Studio: international art (40.1907)

Reviews and Notices

“the golden splendour of the bush”

applied arts have also been noted with a view
to purchase. C. M.

REVIEWS AND NOTICES.

Isadora Duncan. Six movement designs by
Gordon Craig. (Leipzig: Insel Verlag.) Mk. 60.
—In these six drawings, issued in a portfolio
upon which no pains have been spared, Mr.
Gordon Craig hints, and his art always has
this power, at something which is remote and
which is beautiful. Certain movements of a dance
are drawn, and the dance is reminiscent of Grecian
movement as we have remembrance of it in art.
The book is a dedication of one art to another—
Mr. Craig’s fancy to Isadora Duncan’s genius.
Miss Duncan’s art is in intention allied not only to
music, but to the plastic arts, and the only tradition
for which she cares is one that has been their
secret. She revives in her art much of that

serener spirit which is at
present quite divorced from
dancing. In the rhythm
with which she interprets
the music of the great com-
posers, more than an echo
answers of the joyful spirit
which finds expression upon
the Grecian vase. The
beauty at which the dancer
aims—and how strange to-
day that a dancer should
aim at beauty!—is fitly
symbolised in the rare
atmosphere which it is the
province of Mr. Craig’s art
to suggest. Beyond, how-
ever, the imaginative sym-
pathy with which one artist
has received a motif from
another, the book bears no
direct relationship to Miss
Duncan’s dancing. It is
not Mr. Craig’s forte to
present to us reality, and
spontaneity is entirely ab-
sent from these drawings.
The ideals which have con-
trolled him in his applica-
tion of his own art to the
aims of the theatre have
always been the very purest;
thus he is enabled to re-
spond, as perhaps no
other artist could, to Miss
Duncan’s aims, but those who study the portfolio
must remember his decorative devices are his own
in fancy and spirit. If he has missed that which
would give greater meaning to his designs in
regard to the art and the personality of the dancer,
he has still served the public well in reminding
them of this dancing given to the interpretation of
classic themes.

Birket Foster, R. W.S. By H. M. Cundall,
I.S.O., F.S. A. (London : A. & C. Black.) 2os. net;
Edition de Luxe, £2 2s. net.—The publishers of
‘this truly charming memoir of a man whose genial
personality left a very vivid impression on all
who knew him are to be congratulated on having
secured the services of its author, who has had
exceptional facilities for dealing successfully with
his subject and has turned them to account with
no little tact and skill. The son of Mr. Joseph
Cundall, who was the intimate friend and for many

BY W. LISTER LISTER