On This Day, 17 July 1917

Birmingham Mail

Tuesday 17 July 1917

IMPRESSIONIST PAINTINGS

EXHIBITION IN BIRMINGHAM OF THE NEW ART

An exhibition of pictures and sculpture illustrative of the new movement in art, and which is said be the most complete yet seen in England, is being held in the rooms of the Birmingham Royal Society of Artists. Supporters of the new movement will no doubt find upon the walls a great deal to enthuse over, and the average man who visits this exhibition from spirit of curiosity will find many things to interest him. He may not find much to admire, for there is nothing beautiful or bearing the traces, as art is judged from his standpoint, of even mediocre workmanship. There is much gaudiness, much brilliance of colouring, much crudeness; figures without features or form; trees in which one sees nightmares; and all the rest curious types of impossible things which are the result of the imagination of cubists and impressionists. The latter may argue that they are giving us the real elemental studies of nature, and portraits of people as they really look but are seen only by the elect. The elemental plea is no doubt correct, for a twelve-month-old baby allowed to make a splash on a canvas with a brush holding all the colours of the rainbow would produce results very similar to some of pictures now being shown, and which would be quite as intelligible to the uninitiated.