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Eric Gill & David Jones at Capel-y-Ffin (Border Lines Series) by Miles, Jonathan (1992) Hardcover
This is the first book dedicated to the four year collaboration between two major British artists, Eric Gill and David Jones, at Gill's artistic-religious community at Capel-y-Ffin, a remote disused monastery in the Black Mountains.
Hardcover
First published January 1, 1992
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August 27, 2020
In 1924 Eric Gill moved his family from Ditchling to a ruined complex in a Welsh Valley, hoping to set up an artistic and religious community. By 1928 the experiment was over and he moved to Pigotts in Sussex.
This short book is divided into five narrative chapters, which have dates for titles...from 1924 to 1928, interspersed with chapters of discussion, analysis and criticism. While the narrative chapters tend to plod unavoidably, the book takes off and flies in the others. There's a lot for a reader to think about, even if he or she has already read the full length biographies now available for both men.
Writing this book, Jonathon Miles faced an obvious problem. While Both Jones and Gill were undoubtedly at Capel-y-fin, over the four year period neither seems to have spent that much time there. As this book shows, during the years the Gills were in residence, Eric was constantly traveling away for one reason or another. This means the narrative chapters are often lists of places visited by Eric away from Capel.
The other obvious problem facing Miles is that while Gill kept his (in/famously?) detailed diary allowing a biographer to track where he was every day, who he was with and what and who he was doing, there is no similar source for Jones. This leads to an imbalance in the book. The narrative sections track Gill's movement in detail, but Jones tends to appear and then disappear. Gill stays centre stage in the narrative while it's obvious Miles thinks Jones is the far better artist. (An opinion shared by Gill himself.)
When it comes to criticising the two makers of art, Miles is unimpressed by Gill's except for his lettering. The chapter 'Eric Gill: drawing sculpture and typography' struggles to find anything good about the first two. Jones on the other hand is praised as an artist, though with some interesting qualifications to the praise.
Miles is even handed, if declarative, in his criticism. There's often an element of shocked voyeurism in reading about Gill's behaviour, or looking at a lot of his work, and the question, why are we going over this again? does need answering.
Miles doesn't avoid Gill's sexual behaviour, but draws some interesting links between it and what he sees as the failure of some aspects of his art. For a man so addicted to sex, it's interesting that the endless nudes and naked lovers rarely rise above competent drawing in Miles' opinion. Apart from his contribution to lettering, there are times when the logic of Miles' argument is that Eric Gill may have been a good teacher and a man who encouraged and helped other, but otherwise is not really worthy of the interest invested in him.
Round about the same time Gill was moving to Capel, Robert Graves was considering the balance between technique and trauma in the production of poetry. Too much technique the poem dies. Too much trauma and the poem disappears into a personal mess.
Although Miles doesn't use this terminology, his conclusion epitomises the distinction. In Gill's work he argues there is too much technique. The inner traumas (Miles describes them as 'inner stresses') are avoided or kept at bay and the work is therefore 'impoverished and prettified'. Jones on the other hand worked through to a place where first as a visual artist, and then later as a writer, he seems to have been able to get the balance right. Later, the trauma took over and he was forced to stop work. Even later, in some of his writing and visual work, his habit of research 'would deteriorate into a numbing pedanticism'.
I'm not sure about the blurb's claim that the book offers 'a commentary on their radical Catholicism'. I think you'd have to be some kind of mental contortionist to reconcile any use of the term 'Catholicism' with Gill's behaviour but otherwise this is a thought provoking, well-written, well-illustrated book.
This short book is divided into five narrative chapters, which have dates for titles...from 1924 to 1928, interspersed with chapters of discussion, analysis and criticism. While the narrative chapters tend to plod unavoidably, the book takes off and flies in the others. There's a lot for a reader to think about, even if he or she has already read the full length biographies now available for both men.
Writing this book, Jonathon Miles faced an obvious problem. While Both Jones and Gill were undoubtedly at Capel-y-fin, over the four year period neither seems to have spent that much time there. As this book shows, during the years the Gills were in residence, Eric was constantly traveling away for one reason or another. This means the narrative chapters are often lists of places visited by Eric away from Capel.
The other obvious problem facing Miles is that while Gill kept his (in/famously?) detailed diary allowing a biographer to track where he was every day, who he was with and what and who he was doing, there is no similar source for Jones. This leads to an imbalance in the book. The narrative sections track Gill's movement in detail, but Jones tends to appear and then disappear. Gill stays centre stage in the narrative while it's obvious Miles thinks Jones is the far better artist. (An opinion shared by Gill himself.)
When it comes to criticising the two makers of art, Miles is unimpressed by Gill's except for his lettering. The chapter 'Eric Gill: drawing sculpture and typography' struggles to find anything good about the first two. Jones on the other hand is praised as an artist, though with some interesting qualifications to the praise.
Miles is even handed, if declarative, in his criticism. There's often an element of shocked voyeurism in reading about Gill's behaviour, or looking at a lot of his work, and the question, why are we going over this again? does need answering.
Miles doesn't avoid Gill's sexual behaviour, but draws some interesting links between it and what he sees as the failure of some aspects of his art. For a man so addicted to sex, it's interesting that the endless nudes and naked lovers rarely rise above competent drawing in Miles' opinion. Apart from his contribution to lettering, there are times when the logic of Miles' argument is that Eric Gill may have been a good teacher and a man who encouraged and helped other, but otherwise is not really worthy of the interest invested in him.
Round about the same time Gill was moving to Capel, Robert Graves was considering the balance between technique and trauma in the production of poetry. Too much technique the poem dies. Too much trauma and the poem disappears into a personal mess.
Although Miles doesn't use this terminology, his conclusion epitomises the distinction. In Gill's work he argues there is too much technique. The inner traumas (Miles describes them as 'inner stresses') are avoided or kept at bay and the work is therefore 'impoverished and prettified'. Jones on the other hand worked through to a place where first as a visual artist, and then later as a writer, he seems to have been able to get the balance right. Later, the trauma took over and he was forced to stop work. Even later, in some of his writing and visual work, his habit of research 'would deteriorate into a numbing pedanticism'.
I'm not sure about the blurb's claim that the book offers 'a commentary on their radical Catholicism'. I think you'd have to be some kind of mental contortionist to reconcile any use of the term 'Catholicism' with Gill's behaviour but otherwise this is a thought provoking, well-written, well-illustrated book.
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