ART IN PARIS

New Zealand Times, Volume L, Issue 11412, 8 January 1923, Page 4

ART IN PARIS

AUSTRALIAN LADY'S IMJPRESSIONB. "I saw so many pictures, in Paris that I became footsore and brain weary," arid Miss Ethel Stephens, who has just returned; to Sydney,, after a three years' stay in Paris. .At the Old Salon,” she said, "there are about '4600 pictures. It would' take a day to, view them; but after three hours you are glad, to take refuge in that aanctukry df rest celled 'Salon da, Itepoe.'t At. the Autumn Salon there, to, a maze of ultra modem works which total 8000; the new salon has 2500 works;, while the Boyal Academy has a mere’ ’ 1250. The Autumn Salon; is devoted to the latest phases in painting, sculpture, poetry, drama, music, drees, and dancing. Here , the big attractions are: A drees parade, a new ballet, a performance of an up-to-the-minute play, and a poet's reoitation of a masterpiece of - his own. Among the dancers who; appeared on the Salon stage was Mile. - Yvonne Daunt, a Melbourne girl, who ie celebrated as a premiere danseuse of the advanced sohool. I heard some of' the modern music; it was as incomprehensible as some of the pictures. Any painting with a" definite composition is regarded by the radical section as old-fashioned,-and the work of men like Liicien Simon, Blanche, and Menard is labelled as academio. An ideal portrait of the new school is a head two feet long, the face being hacked out in hard outlines. 1 tried to judge these extraordinary compositions as fairly as possible, but 1 became more and more depressed the longer I looked at them."