ART
NEW CARICATURES BY MR. MAX BEERBOHM
AT THE LEICESTER GALLERY.
\VITEN Mr. Max Beerbohm is referred to as an " institution ". I do not think the term is meant to imply that we have become
anaesthetic to the effects of his work, but rather that he has become a necessary part of our social structure. We should not be at all surprised were he to be absorbed by the Govern- ment and departmentalized. It would be difficult to find a suitable name for the Department. Perhaps " Department for the protection of the public from celebrities " or " Spectator- ship of men and affairs to the nation " might be condensed-
to fit stationery requirements. It would be fatuous to criticize Mr. Max Beerbohm's work from a purely aesthetic.
point of view, for,• unlike the usual caricaturist, lie does not set out to " characterize " the sitter's private visage, but, being primarily a literary man with an itch for a pencil,.
lie takes his sitter as he appears on the footboards, observes his antics in public, and, after reducing his critical analysis to supreme literary terseness, only then amplifies it with trenchant illustration from his equally economical pencil. It is this preoccupation with the sitter's public personality that makes his caricatures, no matter how satirical. they may be, so inoffensive. Mr. Max Beerbohm never poaches within private domains for his secrets ; his secrets are wrested from a source which is public property. In our worship of celebrities we are inclined to develop a blind spot to their human qualities and weaknesses, and it requires someone like Mr. Beerbohm to humanize our public idols and reduce them from abstract deification to tangible realities. His drawings thus form a link between us and our great ones ; we become a happy commune again, and all being human once more we arc able, in this bond of humanity, to identify ourselves with the great. Whether or. not the converse is true it is difficult to say. But it matters little, for our egos arc satisfied, and we can console ourselves with the thought that perhaps, after all, our idols were always human to themselves— (in private at least). We are grateful to Mr. Beerbohm for showing the human frailty behind even the public armour. Are we equally grateful, however, when, from his spectatorial box, he turns his lens upon our mass activities, or sectional affectations, exposing incongruities of which we were com- fortably unaware ? Would it not be better for him to let us have our little egotistic fling in the presence of our celebrities in peace, unchecked by these disconcerting tilts at ourselves ? Could he not reserve the latter for a special exhibition, to which, forewarned, we could refrain from going ? We enjoy the caricature (31) of Mr. George Moore's Old Self holding a conversation in which he modestly admits to his Young Self that there have been no painters. since Manet, no composers since Wagner, and only one novelist, whom we can guess, since Balzac. But surely he does not expect us to have the (41) " Miniature Design for Colossal Fresco Commemorating the International Advertising Convention (Wembley, July, 1924) and the truly wondrous torrents of cant and bunkum that were outpoured from it " executed in a bigger scale for one of our-public buildings, especially after we have swallowed - and relished " the wondrous torrents " which appeared. in our daily Press ; we could never do it ; it world upset our_ dignity. In the Young Self and Old Self series we par- ticularly enjoyed (27) Joseph Conrad, (26) Mr. Arthur Pon- sonby; (22) Lord Balfour, (30) Professor William Rothenstein, (33) Mr. Bernard Shaw and (34) Mr.- Arnold Bennett. Our gratitude to Mr. Beerbohm.
Amongst the other good caricatures which we pretended not to notice were (9) "Things in General," (7) " Civilisation and the Industrial System," and (36) " The Insurgence of Youth.". One of the drawings which is most satisfying from the point of view of draughtsmanship is (2) Mr. Osbert and- Mr. Sacheverell Sitwell. - We long for the publication of these new drawings in book form that we may enjoy them
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