Carving, modelling, painting: Adrian Stokes and Merlin James

As an antidote to reductive tendencies in much psychoanalytic art criticism, this article takes up the writings of the English art critic, Adrian Stokes. The great virtue of his criticism is that, rather than deciphering images, he responded to the handling of materials and the qualities of the medium. His key critical terms, carving and modelling, although derived from sculpture, are more generally illuminating. They are not just techniques but attitudes to the world informed by Melanie Klein’s ‘paranoid–schizoid’ and ‘depressive’ positions. The article concludes with a brief discussion of the painting and writing of one contemporary British artist who has a high regard for Stokes, Merlin James.