Sussex Modernism at Two Temple Place

I posted here in 2013 about Artists in Cornwall, the second annual Winter Exhibition held by the Bulldog Trust at Two Temple Place on the Victoria Embankment, London. Their current and sixth show, Sussex Modernism: Retreat and Rebellion, brings together some of the art, craft, photography and architectural design which flourished in that area* between 1900 and 1950.

Many people will be aware of the presence of Eric Gill (Icon 1923, below top left) at Ditchling, the Bloomsberries (Duncan Grant, Bathers by the Pond c1920-21, below lower) at Charleston and Roland Penrose and Lee Miller (1952 photograph, below top right, of Henry Moore with Mother and Child 1936-37 – on display at Two Temple Place) at Farley Farm House. However, Sussex’s rural nature combined with its proximity to London would attract other cultured and creative spirits, although the extent to which they were aware of each other’s presence, let alone its influence, is probably unknowable. Nonetheless, it is almost certain that they would all have been conscious of the avant-garde arts of their time and can quite fairly be accommodated under modernism.

The show at Two Temple Place has brought together a fascinating selection of items, many from local collections, revealing Sussex’s twentieth century cultural heritage. Two examples are by Edward Wadsworth from 1940, at the tail end of 1930s English surrealism, Light Section from the Brighton Museum and Art Gallery (below top) and Bronze Ballet from the Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne (below lower):

Other exhibits have come from further afield, like Edward Burra’s Landscape near Rye, 1934-35 (in the poster above). A striking item of furniture on display is the Mae West lips sofa designed in 1938 by Salvador Dalí and Edward James for the latter’s home in West Sussex (below top). The De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill on Sea, designed by Mendelsohn and Chermayeff in the mid-1930s and one of the UK’s most important Modernist buildings, is represented by photographs and its original architectural model (below lower):

Sussex Modernism: Retreat and Rebellion is a free exhibition and ends on 23 April 2017.


*’Sussex’ consists of the English counties of East and West Sussex bordering the English Channel and the seaside conurbation of Brighton and Hove. The great circle (shortest) route from London to Paris passes through East Sussex, close to the Newhaven-Dieppe ferry route established in the mid-Nineteenth century.

Virginia Woolf at the NPG

Novelist, essayist, biographer and critic, Virginia Woolf is the most famous and influential modernist prose writer of the 20th century. She occupied a central position within the Bloomsbury Group: that union of friends who helped rid art, design and society of the constrictions and conventions left over from the Victorian period. 

Frances Spalding 

Virginia Woolf: Art, Life and Vision at the National Portrait Gallery in London has been curated by Frances Spalding, an eminent art historian, author of several books relating to Bloomsbury and now of the NPG exhibition’s catalogue. She has selected more than 100 objects relevant to Woolf’s life including paintings, photographs, first editions of her novels and archival material such as correspondence and diaries. This material is mostly arranged chronologically but, unusually for a modern exhibition, there is no timeline presented at entry, although one taken from the catalogue is available on the NPG's website. Consequently, there is no context for the first images the visitor encounters: photographs of the devastating effect of the London blitz in 1940 on the Woolfs’ former Bloomsbury home, 52 Tavistock Square and on 37 Mecklenburgh Square where they were living at the time (when not at Monk’s House at Rodmell in Sussex). This was a year before Virginia’s death in 1941, the point at which the exhibition eventually ends.

Although their work is not universally admired for its quality, it cannot be denied that the painter members of the Bloomsbury Group, whether at Charleston Farmhouse or elsewhere, had no shortage of noteworthy subjects close at hand. Obviously this show concentrates on images of Virginia – I liked in particular Duncan Grant’s 1911 portrait and Vanessa Bell’s of 1912:

but Lytton Strachey,1904 by Simon Bussy, Mark Gertler’s Samuel Koteliansky, 1930 (below, left and right) and Vannessa Bell’s The Memoir Club c 1943 (below, lower) were all memorable (the Bloomsberries in this picture include both Bells and their son, Quentin, Leonard Woolf, the Keynes’s, EM Forster and Duncan Grant):

Among the many photographs of Virginia in the exhibition are the familiar 1902 society studies by GC Beresford, but more interesting to me were the Man Ray portrait (one of several, I believe, for a Time Magazine cover feature in April 1937), (below top, left and right) and some of the last to be taken of her, by Gisèle Freund in 1939, including one of Leonard and Virginia at 52 Tavistock Square (below, lower, left and right):

 It would be difficult to come away from this exhibition without seeing and learning something new. For example:

Virginia typeset TS Eliot’s The Waste Land (a copy is on display) during the period she and Leonard were living in Richmond-upon-Thames and had set up the Hogarth Press and Virginia was writing Mrs Dalloway. Lady Ottoline Morrell took a photograph of Eliot and Woolf (right) in 1924, the year the Woolfs returned to Bloomsbury.

Leonard and Virginia visited Sigmund Freud in Hampstead soon after his arrival from Vienna in June 1938.

Virginia was a Sponsor and Patron of the campaign led by Roland Penrose to exhibit Picasso’s Guernica and the studies for it, in London and elsewhere in late 1938/1939.

This exhibition should have a wide appeal: to admirers of Woolf’s writing, to those fascinated by the Bloomsbury Group – Dorothy Parker is said to have observed that 'Bloomsbury paints in circles, lives in squares, and loves in triangles' - and to anyone with an interest in 20th century British art. Virginia Woolf: Art, Life and Vision continues at the NPG until 26 October.

The far side of Grayson Perry RA

RA is the Royal Academy of Arts Magazine and the Summer 2012 issue has just arrived:

I like Grayson Perry (as I explained in a post about his British Museum exhibition) and I thought his cover for RA was quite amusing. It was described inside:

Turner Prize-winning artist Grayson Perry RA is famous for his wonderful pots which combine dazzling visual exuberance and dramatic physical presence with imagery that reveals a sharp social observation. For our summer cover he has drawn a special Summer Exhibition pot, bulging inside with the show's goodies, while offering on the outside a gently teasing vision of its supposedly Waitrose-shopping, Radio 4-listening, National Trust-supporting audience.

Although I’m not a great fan of the RA Summer Exhibition or BBC1’s Antiques Roadshow, I’m afraid that my household has to put ticks of varying thicknesses, rather than crosses, in all the other ‘boxes’ (including the NT) except for The Proms. This issue of RA is launching a new opinion column with a contribution from Perry, No accounting for taste, on the class basis of aesthetics. As he points out:

In Britain, the most pervasive influence on the things we buy and do is social class.

He goes on to observe that the bedrock notion of middle-class taste is restraint and that:

I think this buttoned-up refinement can be seen in some of my favourite paintings. Someone once described modern British art as 'tightrope walking six inches off the ground'. I interpret this as an observation that British artists such as Paul Nash, Eric Ravilious, Ben Nicholson, even Francis Bacon with his glazed gold frames, did a polite, drawing-room-friendly version of Modernism, unlike those garish shouty foreigners with their café philosophy and angry politics. The shrine to this tasteful notion of bohemia must surely be Charleston in Sussex, the exquisitely faded farmhouse plavground of the Bloomsbury group …

Oh dear, more ticks: Ravilious and Nicholson have appeared in posts here, as would have Nash and Bacon if the opportunity had arisen – and I have been a supporter of the Charleston Trust for over 20 years …

So, just as people used to speculate about the once unseen far side of the moon, what would there have been on the far side of Perry’s RA pot, if it had been made, not just drawn? Well here are some suggestions for additional middle-class, Summer Exhibition-goers preferences in 2012:

The Dordogne
Volvo for sure at one time, but perhaps BMW or Audi now
The Killing or, better, Forbrydelsen
The Duchess of Cambridge
Ikea (mentioned in the article but not on the pot)
A trio of ’national treasures’: Alan Bennett, David Attenborough and Tony Benn
Most but probably not all of GAMA - Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple
Emma Bridgewater
Paul Smith (added 1 June)

I will add more if I can think of them, but coontributions are, as always, welcome.

On 5 June Perry is starting a three-part Channel 4 series, In the Best Possible Taste, based on talking to people from some of the tribes that make up modern British society that he came across in Sunderland, Tunbridge Wells, and the Cotswolds. The last of these is mostly located in South West England, of course. If it seems appropriate I will comment here on the series and also on his related exhibition, The Vanity of Small Differences, at the Victoria Miro Gallery, if I get to it.

Addendum 8 June

I should have known better than to try to be clever where Perry is concerned.  His Victoria Miro show includes the original, RA Pot, for the RA cover, and also a companion piece, Tate Pot, (left) for the Tate incorporating another 14 favoured brands. Assuming that there isn’t much to differentiate the taste of Summer Exhibition goers and Tate supporters, it’s a fair conclusion that the Tate pot is in effect the far side of the RA one. Well, I got three right: Apple, Amazon and Ikea. And what is a MINI if not a BMW? But I’m kicking myself about Pret A Manger.

I will post soon about The Vanity of Small Differences and the TV series, but in the meantime I recommend anyone interested in Perry’s work to make the trip to Victoria Miro 14 in Wharf Road, N1 to see Perry's six large tapestries and some new pots.

If, like me, you don’t aspire to the use of taxis, a 43 bus works fine: get out at Windsor Terrace, aim for the back of McDonald’s (not to be found on either pot ...) and look out for the Victoria Miro banner.