ART EXHIBITION.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 126, 31 May 1939, Page 10

ART EXHIBITION.

Mr. Xigro. in a perfectly natural defence of his paintings, '"Mental Affinities" and "Elective Affinities." has allowed his resentment to my remarks to run very close to invective.' T can assure Mr. Xigro that I am far from being "absolutely prejudiced against anything new that is attempted." or that my "appreciation of creative painting is dominated liv old-fashioned thought." Ironically enough, I have barely emerged from a controversy in which I stoutly defended abstractionist, surrealistic and other forms of subjective art. Were Mr. Xigro to peruse my article in the light of a catholic review of the Art Exhibition and not an attempt to justify or discredit contending schools of thought, I am sure <hewould feel no occasion of injustice to Mr! work. If a painter elects to make intellectual excursions into the realm of subjective reality which involves the use of a somewhat obscure symbolism he can hardly take exception to the. comment that tbe layman may be both startled and puzzled. Creative work of this kind which is beyond all established conventions of painting also strikes at the very root of the philosophy of art; a subject that is highly controversial and subject to sharp divisions of opinion. Apart from symbolic inference, the inter-dimensional composition in such work as Mr. Xigros must not only conform to certain laws of mechanical balance, "but still remain aesthetically satisfying, and mv reference to the use of three and two dimensional forms was directed to this aspect of the work and not to anv misinterpretation as to their intent. A. C. HIPWELL.