ART FOLLOWING PHILOSOPHY.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 58, Issue 86, 21 January 1938, Page 4

ART FOLLOWING PHILOSOPHY.

“Among the truisms, among the things that are obvious, is the infinite mischief done by the two great evils of the modern world—war and. poverty,” said Viscount Samuel, in an address to the British Institute of Philosophy on the trend of civilisation. “Mankind will come to see that by far the greatest danger to its own welfare is the existence of State which combine technical strength with moral weakness, the possession of great means with indifference to good ends. Nor will the future be likely to tolerate that mingling of splendour and squalor which the 20th century has, inherited from the 18th and 19th a brilliant garment on a body dirty and diseased. We see that the movement toward such ends as these has already succeeded in setting a fresh value on simplicity. Art follows, as always, the predominant trend of thought. We see it now no longer creating ornament for ornament’s sake; catering less for private luxury and more for ordinary comfort and general civic needs; aiming at imparting beauty to everyday things. We cannot doubt that that tendency will develop. There have been signs indeed that this movement may overpass itself, going beyond the simple and beautiful to the merely primitive t which may also be the ugly. Because we prefer a Doric temple to the Albert Memorial that is no reason why we should prefer the art of Easter Island or Benin to the Doric temple; no reason why we should prefer Epstein’s ‘Genesis’ to Michelangelo’s ‘Dawn,’ the style of the Futurists or Surrealists to that of Rembrandt, or negroid music to the purity of Bach or the majesty of Beethoven.”