13 JANUARY 1956, Page 8

IT AMUSES me to see how, in the arts, wild

men from abroad are thought to be more respectable than the native breed. I noticed one or two are critics dealing solemnly, in their reviews of the American exhibition at the Tate, with the works of that dribbler who pours his paint from cans on to a horizontal canvas and hopes for the worst. But he is a feeble operator compared with a British painter I know who sets up his .canvas against the wall and runs past it again and again, squeezing his tubes along the surface, until a suitably pleasing mess is produced. Why should we yield the palm to Mr. Jackson Pollock when we've got wilder and woollier men at home?