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CURRENT ART SHOWS.
PERCY LEASON.
Mr John Eldershaw at the Fine Art
Society's Galleries; Miss Clarice Beckett at the Athenaeum.
WHEN nine hundred and ninety-
nine artists in the thousand sit
themselves down before their chosen
subjects they do pretty much what
Mr Eldershaw does; Miss Beckett
does what the odd one does.
The nine hundred and ninety-nine
um and ah a little and then proceed
to fit so much of the subject as they
want into their ideas and notions of
what a good picture should be. Some
think the secret of art is composi-
tion or decoration or design; some
count more on drawing or color or
brushwork or soul or catching the
spirit of the thing (whatever that
means): some like a mixture of some
or all of these, and some, of course,
are not too clear about what they
like. But there is not one single cur-
rent notion or idea of what should
go to the making of a good picture
that has not been bandied, around
hundreds, perhaps thousands, of art
schools and studios.
When the artist has only one of
them it is a matter of luck if the
beauty of the subject reaches his pic-
ture intact, and experience shows that
luck does not run that way. At the
best the editing of the subject is al-
ways patent to the sensitive eye.
When the artist pins his faith to more
than one such notion it usually means
the tame sort of realism that is com-
monly mistaken for the true, even by
art critics, and is as pleasant to look
at as the average movie and no more
impressive. The kind of realism, in
short, that once poured out of the
studios so thickly as to give the
"moderns" an excuse for their exist-
ence—they at any rate sought to
make art of character.
Mr Eldershaw's work, on the whole,
lacks character. It is often charm-
ing for the moment, but usually he
plays with ideas of design and con-
trasts and other things so much as
to bring his paintings under the head-
ing of merely nice pictures. When
he leaves his favorite ideas at home
he demonstrates by the greater fresh-
ness and vitality that he gets, as in
"Spring Time," that they are better
left at home.
MISS BECKETT, on the other hand,
takes always to her subjects
nothing but a scientific approach,
a pair of carefully trained and
highly developed eyes and the
mind of the discoverer. The result
is what it always is and always has
been in such a case—work that is
remarkable for originality and char-
acter.
It is true that Miss Beckett was
not mentioned to the s.s. Malolo pas-
sengers as one of Australia's leading
artists. It is also true that the average
picture lover, with an appreciation
reared on the art of the nine hundred
and ninety-nine, might not like her
work any more than the average art
lovers of their respective times liked
the work of Constable, Corot, Rae-
burn, Whistler and others.
But this is only natural. She has
none of the recognisable features of
correct art, and she frequently does
things that are not regarded as right
for any self respecting artist to do.
But one is not fair to oneself to
remember these things, and count
them important. Miss Beckett's pic-
tures are extremely sensitive things,
and to take a .chair at the right dis-
tance from any one of them and wait
for it to assert itself is to be certain
of a rare and very pleasant experi-
ence. Her paint and canvas will pre-
sently become air and light, and her
delicately balanced fractions of shad
ing and color and excellent propor-
tions will demonstrate that almost
anything—even a commonplace piece
of roadway, when accurately seen,
may be as beautiful as anything else,
can art go further than that?
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