ART
IT has been said before that Ben Nicholson's sterilised and hygienic theorems echo in some measure the exquisite felicities of his father. I do not think that he has sprung any surprises on us in his new show at the Lefevre Gallery. For his uncompromising integrity I am lost in admiration ; for the impeccable taste he invariably displays I am duly grateful but before his relentlessly cold and austere intellectuality—a culmination in the planning of static relationships— I find myself intimidated and a little lonely. To some extent every painter believes in the transcendental quality of his work, but it is difficult to see how much more Mr. Nicholson's geometry could be purified without its autonomous existence being threatened, or, as Mr. Reginald Brill has put it, "emptying away the baby with the bath water." After prolonged contemplation of one of his ruler- and-compass decorations I want to cry out for some spark of humanity, some warmth of emotion or at least some suggestion of movement, energy and vitality. For this reason I am much happier with his landscape and " subject " compositions, some of his early work conceived in post-Cubist idiom and his more gaily-coloured pictures. If I wish that Mr. Nicholson had turned his talents more purposefully in this direction, however, I must not deny him little masterpieces of perfection in his own more limited field.
The opposite pole to this rarified painting is represented, I sup- pose, u by someone like Jack Yeats, passionate, humanist and undisciplined. A tinge of his feeling for life may be detected in the work of his young compatriot, Louis Le Brocquy, whose watercolours of Irish tinkers are on view at Messrs. Gimpel Fils. The fierce and feckless tinker, one gathers, has for him a symbolic quality as repre- senting one of the last free and uninhibited groups of the Western world still outside the drag-net of so-called civilisation. Their esoteric mysteries hinting at strange knowledge, their pride, their humour, their crafty, crazy innocence he has caught in some measure with a freedom of expression matching their own, though tempered with a sophistication learnt in France. The resultant alloy is tricky and not entirely satisfactory. Le Brocquy's use of a system of fractured planes, left over from Cubism—a system essentially classic and architectural—does not, in these watercolours seem to relate to his desire for a romantic evocation of mood, with the result that they often seem restless and mannered. His oils, however, seem to be more fully considered and integrated—the work entitled The Con- demned Man is admirable—and I hope we may see more of them at an early date.
The London Group exhibition at the R.B.A. Galleries, like any other large mixed shay of contemporary work, defies detailed analysis. As the only remaining exhibiting society which does not suffer from hardening of the spiritual arteries, however, it most certainly deserves attention. Here, in harness if not always pulling in the same direction, may be found more serious British artists under one roof than in any other similar show. M. H. MIDDLETON.
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