On this day: March 10, 1915
This is only a group for exhibition purposes. The pictures of Mr Wyndham Lewis and of Miss Sylvia Gosse seem to belong to different ages and continents. There would not be so wide a difference if Cimabue and Chardin were hung in the same gallery.
Messrs Lewis, [Edward] Wadsworth, and [William] Roberts are more rigid than ever. Their pictures are not pictures so much as theories illustrated in paint. In fact, we can only call them Prussian in their spirit. These painters seem to execute a kind of goose step, where other artists are content to walk more or less naturally. Perhaps if the Junkers could be induced to take to art instead of disturbing the peace of Europe, they would paint so and enjoy it. But we do not feel that these gentlemen enjoy it. They are not Prussian enough for their theories. They seem to have set their teeth firmly and done their worst in a kind of aesthetic asceticism which prevents them from taking an interest in anything actual or concrete whatever. We only wonder what they will do next in the way of renunciation.
Mr [Jacob] Epstein in his sculpture the “Rock Drill” has not gone quite so far as he might. You can see that his figure not only expresses some kind of energy or strain, but also that it has been suggested by a human being. It has limbs, a body, and a head, although it looks almost as much a machine as the drill it is manipulating. We have yet to see sculpture that is purely abstract, and when that has been produced perhaps sculptors will begin to return again towards the concrete. Mr [Gaudier-]Brzeska goes nearly as far as he can in his alabaster statuette, but his “Singer” might almost sing, and is quite a pleasant work.
Miss Sylvia Gosse’s “The New Recruit “ is charming, entirely her own and not at all Mr Sickert’s; shadowy, hesitating, as if she did not want to press her point too far, and yet it is a picture of a recruit and not merely a piece of genre. Mr Paul Nash’s “Helm Crag” and “The Monkey Tree” both look random and careless watercolours, but they come off, one cannot tell why. The exhibition contains other works of quiet interest, as well as some that are neither quiet nor interesting.