Diary

Letters

Vol. 6 No. 9 · 17 May 1984

From Nancy Dunstable

SIR: Lawrence Gowing’s relief at the mildness of the Arts Council’s purgative draught has overstimulated him (LRB, 19 April). The Romanesque exhibition is splendid, as he says, but two exhibitions of Oriental rugs and carpets had already proved that the Hayward Gallery was, as an exhibition space at least, too swiftly denigrated. Moreover, while the activities of the Serpentine Gallery are worth fighting for, Gowing’s advance puff for the Caro exhibition will give pause to the many who have heard, in the chatter which rose when the bomb had exploded with less loss of cultural life than expected, more relief at the shoring-up of a hermetic sensibility than concern for the generality of intelligent gallery-goers. This point only seems worth making because Gowing’s plea for evening-institute drawing classes is a reminder of a more broadly based interest in picture-making. Surely the threat of a cut in public funding might have led a teacher and painter of Gowing’s abilities and stature to be a little less bland in his implied affirmation of the health of English art.

Nancy Dunstable
Colchester