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September 1997

Vol. 139 | No. 1134

The Burlington Magazine

Editorial

Reckoning with the Century

When Matisse was in London in 1919, designing sets and costumes for the Ballets Russes (see p.588), his museum- going was confined to the 'merveille' of oriental art at South Kensington: he may not even have been aware of the Tate Gallery, inaugurated twenty years earlier on the site of the Millbank Penitentiary, even though its remit had recently been extended (with great caution) to 'modern foreign' art. When Kandinsky corresponded with his English patrons the Sadlers in the years before and during the First World War (see p.600) - his chosen language changing from German to French in response to world events - he could hardly have dreamt that his letters would end up in the archive of what was then the 'National Gallery of British Art'. 'We English are slow', as Michael Sadleir observed in conversation with the artist: it was not until 1938 that the first work by Kandinsky entered the Tate's collections, hard on the heels of its first two Matisses. (But this may seem speedy compared with recognition of Mondrian, now the subject of an exemplary small show at the Tate selected by Bridget Riley, mostly from the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague: the first work by him was acquired as recently as 1964!)

 

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  • Matisse's Second Visit to London and His Collaboration with the 'Ballets Russes'

    By Rémi Labrusse

    At the beginning of September 1919 Serge Diaghilev and Igor Stravinsky paid a visit to Matisse at his home in Issy- les-Moulineaux, outside Paris, that was to prove of critical importance, not only to the painter's employment during the succeeding three months but also to the direction subsequently taken by his work. The two Russians had come in order to propose to Matisse that he re-design the sets and costumes for Le Chant du Rossignol, a work that Diaghilev had already staged in 1914 in an operatic version by Igor Stravinsky with sets by Alexandre Benois. The idea was to present a new production at the Paris Opera, set to a purely orchestral score by Stravinsky and with choreography by Leonide Massine. The scale of the challenge to Matisse cannot be over- stressed: hitherto almost entirely an easel painter, he was now being offered his first large decorative commission. Its international context, its large budget and the Ballets Russes's close links with developments in contemporary art, all contributed to the significance of the project.

     

  • 'Blue Spiritual Sounds': Kandinsky and the Sadlers, 1911-16

    By Adrian Glew

    The cataloguing of the papers in the Tate Gallery Archive of Sir Michael Sadler and his son, Michael Sadleir (Fig.29), both important collectors of modern art,' has brought to light details of their friendship with Kandinsky, and in particular how the artist's celebrated text Uber das Geistige in der Kunst, first issued in 1912 by Reinhard Piper in Berlin, came to be published in an English translation by Sadleir (Fig.31).2 A noted educational reformer, Sir Michael Ernest Sadler (1861- 1943) was at this period Vice-Chancellor of Leeds University (1911-23). His son, Michael T.H. Sadleir (1888-1957; he adopted the older spelling of the surname to avoid confusion with his father, whose biography he wrote),3 was a successful novelist, publisher and bibliographer. Although Kandinsky's letters to Sadler and his son are primarily concerned with practical matters, they contain sufficient substance to be classed as an important new source for Kandinsky's literary and artistic output at this critical stage in his development.

     

  • Painting Now

    By Bridget Riley

    If I had been giving a talk entitled 'Painting now' thirty years ago, I would have found myself describing a very different situation from the one in which painting finds itself today. At that time painting was very much in evidence and I would have simply tried to cover its various styles and manifestations. But now the situation has completely changed and one could be forgiven for asking: Whatever happened to painting? Where is painting? Is there any painting? And if there isn't, does it matter?