Studio: international art (89.1925)

BRIGHTON—MANCHESTER

BRIGHTON—Stella Langdale's genius
expresses itself best in a swift medium
such as charcoal, a medium on which she
relies chiefly as an illustrator. She finds,
too, in aquatint and mezzotint, tone pro-
cesses peculiarly suited to her tempera-
ment and subject. Her work is uneven
but never drops to the level of the common-
place. There is something haunting
about her best works ; it is not merely
because her designs are satisfying that
one remembers her compositions long
after one has forgotten the arrangement of
pictures by more renowned artists. Unlike
most women artists her work is creative.
Brighton and Glasgow Schools of Art
claim her as a former student and from
Mr. Alfred Palmer, the painter, she has
learnt much. But her work shows no
appreciable influences ; it has distinct
personality. 00000
In the modern world Miss Langdale
finds little inspiration; the secret garden
in which she spends most of her days is a
place of velvety depths, tropical forests,
primeval, moonlit rocks and swirling
black waters. An enchanted kingdom
peopled with fauns and cynical sphinxes
where some of the terror and all the beauty
of Pagan days remain. 000
Hesketh Hubbard.

MANCHESTER. — Caricature, if it
is to be successful must make an
instantaneous impression ; there must be
nothing laboured about it, nor must it
unduly exaggerate peculiarities, for the
neatest parody (and caricature is akin to
parody) keeps pretty close to the original.
In Miss Pearl Binder, who has recently
emerged from the Manchester School of
Art, there are already signs which seem to
point to a successful career in this field.
She has imagination, a Puckish sense of
humour and a power of quickly sizing up a
personality and presenting its essential and
interesting constituents in the form of a
drawing. Sometimes, as in Art Students or
the More Unpleasant People here repro-
duced, Miss Binder is content to let a more
or less realistic interpretation speak for
itself. But she also has semi-symbolic
things like The Aspidistra (somewhat un-
kind commentaries on aspects of British
social life), and pure pieces of symbolism
like Creme de Menthe, wherein the colour
note is the main factor. If she can pre-
serve her satire from undue admixture of
sxva indignatio and her drawing from that
slipshod character which mars a good deal
of contemporary symbolic work, Miss
Binder should make her mark. a 0

H. B. G.

["lore unpleasant people.

" MORE UNPLEASANT PEOPLE "
DRAWING BY PEARL BINDER

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