ELIOT HODGKIN appeared on the scene in June 1905, so that there is no question of hailing a Great Master of eighteen or so as a good investment.
In fact any one who knows much about painting will be aware that work of this character is not produced without an infinite capacity for painstaking labour over a number of years. But although this faculty almost always accompanies “genius”, it by no means constitutes it, so that the perspicacious will scarcely be surprised to know that Eliot Hodgkin commenced his work by covering large spaces of canvas with oil paint and wall-spaces with mural paintings. The Tate Gallery, and other public and private rooms witness to this fact.
Being sufficiently intelligent, however, to realize that one is not here at this time of day to have a good time, but to gain necessary experience, our artist found all this much too easy. Perhaps, also, the restricting and frustrating effects of war and “peace” conduced to a somewhat unusually early mental stock-taking. In any case the early forties of the century found him experimenting with the Tempera medium.
Having learned to draw chiefly under the admirable direction of Ernest Jackson – who did not, however, teach him the egg medium – he was equipped with just the right approach for such a change over. This did not occur with unnatural suddenness for his third attempt in this medium, the “Forest of Kale“, was still of a size that was more normal in oil. From the point of view of the tempera painter this work is a considerable tour-de-force, and it was evident that the artist was still picking up from the distant past the memory of a well-mastered technique. Still a little oily in viewpoint it does not quite realize the full qualities of the medium, but when shown in the Academy of 1943, cleared its space in the small back room devoted to this medium with such effect as to obliterate my own rather larger work hung above it. This may not sound very impressive, but when one knows that this picture includes two figures and half a unicorn in the immediate foreground, the fact is important; for one who has read his Ruskin is aware that even a small human gives an importance to a landscape far beyond its size, and to overpower such a design with two cabbage stumps and a few leaves is little short of miraculous.
It must not be supposed from this reference that Eliot Hodgkin is one of those who think all meaning unnecessary in a picture, but with him the meaning is, as it should be, inextricably part of the whole, and it is this fact no doubt which gives the objects he uses to convey it such extraordinary significance. We have been shown of late years so much “significant form” that is significant of nothing, that we have almost lost the ability to recognise the true variety. In a recent book, “Colour: its Meaning and Use” (Pentagon Press), the author compares the “ideological content” of most modernistic pictures to “a crazy-quilt or a garbage-can, as you wish”. That is to say, there is little form or content there. The form has disintegrated and the content is irrelevant, or can only be related to that vague subconscious astral plane in which dispiriting locale many people seem to prefer to live.
Eliot Hodgkin is, on the other hand, one of those painters who insist the importance of meaning. His often whimsical titles emphasise this, and it is impossible to criticise his painting if one ignores the fact. In a masterly analysis of the matter of meaning in his new book, “Figures of Speech” (Lusae), Coomaraswamy writes: “The critic must both know the author’s subject and delight in it . . . yes, and believe in it. It is laughable if one who is ignorant of and indifferent to . . . metaphysics . . . proceeds to criticise Dante ”as literature” or calls the Brahmanas ‘unintelligible’. All making or doing has reasons or ends . . . It would be absurd to pretend that we do not know what the archer intends, or to say that we must not call him a poor shooter if he misses”. Too often one feels that today the “archer” intends nothing beyond a rather trivial amusement, and that directly necessity arises for a definite aim and the labour of reaching it, he loses interest in his “art”; as indeed does the critic, too often.
In his attitude, then, Eliot Hodgkin shows himself truly of to-day, as distinct from “modernistic”. As a modern painter he will scarcely interest himself in the tradition of elucidating the suppositional excitements of half-a-pound of unripe apples and a lemon scattered about a crumpled napkin. Nowadays, one realizes, the experiments of 1895-1910 or so can no longer be considered exactly up-to-date, and that the pendulum will inevitably bring back meaning into art, along with its concomitant symbolism and an intelligent syntax.
Our artist’s symbolism (which he might likely disavow entirely) is of rather a curious and individual nature. In the Academy of 1945 he exhibited a little picture entitle “… and this is the dining-room“, as well as one of his popular Ragwort-cum-Willow-herb ruins; and a strange panel in 1946. This latter, the remote descendant perhaps of a Patinir, purported at first sight to represent a wide grassy valley amongst mountains. Replete with cliff (right) and chasm (left) one instinctively asked what had become of the Holy Family (with ass) which should be wending its way to some Flemish and fantastical Egypt. With close attention, however, the picture discovered itself as a moss-covered tree root with suitable garnishing.
Far be it from me to explain anybody’s symbolism, which is always clear to those who can be awakened thereby and as always closed to the rest. The Ivory Tower of today tends to be those wilds which were the erstwhile common round of the country bumpkin.
There is a good deal to be said for the Ivory Tower, and the escapist school generally – when one knows what occurs inside. Thus the fantastic and unreal paradise of the Pre-Raphaelite painters has been replaced for the artist by country life amongst real things, whilst the humdrum everyday existence of the “worker” or drone every day more nearly approaches the wild or wilted welter of a Hollywood nightmare film. Painting is just as clearly divided between the two ideologies, and no doubt caters for both attitudes. In this sense Hodgkin paints in an Ivory Tower of natural life.
But whilst Hodgkin’s subject-matter is obviously concerned with realities and Vitalities, it must not be supposed that . . . as he is rumoured to have said, “I just lie down on my tummy and draw exactly what I see in front of me” is factually so. Such a supposition could occur only to one who because he interested in detail, thought the artist’s work resembled that of the Pre-Raphaelites.
The modern artist, however, taking the only “new” road open to him, must as usual return to nature; but this by no means implies a mere copying of factual appearance. A triangle is as “natural” as a leaf, and one of the blindest spots in recent criticism has been the inability to see the difference between a statement, a presentation and a representation. Only the greatest artists, in fact, seem able to keep the three activities distinct.
To many, these pictures of Hodgkin’s no doubt appear to be literal transcripts; but if they took the trouble to follow his supposed lead they would very soon find out not only that even that was not quite so simple, but that, when achieved, their results did not, somehow, resemble his pictures very much.
Indeed, any one who has tried to copy such a tangle of growth knows perfectly well that in itself such an effect when recorded is barely intelligible, let alone satisfactory, as a picture. It is not so much a matter of selection (I dare say Hodgkin would protest that he never selects), as of the employment of an order of creative design analogous to that of Nature herself. Without this such a painting as is here reproduced ill colour tends to be a mere confused mass of lines at the distance of a foot or so.
Even if one thinks of Nature as red in tooth and claw and like our own world a mad struggle of competition and war, the process is carried on under the most rigid Law imaginable. If the ivy strangles the oak it does so with the most economical spirals, and because these spirals are an economic necessity regulated by growth meeting innumerable obstacles, they for some reason appeal to us as lovely and somehow a part of the inherent order of the universe, which, of course, they are.
This point is made admirably clear in chapter nine of the above-mentioned book of Ananda Coomaraswamy who, alone almost amongst living writers, seems to have an understanding of art: “true imitation is not a matter of illusory resemblance, but of proportion, true analogy or adequacy . . . by which we are reminded of the intended referent; in other words, of an “adequate symbolism”. The work of art and its Archetype are different things; but ‘likeness in different things is with respect to some quality common to both’ (Boethius). Such likeness is the foundation of painting. . . .” With which excellent remark, the pictures here reproduced may be left to do their own work in the mind of the reader.