Studio: international art (78.1919)

THE ART OF C. R. W. NEVINSON,

“ THE SANDY PATH." OIL PAINT-
ING BY C. R. W. NEVINSON

came, and I ought not to have expected it,
for, though Nevinson is gifted with a
capital sense of humour, he regards with
seriousness and gratitude every phase of
his artistic development. “ Futurism/' he
said, “ is a manner of pictorial thinking,
not seeing. I never did see the music-hall
as I have painted it. I could, of course,
have seen it as clearly as you, or any one
else, and painted it, had I wished, in the
ordinary way of representation ; but what
I wanted to convey was an abstract
synthetic idea of the garish vulgarity, noise,
and endless movement of the music-hall,
both on the stage and in the auditorium, so
I (deliberately made myself think of it like
that, and tried to interpret my thought
pictorially with inevitable distortion of fact
in synthetic vision/' 44 And have you
learnt anything of real artistic value from

all this geometrical pattern-designing with
its abstract significance i " I asked. 44 Yes,
for one thing, and that of the greatest value,
the means of conveying a vital impression
of actual movement." The truth of this
can scarcely be gainsaid when one recalls
those wonderful pictures of marching
troops and aircraft in flight among the
clouds which proved Nevinson to be one
of the most truthful and original artists of
the day. 0000a
Now, after all his strange and remark-
able adventuring, he yearns again toward
the old masters, and turns his back on
pictorial44 abstractions." Does he purpose,
I wonder, to be himself the 44 reactionary "
who is to “ save contemporary art " from
them i Perhaps; who knows { But
scarcely, I think, by way of the 44 academic
traditions." The traditions of the masters

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