ART
CARICATURES BY "QUIZ" (POWYS EVANS)
CARICATURE might be termed the art of proportionate emphasis. The caricaturist's results are obtained by a process of disintegration. If we are able to imagine that all the pressure of the laws of gravity have been suddenly released and that the forms and expressions of face and figure begin to disin- tegrate in the direction of their tendencies, only to be arrested at an extreme point where, if disintegration continued further, their identity would be lost entirely—then we shall have some notion of the caricaturist's attitude to his subject. He is a complete system of well-controlled concave and convex mirrors. He knows where to use the one and where the other. He disintegrates his subject up to, but just a little before, bursting point. The bad caricaturist, lacking in imagination, submits his sitter to a kind of uneven pressure, which results in a mere distorted likeness, akin to a rendering of the Welsh accent with a plentiful introduction of " look- yous " but without any real appreciation of the idiosyn- crasies of the dialect. Besides having the power of knowing when he has reached the point of extreme emphasis without losing the likeness, the caricaturist must also, in his technical method, introduce yet one other factor before his caricature
can belong to the realm of wit. This factor, which denotes the line of demarcation between frivolity and wit, may be termed " the economy of force." The good caricature must have not one single redundant line.
" Quiz " is one of our best caricaturists—probably in many respects a purer caricaturist than Mr. Max Beerbolun. One feels, in Mr. Beerbolun's caricatures, that the drawing is the secondary offspring of some piece of shrewd verbal satire. The caricatures of " Quiz " in the Leicester Galleries, on the other hand, are always drawings—felt and created in terms of draughtsmanship. It cannot be said, however, that the decorative effects, in most of them, emanate from the natural flow of the expressive lines. It seems as though " Quiz " had superimposed the decorative pattern to some preconceived formula which had been arrived at by an over- enthusiastic study of the work of Aubrey Beardsley or someone of the same school of black-and-white decorators. When he can allow the decoration to evolve itself from a spirited pen his design will fuse into and become an integral part of the caricature. He will then be a greater caricaturist.
One of the best and purest examples of " Quiz's " work is No. 44 (Sir Oliver Lodge), only equalled in economy of line by No. 15 (Lord Pannoor). No. 24 (Mr. G. K. Chesterton) is a good example of proportionate exaggeration, expressed with pertinent economy.
Many Socialists will find joy in the contemplation of No. 35 (Mr. H. A. Gwynn, editor of the Morning Post). Among the other caricatures of celebrities at their worst, Nos. 11 (Lord Balfour), 12 (Mr. J. R. Clynes), 17 (Mr. Philip Snowden), 11) (Mr. H. A. L. Fisher), 30 (Mr. St. Lee Strachey), 27 (Mr. Robert Graves), 41 (M. Serge Koussevitzki), and 34 (Mr. Noel Buxton) are all of very high merit indeed. Needless to say, Mr. Winston Churchill figures prominently in the exhibition.
W. 111cCmcci.;.
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