REVOLUTIONS IN ART.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 19979, 14 July 1930, Page 2

REVOLUTIONS IN ART.

AN HISTORICAL SURVEY. LECTURE BY PROFESSOR SHELLEY. "A revolution in the technique of art is only a changing from one convention to another," said Professor J. Shelley, in the course of a lecture on Saturday evening. Speaking at a meeting of the Workers' Educational Association, he dealt with the subject "Eevolutions in Art," and touched on tho great fundamental changes in the processes of art throughout the ages. The speaker commenced by pointing out the tendencies in the minds of men that bring about revolutions. "We are now developing a real New Zealand art," ho said, "but if our artists were to revolt it would make little difference to the majority of people, and the change would scarcely be noticed. We do not know, however, what an influence oven the covers of books and magazines have on the minds of the young people of the generation. A "smart artist creates a new type, and you will find girls somehow shaping themselves into the semblance of it. The future of the nation will be influenced more by the creative efforts of the arts than the laws. The First Revolutionary. "To discover the first revolution in art," he continued, "it is necessary to go back 3500 years." This corresponded with a revolution in religion, and it occurred in Egypt, in the reign of Amenhotep IV., known also as Akhnaten. who was the previous Pharaoh to Tutankhamen. He was a brilliant youth, and married his sister Nefertiti, whose beautiful bust is one of the wonders of ancient sculpture. Also he had from his mother, who was not an Egyptian, but came from one of tho districts of Mesopotamia, the idea of a single god.* Previously the chief god of many worshipped by the people of Egypt was Amen, but the young Pharaoh thought of tho only possible god as being a force associated with the sun. To inaugurate tho new religion he founded a new capital, but being a peaceful man, and possessing amongst his subjects many priests whose livelihood was threatened by tho piojected revolution, he did not become popular. Hence, when Amenhotep died, the capital was transferred back to Thebes, the monarch's name was defaced from all public monuments, and bis memory from the public mind. This probable first attempt to create a religion with one god covering body was associated with a new attitude towards painting and sculpture, the Professor went on. As opposed to the ritualistic efforts of the priests, 11 more naturalistic type evolved, which endeavoured to see things as they were. Tho contrasting endeavour of the old school to represent the full shoulders of a man while he was standing at sideview was well-known.

Professor Shelley outlined the manner of changes in artistic technique. People nowadays might ask why a statue was white, but the Greeks actually painted their statues. On the other hand the Greeks could not understand efforts to bring light and shade into paintings, and until Western influences began to be felt a few years ago Eastern painting took no count of light values and would regard their utilisation as conjuring. The Coming of Perspective. : ,

The laws of perspective were first learnt at the beginning of the sixteenth century, in Italy. "Of course, why should one .limit oneself to depicting only that which is visible"? asked the lecturer, "for it is merely convention, and in some cases it seems that it is better to do as tho ancients did, and paint a crowd from a childish point of view, inserting everything and everybody, with no regard for the laws of Nature or perspective." But the discovery was a revolution, and there was a further advance in the sixteenth century, when it was found that to properly illustrate the rotundity of things, it was good to play lights upon them. This—responsible later for the great art of Rembrandt—lasted in England until the middle of the nineteenth century, but its great fault was that it lent itself to theatrical effects.

The classical tradition, of classical statues, emanating from the Renaissance, lasted throughout the period of which the lecturer was speaking. It lasted until painting became little more than a portrayal of statues, with colour a very minor detail. Then tho new Romanticism appeared, and a great fight began. Romanticism Reactionary. At the beginning of the eighteenth century Romanticism began to make itself felt, and the fight between the two opposing forces was being waged even to-day, when at every school of art throughout the land the main course of study was the antique, which, as a course, was in many ways good, but which possessed the fault of preventing people from seeing things as they really were. An art without life was nonexistent, and "Shall we have perfection of form, or the violence of emotiont" was the question asked by the exponents of the new school. The statuestic formality of the Classicists was not art, and life was lost in it. Watteau and Gericault were great champions of the movement, while De la Croix did much for it.

Like all new innovations, however, Romanticism aged with time. It partially lost its first form, developing into superficiality, and becoming more and more pretty. It was useful to note that the movement itself came from the north, and it penetrated only a short way into the south, which was the stronghold of Classicism. Then there waß another movement, which also originated in the north. It was the landscape movement, the origination of which could be credited to England. One of its first champions was its greatest exponent, Constable. There were many others, including Gainsborough, and it could be said that modern landscape painting came from England. The revolution was a popular one, and it was taken up with amazing rapidity. The chief of its opponents was Sir Joshua Reynolds, who rarely escaped from the classical.

Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. A group of three young men, J. E. Millais, D. G. Rossetti, and Holman Hunt, introduced the last revolution of which Professor Shelley had to speak. In 1848 they formed the pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and they set themselves about to return to naturalistic art, which was in itself a return to Nature. They were all very young men, and their efforts created a great disturbance amongst the elderly critics. Millais' "Christ in the House of His Parents" provoked mutch discussion in England, when it was ftrst hung, but in later days the nation paid £50,000 in order that it might not go out of the country. There was also the same artist's "A, Knight of Old," which showed not a romantic figure resembling nothing less than a statue of ivory and gold, but an old man in armour, war-stained, giving two children a ride on his horse over a ford. And the old man was of flesh and blood.

Holman Hunt was the one of the trio who paid the most attention to detail in his pictures. His" work was realistic

to a degree, and the quality of it did not fluctuate; with Dante Gabriel Rossetti it w.as different. "The Childhood of Mary," one of Mb flnt offorta, WM alive with t'fte new. art, tfut as ne grew older he lost his desire for the realistic, and became, to his detriment, a pure Romanticist. He resigned himself finally, said the Professor, to painting pretty women. In all but his earlier work he seemed unable to make his scenes and his people lire. Professor Shelley, wlio illustrated his lecture throughout with lantern slides, was accorded a hearty vote of thanks, on the motion of Mr George Manning, the secretary to the W.E.A.