第36章

The BrangwynsWe lingered in the colonnade to view the eight mural decorations by Frank Brangwyn, of London.In front of The Bowmen we found a friend, a gifted woman painter, fairly bursting with enthusiasm."What delights me in Brangwyn," she said, "is his artistic courage.He dares to put down just what he feels.This sturdy figure in the foreground, for example, peering through the trees, how many other painters would have allowed him to turn his back on the spectator? And yet how interesting he is and how alive.""Some of those heads strike me as curious," I remarked."That fellow closest to the center, just about to let his arrow fly, seems to have no head to speak of.""Sometimes he's careless with his drawing.And yet he can draw magnificently, too.He evidently had a purpose in making so many of the heads in these murals almost deformed.He wanted to suggest that these types were in no way mental.They were wholly physical.Notice the care he has lavished on their muscular bodies, their great shoulders and legs.""It doesn't seem like English work, does it?" said the architect.

"No, there's something almost Oriental about it both in the feeling and the coloring.And there's the Pagan love of the elemental life.""But what a chance Brangwyn had to do something new with this magnificent subject," the architect went on."At last, after centuries of effort, men are actually conquering the air.They've learned to fly.

They've become birds.Now why didn't Brangwyn give us a pictorial expression of that miracle? Why didn't the artist have as much sense as the man of affairs who pays Art Smith to come out here and fly before the multitude?"I argued that Brangwyn preferred to deal with antique themes - they were so much more pictorial.

The architect interrupted with some impatience."But that's exactly what they're not.In my opinion Whistler was perfectly right when he said that if a mural decorator couldn't make modern life pictorial he didn't know his business.Flying through the air is only one of many wonders in the life of today that cry out for expression in art; but you scarcely catch a note of them here.""For example?" said the painter.

"Industry - our great machines, the new power they bring into the world, the change in industrial relations and social and moral ideals.Now in these murals, Brangwyn has simply repeated himself and he hasn't by any means done his best work.And I question whether his observation is so accurate as you admirers of his try to make it appear.Look at the way those fellows are holding their bows - with the left hand, presumably for the pictorial effect of the composition.Well, let that point pass.

One fellow has shot his arrow.The other is holding his arrow between the fore finger and the middle finger.Well, it won't go very far.The Indians know better.They let the arrow rest on the thumb to give it plenty of freedom to fly.One of those bows, by the way, has no string.

Brangwyn probably thought it wouldn't be missed."As we looked at the other panels the architect conceded that the points the painter raised for Brangwyn, the brilliant use of color; the dramatic grouping and the fineness of characterization, were true enough."But he's too monotonous.Though his groups are of different periods, some of them ages apart, they're all essentially alike and the figures are even dressed alike.I'm perfectly willing to make allowance for artistic convention.But why should an artist limit himself unnecessarily when he has all the ages to draw on? Why should he neglect the present, the greatest of all the ages?""Ah, I'm afraid you're too literal said the painter."You want to limit a genius to rules."We turned from The Bowmen to study in detail the second illustration of Air, much more modern and yet charmingly old-fashioned, the windmill and the little mill high in the background, the group of naked boys flying kites, the toilers and their children, going home as fast as they could, fighting the wind, their picturesque draperies flying around them.

The architect was impressed."He's caught the feeling of the thunderstorm, hasn't he?" he said.