritte 206 5.4 Francis Bacon 223 Chapter 6: On Showing Art Introduction 240 6.1 ‘An Old-Fashioned Modernist’ 242 6.2 Experience and Interpretation: Curating since the 1970s 255 Chapter 7: Looking Back Introduction 270 7.1 ‘In the Shadow of Thanatos’ 270 7.2 Living with Art 277 7.3 About Modern Art 287 Conclusion 295 6 Illustrations 304 Bibliography Works not by David Sylvester 311 Works by David Sylvester, with an Introductory Note 329 7 List of Illustrations 1. Installation shot, Exhibition of Islamic carpets from the Joseph V. McMullan collection, Hayward Gallery, 1972. Tate Photographic Archive. 2. Installation shot of Magritte exhibition, Tate Gallery, 1969. Tate Photographic Archive. 3. Installation shot of Magritte exhibition, Hayward Gallery, 1992; Ent’racte (1927) centre. Tate Archive TGA 200816/10/2/2/12. 4. Installation shot of Magritte exhibition, Hayward Gallery, 1992 showing The Eternally Obvious [L’Évidence éternelle, 1930]. Tate Archive TGA 200816/10/2/2/12. 5. Installation shot, ‘Trapping Appearance: Portraits by Francis Bacon and Alberto Giacometti from the Robert and Lisa Sainsbury Collection’, Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, 1996. SCVA. 6. Installation shot, ‘Trapping Appearance: Portraits by Francis Bacon and Alberto Giacometti from the Robert and Lisa Sainsbury Collection’, Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, 1996. SCVA. 7. Installation shot, Howard Hodgkin exhibition, Hayward Gallery, 1996. Hayward Gallery. 8. Installation shot, Howard Hodgkin exhibition, Hayward Gallery, 1996. Hayward Gallery. 9. Installation shot, ‘Francis Bacon: The Human Body’, Hayward Gallery, 1998. Marcus J. Leith. 10.Installation shot, ‘Francis Bacon: The Human Body’, Hayward Gallery, 1998. Marcus J. Leith. 11.Installation shot, ‘Francis Bacon: The Human Body’, Hayward Gallery, 1998. Marcus J. Leith. 12.Installation shot, Robert Morris exhibition, Tate Gallery, 1971. Tate Photographic Archive. 13.Installation shot, ‘Dada and Surrealism Reviewed’, Hayward Gallery, 1978, module two (291, The Ridgefield Gazook, The Blind Man, Rongwrong, TNT, New York Dada). Tate Photographic Archive. 8 Acknowledgements This thesis has benefitted greatly from the willingness of a number of people to write or talk to me about David Sylvester and his work after I contacted them, mostly out of the blue. Any of the following could easily have ignored my requests and I’m very grateful they didn’t: Dawn Ades, Frank Auerbach, Bruce Beresford, Mary Rose Beaumont, Sir Alan Bowness, Sir Harrison Birtwistle, Andrew Brighton, Cecily Brown, Jonathan Burnham, Martin Caiger- Smith, Adrian Clark, Bernard Cohen, Harold Cohen, Lynne Cooke, Richard Cork, Elizabeth Cowling, Michael Craig-Martin, Hugh Davies, Peter Davies, Andrew Dempsey, Vanessa Denison, Patrick Elliott, William Feaver, David Freeman, Philip French, Yvonne Gilan, David Gothard, Grey Gowrie, Patrick Hughes, James Hyman, Jasper Johns, Max Kozloff, Catherine Lampert, Shena Mackay, Lisa Milroy, Malcolm Morley, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Julia Peyton-Jones, Irving Sandler, Sir Nicholas Serota, John-Paul Stonard, Naomi Sylvester, Xanthe Sylvester, Jenny Uglow, Victoria Walsh, Sarah Whitfield. I have received valuable help from many museum, gallery and library staff. For assistance with specific requests I would particularly like to thank Clare Colvin (Serpentine Gallery), Kathleen Dickson (BFI National Archive), Jessica Ficken (Harvard Art Museums), Jessica Hogg (BBC Written Archives Centre), Sonia Hope (Hayward Gallery), Victoria Jenkins (Tate), Michèle Kieffer and Thierry Plautot (Fondation Annette et Alberto Giacometti), and Katherine Mauger (Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts). Everyone at the Tate Library and Archive has been extremely helpful and tolerant with me throughout this project and I’m indebted to John Langdon and Lucy Parker for helping me to negotiate the Sylvester archive. I’ve asked Angela Whiffen at the School of Arts, University of Kent, more questions than is probably reasonable over the last three years; she answered all of them without once telling me to figure things out for myself. In return for their friendship during the writing of this thesis I paid Kate Aspinall and Rachel Smith the dubious compliment of asking them to read it; their comments reminded me why I think so highly of them, and I hope I can repay the favour someday. Grant Pooke, my second supervisor at the University of Kent, and Jennifer Mundy, my supervisor at Tate, have contributed valuable suggestions and advice. Above all I want to thank my supervisor at the University of Kent, Martin Hammer, who’s helped me so much on and off the page. Finally, thanks to everyone in the Slipper and Finch families for putting up with me over the last three years. This thesis is dedicated to my grandparents Bill and Gladys Canning. 9 Introduction David Sylvester, Criticism and Art History David Sylvester (1924-2001) was one of a number of significant British critics born during the interwar years. His contemporaries included John Russell (1919-2008), Andrew Forge (1923-2002), Lawrence Alloway (1926- 1990) and John Berger (b.1926), along with the painter Patrick Heron (1920- 99), who was also a gifted critic. Coming of age during World War II, all of the above brought distinctive perspectives to bear in responding to and shaping the visual arts landscape of postwar Britain. While British art criticism at this time was still dominated by white male critics, the traditional bourgeois background of the critic was diversifying. Of the above only Russell followed the traditional path of public school education followed by study at the Universities of Oxford or Cambridge.1 Like the other critics listed, Sylvester eschewed university, preferring to educate himself by reading widely and discussing his various interests with his contemporaries.2 Early in life Sylvester developed a wide range of interests. He was many things: a collector, a curator, a committee member and éminence grise, a writer on sports and film, and a literary critic and musician manqué.3 All of these aspects of Sylvester’s life will be mentioned in the course of this thesis, but only insofar as they relate directly to his writings on art. It will be for other 1 Those who followed this path included Clive Bell, Roger Fry and critics whose careers overlapped with Sylvester’s such as Alan Clutton-Brock, Raymond Mortimer and Denys Sutton. Notable exceptions were Herbert Read (who studied at Leeds University) and Robert Melville, who didn’t go to university. 2 The curator Bryan Robertson (1925-2002) also began working straight after leaving school (as junior sub-editor at The Studio). 3 The writer Peter Vansittart, who knew him as a teenager, wrote ‘I dazed myself by calculating David Sylvester’s possibilities: a novelist, perhaps […] a literary critic […] he could have been a music critic […] a Cocteau […] a profound philosopher […] a theologian […].’ Peter Vansittart, In the Fifties (London: Murray, 1995), p.89. 10 scholars to give these other facets of Sylvester’s career the attention they deserve.
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