he first survey of the Cana-

dian 19th century artist
James MacDonald Barnsle y
< (1861-1929) has been organized
by the Vancouver Art Gallery and
1S being shown there between Oct,
9 and Nov, 1, The exhibition con-
Sists of 37 paintings and 28
drawings that have been care-
fully selected to illustrate high-
ights of his total artistic output,

Following its initial showing
at the Vancouver gallery it will
be Circulated across Canada
Visiting the following centres:

teal and Charlottetown,

One of the important functions
Of an art museum is to carry
Cut research in depth on note-
Worthy artists of the past so that
4 Correct estimate of their ar-
—'stic value and their historical
Position may be reached,

ee decision to conduct such
a €arch concerning the work of
fe cley was reached after see-
e a 3 powerful marine paintings

“*0wn in the exhibition “Of Ships
and the Sea” organized in 1963,

At this stage there were few
Publicly known examples of his
Paintings; the details of his life
= artistic career had also been

Cured by time, Only after
ae of intensive investigation
t 4 coherent story of Barnsley

© Man, his life and works,
Possible,

‘ a umsley’s creative life covers
*T0Ximately 12 years — f
ee matel: y rom

‘Barnsley on view

Regina, London, Hamilton, Mont-

1881 to 1892, After 1892 when he
first entered Verdun Protestant
hospital as a mental patient he
did hot produce any further works
of Ft, Sr

The period between 1883 and
1887 he spent in Europe, especi-
ally in and around Paris, It

was through the inspiration of!
artists exhibiting in the Paris
salon, to which he was also a
successful contributing member,
that Barnsley reached the climax
of his artistic career,

The work ofthe impressionists
had not yet penetrated the salon
and it is rather with followers
of Corot, the Barbizon school and
—in the treatment of water, air
and light—Boudin, that Barnsley
found his place,

Art viewers who have neglect-
ed Canada’s group of 19th century
emigre artists will find much to
reconsider in this exhibition, The
sketches and studies are especi-
ally sure and free, Vibrant with
life and full of the knowledge of
changing patterns of water, wind
and sky,

His marinescapes are un-
paralelled in Canadian history,

This exhibition and accom-
panying documentary catalogue
form an important contribution
to the growing body of studies in
Canadian. art history,

Meee Theatre’s most recent
4 Production, “The Wise Have
Spoken,” presented by the
fe Players, is a moving
if ae of an Irish farm family
ee ae late 1930s, Paul Vincent
ae oll S story consists of dis-
as fot mental illness, fru-
ated love, a silenced priest

i 4 veteran of the loyalist cause
Pain,

eae ingredients are setin an
tragedy that oozes grief,
Et and, at times, utter de-
ae he latter is its chief weak-
i" The play is a slice of real-
ats and the author strives to
8 ay describe the plight of
Set amily in an international
fing during the rise offacism,
_| 4, ‘Ven in his own mind there
ie 2 good deal of confusion,

€xample is the wounded
Piims an from Spain who considers
‘ee a Communist, He is a
a 8h defeatist, wishes he
ei, dead, is obsessed with rifles
4S a tremendous, passion

Vete r

uesday, Oct. 13 saw the
3 birth of a new T.V. show
Manating from CBC’s Chan-
sel 2 in Vancouver. Called
er Voices,” it stars Don
Tancks and will run every
Re oey evening at 10:30 for
© fall and winter season,
®nding sometime next May.

The first show of the series,
4st Tuesday, was devoted to
: . life and times of Joe
é 1. Francks narrated and
ang some of the Wobbly trqu-
oe immortal working
: SS ballads. The program
S excellently done and CBC
a be well advised to repeat

Francks plays Joe Hill

The latest from Metro

for barricades, One would almost
think it was the Communists who
brought on the blood bath inSpain
— rather than Franco and his fa-
scists,

DRAMA

With such basic shortcomings
on the part of the author, the
players were faced with a nearly
insuperable task — though they
gave it a brave attempt, Director
Allen Dobby brought out the Irish
temperament very well, the ac-
tors put all their heart into the
production and the set design and
lighting added to the impact of

_ the play,

All in all, Metro should be con-
gratulated for having the courage
to tackle something beyond the
usual confines of conformity, And
the public of Vancouver should
do this in a practical way, for
Metro is deserving of something
better than the sparse audiences
that have been viewing its seo

‘ My Autobiography,” by Charlie
Chapiin. Price $7.95 (hard cover
only). 545 pages, filled with price-
less material and illuminated by
many rare photos. Available at
People’s Co-op Book Store.

ine pounds in weight of caviar,
the papers tell us, has been

_paid by Izvestia for a thousand

words from Charlie Chaplin’s

- autobiography, An equal feast is

waiting for the readers who buy,
beg or borrow this whole volume,
with its generous allowance of
545 pages, They will gain insight
into the life and mind of one of
the most fascinating human
beings of our time,

The bare facts are well enough
known, They have already been
the subject of research by con-
scientious and not unfriendly
biographers and in any case the
limelight has always been on the
author’s career.

The novelty here is that we are
seeing his life’s adventures
through his own eyes, recalling it
through his own memory, What
is important is not only what be-
fell him, but what he perceived
and what he felt about it,

The story falls naturally into
three parts, First is the childhood
poverty in South London, and his
foot in the muic-hall door,

Then comes the call to Holly-
wood, the fortune glittering with
gold and the fame, warmed by
affection that came swifter and
more worldwide than ever before
in history,

And then the sudden moment
when the hand of every man in
cold war America seemed to be
turned against him and hatred was
heaped upon the alien who would
not conform,

These three phases of experi-
ence are so different that it is
extraordinary that they happened —
to the same person,

What gives them their unity is

that the man who lived through

them happens to be a great artist
and that his narrative tells us a
great deal about the sensitivity
and infinite capacity for absorp-
tion that must characterize an
artist, as well as the tough,
diamond-hard kernel of rock that
he must have inside,

It is also not accidental to his
quality that his life experience
made him, as these memories
show him, a great humanist,

Is this book true? No man is
under compulsion to “tell all” in
his autobiography, There are
here no new revelations or hot-
tings-up of old scandals,

*“Blow-by-blow descriptions”
of sex stuff, says Charliefirmly,
are out,

There is enough frank depiction

of his personal relations, told
without prudishness or prurience
but with effort to avoid unkind-
ness, to enable us to see the man

plain.

The most moving part of the

book is its beginning, The Vic-
torian-Edwardian riverside; the
trams, the cabs, the workhouses;
the decaying respectabilities: of
Brixton and Camberwell,

the
mock gentilities, the ingenious
resorts to avoid starvation; the

galaxy of portraits each en-
* graved in memory,

Is his

Here was a jungle with a tiger
of misfortune lurking to pounce
on the unlucky from behind every
tree,

Here is a jungle whose human
denizens, in face of common
danger, found it natural to toler-
ate and help each other without
afterthought or stint, a crowded
wilderness where ties of kinship
counted more than grudges,

Alike in the story of his mother,
slaving beyond the point ofhealth
and even sanity to keep and feed
and bring up Charles and his
brother Sid, and the sketch ofhis
feckless but not harm-intending
father, the author has raised a
filial memory firmer than
marble,

There is not much about the
technique of film making in the
Hollywood section, though what
there is is full of wholesome

BOOKS

On the contrary, there is much
about the battle that surrounds
each film,

It is significant to an under-
standing of Charlie Chaplin art-
ist, and perhaps of the art of the
film, to see how early Charlie
the creator found he must be
Chaplin the director,

He used his genius as a come-
dian to conquer opportunity for
self-expression,

There is much, very much,
about the people he met and the
people who craved to meet him,
The names provide an index both
to the more than 400 snobs and
the genuine intellectual constel-
lation of a whole period,

But what prevents the tale of
these encounters from becoming

October 16, 1964—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 9

World’s only unbegrudged
millionaire tel

story —

an orgy of name-dropping is the
unconscious portrait it provides
of Charlie the pilgrim in search
of truth,

The fact was that he already
knew how “ordinary” men and
women behaved, and now that
“success” had given him the
world he was insatiable to learn
what made those who seemed to
run the world tick,

It has been the fashion of the
toffee-nosed to despise the con-
clusions of Chaplin the clown—
made more and more explicit in
his films—as trite cliches,

But in these “cliches” there is
more common sense about war
and peace, science andprogress,
religion and empire, the grounds
for optimism that in a decade
of General Election speeches or
reams and reams of writings upon
abstract and “avant-garde” art,

In this last part of the book
is reprinted the full text of all
the best passages: the speech for
the Second .Front, the call to
Hannah at the end of “The Great
Dictator,” the paean to life of
the prostitute in “Monsieur Ver-
doux,”

Charlie never wanted to be a
saint or hero, Throughout his life,
as any reader of this book can
see, hehas feared entanglements,
hated to be involved,

But there was that within him,
the tough stone I spoke of, the
kernel that in ordinary men we
call decency and in the artist in-
tegrity, that refused, when the
test came, to be pushed around,
He is against fascism, He is for
man, He is a peacemonger,

Charlie Chaplin is perhaps the
first millionaire whose wealth
has never been grudged by those
whose cents and pennies built it

up. —Ivor Montagu