Art: Measles

Sir Gerald Kelly, the 71-year-old president of London’s Royal Academy, takes a modest view of the portraits that have brought him fame. Besides paintings of the King & Queen, he has done scores of his wife Jane, eleven of his good friend Somerset Maugham. They are all fine likenesses, and that is their one strength. “I am,” he says mildly, “a sort of reliable family solicitor; I turn out a good sound job of work.”

When it comes to appraising fellow painters, Kelly is equally plain. Last week he was back in London from jury duty at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie International Show (TIME, Oct. 30), with a disappointed verdict on contemporary U.S. art: “It appears to be suffering from what I take to be a kind of measles which affects the young. So many of the young seem to have gone all abstract … it is probably due to the passion for modern culture …”

How does he judge pictures? Why, Sir Gerald says, a painting should “entertain. If it doesn’t give you pleasure, why look at it? Too many people have the feeling that if they can’t force themselves to like [modern art] they haven’t a chance to be considered cultured. What rubbish!”