NATIONAL EXPRESSION LACKING.

Auckland Star, Volume LIII, Issue 62, 15 March 1922, Page 7

NATIONAL EXPRESSION LACKING.

AN AUSTRALIAN CRITIC. FINDS NEW ZEALAND BACKWARD. c For about three months it was my 1 I privilege to travel over the North and i, South Island, and my mission, apart t from my holiday, was to discover if New r i Zealand art particularly had begun to 5 I "find itself," to use Kipling's, phrase, said , Mr. Lloyd-Jones, who recently returned . to Sydney. I am an Australian, and let mc say » with New Zealand lam delighted. It - seems a. Garden of Kden, a land of > beauty, and full of possibilities— pastor- ' ally, industrially and commercially. It - is peopled with a fine stock, and class consciousness, that greatest of hinr drances, is almost unknown. I mention i these facts because I do not, want to be i j taken for one of those who go through a i j country seeing nothing good in it. f National expression in New Zealand, [ as far as I can judge, seems to be in its ! infancy. New Zealand obtains and jus- ; tificd its claims to nationhood through ■ the part it pl«yed in the war, so that . I now is the time when all efforts towards . ! national expression should be encouraged, i I The art and literature of a country I i expresses its spirit or soul. They stand [ for the ideals without which no nation . can have progress, character or individui a!ism. 1 New Zealand seems to Know no nation--1 alism jtut,; you meet provincialism, i.e., ; the Welljngtonian making his jibe at the Aucklander, or vice versa, but you do not see the national spirit; the people thinking of New Zealand Uβ a whole. It ijiust ' be admitted that there are many fine : things here under the provincial spirit. : The generosity in donatfng to their ■ respective towns parks, galleries, city ! organs, would rival any part of the wqrjd. The civic sense as expressed in ' such towns as Wanganui is deserving of 1 all praise. ' "The ideals of yesterday are the realiI ties of to-day," and if New Zealand is to grow and become great it should further nationalism. The part New Zealand " played during the war was beyond all praise, and entitled her to regard herself as of man's estate, and entitled to have ' aspirations and ideas of her own that are not common to t]ie rest of the Empire, In Australia, misguided," mistaken. often behind you as we are, we have this I nationalism. It is apparent in the life jof the people, in their intense love of ' anything Australian. They are AustraI lian before they &re anything else. You I see it in the political ideal of Australia. jin our White Australia for example; in ; our art, which is individual; in our literature, which has that burning love of La Patrie. It is thin sentiment that 1 find lacking in New Zealand to a very great extent. In art, which is the subject I know best, you have a number of capable artists seriously painting the country(speh men as Nicol, Nugent, Welch, I Week=, Miss Richmond, and others— both in Christchurch and Wellington. But these so far have not escaped from European traditions, and while thp work is very interesting it is not yet virile or individual enough to give it a title of : a art. New Zealand was fortunate in having : as its art fathers Van der Velden in the South, and Nairn in the North Island. These men should have been the best influence for grounding and training the coming artist in his means of expression, ! but they seem to have left little result; i beyond their work, which is now beginning to be appreciated. To the interi ested seeker it is dimly discernible that thi.4 new spirit is about to be born, its spirft is beginning to be apparent in the ! work of these Christehurch and We.llingi ton men, who are alive to this idea, and , who are in the throes of making themI selves felt. Through art, literature, music and J education does a nation find expression. The vision or spiritual side of a people i is manifest by these means. New Zealand 1 is young, but. one might hope to find; some signs of its awakening. It is as yet too absorbed in the struggle for existence on the material side of life to . find the need for the painter, the poet, or I the thinker. Moreover, it is still British I in all its ideas: not that anyone wishes ; it to give up its British ideas, but, like every grown man, its time is coming to have ideas of its own. I fear all this i sounds like a voice crying in the wilderness, but it may help to kindle the spark , (rom which thp Divine fire may ulti- , I mately spring, for let us remember that , I where there is no vision the people perish.