DAVID SYLVESTER seems to have lived to become the Grand Old Man of English art criticism, a role which probably he did not want or does not relish. A boon companion of Francis Bacon, he recorded their conversations in a book which has been translated into many languages; he knew Giacometti and Magritte and has written books about them, he has been an art critic for many prestige publications, and he is also a familiar voice over the airwaves and in the lecture hall. In this volume, he has gathered together what presumably he regards as the cream of his critical writings from nearly half a century.
Sylvester began his career when the Paris School was still dominant, and Picasso, Matisse, Bonnard, Braque, Gris probably still form the bass line of his taste. Yet he was among the first English critics to discern the value of the new American painting, not only of the Abstract Expressionist generation but also those of what he calls "the Coke Culture". He stood up for Pop Art when relatively few in England were prepared to take it seriously, he defended certain artists of the "cool" school, he daringly proclaimed Jasper Johns as a new master (which, in my estimation, he has not ultimately proved to be).
Certain critics have been at pains to establish their "international" and cosmopolitan credentials by ignoring or belittling the artists of their homeland. Not so with him; he writes eloquently about Sickert, Bomberg, Bacon, Auerbach and Kossoff, even Coldstream and Bridget Riley. In fact, he is almost a chauvinist about certain British artists, and no special pleading will ever reconcile me to an Epstein revival, or to seeing major figures in Richard Hamilton, Caro, or that played out two horse circus, Gilbert and George. But even if clarity ought to begin at home, it is always hard to see those on your own doorstop clearly, and harder still to pour water on local enthusiasm and good intentions.
Excluding Daumier, Goya and Constable, all the artists he writes about belong to the 20th century. Mondrian and Kandinsky apart, he does not appear to be specially interested in the abstract pioneers early in the century, nor in Constructivism. One notable exception is Brancusi, and this is one of the most substantial articles in the book, virtually a full blown critical and biographical essay. Sylvester knew Brancusi quite well personally, and though he never questions his obvious stature, he does strip away many of the myths which encrust his memory. Brancusi was neither a "saint" nor a "peasant", as is often written and said; he was in fact worldly, self seeking, a womaniser, even something of a social poseur. The famous studio which admirers visited with such reverence, thinking they were entering a hermit saint's cell, was in fact a creation of craftily contrived decor by an old master publicist working on his own "image".
Some of Sylvester's best analysis of contemporary artists is given to Malcolm Morley and Cy Twombly; as for his enthusiasm for Richard Serra, I simply cannot follow him there (when a bunch of New York residents rebelled about a decade ago against the huge, morose Serra sculpture in steel which overhung their lives, my sympathies were covertly on their side, not on the artist's). Like a true Englishman, Sylvester has little time for Continental Expressionism, though he writes well on Soutine, and there are two brief, but approving, references to Beckmann. He also appreciates the greatness of Picasso's very late work and writes movingly about the old womaniser's courage in facing what he had dreaded most sexual impotence in old age.
Sylvester also speaks feelingly about what editors and sub editors have done to his "copy" over the years - an occupational risk with critics, of course, but an accepted part of the job for most of us. Yet at times I wondered if these editors have not spared him on occasion rather more than they should have done; some of the sentences trip over their own feet, while others are turgid and clotted like the harmony of a Victorian organist. At such moments, you remember that Sylvester is famous as a talker, and that he is probably at his best and most typical when lecturing or broadcasting. But he always writes visually, not cerebrally, and his occasional verbal clumsiness comes from having too much to say, not too little. There are few living critics in any field of whom you could say the same.