Money & Culture

amazing wholeness. There is a depth of philosophical thought in it, an epic breadth of generalisation, wisely laconic
imagery, compositional boldness and scale, and excellent rhythm in the organisation of the sculptural groups. From time
to time we are sharply reminded that the withdrawal of the artist into the abstract domains entails a great loss to the
community of spirited and humane comment upon its affairs. When Henry Moore gave us his stately and moving reports
upon conditions in the air raid shelters, and Graham Sutherland made his superbly exasperated drawings of destruction in
the City, their work was understood and appreciated by the community as a whole, and social realism at that level is
much to be desired. All the same, even if the war-time drawings of Moore and Sutherland prove once and for all that
when the graphic artist rises to the occasion he quite outclasses the camera, it has to be admitted that very few of our
contemporaries could bring such zest to the role of special correspondent.
Paul Hogarth, a graphic artist who has deliberately set himself a task of becoming a special correspondent, without even
waiting.
He visited Poland in 1948 and exhibited his drawings at the Gallery of the Artists International Association.
Always interested in pictorial journalism he has done much to foster this type of artist-reporting in his association with the
magazines Our Time, the short-lived but lively Circus, Contact and the Bowater Papers.
Early in 1950 he revisited Lancashire and Westmorelandscenes of his boyhood and adolescence. He made a series of
drawings for a book on Lancashire in the "Vision of England" series published by Paul Elek.
In 1955 he travelled to China where he covered thousands of miles on a grand tour. His pen transcribed many pictures
of daily life in which the teeming population, moving with busy energy, is portrayed in compositions that are often hurried
yet almost invariably moved by a vital interest in social conditions. He found in China's fervent building programme as
imple and natural symbol of man's constructive energies which enables him to use his sensitive topographical
draughtsmanship purposefully.