A D R I A N  S T O K E S

Adrian Stokes and the Psychoanalytic
by
Ron Graziani

Thus Stokes denounced much of then current aesthetic criticism as unnecessarily protective, insisting that "modern abstraction needs no excuse or weighted words."²⁷ The modern artists had no recourse but to create Form solely "from the matter of their personalities and their intelligence."²⁸ The "essential emblematic reference" now originated from the artists' "understanding rather than their imagination."²⁹ But unlike Roger Fry, who had also developed the idea that the task of the modern artists was "thinking form," Stokes did not believe the aesthetic encounter moved to disinterested thought; it was profoundly tied to life.³⁰ As a source of Form, "life" is the basis for Stokes, insistent use of the then pejorative term "literary." The more intense the abstraction, the more subliminally pervasive the "literary content." Stokes concluded that the reaction against three dimensional representation in modern art was "entirely necessary."³¹

In Stokes' second review, "Mr. Ben Nicholson's Paintings." a different structure began to unfold. The fine arts are described as a specialized form of "manual labor," separated into two categories, the modeling or manufacturing mode, and the carving mode, exemplified in the process of agriculture where the "earth is coaxed, made fruitful for man's purpose."³²

These two "merging yet distinctive processes" are explained in very general terms in the analysis of Ben Nicholson's paintings. It is Nicholson's "understanding of the carving concept" that placed him within what Stokes claims will become "the mainstream of the contemporary movement."³³ But this "mainstream" was still a minority position in the 1920s. It is worth noting that in 1918 Eric Gill's book on Sculpture also attempted to unify the arts and crafts by the idealization of labor, and distinguished between modeling/carving techniques in a similar way. Gill describes the distinction as a "moral one," and necessarily tied to the classical— Renaissance.

Gill regarded the carving aspect of art making as owing part of its "quality to the material of which [art is] made and of which the material inspires the workman and is freely accepted by him."³⁴ This idea is reinforced in Stokes' analysis of Nicholson's paintings: "just as the carver consults the stone for the reinforcement of his idea, so Mr Nicholson has started to paint when he prepares his canvases."³⁵ Stokes reiterated this in Stones of Rimini: "Whatever the plastic value, a figure carved in stone is fine carving when one feels that not the figure, but the stone through the medium of the figure has come to life."³⁶