THE LATEST IN ART.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1624, 16 December 1912, Page 6

THE LATEST IN ART.

0 : POST-IMPRESSIONI3M. WHAT THE PUBLIC THINKS OF IT.

[BY S. V. BBACHEE.]

•* London, Oofcober 31. Perhaps the beat way of enjoying soma of the Post-Impressionist pictures now displayed at the Grafton Galleries is to treat them os, material for a guessing game. It takes at least two to play it, but the more the merrier. One of the party carries a catalogue. Pausing before a canvas, which is covered with streaks and splotches of paint bearing no apparent resemblance to anything, the members of the party guess what is is called. And 'refcrenco to the catalogue shows, 'usually, that they are all mistaken. When, we went round, for instance, we paused before one of the works of Picasso, who is reokoued a very great man among the Post-Impressionists. "Something architectural" was one guess; "Shipping" was another. The catalogue called it "Head of a Man." Let it bo understood that I saw and write of these things, not as an artist, or as an art crotio,' or expert of any land, but as an ordinary member of the 'general public. The Post-Impressionista may say—l do not know if they do—that the- general public has no right to have any opinion about such high mysteries. Still, they take our shillings at the door and charge us another shilling for a key to the mean a catalogue—so we should at least be allowed to tender some humble acknowledgment of an hour's genuine, and, I hope, innocent, amusement. [ Perhaps a few of the people v?ho were in the galleries at the same time as ourselves really took the pictures seriously. Perhaps they felt themselves in' the. presence of greatness, and went into ftrvours of aesthetic exaltation. I can only say that I saw' no sign of thf.t sort of thin?. What I ddd see and hear was ' the laughter with which people eipresi their sense of the utterly absurd. "Some Sort of Emotion." > We crossed more than once the path of a party of. gentlemen, conducted by. one who seemed to be in some sort of official relationship to the show. He was pointing out with feeble, but persistent smiles, some of what I suppose are called its "beauties." One or'two of the party, though serious enough when, face to face with him, grinned behind his. back. Others who hod been protesting that they had simply come to learn, made such remarks as this: "I have a little girl at home. She is seven years of ago. If she did anything like that,_ I would send her away and burn her paints." "I think," said another; "they all want a . pood thrashing." To whom the cicerone, desperately, "So you admit, then, that tho Post-Impressionists give you some sort of emotion." . Not to Paint Too Well. To communicate emotion and not to paint too well are, one gathers, the object and the rule of these exemplars of ■the latest thing in art. "Accusations of clumsiness and incapacity," ... says Sir. Roger Fry in the catalogue, "fall wide of the mark, since it is not tho object of these artists to exhibit their skill or proclaim their knowledge, but only to attempt to express by pictorial and plastic form certain spiritual experiences; and in conveying these, ostentation of skill is likely to be even more fatal than downright incapacity." He admits that "the logical extreme of such a method would undoubtedly be the attempt to give up all resemblance to actual form, and to create a purely abstract language of form—a visual music; and the later works of Picasso show this clearly enough." , Among these later works is, of course, the truly remarkable "Head of a'Man already mentioned. Very similar is the composition entitled "Buffalo 8i11....0ne might study it till Domesday without discovering whether it was a landscape, a portrait, an interior, or a battle-piece. '■ "Books and Bottles." , The most careful • scrutiny of tho. pic- . ture called "Books and Bottles" foils to . reveal anything resembling either bottle' or book, and one iß:equ'ally;iri'the'''dark--.-- . as to the nature of''th'e'emotions>f«lt''by "'''■" tho artist in the presence of such objects. One must wait, as Mr. Pry sug- .. gests, till one's susceptibilities to such stract form have been more practised than • '' they are at present. In the meantime v 'the uninitiated mind cannot forbear to wonder what the bottles contained, and whether tho artist emptied, them before he began to paint. But, of course, one must not say such things, for Post-Impressionism is to be taken very seriously. All these pictures, according to another apologist in the catalogue, "are manifestations of a 6"'ritual revolution which proclaims art a religion, • and forbids its degradation to, tho level . of a trade. They are intended'neither to' please, to natter, nor to shock, but " to express great emotions and to provoke ; them. The artists, we are told, are not incapable of "the descriptive imitation of natural forms." We have it from Mr. Fry that Picasso's "Portrait of Mile. L. B. ; ' is as good a. likeness as anybody could : produce. Most of the pictures fall between the two extremes represented by . this portrait and "Buffalo Bill." , The , subjects are recognisable, but' the artists have so successfully avoided the "ostentation of skill" that the impression received by most of the visitors to the gaU lcries is one of "downright incapacity. Angles where nature makes curves, unpleasing and utterly unlifelike colours, hard, thick outlines, an endless variety of ugliness—such are the usual characteristics.. The excepting any who may have learnt the "purely ab- . stract language" of Post-Impressionism —are bound to take the whole collection as a joke. Otherwise it becomes a nightmare: Degrees of Ugliness. In one picture a party of a dozen or fifteen people in various stages of undress are seated at a picnic meal. _ The flesh of some of these persons is bright yellow, of some dull grey, and of others purple. In the middle distance is a sulphur-col-oured lake, with a woman of tho same hue bathing in it, and behind everything is a crimson mountain. There are many , paintings from the nude, all of which appear to the uninitiated badly drawn, atrociously painted, and cither' grotesque or repulsive. There are also a few pieces of ~ statuary which vary in degree of ugliness, but have distortion and disproportion as their common characteristics. The exhibition of two years ago was concerned with the "old masters" of PostImpressionism? This one is designed to show the contemporary development of the oult, "not only in France, its. native place, but in England, where it .is of very recent growth, and in Russia," but Post-' Impressionist schools are flourishing in several other countries. One notices in the catalogue: that the gentlemen (including Lord Curzon, Sir Edgar Vincent and Mr. Lewis Harcourt, the Secretary for tho. Colonies) 'who by "lending their names" as members of the honorary committee, "have been kind enough to give this project their general support." "are • not responsible for the choice of the pictures." But even if the connoisseurs are almost as backward as the public, are there no others? One'of the writersin the catalogue sees "no reason why a mind sensitive to form and colour, though it inhabit another solar system and a body altogether unlike our own, should fail to appreciate" Post-Impressionist art. But ■unfortunately the inhabitants of other solar systems do not, so far as we know, frequent tho Grafton Galleries. Wo, for our part, found it a pleasant change to walk out into Bond Street among peopl" not altogether unlike ourselves.