AS BRITAIN SLIDES ever more quickly into bureaucratic authoritarianism, it is important to remind ourselves that what is new is simply the scale of the problem. Bureaucratic malfeasance has been with us since the birth of socialism. The only solution is to get rid of bureaucracy entirely and replace with a proper civil service, such as Britain had between the Northcote-Trevelyan reforms in the 1850s and the strange death of liberal England in and around August 1914.
Recently, I wrote here about Nevil Shute’s experience as an aircraft designer in the inter-war years, when bureaucracy was just getting going. Today, I want to make a similar point in a completely different context – the art world of the 1950s. That featured a good many questionable characters. One in particular, John (after 1952, Sir John) Rothenstein, Director of the Tate Gallery from 1938 to 1964, was the black hat in this fascinatingly grotesque narrative of smart people doing stupid things. The point is that he was a senior bureaucrat and therefore survived all the allegations due to the clannish tribalism of the arts bureaucracy.
This is the message within a highly-readable book by an old friend of mine, Philippe Le Roux. In After the Dance: Le Roux Smith Le Roux and the Tate Scandal, Philippe tells the story of his father’s background and career. For reasons explained in the text, he acquired the unlikely name, Le Roux Smith Le Roux, even though his father was called Johannes Anthonie Smith. Smith was a prominent member of an organisation called the Ossewa Brandwag, which means, translated literally, the Oxwagon Firewatch. It was a body of extreme Afrikaner opponents of British rule in South Africa.
By the late 1930s, it had become a pro-Nazi resistance movement (as the SNP did). Among its members was B.J. Vorster, the future Prime Minister (in office 1966-78) and P.W. Botha (Prime Minister 1979-84; then President 1984-89).
By contrast, Philippe, Smith’s grandson, was one of the most vocal opponents of apartheid in student Johannesburg in his youth—I know; I was there, marching along in my beard and takkies. This family history illustrates the arrogant idiocy of anti-imperialists (and others) who blame people they don’t like for what they suppose their ancestors did or thought.
The subject of this book is the man who came in the middle, the son of the sinful Ossewa Brandwag man. Le Roux Smith Le Roux was a gifted artist from Cape Town who moved to London at a young age in the 1930s, where he painted some beautiful murals in South Africa House on Trafalgar Square (below) and luscious landscape paintings. When the Second World War broke out, he returned to South Africa and became an arts administrator. These days, that is a term associated with spivs, public-sector free-loaders and people who do not comb their hair properly.
However, Le Roux was always dapper, dashing and deeply dark, in hair, suit and, as this book reveals, in secrets too. Why he did not stick to art, I do not know. Those murals of his which I have seen are dramatic, colourful and exotic. This book has a substantial plate section in which some of them are featured.
In the late 1940s, Le Roux was head-hunted by the Director of the Tate Gallery, John Rothernstein, as he needed a second Deputy Keeper. This was 1950 and he thought a young South African with energy and an independent spirit would be cheaper than any of the in-house staff he could promote. Migrant labour has always been the cheap option, ever since Irish navvies built Britain’s railways.
Rothenstein put Le Roux in charge of the publications department which the newcomer reorganised and, within a couple of years, made profitable. But then the young colonial started to get suspicions above his station. He began to notice that there seemed to have been some jiggery-pokery with the accounts relating to some acquisitions.
The centre of this story is the small sculpture, copied in bronze from a Degas wax original, called “Little Dancer Aged Fourteen”. It looked as if it had been bought for at least twice the market price. Why? Overcharging the state for expenses incurred is one of the standard tricks of all crooked bureaucrats—that is the way the Russian generals make money at the expense of their soldiers in Ukraine today.
Rothenstein showed all the symptoms of the creepy office-wallah caught bang to rights. Rather than explaining what had happened, he reacted with fury because he had been challenged by a junior. The man was clearly a Sturgeon-style bully.
Philippe quotes him early on in the dispute about the Degas. Rothenstein was trying to get the senior bureaucrats to crucify Le Roux so he “threatened” to put his views on the matter in writing. Le Roux said that would be a good idea, help clear the air, etc. That was not the script at all, as Rothenstein explained to the insolent colonial:
I must warn you that besides taking up my precious time, you will regret my written statement because I have considerable skill in compiling written criticisms, and this will have serious consequences for you. It will go on your personal record at the Treasury and become a permanent black mark against you. (p. 150)
There were other disputes, in many of which Rothenstein appeared to be using his position for his personal advantage. His antics sometimes sound like a Mills & Boone plot gone wrong. Like bureaucracy itself, there was something petty, vindictive and grossly self-righteous about Rothenstein.
Another member of the non-creative arts clan is the writer, Dame Frances Spalding. She attacked Philippe’s book last year in the Literary Review. Perhaps predictably, she portrays Rothenstein as the victim, not Le Roux. Clearly the whole issue is still important to what Trotsky would have called “the possessing classes in the art world”.
Le Roux was not alone in his suspicions. Others who harboured them included Graham Sutherland and Lord Beaverbrook. One of Rothenstein’s most consistent critics was the art historian and collector, Douglas Cooper. Spalding revealed in her article just how nasty and boorish Rothenstein could become if you offended his ego:
In November 1954, at the opening of an exhibition [Spalding writes], Douglas Cooper pointed at Rothenstein and said, ‘That’s the wretched little man who is going to lose his job.” Rothenstein punched him.
There is much more to this book than bitchiness and bullying in the art world. The South African dimension is interesting, as is the atmosphere of 1950s Britain and indeed Le Roux’s life beyond the small world of galleries and smog. Philippe has used diaries, letters and his father’s radio talks on the SABC to give an idea of a world that has gone. One thing stood out for me: the brief passage about leaving Cape Town “for overseas” in 1950. There were no jets then; everyone travelled by sea.
Union-Castle mail steamers, mostly built either at John Brown’s of Clydebank or Harland & Wolff in Belfast, left Cape Town every Thursday at 4 p.m., with a passage time of 13 days. I myself have made that journey more than once. I still remember the sense of occasion when the huge ship was towed by tugs out into the middle of the Duncan Dock—so named after the Scottish governor-general during the War, Sir Patrick Duncan—and dropped the hawsers. A tiny tumble of white water appeared at the bow and everyone knew the great ship was under weigh, with 600 passengers aboard and 6,000 nautical miles ahead. Eat your heart out CalMac!
Half of Cape Town would be standing on the dockside in their finery, either to see off their friends and relatives, or just to enjoy the sunshine and the spectacle, with its undercurrent of anticipation and adventure in a foreign land. Philippe writes:
Philippa [Le Roux’s wife and Philippe’s mother] and Le Roux boarded the Stirling Castle in mid-February 1950. The orchestra played, and they stood at the railing, throwing streamers to the people on the quay. They watched Table Mountain recede, with the city sprawling at its base, and Le Roux said, “I can’t wait to return to London. I’m determined to make a success of this opportunity.” (p. 106)
This book tells the story of one incident in the silent, unceasing war between bureaucracy and art. As usual, the bureaucrats won, but the artist was right. Nothing changes. The pity of it is that Le Roux never returned to painting. That strikes me as the greatest loss.
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Photo’s of Degas’ the original Little Dancer (in wax) courtesy of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ Other images provided by the author.
