Bohemia by Sea

In 1959 I gave up a successful career in design and advertising to see whether I could establish a life for myself as a full-time painter. Like many others at the time I was drawn to the picturesque artists’ colony of St Ives in West Cornwall, where studios and other forms of accommodation were still cheap and where I already knew a number of the town’s established artists.

At the time when I first began to make art professionally, a strange-seeming critical orthodoxy prevailed which effectively dominated contemporary practice. To explain this at its simplest, this orthodoxy centred around the widely held notion that art was compelled to develop in certain clearly defined ways both for its moral good and to fulfil the imagined forces of history. It was as though the whole history of Western art so far was seen as an ignorant prelude which was merely waiting to be crowned by the ultimate enlightenment of abstract expressionism.

All who queried that view tended to find themselves characterised as uninformed or head-in-sand reactionaries. As has happened many times since then, opposition to radical fashion was looked on widely as culpable heresy. In other words, in spite of the much-vaunted freedoms of modern art, the pressures to conform to its latest dictates were actually greater than those promulgated in earlier times by the crustiest of academies.

This was just one of the ironies I contemplated each night in my mouse-ridden cottage before finally falling asleep.

In local terms, because of the huge influence exerted until only a little while earlier by the abstract painter Ben Nicholson, which continued to be implemented by his ex-wife Barbara Hepworth, abstract art of a certain rather tasteful kind remained a dominant influence in St Ives. This was true especially at the local Penwith Society of Artists, which was funded in part by the Arts Council of Great Britain.

Very obviously an “official” house-style prevailed there, not least because the committee was packed with adherents of that way of working. Many of the latter were employed, in any case, by Barbara Hepworth in her studio. This was the first time I had seen art politics in action operating so openly.

Understandably, the only Cornish-born abstract artist of note, Peter Lanyon, opposed such total dominance of local art by outsiders. Feuds and angry resignations from committees were commonplace in the artistic community, which otherwise imported most of its artistic and behavioural codes from those that prevailed wherever artists congregated in London.

As a consequence life was lived by many without any obvious codes of behaviour. Indeed, in an absence of the distractions of city life, sexual intrigues became a norm, occasionally sucking in local men and women with tragic results. For example, a locally-born garage owner who was involved in such a way killed himself not long after I arrived in St Ives.

For sound reasons such as this, locally-born people regarded the artistic community with acute suspicion. It was also widely held that local fishermen had been tricked into selling their cottages to newcomers for unreasonably low prices.

Against this it should be stressed that West Cornwall was formerly a stronghold of extreme, puritanical Methodism. While I was there, unwitting visitors had been stoned by local men for attempting to fish on a Sunday. 

For me, discovering the local countryside on foot or on a borrowed motor scooter formed the height of my early recreational ambitions, but in such a small and tight-knit community few newcomers could hope to remain unnoticed for long.

My earliest invitation to do anything in the company of others came from an artist and his wife, who invited me to meet them for a drink. They brought with them a rather intense although attractive young woman who was desperate to become part of the local artistic and intellectual community. I formed an impression she was escaping from a military background.

The next time I saw this young woman was when I met her in the main street of the town on a rain-swept early morning. She crossed the street to greet me with the breathless enthusiasm which was her trademark. “Can you tell me where I can get some Ferlinghetti?” she demanded without preamble.

In my half-awake and slightly befuddled state my mind did not instantly summon up a roll-call of so-called Beat Generation poets—Ginsberg, Rexroth, Corso, Ferlinghetti—besides which I was standing in the doorway of the town’s only reputable delicatessen. “You could try in here,” I suggested.

Since I was clearly either flippant or ignorant, my potential friend shortly gravitated to somewhat superior artistic company—that of the painter Breon O’Casey, son of the Irish playwright Sean. Eventually the pair married and brought up a delightful family.

My ability to drive young women into the arms of others was further emphasised not long afterwards when I received a visit in the early hours of the morning from Midge McKenzie, who had apparently traversed the whole of Cornwall by taxi. She was working on a film the length of the county away. I do not think the taxi-driver from Lostwithiel or some such obscure place in East Cornwall had ever seen such a large hat, or such a large handful of banknotes as those my visitor thrust airily in his direction. I also doubt whether he was destined to encounter anyone even half as theatrical for many years to come.

By the end of the weekend I was to join him in this possible deprivation, and in less than a month my visitor had married another man of whose existence I had previously been unaware. In later years Midge became a well-known maker of films largely with feminist themes. In her youth however she was not averse to the company of lively and artistic young men. 

For artists, much of the social activity of St Ives revolved round an ancient inn which lay directly across the road from the boat-slip which led down to the harbour. The Sloop Inn served both as a meeting place and a clearing house for gossip and was also the preferred haunt of local fishermen. Two major attractions of the main bar were an open fire in winter and a bar-skittles board on which artists and local fishermen competed to loud cries of encouragement from their respective bands of supporters. If anyone left town for weeks or even months they were likely on their return to find their friends and colleagues seated pretty much where they had left them. The Sloop did excellent local trade and also sponsored special events such as an annual bar-skittles tournament to spice up business still further.

Important visitors to the town gravitated naturally towards The Sloop. Indeed, that is where I first met the painter Francis Bacon within weeks of my arrival in the town.

Bacon and I began a long conversation one lunchtime about the merits of the French artist Pierre Bonnard. As we had by no means concluded our discussion by closing time, the artist generously invited me to share a bottle from a case of whisky which had just been sent to him as a present from his new dealers, Marlborough Galleries.

We probably talked for two hours as the afternoon light faded gradually in the lane outside his rented studio. Shortly before five the door was thrown open to reveal a handsome cockney youth who was lovingly fingering the heavy belt which supported his trousers.

“Well ven Francis, are you about ready for your frashin yet?” the young man known locally as Battersea Ron inquired.

Regular drinkers in London were often known by such titles which had their origin—or so I believe—from nicknames given to hoboes in the novels of Jack London. Canadian Bob and Black Nancy were other well-known local examples.

Glancing at my watch I expressed surprise at the lateness of the hour and also remembered a pressing engagement elsewhere.

A good deal of Bacon’s art centred around what sado-masochistic homosexuals did to each other in private. This was explained to me in great detail twenty-nine years later in Moscow by another of the artist’s close friends. One of the curiosities of the reputation accorded to Francis Bacon, which began a very rapid rise about 1960, was the notion that his art was an accurate reflection of a universal human condition rather than merely of his own.

Here was just one more aspect of the nonsense regularly written and spoken about art from roughly the time when I began to paint professionally. Fifteen years later a plethora of such vacuous if fashionable thinking finally prompted me to begin writing on the subject myself.

Half a century ago, newspaper criticism aside, books on art were generally either of poor quality or very expensive. However, this was a trend British publishers Thames & Hudson first set about rectifying at about that time. One of the first books I bought from their new standardised series was a monograph on Paul Klee, who enjoyed a reputation then which has subsequently diminished greatly. Other artists interested me especially who are also largely forgotten today: Manessier, Singier and Santomaso, for instance.

At least part of the reason for the decline in such painters’ reputations was the heavy promotion of American art in Europe at about that time by American cultural bodies. In a sense this temporarily destabilised the reputations even of such European modern masters as Matisse and Picasso. Art, even at the highest level, was clearly subject to major fluctuations of fashion.

At the less rarefied levels of local art in Cornwall, however, plagiarism rather than fashion itself presented a more serious problem for senior artists—another aspect of the art of the time which is likely to be forgotten today. One of the problems of any simplified imagery is the ease with which this can be revamped by pasticheurs even of average abilities. Thus the simplified iconography of kitchens, developed with much skill and patience by the British painter William Scott, encouraged a rash of particularly plausible imitations.

Among senior artists, the ease with which their abstract works could be plagiarised led, in some cases, to states bordering on paranoia. A number took the unusual step of covering keyholes and the slits intended for letters in the doors of their studios in order to obstruct prying eyes. An artist whose work I offered to transport to London as a favour would not let me enter her studio and made certain all the works were totally covered and sealed before I was allowed to carry them out to a van. Standard histories of art never mention such curious actions nor the reasons why some thought them necessary.

In the years since I have often looked back on the years I spent at art’s coal-face with a certain gratitude. By learning to detect artistic subterfuge one grows more likely to recognise—and hugely appreciate—the real thing.

Giles Auty now lives in the Blue Mountains. He has written art criticism for the Spectator, the Australian and Quadrant, among other publications.

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