ART
The London Group IF the New English Arts Club is dull and middle-aged this year, the London Group provides the exact contrast to it, by showing both the failings and advantages of youth. It requires a good deal of courage to go round the rooms at the New Burlington Galleries ; but it must be done, for one can learn a great deal about the present state of English painting from the pieces shown there. One's first impression is of horror at the sight of lots of painters (young, one says apologetically and optimistically) struggling and sweating to be bright. The effect of effort, of determination to be up to date, even if it means doing things which are entirely uncongenial, hits one constantly. All round the walls splutter and splash the backwashes of Picasso, the Superrealists, abstract painters like Helion, and even more restrained painters like Matisse and Segonzac. Few things are more gloomy than large groups of English people trying to be continental.
But among the rubbish—and to quote names in this context would be offensive unless the attack was carried out in much greater detail and with a fuller weight of argument than is possible here—there appear certain paintings which stand out by the fact that they do not try to stand out. It is a positive shock, and a pleasurable shock, suddenly to come upon an ordinary painting, which apparently is as it is because the artist wanted to make it so, and not because he thought it his business to make it otherwise.
The authors of these paintings work as they do apparently because they begin by wanting to paint a particular subject which seems to them interesting ; whereas most of the members of the London Group start, it appears, with a desire to paint in some particular manner. The painters of the first kind will be too much interested in what they are trying to say to have time to be affected. This does not, of course, mean that they will be inefficient, or that they will neglect technical matters, but these will perform their proper function as means not as ends. Manner will not occupy the entire fore- ground, as it sloes in so many paintings in this exhibition. But let us come to particular cases. Perhaps the most striking ordinary painting is Mr. Coldstream's portrait of W. H. Auden (125). The painting leaves no doubt that Mr. Coldstream was interested in Mr. Auden as a man and wanted to paint him for that reason. He was interested in him personally, not as a patch of colour, or because his head was an interesting shape, or for any reason of that kind. And he was interested in him, not in his make- up, as is the case in a very smart portrait conveniently hung nearby for comparison (133), by which the suspicion is aroused that it is the lip-stick and the dress that have caught the painter's attention, not the human being which they cover. Moreover, Mr. Coldstream seems to be taking to a rather more firm method of expression. The portrait of Avery Colebrook (54) is ad- mirably sensitive and has the same seriousness as the Auden, but the latter has a decision lacking in Mr. Coldstream's earlier works. He seems now a little more certain of the comment that he wishes to make.
Mr. Medly's portrait of Mr. Isherwood (89) is as straight- forward and more robust, though it has to make certain sacrifices in sensitivity. But this artist seems to be making great advances in the direction of realism. Two of his scenes from street life seem to me to be slightly spoilt by the emotional use of red which seems out of character with the matter-of-fact conception of the scene. But in one, Men, Women and Children Talking and Playing (38), he seems to have got over this and to have made his statement more precise and direct. If I must be captious, I should still complain that some of the figures are unnecessarily caricatured, whereas others are more naturalistic, and that the unity of feeling thereby suffers.
One other fact about the exhibition is of importance. Mr. Moynihan, who last year showed a series of paintings which were the last word in abstraction, in which even form had been almost eliminated, this year comes forward with a group of portraits and a landscape, which if they are not realistic in the sense that the word applies to the artists just mentioned, are at any rate naturalistic in that they paint people and things in a recognisable manner. Great interest in the subjects chosen is combined with the skill in subtle colouring which was the essential feature of Mr. Moynihan's abstract pieces. May we hope that his chznge is symptomatic ?
Ammoriv BLUNT.
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