Charles Rennie MacKintosh Exhibition
MEMORIAL Art Exhibitions have an unfortunate knack of containing work that is neither old enough to have developed popular historic interest nor modern enough to attract the younger generation. But the show of Charles Rennie Mac- Kintosh's architectural drawings, water colours and furniture now on view at the McLellan Galleries, Glasgow, is a welcome exception. It is an unfortunate fact that even the educated Scotsman does not seem to realize the international importance of MacKintosh as an architect. Of Lorimer we often hear ; having designed our War memorial his position as a national institution was indeed almost analogous to that of Sir Edwin Lutyens in post-War England ; but the influence of his and Sir Edwin's work outside Britain has been very small compared with the effect MacKintosh has had on the current of modern European design, for German, Dutch and other authorities have long acknowledged MacKintosh to be the originator of what we arc used to thinking of as modern continental architec- ture. To see his Glasgow School of Art, knowing its Edwardian date, is to realize immediately the vital pioneer character of MacKintosh's achievement ; the ideals of structure and plan which inspired the design of that building may indeed have been imperfectly crystalized in the architect's mind, but the modernity of his approach to the problem is very apparent. A glance round this Exhibition reveals an odd mixture of the ephemeral and the lasting, for while most of his decorations and furniture have the distasteful stamp of art nouveau upon them, his designs for buildings have all the simplicity of statement and freedom from traditional claptrap we expect to find in post-War architecture. More important to us still is that MacKintosh's domestic work near Glasgow at Kilmacolm and Helensburgh demonstrates the clear affinity that exists between the native tradition of Scots architecture— simple harled or bare stone buildings designed, almost moulded, to meet the needs of the time economically—and the "functional " building of today. That indication is the most
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