REVOLUTIONARIES IN ART.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 18947, 11 March 1927, Page 16

REVOLUTIONARIES IN ART.

THEORY OF THE MODERNISTS. A PSYCHOLOGICAL BASIS. (mon of a owk cohkesioxdekt.) LONDON, January 26. When a group of artists set out to make pictures entiiely different from what we are used to, and incidentally to hold up the Iloyal Academy to- ridicule, we are first arrested by their impertinence and iheu wo wonder if they are quits sane. The hideous distortion of the human figure set out on canvas or the conglomeration of colour without form we feci.-any untutored child could accomplish. Yet apparently normal adults stand in front of these pictures and exclaim: "How fine! How strong! What a marvellous conception ! v We wonder if they are merely posing, and if they are not, do they really appreciate what the. artist is driving at, and docs the artist himself know? . . A small group of painters and sculptors known as the "Seven and Five' Society have an exhibition in London at present. It has a general interest in that it shows the' trend of development of the extreme school of art, but it also has a slight New Zealand interest in that a young New Zealander, a recent arrival in this _ country, has been permitted to exhibit there what is termed an abstract carving. On the ono hand there are paintings showing severe and commonplace buildings of London. One has no hypercritical things to say about them. They are a little more pleasant to look at than the uninteresting things they portray. »On the other hand there are human fibres 'curved and distorted' which are the artists' conceptions of perfectly harmless and straight-limbed people. It is natural to ask: Why do they do these things? This is what they will tell you. A Break With Tradition. The role of a work of art is to give food for thought, to act as a stimulant, to entice the onlooker to inspect things, people, and emotions from a new point of view. These grotesque figures have in them the living fluid movement seen by the artist. These unusual pictures, in shaking us from our lethargy and starting us along a line of mental activity, have the refreshing quality of wind after a sultry day. _ The true artist individualises everything in the world. He recreates the world, giving it fresh life. Art is not an imitation, of Nature, but an interpretation of it. We are still slaves to the insulting l , habit of comparing the depicted object with the object depicted. Painting, like music, is an interpretation, and to appreciate it we are forced to keep ourselves free from traditional prejudice. Once we have set up one unalterable, standard from which we make, all our judgments, we are already dead. The slogan of getting a point of view and sticking to it is out of date; we have lived too much on prejudice, and wo :-:ee where it brings us—the Royal Academy, the War, and the Albert Hall. The plan is to break quite clearly from the representational in its photographic sense, though not like the cubits to abandon known Bhapes. It is to use the everyday objects, but with such a swing and flow that they become living things, they fall into rhythm in the same way as music does, but their vitality comes through colour and form instead of through sound and time. They are not so much pictures as ideas settled for the moment on canvas, but ever ready to take flight into some new life. This explanation may be all very well, but one is permitted to ask whether these strange pictures have < the swing and flow they are meant to have. One may ask whether the idea of the artist is more interesting and stimulating than a photograph, and, finally, whether there are people who will pay the catalogued price to possess such a work of art, for the prices are not modest. Art Based on Psycliology. There is in this exhibition a small block of Australian marble carved into a grotesque shape. It resembles nothing one may give a. name to. With half-shut eyes and with a free imagination one may see in the form a slight reminder of a railway engine or a crouching toad. It is what is known as an abstract subject. No one can tell you what it is meant to be. Nevertheless, thefo have been people who have admired it as a forceful work ol art. Mr L. C. Lye, the creator of the

carving, suggests that it might be caiicd "The Life Force." lb is his conception of tlie Jife force given form. Mr Lye is a young New Ze a lander who has been in Australia and Samoa during the last five years. He has had a grounding in conventional art, but has now Jinnly abandoned it. He,maintains that the proper basis for art is psychology* acquaintance - with Maori art and the art. of the-South;] Sea Islanders has convinced him that I the primitive peoplo expressed in their painted and carved figures something more fundamental than the conventional artist. They got nearer to tac expression of. thought forms. 1 har>tasy, he maintains, is the universal language, • and ; airt based on .phaiitasy, dreams;, symbolism is the highest art. • He has the'courage of his conviction?,; for he .worked his passage. .from . Aus-j tralia as, to Russia, ivlicre these ideas 4 have beendeveloped to the greatest extent. He; gave up this plan, however, owing tpi obvious difficulties, and he proposes now.to settle in London and develop his theories.