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Lima de Freitas (artist, writer)
The following text was written in 1974 for the catalogue of Patrick Swift’s exhibition at the S. Mamede Gallery in Lisbon
In a beautifully perceptive essay which Patrick Swift contributed to Homage to George Barker... he put forward certain ideas which I think are worth recalling...
Patrick Swift refers to St Augustine's view of the human personality, whose essence is the divine word (Logos). From this springs all artistic expression. It provides the touchstone for judging the validity (or not, as the case may be) of all forms of thought and expression, poetic and creative, within whose core lies the Mystery. Patrick Swift writes:
It is his comments on the metaphysics of Aristotle that the sentence of Aquinas occurs: The philosopher is related to the poet in that both are concerned with mirandum. This strikes me as a serious remark and one relevant to the moment. For confessional disclosures about aspects of the individual psychology do not constitute a considerable substitute for the mirandum of which Saint Thomas Aquinas speaks. There is the Mystery, and it will always be the important part of the poet's function to acknowledge it; and unless science can explain origins (and not merely origin of species but the origin of our existence and its purpose) it will remain unsatisfying to the serious mind.
Evaluation is not a function of reason: reason deals with accepted facts, including accepted values. Ignorance of this is the root of rational philistinism.
This is the very heart of the problem of artistic communication. As Samuel Beckett says: '... the only possible spiritual development is in the sense of depth. The artistic tendency is not expansive but a contraction. And art is the apotheosis of solitude. There is no communication because there are no vehicles of communication. Even on the rare occasions when word and gesture happen to be valid expressions of the personality, they lose their significance on their passage through the cataract of the personality that is opposed to them. Either we speak and act for ourselves in which case speech and action are distorted and emptied of their meaning by an intelligence that is not ours or else we speak and act for others — in which case we speak and act a lie.'
'What then is the answer to this condition?', asks Patrick Swift. For the poet Ezra Pound's explanation or statement of how the poem gets written explains his immediate relationship to the Dilemma: 'They were made for no man's entertainment but because a man believing in silence found himself unable to withhold from speaking.' Or from painting, I would add.
These thoughts of Patrick Swift seem to me essential to an understanding of the personality and work of this Irish artist, whose works are now on show in Lisbon for the first time.
Having had a long and warm friendship with Patrick Swift, I regard it as a very great privilege to present this exhibition of his works. They are the product of his years in the Algarve, where he has lived since 1962, in a whitewashed house built by himself among fig trees, overlooking the sea. He jealously guards his privacy and simple way of life, though never selfishly and always with generosity to his family and friends. No one who visits his studio (guided by a kerosene lamp) can doubt that he is a very special person.
Yet what sort of man is he, this friendly, hospitable Celt who has deliberately chosen to live in an isolated corner of Portugal, where the clear night sky sparkles with constellations never seen by city eyes? Is he simply an unaffected original, a fugitive from hectic metropolitan life, candidly retreating into the trees he so loves to paint in his deceptively naïve, timeless style? Or is he little more than an eccentric balladeer, nostalgically singing in the evening light of sufferings and mysteries of a very old legendary country? Patrick Swift speaks little about his past, he is averse to confession... What I know of him I have pieced together from revelations in unguarded moments and from hints and allusions over many years of friendship and collaboration. The picture which has thus emerged is surprising and unexpected. I have come to realise that he possesses an extraordinary knowledge of painting, poetry and philosophy, that his thought is unusually penetrating and profound, his writing lucid and his cultural appreciation remarkably wide-ranging. But there is more than this. Gradually I have become convinced that Patrick Swift has a right to be regarded as a major artistic figure in post-war Europe. Not only is he a distinguished painter, but he was also one of the founders, with David Wright, of perhaps the foremost literary and artistic review of the post-war years. In X... one can find original articles by such artists as Alberto Giacometti, Auberjonois, David Bomberg, Andre Masson, Oskar Kokoschka, poems by Ezra Pound, Jules Supervielle, Milosz, Kavanagh... essays by Ghika, René Daumal, Samuel Beckett...
It is perhaps difficult, at first, to reconcile the image of the solitary Irishman in his Algarve retreat with that of the driving force of a review which was so amazingly international and which played such a central role in the cultural milieu of the early 1960’s. Yet the evidence is indisputable...
The explanation is not easy. What is certain is that Patrick Swift has a deep dislike of cultural fashions... What he sought was solitude.(‘The temple is holy’ — proclaimed Ezra pound — ‘because it is not for sale’) The solitude he sought is that described by Beckett, where there is space and time to nurture that tender, vulnerable plant, the True Self... Such a solitude is in no sense an escape or an easy compromise...
Anyway, Patrick Swift reached the haven of the Algarve coast, the same coast his Celtic forefathers knew so well. Whose eye could better appreciate its natural beauty, its scented hills, the light, sublime, the vibrant vegetation shimmering under the burning sun? Here his painting, which before had been sophisticated and ‘cultured’, was stripped bare and became a paean of praise, both voluptuous and sacred, to a perennial Spring. His exaltation bursts forth in a blaze of colour — like in Soutine, but a Soutine of happiness. He is intoxicated by a joy that casts away the erudite codes of style and revelled in the tangibility of the natural world. Impatiently, Patrick Swift searches out the roots of inner essence. A conjunction of opposites, of a characteristically fiery imagination and the cool verdure of plants and trees produced a kind of ‘naturalism' — but one which is the antithesis of timid conformity and mediocrity and could only have emerged from a process of rediscovering and reshaping a lost innocence. There is nothing here of the sentimental, pretentious lyrics, of the typical provincial artist: Patrick Swift’s paintings are an act of praise and wonder.
…Patrick Swift painted these trees after his time in London and Paris… His painting, whether one is attracted to it or not, has to be seen with hindsight. It can only be appreciated after fully taking in what has been the European experience of recent times.
Who these days pays attention to the clamorous making and breaking of reputations and the compiling of artistic league tables? To paraphrase Robert Graves, there is a simple response to those who insist that there is a ‘correct’ way of painting: if a painting is Art, then it is of no interest...
The natural world he is striving to put on his canvases has no resemblance to the preconceived clichés of weary, blinkered city dwellers out for a tranquillising weekend in the countryside. Patrick Swift saw something different: a natural world both vaster and more intimate, a world lying almost dormant in the deepest recesses of the unconscious, at a level where man's primeval dreams and motivations are born. It is that great divide, separating our natural from our civilised selves, where 'animus' and 'anima' meet, where the mystery of reintegration will, if it can, occur. Will it in fact ever be possible? Only the solitary man can answer that question today; plunging into the depths, seeking out that tiny nodule of consciousness where a still, forgotten voice says 'I am'. Painting, by breaking the vow of silence, is then the voice of a man who 'cannot withhold from speaking'.
***
The above text was written in 1974 for the catalogue of Patrick Swift's only exhibition in Lisbon, at the S Mamede Gallery. The opening took place just a month before the 'flower revolution' of 25 April. During the following years, Patrick Swift devoted himself to running the traditional pottery he had created in Algarve... Patrick Swift had gone to the Algarve in search of the retreat and solitude he needed to sound, through his painting, his inner self. And he was fortunate, for he had long periods of pure creative peace...
The Portuguese, as is often the case, have not yet fully appreciated what Patrick Swift did for their country. (It is interesting though, that Francisco Sá Carneiro was one of the few who did recognise his work; when he became Prime Minister he commissioned him to paint his portrait.)... but this is also partly due to his personality and style of life. Proud, wise and independent he despised opportunism and was hostile to easy success...
I see him yet, a good and dear friend! I shall always see him as a man of profound dignity, generous and proud, a man ceaselessly questioning and seeking, and sometimes seemingly lost in a contemplation of the infinite mystery of life, far in some remote land of savage beauty.
— Lima de Freitas (Portuguese artist and writer), Patrick Swift 1927-83, Gandon Editions, 1993
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Note: many of the reproductions displayed here are of poor quality
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By Swift
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Nano Reid - Some notes on Caravaggio - Italian Report - The Artist Speaks - X magazine - RHA Exhibition 1951 - Eça de Queiroz & Fernando Pessoa - The Portuguese Enigma - Notebooks - All
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About Swift
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Main
Patrick Swift: An Irish Painter in Portugal - IMMA 1993 Retrospective Catalogue - Dublin 1950-2 - By His Friends - X magazine - Poems - Further Quotes About - All
By His Friends
Anthony Cronin - John Ryan - John Jordan - C.H.Sisson - Martin Green - John McGahern - David Wright - Lima de Freitas - Katherine Swift - Tim Motion - Lionel Miskin - Jacques D'Arribehaude - Brian Higgins - George Barker - Patrick Kavanagh
Further Quotes
Brian Fallon - Aidan Dunne - Derek Hill - Brendan Behan - Lucian Freud - Patrick Kavanagh - Elizabeth Smart - Further Quotes About
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