'PLANES IN FLIGHT

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 120, 16 November 1929, Page 19

'PLANES IN FLIGHT

PICTURINGCtKEAT SPEED

ARTISTS' PROBLEMS

If, as -Mr. Montagu Slater wrote in his description of the Schneider Trophy contest, the colossal speeds of the latest 'planes are baffling to human sight, and make the eye superannuated,' how will they appear to the artists of form and colour? How can the painter hope to convey the conception of such pace? If the eye fails, how car. his brush hope to cope with such a task? Photography has already had to admit defeat,1 the camera failing to show the difference between 100 m.p.h. and 300 m.p.h. v Many years ago a photographer made a hit by swinging his camera around as the aeroplane rushed past, with the result that the machine was shown sharply defined, but the trees in the background were streaked. The effect was'good, but the machine was doing a mere ninety miles an hour, and when the same method is applied to Schneider Trophy racers there is nothing to show they are going four times as fast (writes Major C. C. Turner in the "Daily Telegraph"). Here, says the very modern artist, Cubism or Futurism will solve the problem. Cover the canvas with wing edges all parallel, with sparkling metal engine-cowlings in geometrical arrangement, with rows of 'iridescent whirling propeller discs, all urging in one' direction/and there yon have it? '.But, have you? It means nothing to me. Surely the great artist would say the thing can be done by composition. You know how the weight of the small bird perched on the ear of > corn is suggested ! by the bending of the ear. You know how the fleck of spray at the top of a wave tells of the wind and of the strength of the wind. But your,eye is following that 300 miles per hour aeroplane, and sees it clearly defined, sub-consciously registering also .a swift procession of fixed objects: the boat moored out there, a house on the farther shore, a seagull, that ugly round fort. Very well then,, paint them all .'in, ghostly super-im-posed, with the. clear-cut aeroplane above. . / • . • liINES OF THE GBEYHOUND. It would be legitimate to paint in a faint stream of smoke from the exhaust of the engine, for one often sees that. But, again, it would not show the difference between 100 m.p.h. and 300 m.p.h. . ; Things which the human eye cannotsee sharp-cut, such as the blades of a whirling propeller, or the spokes of a fast-running wheel, are rightly presented, not as a high-speed camera shows them, but as the flickered disc seen by the human' eye1. The express train's speed is revealed pictorially by the stream of steam flattened down abaft the funnel, and by the indistinguishable wheel spokes. The true artist, I .think, would seek his end by the position of the aeroplane in the picture— not in the centre, but as something- that has already passed and must be followed very quickly by the eye—and by the shape of the machine,,which, in'the;case of these racers, does irresistibly suggest speed, very great speed, just as the lines of the crouching greyhound show you that when'lie cares he can be very swift. Possibly, too, .the artist would show in the same picture another aeroplane whose'shape the most non-technical eye would interpret as indicating something much slower. WASP IN A MATCHBOX, i But if it be a matter of adventitious aids, to the purely pictorial, possibly sound ought to be invoked. Now, one of -the •distinctiv;e;.-;fbaj;ures'of this' re-. markable r flying is: the speed of the machine in relation to the speed > of sound. By the time the roar of the engine reaches the ear, like the twang of a vast cosmic 'cello, the machine is. well on; its way, so that when the eye picks it up. the sound seems to come from a mile behind it—spectators at Ryde observed this. That cannot be put on canvas, of course.; But if we want to be more Futurist than the Futurists, and more Cubist than the Cubists, the, problem might_ be solved in this way; at least such is the suggestion which emerged from a discussion on the matter. Paint, a picture with a Schneider Trophy racer away to the right of the canvas near the frame. Then attach a deep-toned mechanical buzzing contrivance at the back of the canvas <to the left. (Someone suggested a matchbox with a'big wasp in it!) Here is something for Royal Academicians to think. about; and. perhaps. Mr..Epstein would know how-to deal with the.subject in stone!