Group Making and Group Breaking
THERE is a distemper prevalent amongst artists of to-day. I refer to the mania for group forming. We are told by grave scientists that we carry in us the germs of various diseases; the latent microbe is in our system, apt to be shaken into active life by some unforeseen circumstance. Artists, it would appear, have the germ of "group making" inborn in their systems; less quiescent than other microbes, it awaits the often trivial cause for its activity—in some cases too much fame, in other cases the gall of unnoticed mediocrity. Given, then, one or other of these causes, a series of events is set in motion.
Mr. Maguilp gathers round him various fellow-brushmen of whose work he approves and, if he is wise and is conversant with the recipe of group making, he will exclude from the number any one who will be likely to offer serious rivalry to his own position; he may also luckily procure someone who can make play with the quill as well as the brush to boost him and his band of worthies with the public. A manifesto is next issued in which the faithful band begs to be entirely dissociated from any form of art movement prior to its own, and its members present themselves purged from original influences, risen like several phœnixes from the fire. They offer, so to say, a firm breakwater to the untiring waves of mediocrity. Good! After a few exhibitions of their united work the brothers may be considered established and perhaps not unnoticed by the critics. But now, mark the subtlety of the evil genius which haunts artistic circles, the group begins to think of self-aggrandisement. "Let us have other members, let us enlarge, let us, in fact, become (fatal word) representative." But these good men do not really mean "representative," their exact intentions are rather to increase their numbers by a process of eclecticism. Alas! The most carefully selected members may develop different ideas after their election. What trouble might not be averted if we could see the mental condition, as it were, of every chicken's egg through the shell; to emphasise this point, however carefully you choose your cabbage there may always be a slug in it. So, in this little band, which has now become a "group," there are already forces of unrest, as the papers say. The stages of dissolution from this point are very rapid: the undesirables multiply, they question the authority of our original worthies, they manage to introduce other undesirables, and on all sides there is mutual suspicion and distrust of each other's motives. "I fear he intends to swamp us with the work of his followers," or "He intends to try and get control of the Group" is whispered round. Then the rot sets in. One member, for convenience A., refuses to show in the same room as B., as if the mere presence of the latter's work would corrode the gilt on his frames. Another disagrees with the gallery, a third has been maliciously hung. Worse follows, for one of our original friends secedes and forms another group, drawing others away with him: fresh manifestos are issued, and all original ideas revised, "We shall burst upon the public," and so on, da capo al fine. The public! What do they think of it all, does it interest them; do our friends, the artists, fancy that their petty strife is watched with eager anxiety? Surely to the public this formation and dissolution of groups must be as puzzling as were the military categories of the war. A layman, having once become accustomed to one artistic movement, has his attention diverted to another; on refixing his attention to the first he finds it split up into other formations. He is as a man watching a parade of soldiers, he sees each battalion form and reform, wheel and turn, flaunting the while their separate banners as they march, a bewildering kinetic display. Samuel Butler used to wonder why curates could not be hatched fully fledged in surplice and gown, without the troublesome prelude of ordination. Could not artists be allocated at birth in a system of unchangeable groups? Now all this lamentable state of affairs is largely due to "cliquishness," and in a lesser degree to an inherent distrust of each other which all artists seem to possess. There is also another contention which hampers them in their deeper divans. One man regards the exhibition of pictures as a purely business concern, whereby he hopes to sell his work; another man imagines it to be an opportunity of displaying, for the education of the uncultured, the results of his own deep inspiration. The possible difference in their position may be that the former has to live by what work he sells, the latter has very likely a private income. If, for the sake of convenience, we introduce our alphabetical friends again, B. will despise A. for what appear to him to be mercenary feelings, while A. holds B. in contempt for amateurishness. Of the two I prefer A.'s idea because, once he has carried out his painting, his next idea (a very sensible one too) is to sell it; while B. affects indifference and thinks A. has been calculating his possible assets between his brush strokes. This idea is neither just nor relevant. What can be done for us all? We all want to sell our pictures; what need is there for pretence, and why are we at the mercy only of a few members of the "intelligentsia"? After all, I suppose group forming is in a sense a protective instinct against the dealer, though the results are so inadequate. What then is the alternative to group making, the remedy for group breaking?
At the back of my mind I have visions for the future. A huge emporium for pictures, run on business-like lines, and on a scale which will put Mr. Gattie's warehouse scheme completely in the shade. Here each artist may have his work shown in his turn, not one or two isolated pictures disseminated among the exhibits of fifty other artists, but each man's work hung in a group that all may see his development, note his improvement, and criticise his faults. Why not a Selfridge Emporium for the pictorial arts? "Woodcuts, Madame, fourth floor." Orders for drawings and paintings and sculpture might be received, and commissions for decorations undertaken in any possible style. Then imagine the satisfaction of procuring a Lewis or a Nevinson in the Bargain Basement: and the sales! "Things were cheap!" as Little Tich says, especially after the failure of the spring shows.