Art: Arno on Top

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In London, smart art is shown in the Leicester Galleries. During the season its walls burgeon with the works of socialite portraitists, sporting artists, caricaturists, sculptors. For an artist, a show at the Leicester is like making a good club. Last week the Leicester Galleries gave the first British showing of the wash drawings of Curtis Arnoux Peters, the New Yorker's slick, sexy "Peter Arno." The show was reviewed by that stuffiest of papers, the ultra-conservative Morning Post which promptly compared Arno's work to the line drawings in Punch. All honors went to Artist Arno. Wrote the Post in its best pontifical manner:

"Our draughtsmen in the main draw from models, not from life, whereas Mr. Arno, with television penetration visualizes his types while they are unconscious of his existence and presents them with a cinematic spontaneity and forceful pen and brush that in their presence we believe in their actuality."