WHAT IS ART?

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18552, 30 November 1925, Page 2

WHAT IS ART?

ATTACK ON THE "HIGH-BROWS." MR EPSTEIN'S PLANE. (FROM ors OWX CORRESPONDENT.) LONDON, October 0. As was to he expected, the lion. John Collier's attack on the modern "highbrow" and (he Bolshevik tendency in art has called forth a great deal of comment.. Mr tiacoh Epstein's panel of Eima in Hyde Park, was one of the instances of the modern school which were attacked. It was described as "a bestial figure, horribly misshapen, with enormous "claw-like hands, and the head of a microcephalous idiot." "I do not want to enter into any controversy,'' said Mr Epstein, when he was interviewed, "but 1 do not look upon Mr Collier as an artist at all. When he made his speech last night, I suppose he had to equip it. with postprandial jests. In any case, T do not think he could have "been talking about art. From (he point of view of art we are on different planes, and vr speak different languages. 1 call Mr Collier the crossword artist. He knows nothing about real art, and paints conundrums. Now that, crossword puzzles have become so popular I suppose lie feels that he has been done out, of his job, and has plunged into criticism." "I should like to emphasise, however," he proceeded, "that people like the, Hon. John note with chagrin that all their efforts at attacking my Buna Memorial in Hvde Piirk have signally failed. He is simply following a disappointed group with this attack. These people should note, too, that they are really attacking men like CunninghameGraham, Muirhead Bone, Bernard Shaw, and Sir John Uvcry in so violently criticising my Bim'a, which has gamed their approval." The Laugh which Kills. According to Sir Frank Dieksee, president of the Royal Academy, the modern tendency in art to which Mr Epstein and others are adherents is a disease. It is a degraded and misguided thing. - "Still, I do not think there is any cause for worrv. The high-brow school is being laughed at in Paris, and soon the laugh will come over here. Already the tendency is dying out. Adherents to this high-brow school are distinguished by this one spot of modesty: they see they cannot achieve fame along legitimate lines, and are willing to put up with the notoriety they gain by devising studies of the Bima description. "This impressionist art is an imported thing, and will not take any lasting hold on English art. The trouble is, however, that the students in some schools .of education are trained on these lines. The cult is already becoming a back number; and when it is definitely a thing of the past and is laughed at all round, these poor students will have no true art education to fall back on." A Diseased Tendency. Mr Charles Sargent Jagger, the brilliant young sculptor, who has. just completed the Boyal Artillery ifaonument, agrees with Mr Collier. "There is no question," he said today, "that there is a diseased tendency in the elaboration of modern impressionist art. No true artist, to my mind, can do anything without ad-, hering to Nature. Art must be sincere,, like the mother of us all. Ann individual artists's work is his> personal in-, terpretation of art as depicted by Nature. That is quite a different thing from the malformations which are nowadays described as works of great art."

Birds Avoid the Panel. "Mr Epstein may be left to look after himself," says the "EveningStandard." "Apart from the bust of Lord Fisher —a noble likeness of a very great man—the general public is probably rather inclined to side with Mr Collier than the sculptor. The man in the street may not be an art, critic, but at least he know 3 beauty when he sees it.- The average man does not find beauty in Epstein, but he does find significance in the epigram that even, the birds avoid the Hudson Memorial in Hyde Park." Unnatural Ugliness. "To-enter a gallery where the modernists are exhibiting their portraits or their landscapes," the "Daily Telegraph" remark's, "is to take leave of the outer world of reality. There are plenty of ugly people in life, no doubt, but theirs is, so to speak, a natural ugliness. The ugliness which scowlsi down from these walla, is an unnatural, and distorted ugliness, and to say that it is real, because the artists see it so, is as foolish as to say that a picture in a distorting mirror is real. A distorting mirror distorts and falsifies, and these very advanced artists also distort and twist, and either make their representation of the person or place depicted a grotesque, at which one laughs, or a monstrosity from which one turns away shuddering. "What the high-brows never contrive to explain to the public is how art of this character should call forth the admiration which the masterpieces of Greek sculpture have aroused throughout the ages. But, to do them justice, many of them do not pretend to admire the Old Masters, unless they are the first Primitives or the last Decadents of some particular era, and if it be objected that there is nothing in common between the advanced masterpiece of to-day and a Reynolds, a Vandyck, or a Raphael, th'eir bearing indicates that these latter aro greatly overrated. What is the explanation of it all? Wilful perversity may account for much, the overpowering Shavian passion to contradict, to challenge accepted rule, to deny the ordinary canons, and to bring down new Commandments from the Mount."