The Moment, and Other Essays by Virginia Woolf

Author:Virginia Woolf [Woolf, Virginia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9788074843587
Publisher: e-artnow ebooks
Published: 2013-08-10T22:00:00+00:00

Roger Fry.

Table of Contents

When I was asked to open this exhibition of Roger Fry’s pictures my first instinct I admit was to refuse, for it seemed to me that an exhibition of paintings ought to be opened by a painter or by a critic of painting. But on second thoughts it struck me that this particular exhibition, this memorial exhibition of Roger Fry’s pictures, might fitly be opened by someone who is not a painter or a critic because Roger Fry did more than anyone to make such people—such outsiders—enjoy looking at pictures. That was my experience, and I think I am right in saying that there are others in this room who have felt the same thing. Pictures were to many of us—if I may generalise—things that hung upon walls; silent inscrutable patterns; treasure houses with locked doors in front of which learned people would stop, and about which they would lecture, saying that they were of this period or of that, of this school or of that, probably by this master, but perhaps on the other hand by one of his disciples. And we would trail behind them, silent, servile, and bored. Then all of a sudden those dim pictures began to flash with light and colour; and our guides, those respectable professors, began to argue and to quarrel, called each other—if I remember rightly—liars and cheats, and altogether began to behave like living people arguing about something of vital importance. What had happened? What had brought this life and colour, this racket and in into the quiet galleries of ancient art? It was that Roger Fry had gathered together the Post-Impressionist Exhibition in Dover Street; and the names of Cezanne and Gauguin, of Matisse and Picasso, suddenly became as hotly debated, as violently defended as the names—shall we say?—of Ramsay MacDonald, Hitler, or Lloyd George. That is many years ago.

The dust of that conflict has died down. But all the same pictures have never gone back to their walls. They are no longer silent, decorous, and dull. They are things we live with, and laugh at, love and discuss. And I think I am right in saying that it was Roger Fry more than anybody who brought about this change. He did it, of course, by his writing and by his lecturing. Many of you will have read his books, and will have heard his lectures. You will know better than I can describe it how profoundly he felt about the roots of art; how subtly, with that long white wand of Ids, standing in front of his magic lantern, he would point to this line and to that and would bring to the surface in new and startling revelation those qualities that lie deep sunk in pictures so that we saw them afresh. You will have felt this while he lectured; you will still find it, happily, in his books; but I would like, if I can, to give you some Paint idea how he did it in his talk.

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