He Free Show Few Workers Will See

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The copy made Rubens after Lenoardo's unfinished fresco of the Battle of Anghiari 1977 marks the 400th anniversary of the birth of the greatest Flemish artist of the Baroque era, Peter Paul Rubens.

As part of the "Rubens Year" celebrations the British Museum has mounted an impressive and surprisingly accessible exhibition of more than 200 of his drawings and ol sketches, certainly the largest of its kind ever displayed in this country. Admission is free and the show runs till 30th October.

For a number of reasons though, it's unlikely that this event will draw more than a large handful of workers.

A few years ago a survey was conducted amongst manual workers in this country in an attempt to determine their attitudes towards museums and art galleries and to find out why so few visited them.

This survey had no pretentions to laying bare the social, economic and political roots behind the so-called "cultural philistinism" of the working class but it did come up with some interesting points.

It turned out, for instance, that Over 95% of the respondents likened the atmosphere within the buildings to churches.

OVERWHELMED

All those interviewed felt totally overwhelmed by the rows of giltframed paintings that confronted them once they had entered the galleries, be they the products of genius or mediocrity, be they nineteenth century official portraits eighteenth century landscapes or even earlier religious pieces.

For many, museums have the same status as stately homes and the oil paintings they house seem to acquire and embody the same mysterious way of life that permeate these refuges of the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie.

They symbolise a way of life totally alien and directly opposed to the interests of the masses; about as enticing as a Sunday sermon and a fraction as relevant to the conditions of the real world..

To dig even deeper into the annals of history, Jean de la Bruyere commentea, more than 300 years ago, that "the pleasure of eriticizing robs us of the pleasure of being moved by some very fine things.

No-one is quite sure what those "fine things" were, but we can assume la Bruyere was attacking those professional critics, still with us today, who never permit themselves publicly to find works boring or to admit to being foxed by them.

The trouble is that while the critics maintain their "intellectual dishonesty" , too many people draw the opposite conclusion - that art is purely for intellectuals and the wealthy. In fact this Rubens exhibition shows that there is much life and drama in fine art which can be grasped by the layman.

CRUEL CHARIOT Engels once remarked that human progress was a cruel chariot that rides over mountains of corpses.

The period into which Rubens was born was a cruel and turbulent ada an ate that was nurtured by It was also an age that saw the decline of two centuries of phenomenal artistic creativity, a period not seen for the previous 2000 years.

Out of this metamorphosis was born a new vision of the world. The age of scientific discovery was born. The age of Galileo, who stressed the interdependence of the stars; of Newton, who discovered the laws "gravity and motion; of Leeuwenhoek, who discovered those of microscopic matter and of Harvey, who explained the circulation of blood.

STATE OF FLUX

From these events people began to see continuity in the universe and to realise that nothing was ever destroyed but all was in a constant state of flux.

It was a historic turning pointthe point where religion anc science, religion and art, logic and ethics, all began to part company and go their own separate ways.

Tradition was crumbling and the deities of the past were beginning to be replaced by the new material determinates of man's bodily fate; mechanical laws, atoms, glands and genes.

John Donne, spokesman for the agony of a world on the rack of violent change, wrote in 1611, 'this new philosophy calls all in doubt.. "tis all in pieces, all coherence gone."

During and death in 1640, Rubens nas always been one of the greatest names in European painting.

His biographers have tended to give him the sort of treatment dished out to Lenin after his death by Stalinist historians.

A whole series of writers, by a combination of myth and conjecture and some open lies, have succeeded in building up the legend of Rubens the Superman.

One famous quote by Otto Snerlino resnected nhvsician to the Rubens, whom we found at work, and while continuing to paint he listened to readings from Tacitus and dictated a letter. We were silent for fear of disturbing him but he conversed with us without interrupting his work and without stopping his reading. He also went on dictating the letter as though to give us proof of his amazing gifts."

Given that this aura of panegyric and fairy tale worship surrounds his life, work and memory it's best to stick to the essential, well documented facts about his life.

He was born into a wealthy Flemish family on June 28, 1577. The story of his childhood is sketchily documented and quickly told. Having lived in Siegen, Westphalia for only a matter of months, the family moved to Cologne and then onto Antwerp in 1589.

It was here that Rubens studied and absorbed the Romanizing tendencies of the Antwerp Mannerists. His studies included the then inevitable concentration on engravings and reproductions of antique works of art.

He moved to Italy in 1600 and it was here that he entered the service by and antique sculptures, a study that is well documented in the exhibition.

A large part of this initial part of his artistic education consisted in producing sketches of the monumental works of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo.

As his "Battle of Anghiari" shows, a high level of preparation went into the production of these copies and this disciplined relationship served to lay the basic groundwork for the future productions completed in Antwerp when he returned there in 1608.

His development as a painter was above all smooth and continuous A Lion Hunt. Unfinished oils on pane!

and one can search in vain for sudden breaks and leaps in style.

The Italian Period which saw him developing a hard, epic style gradually gave way to a more subtle suave method which nevertheless still contained the same solidity.

The decade 1610-20 began for Rubens with the two great altarpieces called "The Raising of the Cross" and "The Descent of the Cross"

The latter illustrates especi ally restlessness.

One of the best exhibits show in this exhibition is that "The Lion Hunt"

The end result is wild, traumatic and capturing; yet the initial drawings still demonstrate a careful, analytical, nearly surgical balance and attention to detail, as well as brilliant construction techniques.

SYMPATHETIC

All Ruben's paintings are overpowering-yet to see them side by side with the initial sketches is like looking at a photograph of a fully grown lion next to that of a cub.

All the initial sketches give us a sympathetic insight into his creative process and it is obvious that for Rubens "drawing" was simultaneously "discovery"

Every line he laid down was a stepping stone to the next and even in his most gentle drawings of horses, costumes, trees and nude figures we can see the subject brought to life yet dissected, and in the process reduced to its essential, primitive qualities.

The later works, those subsequent to 1625, show Rubens at his most characteristic and personal. Free strokes of the brush are used and the whole manner of approach is marked by its fluidity and extreme, unhesitating rapidity.

LIGHT HEARTED

Nothing could be treer and livelier than the sketch for the Lion Hunt. As Eugene Delacroix remarked in his famous journal:

"With all the outspokeness of his colours and his heavy forms, he arrives at an ideal of the greatest power. Force, vehemence and splendour free him from the demands of grace and charm."

Ruben's subjects were always typical of an artist patronised by the courts of western Burope;

biblical themes, portraits and religious allegories.

This exhibition of his sketches does however afford us a glimpse of another, more lighthearted Rubens.

It further shows that although Rubens was never a thinker on the level of Leonardo, a soul as troubled as Michelangelo or such a perceptive character analyst as Rembrandt he was both an avowed realist and a remarkable visionary;

a true son of his age.

BY MIKE H INS IGC

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FIRST OF A TWO PART ARTICLE BY TONY RICHARDSON EXAMINING THE POSITIONS TAKEN BY VARIOUS GROUPS PROCLAIMING THEMSELVES TROTSKYIST ON THE CURRENT FT The Trotskyisi Fourth International was formed in 1938 to give a clear lead in the struggle against Stalinism, which had shown itself as a thoroughly reactionary, counter-revolutionary force within the workers' movement.

Since 1938 the major internal struggles and splits that have taken place within the Trotskyist movement have turned on the need for a correct method of analysing Stalinism and understanding the varied ways in which Stalinist parties have managed to play a counter-revolutionary role.

In grouping the basic forces that were to form the FI, Trotsky had to struggle against the centrist forces of what he termed the '3½ International'-the so-called 'London Bureau of Revolutionary Socialist Unity' These people could not accept the necessity to break definitively from Stalinism. Instead they nurtured hopes and dreams that the Stalinist parties could be transformed somehow into revolutionary parties.

Similar tendencies, however, have since found expression within the ranks of the FI, particularly in the aftermath of the war, when the continued existences of Stalinism and the long-drawn out contradictory process through which it expanded into Eastern Europe gave some • impressionists the idea that Stalinist parties had acquired a new, progressive historical role, and could be pushed further to the lett by "mass pressure" or "exceptional conditions"

SPELLED OUT

The main advocate of this position was FI General Secretary Michel Pablo--but the case was widely argued at first by the Fl leadership as a whole, and was taken up also by Ernest Mandel, who spelled it out as clearly as anyone:

"In the coming revolutionary upsurge in Western Europe, during the period of preparation and unleashing of war, the growing pressure of the masses is liable to force the French and Italian Communist Parties to modify this pacifist course of "neutralising" the bourgeoisie. These parties could then "project a revolutionary orientation' and see themselves forced to undertake a struggle for power' ..." (Ten Theses 1951).

PUBLIC SPLIT

As the class struggle itself in 1953 refuted these views, several sections of the FI swung against Pablo's line, which threatened to EVOLUTION OF STALINISM.

Firstly they are indicating their opposition to any struggle against capitalism. The enthusiastic suppor: given by the Italian Communis: Party to the VICIOUS "austerity" measures of the bourgeois Christian Democrat government shows this. as does the backing given by the Spanish CP for the Suarez And secondly these Stalinis: parties show their new 'democratic credentials by criticising the internal regime within the USSR and Eastern Europe-while taking care to give no support to independent workers' struggles agains: these bureaucracies.

These twin policies in other words are two sides of the same reactionary Stalinist coin of 'peaceful coexistence'.

Not so for Mandel. For him the verbal attacks on the regime in the degenerated workers' states flow's not from the Stalinists' move towards their 'own' bourgeoisie and attempts to win anti-communis! middle class votes, but from *the working class and the decisive middle layers ..In other words: the growing criticism of the Soviet bureaucracy is a concession primarily to the West European working class itself and not to the West European bourgeoisies"

Mandel's conclusions are based on this arguement.

"It follows that we must regard this aspect of 'Euro Communism' positively and not negatively . What we condemn about the 'Euro Communists' on this point is not alleged "capitulation to imperialism", but rather inconsistency and lack of courage in carrying their own thought through not regression;, This is progress and to the end Mandel thus procedes put forward a completely false "contradiction":

"Euro Communists' are compelled to make concessions simultaneously to reformist petty-bourgeois pressure from the right and anti-bureacratic pressure from the left."

There is a contradiction posed by Euro Communism. But it is very different from the one suggested by Mandel. Indeed the "Euro Communists' criticism of the USSR is completely consistent and from exactly the same pro-capitalist standpoint as this ciass collaboration in their own countries.

The real contradiction is that such class collaboration by making no concessions to the left, stands totally opposed to the forward movement of the working class internationally, and involves the mass CPs in struggles to contain their members.