Studio: international art (82.1921)

REVIEWS

Pen Drawing and Pen Draughtsmen. By
Joseph Pennell. (London : T. Fisher
Unwin, Ltd.) Quite thirty years have
elapsed since the first edition of this work
made its appearance, and the fact that
two succeeding editions have not sufficed
to satisfy the demand for it, is in itself
evidence of the prestige it has enjoyed.
It is unfortunate that the price charged
for this new edition—seven guineas—
places it beyond the reach of many —
students especially—who would gladly
possess a copy and profit by it, but it must
be remembered that the cost of producing
a volume like this, with several hundred
illustrations is, under present conditions,
very heavy. The work as now issued
follows to a considerable extent the plan of
the previous editions, but a good deal of
new matter, textual and illustrative, has
been added. There is a short chapter
on Japanese drawing, and this is followed
by one on " The New Illustration," with
reproductions of drawings by men of the
so-called " advanced " school. As showing
the author's attitude to this school we
quote some passages from this chapter : 0

" I do not intend that it shall be said I ignored or
was afraid to notice the modernists, the cubists, the
futurists, the whatever Ists they choose to call them-
selves for the moment, but by their handiwork may
they be judged. . . . The trick of Ists and Isms
is so easy to play that anyone can play it—it is,
briefly, the avoidance of difficulties. The pretension
that the art of the Ists is primitive is bluff or ignor-
ance. ... I would be the first to praise the
simplicity, the economy, the directness of these
drawings, if technically the work, the line work, was
good, but it is rotten, cheap, decayed, diseased. . . .
These things are pathetic in their poverty of line and
weakness of line ; they have no virility or energy, and
that is what is the matter with those who made them.
They are diseased, decadent, dreary, dry, dull." 0

Then follows a review of newspaper
illustration during the past quarter of a
century, and this again gives Mr. Pennell
occasion for some " strong " talk. When
he returned to America about four or
five years ago, he gave vent to some by
no means complimentary remarks about
British art. Now he lets his own country-
men have it hot. 000a

" The average American is deplorably artless, and
yet we prate of Art. The illustrated papers prove
our ignorance of it. The empty heads and fat legs of
sexless, grinning females ogle you from the gaudy
covers of the magazines and the Sunday supplements
of the dailies, always in greens and reds and browns

240

in chalk and ink, they defile and disgrace the dailies.
Their contents are standardised, syndicated and
sterilized for the oafs and old maids who turn their
photo-plastered, syndicated pages as they sit in rows
of rocking chairs on rows of front porches—females
and porches all standardised. It is to this that
American illustration has come. . . . Middle-
class and lower-class vulgarity and nastiness and dirt
are the new American's ideals, smeared over with
sentiment and hypocrisy, and spewed out as literature
and art in aniline dyes and stinking ink. No country
ever sank so low, was so completely devoted to money
and mediocrity as this." 0000

We have one complaint to make about
the illustrations to this book. There
are more than four hundred printed in
the text from line, half-tone or wood
blocks, besides ten in photogravure, but
in a great many cases the name of the
artist can only be found by referring to
the text or the list at the beginning of the
volume. 0.0 0 0 0

A Book of Drawings. By FL M.
Bateman. Introduction by G. K.
Chesterton.—More Morrow. A Book
of Drawings by George Morrow.—
Humours of the Street. By G. L. Stampa.
Introduction by W. Pett Ridge. (London:
Methuen & Co.) 0000

" Punch" Drawings. By F. H.
Townsend. Foreword by J. Bernard
Partridge. (London : Cassell & Co.)
—With the exception of a few of Mr.
Bateman's drawings which have been
published elsewhere, the contents of these
four books are excerpts from the pages
of " Mr. Punch," that weekly dispenser

"SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN, WHEN
QUITE A BOY, CONSTRUCTS A
HEN-HOUSE FOR HIS GRAND-
FATHER." BY GEORGE MORROW

(From " More Morrow," Methuen
& Co. By permission of the Pro-
prietors of Punch)