ART
WORK by the American painter Ben Shahn may be seen in an Arts Council exhibition at the Mayor Gallery. It stretches over a period of about fifteen years, during which time Mr. Shahn has clearly increased his technical control and the sophistication of his outlook to a considerable degree, and it now reveals most of the character- istics of contemporary American painting. That is to say—to name but three—it reflects the American scene ; shadows are formed by lowering the tonality of the local colour ; and a slight tinge of Surrealism's emotional intensity is used to lift what would otherwise be unexceptional work on to a more interesting plane. The careful scaling down of figures--a trick learnt from Dali—and the converse close-up are combined in the best of the recent pictures with a nice sense of placing and design, colour that is sometimes excellent, and a pleasant, decorative handling of the material. Mr. Shahn is no colossus, but he might be a great deal worse.
Another Arts Council exhibition which I feel bound to mention is that of paintings from the Burrell Collection, which will be shown in about twelve different places in Scotland. Mostly French and British, these pictures include some really splendid works, from Nicholas Hillyard's Lord Burghley to Cizanne's La Maison de Zola a Medan, and will well repay a visit.
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Mr. Raymond Coxon, whose paintings are being shown at the Leicester Galleries, is a romantic post-Impressionist who likes the dark cavity and mysterious recessions to be seen in woods through a grill of foreground leaves, the rich corruscations of grand and rolling landscape, and the hidden pool. A certain timidity and a sometimes complete absence of construction render many of his oils and water-colours formless, but his less summary work is full of feeling. In particular his bathers in secret, twilight places—feature- less figures of a glimmering innocence—are touching and individual. At the same galleries is work by Mt Derek Hill, who has inherited Sickert's part of the Impressionist estate, and .seems likely to hand it on intact. His portrait of Mrs. Mangan is one of the best of these sincere, sensitive and often unremarkable paintings.
M. H. MIDDLETON.
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