OLD REPRODUCTIONS ON VIEW

The following review was written for the Crimson by one of the committee in charge of the exhibition on display in the Fogg museum at present:

As a sequel to the successful Degas show, an exhibition of reproductions of Old Master drawings is now on view in the Print Room of the Fogg Museum. The reproductions are from the New York dealer, E. Weyhe, and will be for sale to members of the University until March 4. The mention of Old Master drawings usually calls to mind many academic heads, many chubby putti, many nudes in red chalk, all manifesting the years of devoted study passed in repeating the forms of the schools for the purpose of creating pretentious paintings which can be classified as being in the style of this or that master. This is a tradition left from the time when the term "Italian School" was used in a more general sense than it is today, to designate that type of painting most readily associated with the thought of an Art Gallery. Such drawings usually form part of a group within which only experts can distinguish the light of an individual hand--a playground for pedantry, enchanted with the name "Old Master", but devoid of significant, spontaneous vitality. In the current exhibition, there are but fifteen men represented, but the collective gesture of those fifteen is sufficient for a long period or art history and for many phases of genius. For such "esprit", there are few boundries. Individuality is easily discernable.

Good Humor In Exhibition

Only in the Tintoret and in one of the Rubens is there a suggestion of a purely academic point of view. But in these, no such effort is required to translate them into good humor as is the case with the drawings of the weignty School of Michelangelo. We believe that the good humor is carried through the entire exhibition, through the chiaroscurists Guardi, Tiepolo, Poussin, and Rembrandt, through the lyricism of Corot, through the tortures of Grnenewald, to culminate in pure humer in Breughel. Pisanelio may seem, at first thought, to be purely nonsensical, but with longer inspection of these drawings, it will be found that his nonsense becomes mingled more and more with passionate reality until it fixes itself in admirable concentration and observation. The other artists represented are Holbein, Fragonard, Delacroix, Watteau, Canaletto, and Duerer. For the visitor, we suggest the mental attitude inspired by the great Delacroix horse, perhaps the most conspicuous drawing in the room