Wieneke Archive Book 4g : Art in Brisbane Presscuttings

I -- Ails Council Exhibitions Arts Council Gallery 4, St. James's Square London, S.W.I Roman Portrait Busts Opening October 30 Weekdays WA Sundays 2-6 Admission Is. Tate Gallery Millbank, S.W.1 Renoir Closes October 25 Weekdays 10-6 Tuesdays and Thursdays 10-8 Sundays 2.6 Admission 1/ - Yugo -Slav Medieval Paintings (replicas) October 23 -- December 13 Weekdays 10-6 Tuesdays and Thursdays 10.8 Sundays 2-6 Admission Is. ARTISTS HOUSE Maness Street (Charing Cross Rd.), W.1. Mondays-Saturdays 11:6 Admission free 3-0 Drawings by HEROD and KENTON october 14-2N THE ARCADE GALLERY 28 Old Bond St.,W.1 10-5 Sais. 10-1 EXHIBITION OF GOTHIC AND EARLY RENAISSANCE PAINTINGS Closes October 24 THE ARCHER GALLERY 303, Wcstbourne Grove. R'11. Toes.-Sao. 10.5 Sundays 2- HENNING NYBERG October 13 - November 7 THE A.I.A. GALLERY 15 Lisle Street, W.C.2 114, Adm. free THE GERMAN EXPRESSIONISTS Until (ktober 2(1 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 -0/0,04/11/Wireee //WI IINZ.N.-NVAN,-"6:+7.4,7%,NNVN,N rerrt( '1011 t) I" is: ,p Heiler Gallery, Cambridge Ar TIII. Heifer Gallery. Cambridge, there is an excellent exhibition of modern British sculp- ture. Almost everything on show is really recent: the only notable artist not represented by current work is Turnbull. whose bronzes date from 1951. Until recently, many of the younger sculptors used biological forms lower than the human: this was supposed to express a feeling for life as something basic and pervasive. There is a tendency now away from late surrealist bin- morphism towards more direct versions of the human image. Though a drawing of 1952 reminds us of Reg Butler's mastery of the Rem', he shows a Girl in shell bronze of this year which confirms the impression of the "watchers" in the Prisoner maquette, that the human contour is becoming more important. Recently, Paolozzi has modelled several small heads: three of them are ut Cambridge. two in bronze, one in aluminium. They are simple and rich, reminiscent of the 14th century anatomy in the Parallel of Life and Art at the I.C.A. They suggest also, by their comfortable scale, perfectly adjusted to the hand, ornamental rolls from the bakery. There is no suggestion of the shrunken human head about them. Armitage is showing two single figures, both this year's. The best of them is. I think, No. 2. It is part -totem. part playing -card: nose, breasts, navel, and hands push out from both sides of the flattish bronze plate. The nicety with which he retains a fragmentary human anatomy as he juggles with proportion has an Italianate sensuality: he never loses the buttocks' curves or dimples. The human image may be returning in modern sculpture, but only in certain forms and situations: despite their difference Paolozzi and Turnbull (not in this exhibition) seem to be on the right lines. Footballers have been replacing unknown political prisoners lately hut modern sculpture cannot use them. Geoffrey Clarke's competition -piece is on view at Heifer's. It is a real curiosity- -a half -circle of fire -irons, which looks like a maddening, up-to-date version of one of those games of football in amusement arcades, with robot players who kick when you jerk a handle. Only Clurke's sculpture has no handle. Apart from these and other young sculptors. Moore and Hepworth arc represented. Moore is showing one of those rootless, panicky experiments which have occupied him lately, a bronze Mother and Child (1952) which reminds me of Lipchitz, particularly in the metamorpho- sis of the baby into a hungry guitar. Such a transformation of cubism is stale now. Hep- worth, unlike Moore. has continued developing purposefully, but in her way she, too, is disap- pointing: her Small Stone with Strings (1951- 52) is mature but stereotyped. Lawrence Alloway. 'Abbreviation used in science -fiction for bug-eyed monster. A.I.A. Tnt rXHIRITION OF works by German Expres- sionist painters which was first shown at the City of York Art Gallery has now reached London in the course of its peregrinations through Britain. A personal anthology, being in effect a private collection, it yet represents clearly enough the particular nature of the movement which contributed so much to the aesthetic experience of our time. Nearly all the great names arc here, though the two works by Kadinsky are slight, and Lyonel Feininger, not one of the most important members of the Bauhaus. is rather over represented. Two litho- graphs by Kokoschka, live etchings (with water colour added) by the sculptor Lchmbruch, and a variety of drawings by that most interesting artist Christian Rohlfs, who died in 1938 at the age of 90. demonstrate the work of the artists who were on the fringe of the movement. ART NEWS AND REVIEW Leger At tctA Bovtx, who is holding her third exhibi- tion at the Leger Galleries, is an Irish artist whose work is both iminediatels captivating and has a lasting appeal. Her painting is very Irish, whymsicul, fey and a little sad, but at the same time displaying a controlled lyricism. Her colouring is soft. yet she commands a consider- able range of tones and has a highly developed sense of colour orchestration. Her two greatest weaknesses are the limited range of emotion she seems to wish to express and a tendency towards weak design. But even unfavourable judgments along these lines are overruled when we are faced with particular pictures in this exhibition. For in them the artist expresses herself with clarity on the one hand and subtlety on the other. Certain of these paintings, like Two Ways, Henfold (IS). The Broken Fence (26) and Cider Orchard (27). illustrate two of the appealing aspects of Alicia Boyle's work, namely her sen- sitive response to certain moods of nature and her delicate sense of colour; Two Ways. Hen - fold, in particular, is a delightful study in greens. But at the same time there is a touch of the whymsical about these and all her other pictures, and even when she is apparently at her gayest, as in Fountain Street. Londonderry (21) there is a suggestion of that delicate melan- choly which is so essentially Irish. Her three best pictures seem to me to be The Door of the Manor (3), a simple yet eloquent little study, Lighters at Low Tide (22) which indicates that at times her design is not only adequate, but also assured and The Blue Pinafore (28) which makes a direct and moving emotional appeal. Terence Mullaly. Chinese Print THE CHINESE WERE one of the first peoples to awake to a realisation of the possibilities of mechanical reproduction of graphic forms. Their alphabet itself is an incentive to formal elegance, and visitors to the current exhibition of honks and periodicals from "New" China at Collet's Book Gallery, in Museum Street. will he pleased to see how continuous is the Chinese tradition of beauty. Despite the apparent diffi- culties, modern Chinese printing seems lucid and lovely, and to contemplate it will mean much even to those for whom the content of the hooks has neither meaning nor significance. Wilton Gallery HERE IS ONE of the most fascinating exhibitions of the season. In the main it is devoted to the works of an early nineteenth century artist. Charles Topliss, about whom little is known. Some twenty water-colour paintings by him- all of the same format-are on view. They are utterly different from any others of the same period - flat, clear and precise, with the sim- plicity of colouring and composition which would mark the work of a primitive, and yet neither crude nor unskilled. At times they have the almost apocalyptic sincerity of a Stanley Spencer, yet it is easy to sec in them the same clarity which underlies the design of Regency houses or the prose of Jane Austen. Topliss' works arc mostly topographical, and one of the most fascinating shows the backs of a row of houses with washing gaily fluttering on the line. But there is none of the pathos, or the drama which at this period distinguished the work of more sophisticated artists. Their nearest pic- torial equivalent is the Image d'Epinal. To reinforce this discovery there is also on view a collection of works by other primitives (in the Grandma Moses sense) of the eighteenth and early nineteenth cent Ty. Some of them, in- cluding especially the panoramic view of a valley with an early steam train puffing its way acroF,s, arc similar in feeling to the American works of the same kind which were illustrated in a book published some live years ago. But others go back to th,. Elizabethan conceptions of form and expres! lotably the gem of the collection a view o Market Square at Nor- wich about 1770. acme of the portraits, too. are attractive, and there is a delightful view of a scene in India. ART NEN .1 awe ON !hi THIS WAS r published al mic positioi think it is more. We different to I turning out young men tory. theory . were before man servicci background teaching du, the position earnest is it tury ago. 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