ART
• Early Cubism and Superrealisn.
THE exhibition of paintings by Picasso and Chirico at the Zwemmer Gallery provides an admirable opportunity of studying the origins and early history of the two most important movements in the arts 'during the present century, namely Cubism and Superrealism. The Picassos date mainly from the Years 1905 to 1914 and contain many of the capital works of that period which have never been seen in England before. The exhibition opens with a small group of drawings from the first years of Picasso's activity as an artist and are just enough to Provide a contrast to the later paintings. One is struck with surprise at the extraordinary change which Conies over this artist about 1907 when he throws up the elegant and almost over-refined style which he had been practising up to that time and bursts out into a savage and aggressive manner, in which he seems to impose his will upon nature instead of letting nature dictate the picture, is had in a certain sense been the case before. This change was no doubt in part due to the influence of Negro sculpture with which Picasso came into contact at about that time, but this influence could never have become operative unless there had also been some upheaval going on inside Picasso himself at the same time. What this may have been it is impossible to say, but something seemi to have kicked the artist into an intense excitement which he has perhaps never quite recovered since. The paintings of the years 1907 to 1912 mark a break in the development of painting which is probably unique in its suddenness: In two or three years the whole basis of realistic painting was swept away and artists found themselves in the middle of Cubism. The result is that the works of these pre-War years have a vitality lacking in almost all the painting produced since the War, which seems often to be a mere repetition of what had been done with the freshness of discovery before the. War. Nothing could .be more alive and sensitive than the Jeune Fille ti la Mandoline of 1910.
Compared with a painting like this the Chiricos look-at first sight curiously mechanical. Sensitiveness and the more painterly qualities are certainly not those in which this artist excels, and it would be easy to go away from this • exhibition with the impression that Chirico is merely a second-rate artist. On the highest standards of pure quality this may be the case, but considered historically the position of this painter is of the greatest importance. The canvases shown here date from the years 1912 to 1916, that is to ray from. the period of full Cubist domination, and yet there is implicit in them almost all of the later developments of Superrealism. The Superrealists may now turn against Chirico; but they cannot deny that it was he who made the first and essential steps in the creation of their school. Even in the Melanconia painted in 1912, there is already that nightmare atmosphere, produced by a deliberate falsification of proportion and perspeciiVe, with which the later Superrealists have made such play. 'In the paintings produced during the War Chirico is in the position of an artist 'struggling towards Superrealism in a world in which everyone else is a Cubist. The queer perspectiVe persists, but is used as a background for a mixture of citrions geometrical shapes and unexpected objects, among which the human eye and the Petit-Beurre stand Out as the most frequent. Already the painter is getting below the surface of the conscious and geometrical mind and is plunging Out into 'more obscure depths. The effect is now not only un- realistic but irrational, and, in spite of the geometrical forms of Cubism which cling to him, Chirico is clearly Moving totvards "a conception of art fundamentally different from that of the Cubists. But he never developed his ideas and, instead of taking the final plunge, he went bade- at first to a more classical style; as in the portrait of the artist and his mother, and then to a more academic manner in which he is still working.
To go from these paintings to the exhibition Of works -by Max Ernst at the Mayor Gallery is again to go from the vigour of pre-War art to the ingenious but empty cleverness of post- War painting. With Ernst as with Dali, one is compelled to admire a certain technical dexterity (no one, with the possible exception of Klee, can give to paint a more attractive surfac.e quality), but, when one has done wondering at this, what is left ? A gift .for dream creation, perhaps ; but the dream seems to have lost its vitality; and anyhow are we to,be con-
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