ABSTRACT
The conflict between the ‘private’ and the ‘public’ is a problem for all artists: while all art is about ‘life’, not all experiences and feelings can be told. The complex process of ingestion and regurgitation of experience before it can be expressed takes time and often courage to challenge restricting conventions. Most of us are brought up to accept that ethical and moral values pre-exist and cannot change. The realisation that these values can be challenged or that they may not even exist and that individuals either alone or collectively can construct their own, offers the artist a wealth of possibilities. Some retreat and use their art as a means of escape; others seek to use art as a means of challenge, an opportunity to state the absence of a given set of values. In London the Bloomsbury group of intellectuals, writers and artists, which included artists Duncan Grant and Stephen Tomlin, and the critic Roger Fry challenged the conventions and traditions of art and the values of society, while in France Jean Cocteau was part of a movement which demanded that homosexuals should not merely be tolerated but given equality.
