Art on Display 1949-69Art on Display 1949-69

Painting & Sculpture of a Decade 54-64 | Tate Gallery (now Tate Britain), London, 22 April-28 June 1964

Alison (1928-1993) and Peter Smithson (1924-2003) gained both fame and notoriety as propagators of the New Brutalism during the 1950s and 1960s. Trained as architects in Newcastle, they moved to London to work with the architects' department of the London County Council. After winning the competition for the Hunstanton Secondary School they set up their own practice. When realised in 1954, the school's stark, modernist architecture of a black painted steel structure filled in with glass and yellow brick brought the Smithsons immediate international fame.

The Smithsons were suggested as designers by the exhibition 'selectors', Alan Bowness, Lawrence Gowing and Philip James. Gowing, an artist-writer as well as a Tate Trustee, was the initiator of the show and apparently it was also he who had suggested the Smithsons. This was not a complete surprise since the architect couple was well known in artistic circles due to their involvement in the Independent Group, who gathered at the recently established Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA). By the early 1960s the Smithsons had acquired the prestigious job for The Economist building in St James's, the construction of which was finished in 1964 and confirmed their reputation as radical innovators in British architecture.

Painting & Sculpture of a Decade 54-64 set out to bring to London an extensive survey of the latest and most exciting developments in the international art world, all in order to catch up with events in America and on the continent. The exhibition was organised and sponsored by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, and the Tate Gallery was happy to accommodate it. Initially, the ambition was for a show with 250 paintings and 50 sculptures; eventually, the galleries of the Tate were filled with up to 370 pieces many of a large or even monumental size. Works by Matisse, Picasso and Léger struck the opening chord after which an astonishing cross-section of established and emerging contemporary artists was presented to the visitor. Some of the Smithsons' Independent Group friends were also included, such as Anthony Caro, Eduardo Paolozzi, and Victor Pasmore.

To accommodate the dense groupings of artworks - a 'Milky Way' as the Smithsons called it - they created a labyrinthine sequence of stark white spaces within the Tate Gallery. The architecture of the neo-classical museum including the monumental Duveen Sculpture Galleries, was completely and intentionally suppressed by enveloping the rooms with a con- tinuous screen-like, fake wall that followed an oblique geometry of its own. Daylight was blacked out, while the nine-foot high boards were painted white and illuminated by bright, arti- ficial tungsten light from aluminium painted reflector fittings and spotlights. One report spoke of the need for extra electric- ity supply.

Alison Smithson would take the lead in the design of the exhibition as becomes clear from notes and drawings in the archive. Although the budget for the exhibition was substantial, the sheer scale implied high costs, and practical, yet radical and consistent solutions were necessary. Straightforward plinths and pedestals clad in white board were installed where necessary, sometimes to support large, heavy paintings, at other times to lift smaller sculptures off the ground. The largest pieces were set directly on the floor. Various drawings in the archive show a frantic struggle to fit all the selected works in the available space. Pieces were shifted from one space to another, while extra walls were inserted into the Duveen galleries. Often it was not possible to view the largest paintings frontally. The Smithsons and the exhibition organisers envisaged a reciprocity between the groupings of the artworks and the flowing movement of the visitors, thus creating an experience of intellectual association and sensory immersion.

Text Dirk van den Heuvel. First published in the catalogue accompanying the Art on Display exhibition.