POST-IMPRESSIONISM.

Wanganui Chronicle, Issue 12856, 16 December 1912, Page 8

POST-IMPRESSIONISM.

WHAT THE PUBLIC THINKS OP IT

(By S. V. Bracher.) LONDON, October 31

' Perhaps the best way of enjoying some of the Post-lanpreasioriist pictures, now displayed at the Grafton Galleries is to treat -them as .material for a guessing game. It takes at least two to play it, but the more the merrier. One of the party carries a catalogue. Pausing before a canvas, which is covered with streaks land splotches of paint-bearing no apparent 'resemblance to anything, the memibers of the party guess what it is called. And reference to the oatar logue shows, usually, that they are all mistaken.

When we went round, for instance, we paused before one of the works of Picasso, who is reckoned >a very greaifc man among the Post-Impressionists. " Something architectural" was one guess; "Shipping" was another. The catalogue called it "Head of a Man." Let it be understood that I slaw and write of these things, not as an artist, or as an- art critic, or expert of any kind, b-ut as an ordinary member pf the general public. 'The Post-Impressionists may say—l do not know if they do — that" the general public has no night to have any opinion about, such hagli mys-t-eries. Siill, they take our shillings at; the door and change us another shilling for a bey to the puzzle—l mean a catalogue—so wo should at least ibe allowed to tender some humble acknowledgement of an hour's genuine, and, I hope, innocent, amusement. Perhaps a few of the people who were in the galleries at the same time ias ourselves really took the pictures seriously. Perhaps they felt themselves dn the presence of greatness, and went into fervours of aesthetic exaltation. I call only say that 1 s&lw no sign of that sorb of thing. What I did see and iheair was the laughter witih which ipeople esspress their sense of the utterly absurd. " SOME SORT OF EMOTION." ■ We crossed more than once the math of a. party of gentlemen conducted iby one who seemed to be in some sort of official relationship to the show. He was pointing out with feeible, but persistent smiles, some of what I suppose are''called its "beauties." One or two . of the party, though serious enough when face to face with ihim, grinned beihind'his iback. Others who -had 'been protesting that they had sim/ply come to learn, 'made such remarks as this: "I have a little girl at home. She is seven years of aige. If she did anything like that, I would1 send iher aiwia.v and burn her paints." "T +Kinkj" said another, "they all w;ant a good thrashing." To whom the cicerone, desperately, "So you admit, then, that the Postlanpressionists give you some sort of emotion." <" / NOT TO PAINT TOO WELL. To communicate, emotion land not to paint too well are, one gathers, the object and the rule of these exemplars of the latest thing in art. "Accusations of clumsiness and incapacity," . . . says Mr Roger Fry in the catalogue, "fall wide of the mark, since it is not the -oibject of these artists to exhibit their skill or proclaim their knowledge, but only to attempt to express by jpiotorjal and plastic forlm certain spirituial experiences; and in conveying these, ostentation of skill is likely to be even more fatial than downright incapacity." He admits''that "the loiprioal extreme off suich ia (method would undoubtedly be the attempt to <give up all resemblance to actual form, and to create ia (purely abstract lantgfuage of form—a visual music; >and the later works -of Picasso show *his clearly enough." Among ..these later works is, of course, the truly remarkable "Head of a Man" alreadyv mentioned. Very siimilar is the composition entitled "Buffalo Bill." One might study it till Domesday without discoverjng whether it was la landscape, a portrait, an interior, or a bat-itle-<preoe.

"BOOKS ANiD BOTTLES." The most oareful scrutiny of the ipioture called "Books and Bottles" fails to reveal anything resembling either bottle or book, and one is equally in the - dark as 'to the nature of the emotions felt iby the lartisit in the presence of such objects. One must wait, las Mr Fry Suggests, till one's susceptibilities to such abstract form have been more (practised than they are at present. In the meantime the uninitiated .mind cannot forbear to wonder what the bottles contained, and whether the artist emptied them before he began to paint. But, of course, one must not say such -things, for Post-Jminressiom'sm is to be taken very seriously. All these pio- ■ tures, according to another apologist in the catalogue, "are manifestations.of a spiritual revolution which proclaims art a religion, and forbids its degradation to the level of a trade. They are intended neither to please, to flatter, nor. Ito shock, but to express great emotions , and to provoke them." The artists, we [ are told, are not incapable of ",the dcsI criptive imitation of -natural ' forms." IWe have it from Mr Pry that Picasso's "Portrait of Mile. L. B." w as good a likeness as anybody could produioe. Most of the pictures fall between the two extremes representedl Iby this portrait and "Buffalo Bill." The subieots are recognisable, bat the artists have so successfully avoided the "ostentation of skill" that the impression- received by most of the visitors, to the gailleries is one of "downright incapacity." An- ! gles where nature makes curves, uiipleasing and utterly unlifeliko colours, hard, thick outlines, an endless variety of ugliness—such are tho usual characteristics. The spectators—always excepting any who may have learnt the '"purely abstract ipnguage" of PostImprossionis.m—are bound to take the whole collection as a joke. Otherwise it I becomes a nightmare. DEGREES OF UGLINESS. In one picture a party of a dozen or fifteen people in various stages of undress are seated at a picnic meal. The flesh of some of these persons is 'bright yellow, of same dull grey, and of others purple. In the middle distance is a sulphur-coloured lake, with a iwomfcn. of the same hue bathing in it, and behind everything .is .a crimson mountain. There are .many paintings from the nude, tall of which appear to the uninitiated .badly drawn, atrociously painted, and either grotesque or repulsive. There are (also a few pieces of statuary which vary in degree of ugliness, but have distortion and disproportion as their common characteristics. I The exhibition of two years ago was ■ concerned' with tho "old -masters" of 'Post-iTmpressionism. This one is designed to show the contemporary development of the cult, "not only in France, its native place, but in 'England, where it is of very recent growth, and in Russia," but Post-Impressionist schools are flourishing in several other . countries. One notices in the catalogue that the gentlemen (inldhiding. Lord Curzon, Sir Edgar Vincent and Mr Lewis Harcourt, the Secretary for the Colonies) who by " lending "their names" as members of the .honorary committee, " have been kind enough togive this project their general support," "are not responsible for the choice of the pictures." But even if the connoisseurs are almost as backward as the public, are there no others? One of the writers in the catalogue gees "no reason why a mind sensitive to form and colour, though it inhabit anoitJier solar system and a body altogether unlike our own, should fail to iappreciate". !Post-Impressionist art. But unfortun-

ately the inhabitants of other solar systems do not, so far as W' know, fretjuent the Grafton Galleries. "We, for our part, found it a pleasant change to walk out into Bond Street among people not altogether unlike ourselves.