AUGUSTUS JOHN

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18871, 25 May 1923, Page 4

AUGUSTUS JOHN

AN ARRAY OF INSPIRED WORK. MR MASSEY’S PORTRAIT. * (From Oue Own Correspondent.) LONDON, April 5. Critics have been called on this last weekend to write notices for the 'exhibition of some 30 paintings and a similar number of drawings by Augustus John, which are appealing at the Alpine Club Gallery. But each and all have sett aside their province of critic and have vied, with one another in praise and homage for a master. It is one thing to have seen an odd portrait of this great painter in the Royal Academy and to darri’ to express an opinion of it. It is quite a different thing to be laced with a galaxy of inspired work and to attempt to set down one’s likes and dislikes. After the privilte view a fow days ago the art students of the Academy, the Slade, and Royal College of Art assembled to do honour to Augustus John before he left for the United States. They were reduced to awed silence. Conversation was carried on only in wliispors and dead -silence reigned when John himself joined the throng of his young admirers. ‘•There was something very impressive and touching in this respectful attitude of the young towards the master,” writes one who was present on that occasion, “something suggestive of hero-worship, or of modest disciples gathering to hear the utterance of an inspired prophet. . No other living artist could have had the same restraining effect upon impulsive youth. Indeed, no other living artist could have been, the cause of such a meeting. And when Mr Leon Underwood, modest, nervous, and halting, as though he were himself a student, addressing his lellow-students in the groat man’s presence, explained what Augustus John stood for to tho rising generation of artists, ho went far towards defining John’s exalted place in modern art. He stands for progress and freedom. He has had an irifluenco c.n British art as profound us Oezane’s on French art. He stands for the assertion of individuality and personal expression as against stale schooltaught formulas. He is a dominating force of a significance that can scarcely be grasped by his contemporaries.” “It is something in a world of compromises and half-lights to find anyone so absolutely sure, so courageous, and so convincing ag this artist,” says another writer. “One after the other, the paintings challenge criticism. So overwhelming is their virility, their power, their sheer throbbing brilliance that the spectator has the sensation of catching his breath and falling back a step from the impact.” Another thus expresses ms appreciation: VI realised more than ever that we, have; living amongst us one of the race of the great masters, an artist of such tremendous vital force as to defy ordinary standards of criticism. Augustus John is a real creator. He can afford to take every conceivable liberty which would' be disastrous in the work of other men, and from his brush will flow such vital energy, such noble stylo, that his lapses into distortion, his frequent disregard of jio material beauty of paint, count for nothing. He simply takes your breath away. ■ and leaves you speechless, with a vague recognition of his greatness, and faced hy the hopelessness of the task of putting into words what quality there is in his pictures to work tnis'.mysterious spell.” A PEACE CONFERENCE PORTRAIT. These eulogies, though written by critics long versed in their work, are quite understandable by tho rank and file whose knowledge of art is limited. The tyre cannot but appreciate ho is in tho presence of a master’s work. But, what makes this exhibition of special interest to New Zealanders is the fact, that the potrrait of Mr Massey figures among the immortals. It was painted by John at the time of tho Peace Conference in Paris, It is now offered to the general public for the sum of 850 guineas. It will' be interesting to see it some enterprising collector with his eye to tho future Will speculate in the New Zealand Prime Minister. Certainly, there seems ito have been no application for. it from the dominion itself, yet no dominion Prime Minister has probably had such an honour paid to him before, and I understand that Augustus John feels that ho did justice to himself in this work. “Uncompromising ruggodness,” one critic has described the portrait. It must not be supposed from this, however, that the Premier has been “overdone” as it were. It is, in addition to being a great work of art, a striking likeness. It is intensely alive and the artist has caught Mr Massey at a moment when he was most intensely himself.