Sir Gerald Kelly On Modem Art
(Special Correspondent N.Z.P.A.) (Rec. 7 p.m.) LONDON, January 19. “Gosh, how conceited I was! I thought I was the cat’s whiskers. • said Sir Gerald Kelly, aged 75, past president of the Royal Academy, referring to his early painting days when he opened an exhibition by full and part-time art schools students. Painting, he said, is great fun. “but frightfully difficult.” He added: “I do not understand the most modern art, which consists of inspissated gloom. I like pictures bright. And I am very interested in painting. lam not interested in highbrows, or art or the 8.8.C.'s Third Programme. I am not interested in people who approach visual art through intellect “All of you are going to be engaged in the only reasonable and decent occupation in the world. You are going to have a much tougher passage than I, because there are a great many of you. The only thing to do is better work.” Sir Gerald Kelly said that no criticism had ever helped any working artist. “It is uttered by a rather low form of animal life,” he said.
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Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27563, 21 January 1955, Page 11
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187Sir Gerald Kelly On Modem Art Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27563, 21 January 1955, Page 11
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