CONTEMPORARY ARTS
ART
Pietro Annigoni. (Wildenstein's.) FASHIONS change, but the truly fashionable does not: immortally supple, slick, and adept, it survives from mode to mode, pre- serving its essential gloss intact.. This eternal and enduring quality of chic is demonstrated now in Bond Street- -where else?—in a degree of perfection and polish hard to parallel; Pietro Annigpni, whose "genius may be seen in all its variety" at Wildenstein's, knocks all our society painters flat. He does this chiefly by pure technical accomplishment: he is said tot have been ' dedicated to painting' since childhood, and his skill is certainly a good deal beyond what most regulation art-school courses could teach even if they wanted to. He has all the tricks at his command: he can paint a well- varnished beauty with as much skill in trompe-l'ail lavished on her eyelashes as ever a Dutchman expcnded on a bunch of grapes; he can put in the wrinkles with an apparent candour wh:ch makes all the sweeter his dextrous flattery ; he can place his sitter against such a fine symbolic back- ground as must persuade her she is Sybil, Saint and Gioconda rolled into one. groups, fairly whistling for attention, but with no other reason why they should be there; caught for ever in attitudes of adver- tisement and by now, poor things, getting rather bored. The fashion parade moves on, a brilliant and extremely lucrative busi- ness ; only their faces betray the awful ennui that consumes the mannequins.
CHRISTOPHER SMALL
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