Eighty modern paintings from the combined Granada and Bernstein family collection, are on exhibition at Manchester University’s Whitworth Art Gallery. Normally, the Granada collection, comprising 25 paintings, hangs in the corridors of the TV Centre in Manchester — accepted by the staff as part of the surroundings. Here
JOHN WHITE
Professor of the History of Art, and Director of the Whitworth Gallery, tells how this unusual form of art patronage is catching on

Television is both an industry and an art. In both capacities it aims at bringing pictures — moving pictures — to the family at home.

Its profit lies in interesting and entertaining the leisure man. It is therefore revealing to find that Granada also finds it worthwhile to bring pictures — still pictures — to the office.

This is becoming a common practice in many of the great commercial enterprises on both sides of the Atlantic.

The exhibition of modern pictures from the Granada collection shows some of the paintings seen by everyone who works in, or who visits, the studios and offices of Granada in Manchester.

Next to them, on the exhibition walls, are the results of a much more familiar type of art patronage. These are pictures from the private collections of four members of the Bernstein family.

The two sections of the exhibition are a sign that art is about to become what it once was. It will again be part of life as a whole.

It will not just be something clinging precariously to the edges of existence, a sort of fringe benefit.

Banks and factories, shops and businesses, all over the world, are finding that it is not enough merely to put up fine buildings.

It is a waste to enliven a city skyline and then face men and women with blank walls and bare corridors throughout their indoor working day.

The Inland Steel building in Chicago; the Pilkington Glass Works in St. Helens; the Granada studios themselves, are all signs of the future.

The business and industrial world is already a major patron of modern architecture. Design in packaging and advertising, as well as in the goods themselves, is, of course, a major concern.

Progressive firms encourage the best of every kind of applied art in furniture and fittings, carpets and fabrics.

It will not be long before they begin to challenge private and municipal patrons in the so-called fine arts of painting and sculpture.

This, after all, is only sensible. Automation or not, we still spend the greater part of our waking lives at work.

If life is worth living, and art is part of it, it seems ridiculous to confine painting and sculpture to our homes and public buildings and museums.

If good surroundings matter, they matter most where we are most intensely occupied, and for ffie greatest length of time.

A TV company has special reasons for making modern art part of modern working surroundings. I am, for instance, often lost in admiration for the ingenuity with which period settings of every kind are reconstructed for TV dramas.

This is all the work of expert researchers. But what about the innumerable modern interiors, tycoons’ offices and rich homes that continually appear in plays and serials?

We far too seldom see in them the kind of fine contemporary sculpture and painting which is increasingly to be found in the real thing.

A couple of prints of vintage cars is not enough.

The set of It’s Dark Outside (Friday) is one of the exceptions. Have you noticed the very modern-looking painting on wood, hanging in reporter Fred Blane’s (John Stratton) flat?

This is not a studio prop. It’s an original painting by Harry Thuron, called “Japanese.” One of the Granada collection of paintings, it was “borrowed” by set designer Roy Stonehouse for the duration of the series. You can see it in the Whitworth Exhibition.

There is a townscape by Utrillo; there is a nightmare study for a Pope by Francis Bacon. There are pure abstract paintings by Ben Nicholson and Alan Reynolds. There is something for everyone who enjoys today’s modern art.

In the end, it will only be when people have grown used to seeing art as part of life, and working life at that, that we shall automatically glimpse such works on our screens in the background of the TV office or down the TV corridor.

In real life, at Granada, they are there already.

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IT was a moment that few but the brave would have relished. I was face to face with that impregnable fortress of the law, Chief Inspector Rose, in his own den.

“Why,” I began boldly, “are you such a swine to your subordinates?”

Expecting something like the lash of a kid glove across my cheek, I stepped back a pace. I needn’t have bothered.

The Rose mirage faded quickly and I was left with the actor. Jolly, home loving, family man William Mervyn.

Only similarity between William and the iceberg-cool Rose he portrays so majestically in Friday’s new series of the twilight thriller, It’s Dark Outside, is his careful attention to dress.

“Don’t be too hard on Rose,” he said. “He’s really quite an amiable fellow when you get to know him.

“People are always telling me to take it easy on those poor old sergeants of mine, but Rose niggles with a purpose — to draw people out.

“You have to needle some folk to find out what they’re really like. With policemen, you’ve got to see if they can take it.

“Rose is a pompous old thing, but he’s not a fool. He’s impeccably honest and on top of his job. His verbal duels are really for sharpening the wits.”

Well, Rose may not be the ogre we suspected, but he’s parted company with Sgt. Swift.

In the new series we find him searching for a new assistant and he has earmarked Det. Sgt. James McKenzie Hunter, played by 29 year old Anthony Ainley, a newcomer to television.

Will he get his man? Well, he doesn’t get off to the best of starts, because Hunter, a sort of wild colonial boy from Kenya, detests Rose and his pomposity.

New female lead in the series is Veronica Strong, a bubbling, vivacious redhead, who plays Claire Martin, a 24-year-old fabric designer.

Claire is engaged to Sgt. Hunter, but has a weakness for lame dogs like Fred Blanc (played by John Stratton), a hard-drinking, wild-living newspaper reporter.

Veronica, who started in rep 10 years ago at the age of 16, sees Claire Martin as a very “with it” bachelor girl, rather like her own life, I gathered.

She comes from Brighton, has a flat in London, drives a mini, but would love a big Bentley. Veronica has a passion for classical music and spends most of her money on records and going to concerts.

The post Rose blooms when it’s dark outside! appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.