3.34 Sculptural head, 1940s, cork, paper, rubber © NMI
Throughout her life Gray never stopped producing artwork. She knew so many artists during her lifetime, but her debilitating shyness thwarted many opportunities to expand on these friendships, attend social occasions or make new acquaintances. In the later years of her life she had regrets, saying that she wished to have known better the artists Picasso, Léger, Miró, Rouault and Modigliani.119 Her letters reveal associations with some painters which until now were unknown. Gray met prominent Mexican painters Diego Rivera (1886-1957) and his wife Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) in the spring of 1934 when she travelled to Mexico by boat with Jean Badovici. She had visited Acapulco and Oaxaca and while in Mexico City she had lunch with Rivera and Kahlo. Rivera arrived in Europe in 1907, firstly to study in Madrid, and from there went to Paris to live and work in Montparnasse, where he remained until 1920. He became very good friends with Amedeo Modigliani and Chana Orloff. Despite such introductions Gray was left unimpressed with both his work and the work of José Clemente Orozco (1883-1949).120
Gray remained acutely aware of the changes occurring in the contemporary art movements of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. However, she had grave concerns.
No one seems to have any imagination, the current has deviated to science, computers, (ordinateurs) and the new generation are wildly realistic though they have never thought of grappling with the most obvious problems. It is obvious that, as the wheel turns now so quickly, all institutions need profound reforms in their structure and the old birds are always reluctant when it comes to any change.121
With the decline in easel painting, with an increase in the use of acrylic instead of oil paint, and the introduction of abstract painting where there was deliberately no meaning to what one painted, Gray felt that contemporary art had lost its identity.122 To her it was stagnant, in comparison to the socially and politically motivated avant-garde art movements at the turn of the century. Minimalist and Post-painterly Abstract art just simply hypnotised its audience ‘like in the story of the Emperor’s new clothes’.123 Critical of the extravagance of new American art – notably Pop and Op Art – Gray wrote, ‘Painting seems to be going through a bad patch... Pop Art and now Pop-optics are the latest thing in England, but here the critics who were never capable of understanding abstract art have tried their best to kill it and now painters are totally divided, some going on with more or less the same things and others attempting what they think is a new figuration but without sincerity; the result is frankly mediocre’.124 She questioned if art could recover from the Pop and Geo-Pop movements.125 In Gray’s opinion Pop Art figurative painting was pretentious as she described it full of ‘pompiérisme’.126
Gray was interested in the work of a number of contemporary artists; Jean Dubuffet (1901-1985),127 Barbara Hepworth (1903-1975),128 Francis Bacon (1909-1992), Bernard Buffet (1928-1999)129 and Frank Stella (b. 1936). However, she criticised Stella’s infamous painting Hyena Stomp, 1962 and the Irregular Polygon series.130 Stella had produced the Irregular Polygon series in 1965-66 where he painted eleven compositions combining varying numbers of shapes to create irregular outlines. He made four versions of each composition, varying the colour combinations of each. Hyena Stomp came from a musical tune by the American jazz musician Jelly Roll Morton. Gray didn’t understand the work, not realising that Stella was thinking about syncopation while working on the painting. She was both critical and complimentary of fellow Irish artist Francis Bacon when she viewed an exhibition of his work at the Galerie Maeght in 1966. Gray wrote, ‘Enormous canvases, very thin; light paint, every sort of colour, the kind of realism that one finds in the Bandes Dessinées (cartoons) in Weekly Revues’. However, she then proceeds to describe his style as ‘Anecdotal .... No shadows but perspective, and in every painting (if one could call it painting) the faces of the humans were distorted like wicked gnomes or demons... The colours so horrid as if they were imitating comic cuts. This is surely the end of civilization’.131
Gray’s work as a designer and architect was criticised throughout her life in various publications and by various critics. Though she was freely able to criticise the work of artists in her later years, when it came to someone’s review of her own work, who was of her generation, Gray became fearful. Thoughts of ineptitude as an artist persuaded Gray to destroy so many of her early artworks. In the 1960s she wrote to Stephen Haweis, her contemporary from art school, about the incredible body of work she was producing. Her fears returned. She was devoting this time to abstract or semi abstract works and was worried that he, her contemporary, would not like them’.132
Gray also criticised art exhibitions or at least the public’s reaction to the work of her contemporaries from the turn of the century. At times she is exceedingly protective of her generation’s work. It is in moments such as this that she reveals an encyclopaedic knowledge of these artists; their work, their ideologies and the artistic movements from where they came. For example, Gray attended the exhibition Les sources du XXe siècle: les arts en Europe de 1884 à 1914, which took place at the Musée Nationale d’Art Moderne from 1960-1961. Works by an impressive array of artists were on display; Paul Cézanne, Fernand Léger, Wassily Kandinsky, Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, artists from the Expressionist German school, and a selection from the Futurist movement. Gray was critical of the selection, stating that the work of neither Eugène Carrière nor James McNeill Whistler was represented and only a tiny work by Alexander Archipenko was in the exhibition.133 In another instance, Gray, who knew Alberto Giacometti from his Surrealist years, attended an exhibition of his sculpture in May 1961 at Galerie Maeght in Paris. She had gone to view the work which had become his characteristic style – very tall and thin figures. Giacometti had become, by this time, the outstanding sculptor of the era, questioning merging ideas of distance and proximity in frontal, rigid sculpture. Like Gray, he constantly self-questioned his work and the reaction to it. For this reason Gray became highly frustrated. While at the exhibition, a wealthy industrialist approached her and said of Giacometti’s work ‘you know in my factory, we too, we have a lot of iron or scrap, but it serves an entirely different purpose’.134
Despite her criticism of artists or their ideas, Gray always believed in the importance of the artist and especially a respect for the resulting work. At times her view of the status of an artist in society was completely idealistic. To her an artist was precious. She went even so far as to state that artists shouldn’t drive, as too much attention to the task at hand prevented artistic thinking or ‘wandering’ and because driving put constant tension on their eyes.