Hyman Levy (1889–1975) was a philosopher and mathematician. A member of the British Communist Party, he was expelled in 1958 after criticising the treatment of Jews in the Soviet Union Bernard Denvir (1917–94) was the editor of Art News and Review from 1949–50 Pierre Rouve (1915–98) was born Peter Ouvaliev, and moved from his native Bulgaria to Britain in 1947. His career spanned writing, broadcasting and directing. He was Michelangelo Antonioni’s associate director on Blow-Up (1966) and the director of Stranger in the House (1968) starring James Stewart Oswell Blakeston (1907–85), real name Henry Hasslacher, was a British artist and writer best known for his work in experimental film and its theory. Dylan Thomas called Blakeston ‘a friend of all boozy poets and me too’. He was the partner of painter Max Chapman
industry a movement to increase the social importance of the pub by making it a focal point for the social activities going on – in the neighbourhood it serves. As part of this movement some brewery companies have been promoting different art forms; Tennants of Sheffield hold Sunday Concerts in some of their houses; Mitchell and Butlers recently had an ‘Arts and Crafts’ exhibition in Birmingham, while Taverners have been giving poetry readings and play actings in London and the South of England. Ind Coope and Allsopp have mainly concentrated on painting. The first art exhibition in an Ind Coope pub was held at the Mermaid Hotel, Sparkill, Birmingham, in December, 1948. It was sponsored by the Arts Council and was opened by the Chairman of that body, Sir Ernest-Poolev. Among the contributors on that occasion were John Piper, Ben Nicholson and Stanley Spencer […] No conversion campaign seems necessary to persuade customers into acceptance of art in the pub. After all if a man does not want to look at the pictures on the wall, he need not. Wherever the company has held these exhibitions, however, they have been welcomed by the majority of regulars, and requests for a repeat have been received in many cases. Since the war there has been a growing interest in art by all classes, although it is only of late that any co-ordinated efforts have been made to foster this interest. The large number of gregarious men and women who form the pub-going population often find the atmosphere of art galleries too austere. It is also hard for them to find time to visit them. The same people are glad to see paintings which are brought to them and hung in the saloon bar of their local. By encouraging art in the pub it is also hoped to overcome the tendency among so many people to regard art as beyond their ken.
30 October 1954 J.D.H. Catleugh, James Hull and Redvers Taylor at Gimpel Fils, London, reviewed by Oswell Blakeston
Popular art
12 August 1950 Ben Enwonwu at Galerie Apollinaire London by an unidentified reviewer
Caught between two places This artist has recently returned from Nigeria, where he is art adviser to the Government, and where, apart from painting and sculpture, he is engaged in encouraging young artists. At his present exhibition at the Galerie Apollinaire he shows himself essentially as a carver in wood. However much he wanders into other fields of art, it is the formal qualities which retain the maximum interest. He designs well in space, but his colours are uninteresting. Although he has learnt a lot from his studies in London and Paris, it is the basic struggle between the wood and the chisel, fortified by centuries of tradition, that produces his best work. When the struggle is hardest, as in the ebony heads, the interest is intensified and a spirituality appears which is lacking in the less resistant materials. One feels, however, that the artist is hovering on the brink of a decision: that is, whether to allow his traditional influences full play, or only to permit them to be transmuted through the filter of a European culture and diluted accordingly.
27 November 1954 Report from Africa, by Joss of ‘The Star’
Propagandists for “art for the people” generally expect workers to enthuse over sordid scenes from their own lives – the still life of a kitchen table piled with unwashed crockery, the portrait of the tough with pneumatic drill looking anguished, etc. Propagandists have superior detachment. In fact collage is probably the real “art for the peep-hole” – the most enjoyable encouragement to art appreciation. Here difficult problems of paintings are removed. One can look at paste-ups for simple immediate pretty-pretty or fun. In spite of the paradox which reserves this happy simplicity for the new, collage is – if only the plain fact could get past the clique barriers – the real lowbrow art of our time. J.D.H. Catleugh’s collages, for instance, cannot fail to please the uninformed observer who is immediately drawn towards the mysteries of art with an A.B.C.
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which he might easily imitate in a parlour game. Mr. Catleugh cuts out black stripes and pastes them close in vertical order, and on them he sticks small ribbons of coloured paper. The effect, oddly, is that of looking through slats at a confetti world: it is surprisingly agreeable. These pictures should be bought by public authorities and given to the people in factory canteens, station waiting rooms, etc. to replace contemporary highbrow “social realism” which can only be appreciated by experts who understand the role of anguish in achievement […]
A European goes sketching in Africa Here are the promised notes, scribbled hastily on the last day of a breath-taking sketching-trip of Nigeria and the Gold Coast. Penning this, I tremble. For copies of Art News reach Kumasi and Ibadan, and I know that earnest Africans take your paper and all it says far too seriously. This indeed is my first and deepest impression: the earnest, the spirit of dedication in which African technicians, scientists, teachers (who, incidentally, have clear majorities in the local parliaments) and artists are pushing ahead the development of nearly forty million people. Let me say here and now that before I succeeded in tracking down my most adorable models – the naked or near-naked “pagans” of the Northern Territories –
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