ART
SOME familiar, but always welcome, lithographs by Vuillard may be seen at the Hanover Gallery, where Eileen Agar is also showing new paintings. These, still in that interesting territory which is bounded on one side by surrealism and on the other by pure abstraction, display a very clear development since her last exhibition. There are still stylistic echoes of Max Ernst, Chagall and other fantastics, but Miss Agar has strengthened the structural basis of her work considerably. Her preoccupations with textural tricks are still there also, but they have been subordinated in large measure to a more legitimate use of paint. Her patterning of the most brilliant colours has become more concentrated—sometimes, it may be, too much so, with the result that the riotous material almost bursts from the over-filled canvas.
* * * *
To say that London Transport's exhibition of forty years of poster designs at the Victoria and Albert is of the highest interest should be unnecessary. Anyone with a remote concern in the problems of commercial design knows how very much design standards in this country owe to London Transport, and more particularly to the late Frank Pick. Other organisations have shown a passing brilliance of equal or greater intensity, but none can boast of a sustained effort over so long a period. Nonetheless, I was faintly disappointed by this exhibition. Some of the work shown is of no aesthetic interest and of minor historical importance. More particularly, the emphasis on paintings has led to the inclusion of items which have little to do with poster design, and to the suppression of solutio-is based on the mediums of mechanical reproduction, which have been among the most striking and satisfactory of London Transport's contribu- tions to the hoardings. From the complete repertoire, however, we would doubtless all ch)ose different exhibitions. Kauffer emerges more clearly than ever as the most considerable designer of the inter- war period, and takes his place easily in history with the Lautrecs and Beggarstaffs and other early misters' with whose posters the museum authorities have happily prefaced this show.
M. H. MIDDLETON.
Previous page
