Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/130999
this was an occasional activity rather than a habitual one. The exchange of work between artists is usually a mark of mutual respect and affection, but can also be fraught with complications. One artist may want to swap, while the other feels pressured into it; or the balance of work may not quite match for each artist. Scott raised the stakes in this arena by offering a high-quality work to the friend or colleague he had selected to exchange with: generally this had a good effect and elicited a high-quality item in return. Scott was perhaps shrewd in choosing not only artists whose work he liked but those who also admired his work. the finest art critics of the century, wrote perceptively of Scott's work. 'It is the sensation of space and depth in a painted flatness,' he explained in 1953, 'that inspires much contemporary painting. Scott is a brilliant exponent of it.' And here is a particularly beautiful and vivid description of Scott's work from the same year: 'The restless pulse of living things everywhere inhabits his forms, pulling them out of the square, out of the straight.' For his part, Scott was prepared to go on record (on BBC TV's Tonight programme in 1958) saying what a great colourist Heron was, and that colour was everything to him. Heron later commented that at the time this was certainly news to him... In the late 1940s and 50s Heron wrote a great deal about Bonnard, whom Scott was later to describe as the painter he most admired among the Moderns, and doubtless the two friends discussed the Frenchman's work in some depth. Scott would have been able to use this newly-acquired knowledge in his work, for he still looked to European models though he had first-hand experience of the New American painting from his New York visit in 1953. Heron described Scott's work as a synthesis of European and American: 'the deliberate science of French painting is married to that raw energy, and that spirit of radical innovation, which one associates with the Americans.' Mary and William Scott with Martha Jackson and Jack Mayer Paris, 12 November 1962 Courtesy of William Scott Foundation For instance, Patrick Heron (1920-99) and Scott developed a strong personal and professional friendship in the early 1950s, and remained close throughout the decade. Heron, who doubled as one of 8 Heron sometimes stayed at Scott's London flat in Edith Grove, as Scott stayed with him at Zennor in Cornwall, and when the Scotts decided to buy a house in neighbouring Edith Terrace, they generously assigned the lease of their flat to Heron, which became his London base for the rest of his life. Heron was of a more analytical and intellectual cast of mind