ART IN LIFE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 83, 8 April 1933, Page 8

ART IN LIFE.

THE WIDER VIEW.

(To the Editor.)

Mr. C. R. Ford did a public service when ho gave that address to the Society of Arts this week. The huge mistake is made by most-people of thinking of art purely as painting, and as something outside ordinary lif e The Society of Arts is primarily a society for encouraging painting. Let it flourish in this department —but there are few of us that can afford to buy pictures. Here is where Mr. Ford's suggestion of a prize for furniture comes in. We must all use furniture, so why not try to make our furniture beautiful or at least pleasing? Mr. Ford is also quite right in stipulating that designs must be connected with the machine age. The average citizen must use the products of mass production, and the problem is to wed that production to art. As Mr. Ford says, there is an awakening of taste and conscience. The protest against railway advertising is one sign. A community with an artistic sense simply would not tolerate such defacement of the landscape The Art Society is our chief guardian of civic rights in, these matters. I hope it will realise, that the scope of its duties is much wider than hanging pictures once or twice a year. It should pounce upon ugliness in all its forms DILETTANTE.