Word: nicholson
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
When he chooses, Ben Nicholson paints charming and recognizable still lifes and landscapes. He doesn't always choose. He also happens to be Britain's most revered abstractionist. For conservatives, there's the rub. In a book on Nicholson newly published in England, Art Critic Herbert Read rubs it in. You can't admire the still lifes and abhor the abstractions, admonishes Read, "without confessing to a prejudice that has nothing to do with the essential qualities...
Whether a confession of prejudice is required or not, most laymen will probably go on preferring Nicholson's more representational paintings. His paper-thin, impeccably tasteful abstractions strike some onlookers as a game of solitaire played with illegible cards. And to them, his geometrical bas-reliefs look as blandly uncommunicative as a ouija board...
...cult of Nicholson-worshippers, which has been growing in England in recent years, insists on regarding his art as the work of a brilliant mathematician or a deep metaphysical thinker. Nicholson himself takes a simpler view. "People are too sophisticated about art," he told a correspondent last week. "They look for hidden meanings. The fact is my six children laugh at my knowledge of mathematics and I know nothing at all about metaphysics. A painter should paint, not theorize. Of course," he added with a twinkle, "it's extremely interesting when a really intelligent man comes along and explains...
...Nicholson looks rather like a smaller and more delicate Picasso-as does some of his work. He lives with his wife, Sculptor Barbara Hepworth, in a grey, gabled house on the Cornish coast, and does his painting in a small, tidy studio upstairs...
Freshman and Jayvee elevens open the football weekend simultaneously this afternoon when both take on squads from Boston University in a home-and-home engagement. The Freshmen run up against an undefeated powerhouse at the Terrlers' Nicholson Field, while the Junior Varsity plays host at 2 p.m. on Soldiers Field...