Heroes Every Day

Jack Smith is a handsomely bearded young (26) Yorkshire artist who firmly believes that life is grim and men are heroic just to live it. For his second one-man show, on exhibition last week at London's Beaux Arts Gallery, Artist Smith produced 15 examples of what he calls life's "acts of heroism." His big, life-size painting of a baby taking its first step beams with self-conscious bravery; his old lady in a wicker chair, a sort of off-key Whistler's mother, is the essence of enduring patience. Even his cadaverous Skid Row figures, asleep amid prowling mongrels and a litter of old newspapers on a sidewalk, exhibit a kind of desperate valor. Says Smith: "They may be resigned, even despairing, but they're still trying to live."

Such preoccupation with the unsung tragedies and triumphs of the everyday and ordinary, painted in drab browns and greys, is typical of a growing school of young British realists. Says Smith: "There's got to be a revolution in painting. You can't paint like Picasso any longer, and you can't paint like the old masters. You've got to go back to living, and the things around you." In his own painting he sets himself a straightforward goal: "A bottle is a bottle. And it's quite different from a cucumber. I want to get this across."

The son of a North Country clerk, Smith has been painting ever since he was a boy in primary school. After his two-year hitch of national service with the Royal Air Force signalmen, he moved to London to study on a government grant, later won a scholarship to the Royal College of Art. During a jobless period in 1952 before he began to teach at the Bath Academy of Art, he held his first one-man show in London. His subject matter, working-class domesticity, was as commonplace as his own name. The critics noted it with mild approval.

In his second show the critics were more enthusiastic. Wrote New Statesman Critic John Berger: "I now think it possible that Smith is a genius . . . The faith I have in Jack Smith's work is due to its certainty, which is the result of a passion reminiscent of Van Gogh's during his Potato Eaters period."

In his Kensington studio last week, amid a clutter of cigarette stubs and old paint tubes, Smith was busily working on three or four paintings at once. He is not at all disheartened by the wide spread between his critical and financial successes. His first show sold only four of his paintings for a total of $336, but that was enough to pay for his room in Kensington, his food, an occasional night at the local pub, cigarettes and hardboard (cheaper than canvases) for six months. His second show has sold only three pictures, for $315, to private collectors. Says Smith defiantly: "I don't care whether I sell my pictures or not. I know I've got to paint them, and paint them that way."

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