ART
THERE are a number of current exhibitions, all deserving more space than I can give them, to which I would like to refer before em- barking upon the depressing task of reviewing the Academy Summer Exhibition next week. At the Redfern Gallery, apart from some fine Chagal etchings and a group of Klee's minutiae, is a show of melancholy oils by the Belgian surrealist, Paul Delvaux. His pictures may be divided technically into two groups ; in one he expertly superimposes a gentle if familiar Freudiana upon a precise technique reminiscent of the fifteenth-century Flemish primitives, while in the other group he works far less successfully in a flat decorative manner derived from early Chirico. Invariably his subjects are blank-faced, bosomy, long-haired ladies either gossiping with Ensor's skeletons or promenading vaguely in twilit streets and gardens. All of these maidens curiously combine a display of various fetishes with complete sexlessness. His best pictures are extremely skilful and possess a real if rather obvious nostalgic charm.
Wildenstein's have pictures on view by a group of talented and unpretentious artists, some of whose work is quite new to me. Margaret Thomas shows' a dramatic and well-designed landscape and several sensitive flower pictures ; Joseph Gray has a brisk and virile picture of a cornfield, and Clifford Frith—a very young and outstandingly promising painter—exhibits six pictures, well worth the attention of the discriminating collector. The names of Leonard Applebee and Alan Gwynne Jones are by now familiar, and their pictures, academic in the very best sense, dominate the group.
Three other exhibitions should not be missed. The exhibition of Chinese sculpture at the Berkeley Galleries which is coming off all too soon, the Swiss book exhibition at the Suffolk Galleries, which gives ample evidence of the fact that the Swiss are masters of book production and picture reproduction, and, lastly, the truly superb collection of multifarious objets d'art gathered into the one newly reopened room at the battered British Museum. Before this exhibition I doubt if, any single room in this country has ever contained such a galaxy of priceless masterpieces of the applied arts. The pick of the Museum's incredible collection of English illu- minated manuscripts, the newly discovered Celtic treasures of Sutton Hoo, and the medieval plate, embroidery and crystals alone make
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