Close and Distant Encounters with the Past

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HENRY PHILLIPS reviews exhibitions on Sumerian civilisation and the 1930s. 'THE THIRTIES' is showing at the Hayward Gallery, South Bank, London SE1 until January 13, admission £1.20 (60p on Mondays) Printer to nolities in the 19308 - Chamberlain returns from Munich 1938 Although there are only a few exhibits, this exhibition. (partly as a result of its informative catalogue) conveys a lot about a civilisation which marked one of the most gigantic steps forward ever taken by mankind.

Sumerian civilisation was a qualitative leap in man's struggle against_nature and 'so towards that development of the productive forces which must form the material basis of the advance towards a classless society.

Sumerian civilisation which lasted from about 5000 to 2000 BC was one of the civilisations of the so-called Bronze Age.

During that period there arose a series of societies in the fertile area between the Rivers Tigris Euphrates and also in the Nile valley and in the north of India.

Steps forward

These: new societies were based, probably for the first time in human history, on widespread settled agriculture, the permanent prodúction of a surplus of food and the growth of large scale urban society.

Sumerian society developed and made use of new techniques of metallurgy as well as the wheel, irrigation, the sailing ship and writing.

These were massive steps forward for humanity, though they took place within the framework of an authoritarian priest-ridden society which eventually became an obstacle to the further development of productive forces.

Within Sumerian society the exchange of commodities developed to a very advanced degree.

A monetary system was founded and capitalist trade and probably even the rudiments of capitalist production began.

But the reactionary features of the society-slavery and religious : oppression —prevented the formation of a "free" labour force not tied to the means of Material conditions Sumerian civilisation, therefore, did not provide all of the material conditions which would have permitted capitalism at that time to become the world's dominant mode of Another 3000 years of advances and retreats for humanity were to be required before that occurred.

But the unprecedented material: advances of • which Sumerian civilisation was capable can be clearly seen in this exhibition-not so much in the stark, staring faces of the religious statues: but in the plans,. pictorial reconstructions and photographs of excavations of. the complex and highly developed cities.

But if the exhibits of the Sumerian exhibition appear_to be staring at us a little mysteriously across the distances of millennia there is another much vaster exhibition now on in London in which many of the exhibits could scarcely be more familiar and immediate.

Art and design "The Thirties" at the Hayward Gallery is an exhibition of the art and design of the decade and the country in which I was born.

The exhibits include many of the everyday household objects, books, comics, magazines and advertisements of my own childhood.

Familiar

That is one feature of the exhibition which makes it particularly visually arresting.

But you don't have to have been born in the Thirties to find a very striking feeling of familiarity in many of the designs.

A few stand out as designs which are so much a standard part of our surroundings that we have forgotten to look at them as conscious creations.

An example of these is the London: Underground sign which was designed in the '30s but in no way seems dated today.

That -particular one, however, is a somewhat exceptional instance of a brilliant, forward looking piece of design serviceable for decades.

To me one of the, noticeable features of the exhibition was how few of the 1930s designs had been so durableand how many of the objects seemed relatively dated.

And that is partly because many of them were, even at the time, backward looking designs-in particular much of the glassware and ceramies and some of the architectural extravagances like Edwin Lutyens' design for Liverpool Cathedral, to be the second largest church in Christendom.

It is the industrial designs of the exhibition which personally found its most interesting feature.

And this is partly because the 1930s was the decade in which industrial design as a sep-, arate speciality was born.

The exhibition's huge and exhaustive catalogue says that in 1930 there was not a single professional industrial designer working in Britain while by the end of the decade there were 300.

This fact is reflected in the tensions between backward and forward looking designs.

Some of the early designs for such new products as TV sets and radios try to make them look like something totally different by encasing them in housing which harks back to a previous age.

• This tendency to disguise téchnology is in sharp contrast to such exhibits as an -early Whittle jet engine or Sir. Malcolm Campbell's car, 'Bluebird', , in which he broke the world speed record.

Durable

In both cases design is subordinated to the technical needs and the result is a design which is more honest and more durable.

But another problem with the most original and forward looking designs. however, many of which owe a good deal to German designers of the late 1920s, is the over enthusiastic use of some of the new materials which became available at that time.

These include moulded plastics, chromium plate, bent plywood and various new building materials.

Many things made of these materials which must have seemed futuristic at the time now look merely vulgar (for instance the Nash bathroom and much of the furniture).

But many of these questions will be affected by individual taste. This is even more true of the large collection of paintings.

There will be few people who fail to find some interesting aspects of a huge exhibition which covers painting, sculpturé, architecture, photography, industrial: design, print, book and magazine design, commercial advertising and leisure. Socialiste socialist will be puzzled by the at the same time a exhibition.

The '30s, after all was the decade of deep capitalist crisis and slump, of mass unemployment, of fascism and the approach of war.

- Those things do impinge on the exhibition but in the form of very shadowy and •distant images, especially in the section devoted to photography. • It would be wrong to ask this to be an exhibition of political history.

But there are no more than a few hints, some of which appear accidental, about the way in which the art and design of the period reflected social and political factors.

The images of the exhibition seem to reflect a number of long term trends which continued or even accelerated during the "30s-the development. of new materials, the increasing role of the capitalist state as a patron of art and design and the emergence of new products, especially electrical and electronics goods.

But it is less successful at reflecting the way in which economically and politically the '30s was a decade of crisis, regression and barbarism. Send to: mouth Parl NW5 1HR The Silver Bullet - functional design JO With workers by the thousand taking • to the streets to oppose Tory policies there is plainly no lack of militancy in the organised working class.

Yet the existing trade union bureaucrats and Labour leaders -whether right or 'left'-have no perspective to offer those workers prepared to fight in defence of jobs, living standards, social services and demo. cratic rights.

These can only be defended through policies which start from the independent interests of the working class, which, as international class, has nothing to gain and everything to lose from attempts to restore the profitability of their "own" employing class.

In a period where the contraPlease send me more details of the Workers Socialist League.

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