Art
Decoration and Observation
Pkitrraros may be divided into three classes : those which produce an immediate effect of pleasure, which may wear off with time ; those which produce at first practically no im- pression, but which closer acquaintance shows to possess considerable beauty ; and those which produce no effect of pleasure at all on. the spectator either immediately or after careful study. The last class we may pass over as definitely bad and negligible, but the other two present difficult problems. We cannot immediately say that the one or the other repre- sents the better kind of art. The older critics abound in stories of intelligent people who, visiting the Vatican to see the frescoes of Raphael, walked right through the Stanze without even recognizing his masterpieces, so little do they strike the imagination at first sight. On the other hand, one would have to be practically blind to pass through the Sistine Chapel without being brought to a halt by the Last Judgment. Michelangelo catches the eye and appeals directly to the imagination, and with paintings as arresting as his the test is whether the effect wears off or not. I can think of other paintings-Masaccio's Crucifixion in Naples and Greco's Laocoon, for instance-that take one's breath away at first sight and still do so at the fiftieth visit, but they are rare, and, for myself, I am suspicious of the blustering type of painting which usually lets one down in the end. I like paintings to be an inexhaustible supply of pleasure, revealing new beauties at every contact.
On entering the Mayor Gallery at the moment it is almost impossible not to feel immediately a mildly pleasurable sensation. The walls are hung with canvases by Marie Laurencin, a series of flower paintings, the delicacy and good taste of which at once captivate the eye. And yet after a short time I found myself compelled to admit that I was not enjoying them as much as I had done when I first came into the room. Then I looked at the catalogue, and in Mr. Somerset. Maugham's introduction I found the explanation. Mr. Maugham describes how he arranged his own collection of paintings by Marie Laurencin in his house on the Riviera, how he framed them in tarnished silver, how he adjusted the furniture in the room and fitted in a couple of mirrors and Venetian candelabra. Then the effect was perfect. Yes, but does not this reveal the crucial fact about Marie Laurencin's paintings-that, elegant, refined, delicate as they are, they are only furniture pieces, that they are decorative painting carried to its last extremity, that they might just as well be tapestries or wall-papers ? And, in my old-fashioned way, I hold to the view that painting should be more than this.
To see painting at its opposite extreme it is only necessary to walk as far as King Street, where the East London Group is holding its exhibition at the Lefevre Galleries. Few things could be less inspiring than the first impression which this exhibition conveys. A quantity of views of the gloomier parts of London, a few not very agreeable interiors and some simple still-life themes are the first objects which force them- selves on the visitor's attention. But gradually it becomes apparent that these subjects are treated in such a manner that they have been made into serious works of art. The themes in general are not of a kind to demand glamorous treatment, and they have received instead careful observation and exact honesty of execution. It would be possible to maintain that Mr. Harold Steggles had carried his refusal to idealize his subject-matter so far that a certain dryness and monotony results in his paintings ; but, apart from this, his treatment is appropriate to what he has to say. Mr. W. J. Steggles is a little less severe, and though he seems to have lost slightly in subtlety of observation since last year his versions of the English village and countryside show a very great understanding. But from the whole group there stands out conspicuously Mr. John Cooper, whose Oast Houses (23) is by far the most completely successful painting in the exhi- bition. It has not the extreme austerity which makes some of the other exhibits difficult to enjoy at first sight, but it avoids equally the opposite extreme of frivolity. It shows that its author has considerable powers of nice observation, but also.that he is not afraid of exploiting as far as is relevant to his theme the sensuous beauty of oil paint. • ArrrnotrY BLUNT,
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