Kenneth Clark: Looking for Civilization is at the Tate Britain

Kenneth Clark, patron, collector, art historian, and broadcasting impresario best known for his pioneering 1969 TV series Civilisation – the first to bring the art of the 20th century to a mass television audience — was very much shaped by his time in Oxford.

Clark (1903–1983) studied history at Trinity College, Oxford; developed his art connoisseurship under Charles Bell, Keeper of the Fine Art at the Ashmolean Museum; Bell also encouraged him to write his first book, on the Gothic Revival; Clark succeeding Bell as keeper in 1931. Post-war, Clark became Slade professor of fine art at Oxford.

“Oxford was valuable for him in terms of the people he knew, the cultural establishment,” Chris Stephens, curator of Tate Britain’s Kenneth Clark: Looking for Civilisation exhibition, which looks at and pays tribute to Clark’s legacy. He met Roger Fry lecturing in Oxford — “a real-life critic” Stephens said, and through him met artists. And through Bell he met art historian Bernard Berenson, assisted him in Italy (while still a student) working on Florentine drawings; in turn this led to a love and connoisseurship of Italian art. At Oxford too he met his wife Jane, a fellow student.

“He’d had a passion for art from aged seven. A teacher at his school had a collection of Japanese wood block prints” — a passion that once absorbed never left him. As a first year student, whereas others had cheap prints on their walls, Clark had Corots,” Stephens told me. He was no ordinary student: born into privilege — his family’s immense wealth stemming from Clarks of Paisley’s invention of the cotton spool (a boxed set of reels is an unusual exhibit in the opening room) — he had, as Stephens put it, “conspicuous erudition.”

Glory: John Piper, Coventry Cathedral 1940

Interestingly, it was at Oxford that, according to Stephens, he began to believe in the social importance of art, and that galleries should make art as accessible and understandable to as many people as possible. He developed this concept when at the age of 31 he became the youngest ever (and most controversial) director of the National Gallery, London.

The exhibition starts with two portraits. One, Cecil Beaton’s photograph, shows the patrician Clark examining a bromide print beside a marble sculpture and a Flemish tapestry: giving a flavour of his Saltwood Castle home in Kent. The second, much more fun, also in profile, by Graham Sutherland, is a delightful echo of Piero della Francesca’s early Renaissance portrait of the Duke of Urbino.

Scene: George Seurat, The Forest at Pontaubert 1881

There are over 270 objects on view; fine and decorative arts, books, TV clips and so on — from Aubrey Beardsley drawings loved as boy, to Hokusai and Utamaro prints, works by the British artists Clark championed, such as Henry Moore, Graham Sutherland, John Piper, Victor Pasmore and the Euston Road School, the Bloomsbury Group, plus Leonardo drawings, Cézannes, and other delights, from Samuel Palmer’s cornfield by moonlight, to a Bellini Clark bequeathed to the Ashmolean in recognition of his time there.

Every work of art here is here because it was loved. His was an incredibly eclectic collection — with areas of strength such as Renaissance drawings, Cézanne, and 16th century majolica — and this is reflected in the choice of works here, from Clark’s own collection and sources such as the National Gallery (including Constable’s Hadleigh Castle purchased under his directorship). 

Holy mother: Giovanni Bellini, The Virgin and Child c. 1470

“There’s nothing more deadening than a period room,” held Clark. Thus, Tate has arranged the show as Clark would arrange his collections in his homes. So, in galleries titled collector, patron, New Romantics, Wartime, and so on, works are hung not according to artist or period so much as themes that tell of Clark’s career and thinking. This is both pleasing and potentially frustrating (if say, you want to locate a particular work). But of those, pleasure wins out — how not to be charmed by seeing Sydney Nolan paintings hung impossibly beside a 17th-century family portrait? Or to jump between a Malliol bust, Cézanne’s Bathers, a Lucca della Robbia piece, a Seurat forest scene, and then move to a fresco fragment from c1500?

This is a thoroughly absorbing exhibition. I wanted more time. There’s so much to see and learn, and delight in. “Whether or not you like what he represents, he had a huge legacy,” said Penelope Curtis, director of Tate Britain. “We are taking an objective look at Kenneth Clark... and how he shaped our taste for art.”

There is talk of a remake of Civilisation. A “happy coincidence” according to Stephens for Tate has been planning this show for years. As for the presenter, pundits have named Will Gompertz, the BBC arts editor and Oxford man.