Art - Sarah Jane Checkland on how Ben Nicholson was determined to get a gong
Ben Nicholson kicked against the Establishment throughout his career. As a young man, he dropped out of the Slade School of Art; in the 1930s, he caused consternation in the art world with his abstract white reliefs, which were duly condemned by critics as a "lavatory art form" that, due to its "fatal defect of purity", had committed "spiritual beri-beri". It was only when the Nazis lost the war, and "degenerate" art of Nicholson's ilk suddenly gained cachet, that he became phenomenally successful. His works were not only being acquired by museums the world over, but were also winning all the international awards going, including the Pittsburgh and Guggenheim prizes in 1952 and 1956. The Guggenheim was presented to Nicholson at the White House by President Eisenhower himself. But, in 1958, Nicholson bucked the system once more by becoming a tax exile in Switzerland, his accruing fortune being ingeniously rerouted to various tax havens by his dealers, Marlborough Fine Art. It is a measure of his own cunning that, from this mountain-top retreat, he managed to obtain the most prestigious honour the British sovereign can bestow: the Order of Merit.
Nicholson always had a strong Machiavellian streak. When invited by his fellow artist Ivon Hitchens to join Britain's feeble equivalent to an avant-garde, the Seven & Five group, in the late 1920s, he soon applied various "ploys", as he called them, towards evicting all but abstractionists such as himself. During the postwar period, when he and his wife, the sculptor Barbara Hepworth, were fast turning the Cornish fishing town of St Ives into the centre of British abstract art, the two of them manufactured a civil war between themselves and the resident traditional artists. This came to a climax at an extraordinary general meeting of the St Ives Society of Arts in 1949, during which - according to the artist Sven Berlin - Hepworth stood at the back urging her younger colleagues to heckle for a vote of no confidence in the chairman Leonard Fuller, while Nicholson stood silently at the back, his face predatory "like a falcon", watching as his various manoeuvres came to fruition. The high point of the occasion was when Commander Bradshaw - a former sea dog and now a leading traditionalist - shook his fist at the chin of the hapless Fuller and shouted "quarter-deck expletives", as the artist Hymal Segal later recalled. Soon, all the "moderns" had resigned, leaving the way open for Nicholson and Hepworth to create their own new society, with Herbert Read, the art critic and guru of the avant-garde, as their president.
But Nicholson's biggest coup was in gaining his Order of Merit. By the late 1950s, life in St Ives had become claustrophobic for him, what with all the internecine rivalry between the artists, and the presence there of both Hepworth and his lover, the market gardener Rhoda Littler. So when an attractive young German journalist called Felicitas Vogler arrived on the scene to interview him in 1957, he grasped the chance for a new life and a new environment, marrying her and leaving for Switzerland in 1958.
By this time, Nicholson had already turned down the offer of a CBE by the then prime minister, Anthony Eden, on the grounds that he did not believe in such things. But as the Sixties drew on, he began to correspond with two influential old friends - the advertising executive and chairman of the Labour Party's science and arts committee, Marcus Brumwell, and the eminent scientist and "Whitehall warrior" Solly Zuckerman. Ostensibly, Nicholson's letters were a one-man campaign to reform the British honours system, but he was clearly angling for one for himself. Writing to Zuckerman in 1965, he said he was "all for" the Beatles being granted MBEs, and the First Division footballer Stanley Matthews being knighted - both of these elevations having sent shockwaves through Britain at the time. But as a whole, he said, the system desperately needed updating, and he recommended not only the abandonment of hereditary titles, but that an entirely new order should be created for life achievement, with a separate section for the arts. Finally - and this is where self-interest comes in - he suggested that, when seeking a "yardstick" for assessing painters and sculptors, the powers that be should "check up on the artist's international reputation - for example, the list of public museums abroad that own his works". The result, he claimed, would be a system far superior to the "debunked" one at the Royal Academy, by which members gained the right to place the letters "RA" after their names. Zuckerman duly replied that he would air Nicholson's ideas in the relevant quarters.
Sure enough, within a matter of months, not only was Hepworth invited to become a Dame in the Queen's birthday honours list, but also Nicholson was offered the title of Companion of Honour. While Hepworth accepted eagerly, Nicholson declined the offer with the quip that he already had the letters "CH" on the back of his Mercedes. He was playing for higher stakes.
The gamble eventually paid off when, in 1968, he agreed to become an OM. Enjoying the moment, Nicholson replied to a congratulatory letter from his fellow artist and OM Henry Moore, writing that he had been in two minds as to whether to accept. When Debrett's Peerage sent him a proof of its forthcoming entry on him, he launched into a "small OM row", complaining that it had failed to mention his beloved mother, Mabel. "Stinking old reactionary publication," he said. By a nice coincidence, Zuckerman - now Sir Solly - became an OM at the same time.
Arriving at Buckingham Palace to meet the Queen, Nicholson's behaviour was as wayward as ever. When Her Majesty presented the insignia to him, commenting that it was "rather beautiful", he replied that it would be even better "if some of those knobs were knocked off". After they had chatted for a few moments, he virtually dismissed his hostess with the words: "I think you must be awfully busy - so perhaps I'd better go." He then went off to apply himself to those knobs, and to proceed to decline all invitations to forthcoming OM gatherings.
Sarah Jane Checkland's Ben Nicholson: the vicious circles of his life and art is published by John Murray (£25).
A display of Ben Nicholson's work is currently at Tate Britain, London SW1 (020-7887 8000), and an exhibition runs at the Bernard Jacobson Gallery, 14a Clifford Street, London W1 (020-7495 8575) until 29 July
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