THE ART OF ENGLAND
HE Reith Lectures, 1955, which will have their first broadcast here, beginning next week, were given by Nikolaus Pevsner, until recently Slade Professor of Fine Art at Cambridge, and now Head of the Department of History of Art at Birkbeck College in the University of London, Dr. Pevsner takes as his subject the Englishness of English Art, and in his first lecture, "The Geography of Art," asks what it is that all works of art of one people have in common-at whatever time in history they have been made. "That means," he says, "that my subject is really national character as it is expressed in terms of art,’ and he seeks to justify the question in the light of two possible objections-whether it is desirable to stress a national point of view in appreciating works of art and architecture; and whether there is such a thing as a fixed or almost fixed national character. Introducing the series in the BBC Radio Times he wrote: "Ultimately it is, of course, personal genius that creates worthwhile art or architecture, and neither the abstraction of an age nor the abstraction of a period. That is why four out of my seven lectures carry the names of great English artists in their titles. Any national categories which we may find can only be valid if they apply to the great artists as well, and I hope to be able to prove that Hogarth and Reynolds, Blake and Constable, opposed to one another as they are, are yet all English in a sense permeating the art
and architecture of their and other periods and also manifestations of the English character in other fields." The other talks of the series are titled: "Hogarth and Observed Life," "Reynolds and Detachment," "Perpendicular England," "Blake and the Flaming Line," "Constable and the Pursuit of Nature," The Genius of the Place." The Reith Lectures, 1955, will start from 1YC at 9.34 and 3YC at 9.30 p.m. on Monday, October 29, and continue on successive Mondays. The series will be heard later from 2YC and 4YC.
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 899, 26 October 1956, Page 15
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349THE ART OF ENGLAND New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 899, 26 October 1956, Page 15
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