Rocky ride

Now that the great design surveys regularly mounted by the V&A have come up to date, what will it seek to beguile us with next? These exhibitions have always been of interest, at least in parts, and often infuriating, a combination that has helped to ensure their success. The wide range of paintings and objects on display has also given them the status of offering ‘something for everyone’, rather like a vastly superior village bazaar. The current show is no exception. It begins very well, and then conks out repeatedly like an untuned engine. Ah well, who said the course of true progress (and innovation —  don’t forget innovation) runs smooth?

The exhibition (sponsored by Ernst & Young) opens with a small section of John Piper’s huge 1951 Festival of Britain mural ‘The Englishman’s Home’, which has lately been on view in its entirety at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on the South Bank. The whole thing is sadly rather dull and overblown, so a section of it looks much better here, and gives a foretaste of the new Romanticism that pervades this first area of the display. To the right is a model of the famous and very beautiful stained-glass Baptistery Window at Coventry Cathedral designed by Piper with Patrick Reyntiens. Next to that is a Piper painting of what was left of the bombed interior of the old Coventry Cathedral. Opposite is the first cartoon for Graham Sutherland’s controversial tapestry for Coventry, looking rather better than the finished thing. In a wall cabinet nearby is a trial section of tapestry, showing a disgruntled Eagle of St John, and in front of it Geoffrey Clarke’s exquisite cast silver altar cross.

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This initial emphasis on neoromantic art is backed up with Coronation or Festival exhibits by Edward Bawden, Kenneth Rowntree and Abram Games, and Lynn Chadwick’s impressive maquette in cast copper, brass and iron for ‘Three Hollow Men’.