Much as I have enjoyed reading the novels of Henry James* I have to recognise that there are occasions when the great man becomes just a touch too much. I saw quoted today his review of the 1878 Royal Academy exhibition. “The artist must tell a story or preach a sermon; his pictures must not be an image, but in some fashion or other, a lesson; not a reproduction of form or colour, but of life and experience.” Well, that’s telling ’em! But was he right?
I have to admit that I have a degree of sympathy for his point of view, but when I begin to think about it I feel that his dogmatic opposition of categories is rather too overdrawn. As it happens, my exhibition of artistic responses to Almscliff Crag is on view this month, and not unnaturally I fell to thinking about how he might have responded to it (leaving aside for the moment the impossibility of James having any kind of sympathetic engagement with rock-climbing as an activity.) A great deal of my material here has to do with my appreciation of form. Certainly, however, I rarely set out to tell a story. It is interesting to note that it is unusual for these pictures to contain the image of a climber. I don’t think that a “sermon” quite catches the spirit of what I am trying to do either. I do hope that my pictures contain some indication of my emotional response to or involvement with the Crag, but I’m not happy with the idea that what I am offering is in some way didactic in its intention. I would prefer to think that what I am doing is inviting the observer to stand next to me and look, and respond to what is seen. Is that a “reproduction … of experience”?
Perhaps there’s something in James’ views…. but I do wish he could avoid being quite so pontifical.
*Well. Some of them! I never managed to finish The Golden Bowl.