ART
THE Lefevre Gallery is filled with a- collection of printed silk squares designed by some of the finest French and English talent available; the London Gallery contains the results of an American film company's competition for a contemporary Temptation of St. Anthony, in connection with a production based on de Maupassant's Bel Ami. In both cases the terms of reference and employment were lenient and generous; the painters and designers were accorded com- plete freedom. The Aschers indeed told their artists not to worry about how the design would look when folded, and have exhibited the results framed as pictures. Maybe this is going too far. I feel Keith Vaughan is nearer the mark when he says, "The problem as I see it is not so much to get a design- which looks right in a rigid square, but a design which will hold together when the square becomes fluid and the material draped. Furthermore the design must be part of the material; as it were a flower that has bloomed on it." It may give one a psychological kick to know one's head is wrapped in Frances Hodgkins' landscape, but the abstract designs —Sutherland's black and mauve trellis, Matisse's elegantly simple ' contribution, or any of those by Ben Nicholson, Robert Colquhoun, John Tunnard or Ivon Hitchens—seem to me to fulfil their function more happily. The literary precision and sensational character of Surrealism are right up Hollywood's street, and the exhibition at the London Gallery is interesting in revealing the grip the movement in its steady trip round the world now has upon America. Stanley Spencer's pink and pearly nudes seem scarcely at home here among their more horrific neighbours, and Delvaux obviously looked out from the basement a canvas which was not wanted elsewhere for a bit ; but nearly all the other contributors have devised orthodox Sur- realist concoctions of evil, very largely derived from Bosch and his contemporaries. Dali provides air-borne elephants with trailing daddy-long-legs limbs—one of his strangest works; Albright (of Dorian Grey) is bogged down in his own complexity. The others have their moments, but scarcely reveal any real depth of feeling— and that includes, for me, the version by Max Ernst which was chosen for use in the film.
At the Leger Galleries are paintings by three young people: Ursula McCannell, John Verney and Peter Rees-Roberts. They have, all three, a sense of paint and colOur and composition, but, whereas the latter pair have yet to find themselves, Miss McConnell knows where she is going just a little too well. She is exceedingly accomplished, but her work is mannered for her years.
M. H. MIDDLETON.
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