MORBID IN ART

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 114, 16 May 1931, Page 22

MORBID IN ART

Several interesting and entertaining art-episodes have been recorded recently. We have had the tragi-eomcily of the so-called "fakes" in the Persian Art Exhibition at Burlington House and tho allegation that a number of genuine works of art there arc for sale. We have had tho exposure to public view of the unboloved "Genesis," by Epstein. Wo have ,had Sir Philip Bassoon's great exhibition of Georgian art at 25, Park lane. And wo have had the sensational evidence in connection with tho attack with an axe upon Rembrandt's celebrated picture of an "Anatomy Lesson," in the Amsterdam Gallery, says a writer in the "Daily Telegraph." The1 last-mentioned event has caused the most widely-spread comment, and lias given rise to a. good deal of curiosity with a more or less philosophical background. It has been remarked that .Rembrandt's must have been a morbid mind, seeing that ho ! went out of his way to depict such a ! gruesomo subject. Tho young man who slashed Rembrandt's "Anatomy Lesson" no doubt meant wyll, and his action is but a practical way of expressing tho teaching of a vast body of art critics who would have it that the artist must conu'no himself to what, iv their opinion, are the prettier things in tho visible world. There is surely some illogicality in their contention. The Crucifixion of Christ cannot have been a beautiful spectacle, except in the eyes of fanatics, yet I should think moro beautiful pictures of tho Crucifixion exist than of any other scene in religious history. In the same category we have the "Birth of tho'Virgin," the "Death of the Virgin," and the "irartyrdom of Saints."

If we', are to exeludo all the works of art based upon these themes we must exclude battalions of masterpieces and write off Kaphael, Kubens, Titian, El Greco, Bellini, Van Dyck, and a host of others, as persons of depraved taste.

It may be argued that in these cases in which physical suffering is depicted religious sentiment elevates tho work of art to a higher plane. Without denying' that, the art lover is com-

A SLASHED : MASTERPIECE

pelled to realise that in profane art, too, there aro many acknowledged masterpieces which, taken together, make up a glorious commentary on the suffering to which all of us aro inevitably exposed in our passago through life. | That this is true could be proved by an examination of any great period of art activity and irrespective of the temperament of any particular civilisation. Examples could be taken from cultures as widely separated as those of China and Greeco, of Eussia and the Easter Islands, of Egypt and Germany, of Persia and England.

A proof of the vastness and importance of the subject as a study in art is to be found iv the fact that it is divisible in accordance with the psychology of the great peoples of the world. Thus wo. find that' tho old masters of Italy excelled in investing scenes of anguish with tho spirit of beauty; ill at the Spanish painters, great and small, abandoned themselves' of tenor to the depiction of horrible things apparently as a kind of luxury; that the Netherlandish artists, on the whole, avoided what appeared to be simply grim and developed forms of expression combining dramatic instinct with a senso of comedy.

Of all the national communities of artists the early English, despite their' witch burnings and their hanging men ' for stealing hens, were the least violent, j They never really,seemed to enjoy pain i like the early Spaniards, who sometimes gloated1 over it. Yet the English painters did not exclude the theme, but in including it in. their works they exalted it and purified it, through laughter less ribald than that of the Dutch, less gross than that of tho Germans. • ' Our artistic ancestors saw nothing exciting in the spectacle of a good man losing his head or his limbs at the dietato of his enemies, and they did not think of a tooth-extraction as merely ridiculous. Thus they were not in line with their Spanish or Dutch contemporaries. On the other hand, as tho medieval carvings even in buildings as sacred as Westminster Abbey testify, they lacked reverence.