Democracy and Art.

Press, Volume LXV, Issue 19735, 27 September 1929, Page 10

Democracy and Art.

The real meaning of the Clock Tower controversy is that Christchurch does not know whether the Tower is a thing of beauty or not. It knows that there is an interesting fitory behind it, and some citizens at least —it is impossible to guess what their number may be—deplore the proposed breach with antiquity. It knows that the clock never kept time, and is beginning to know that it is not as sate as it used to be to stand gazing up at its faces. But it certainly does not know whether the men who designed and built the Tower, to a price, made what an artist would call a good or a bad job, and that is why the Council is so uncertain and so uneasy about removing, storing, and sailing the To f wer, and why so few people are rushing to its rescue or to help fo *»» JFfee interesting

fact however is that we must all pretend to know, since something has to be done, and it will make 110 difference to our taste and knowledge whether we wait a month or a year or a hundred year,-. It is just barely possible that there have been communities on the earth capable of' deciding between beauty and ugliness, but there certainly has not been one in modern times, nor, if we face the fact and call a spade a -pade, lias there ever been one speaking the Engli.-h language. Everyone who sees the English newspapers and magazines knows what a controversy ihere has recently been over the Haig monument, siuee (as the Saturday Beririr says, quoting a Scottish sculptor), "it's no every Man can be like " his Bust.'' .A cloud of witnesses, the Saturday points out, liave proved, with photographs in their hands, that the figure has no resemblance to the -Man; veterinary surgeons and riding masters have proved that he is not sitting on a Horse; Army tailors and J),-. >s Itrftnlations say that there were never such straps and buttons. •< Arty" fellows on the other hand, including one who not so long ago was a Labour leader, say that what the controversy means is that " the mob claims the right to prevent our public " memorials being looked at with pleasure by posterity." But this of course is Ihe multitude's prerogative. What nineteen ordinary people admire the twentieth nearly always condemns, and it does not make much difference whether any or all of the twenty speak the language of aesthetics. A few people know in Christchurch that what we do with the Clock Tower and where we put it is now less important than what we are doing on Cambridge and Oxford terraces, if beauty is the test. But beauty never was and never can be the test of anything under a democracy. Art happens, but what makes it happen is something that democracy will not have at any price. Democracy says that one man's opinion is as good as another's, as in fact it is. But the total of these opinions is not art, or anything related to art. It is not beauty or anything related to beauty, but at best something that a majority of people want, and at secondbest something that a majority are able to endure. It is a lucky community that does not outgrow its monuments aesthetically until they have begun to be a trouble economically.