The softer side of modernism
Isabel Andrews, Tuesday, 27th May 2008
A lecture at the Hay-on-Wye Guardian Festival this weekend focused on the role of the English landscape in Ben Nicholson’s work – a fitting theme given the festival’s idyllic setting, and one overshadowed by the artist’s international modernist style. The lecture, given by Tate Britain curator Chris Stephens, was not to plug a book – unusually so for a book fair event – but to promote a forthcoming touring exhibition on Nicholson that opens in Abbot Hall, Kendal, in July. The show, entitled ‘A Continuous Line’, explores the artist’s life and work in the British countryside from 1922-1958 to reveal that, far from being a marginal concern, landscape was always at the heart of Nicholson’s work – despite the modernist movement being traditionally associated with the city and the urbane.
Nicholson’s modernism was informed not just by his love of the countryside, but by his relationship with his parents, both of whom were artists. His father, William Nicholson, was a well-respected figurative painter in his time (also the author and illustrator of children’s books including The Velveteen Rabbit) but his artistic style was rejected by Nicholson and the St Ives Group who undermined the established values of beauty and the protocol of technical style. Instead, Nicholson chose to identify with the feminine aspect represented by his mother, comparing his art to her feminine household chores. In a colourful anecdote, the audience heard how Nicholson’s mother would flee from erudite discussions about art between her husband and son, and take to scrubbing the kitchen table to vent her frustration. It seems to me that the exhibition’s title, 'A Continuous Line', refers also to the legacy of artistic tradition that is continually rejected and developed by each successive generation of artists, and nicely played out in the Nicholson family.
'A Continuous Line: Ben Nicholson in England' is at Abbot Hall Art Gallery from 7 July-20 September
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