MONGOLIAN RACE’S NEW INFLUENCE

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 99, 21 January 1935, Page 6

MONGOLIAN RACE’S NEW INFLUENCE

Art’s Field Has Widened to the East (By Edward C. Simpson.) We are often, told that modern art is chaotic. If this judgment implies that art is more chaotic now than it has been at any other time, it is probably wrong. Can we with truth, maintain that art is more chaotic now than it was in Florence of the fifteenth century? There is always one good cause why art of the present appears more bewildering than it does at any other period. We ourselves can only live amidst the art of one period, and that period is the present. But is it not a lack of vision that we cannot realise that art must have been just as bewildering at many other times to those who lived in them? Besides, may not our suggestion of chaos apply to those who feel it rather than to the art? The art of past ages has been sifted by time. What was of no permanent value has become submerged in the passage of time, leaving us only the stable works that have artistic value for all time. There is, however, good ground for thinking that the art of our time does present a kaleidoscopic appearance of change that tends to leave us breathless in our endeavours to keep pace with it. Art, by its very nature, is ceaselessly changing in its technique, its materials, and its modes of expression. But its changes in the past, although just as radical as those taking place in our times, have extended over a longer period. It is not so much the extent of the changes in art that bewilders us to-day as the rapidity with which they take place.

Our Changing Views.

During my younger days I was taught, with a finality that was serious and absolute, that there were two irrefutable facts in art: that the greatest painting in the -world was the Sistine Madonna, and the greatest piece of sculpture the Medician Venus. Art, in fact, was confined to painting and sculpture. And by painting must be understood painting of the Italian Renaissance, and by sculpture the so-called Greek sculpture of the Vatican. Since those days the w’orld has become much smaller to us, in that distances of months of travelling have been reduced to days, while whole continents of vaguely apprehended civilisations have become open and familiar to us. In fact, art, formerly almost confined to the basin of the Mediterranean and a few other European countries, now reveals itself to be not only age-old, but worldwide. Moreover, to-day it can be reviewed from an armchair. Not least of the new vistas that has been opened up is the art of the savage. Negro sculpture is to-day a favourite exhibit in the galleries of Paris, New York and London. IVhat was formerly passed over as barbaric, or sneered at as only of ethnographic interest, has proved a source of immense influence, qpening up new prospects in the world of art, and revealing that the negro is able to achieve, despite his barbarity, that essence of sculptural form that has so often eluded the European artist. The artifacts of the Maya civilisation of Central America, the bronzes of Benin, the masks and carvings of the South Seas, are no longer relegated to the care of the ethnologist or the historian. Tlie misapprehension of their artistic value has been cleared away and they take their place in their true position as works of art. What has proved an even greater influence has been the revelation of the immensity and high artistic value of the art of Asia. The prejudice of the last century was unwilling to believe that India could produce anything that was worthy to be called fine art, so deep and long enduring was the prestige of classical art. The great monuments of Indian sculpture, the unique quality of the frescoes of Ajanta, the charm and beauty of the native schools of painting, qre only now being appreciated at their true value. About ISGO the eyes of Europe were first opened by the curiosity excited by the colour-prints of Japan. They were obviously not part of some exotic religious system, but were an expressive art of a fine pictorial design and a charm that made an immediate appeal. Once interest was aroused inquirers began to explore a little further, not only into colour-prints, but into the classical painting of Japan. Grand Chinese Art. At the beginning ol this century Japan was considered to be the great artist nation of the East. But the Japanese themselves dispelled this illusion by the many line publications, made available in Europe, of the masterpieces of Chinese painting, thereby revealing! the beauty and grandeur of the older Chinese art. There was still more to be revealed in China. The Chinese’sciilpi or, though he had been credited with a virtuosity that produced carvings in jade and rock crystal, was not even suspected of the capacity to create works of the force and grandeur of early Chinese sculpture.

So in a few years the whole coneei)tiou of Asiatic art Im.? been entirely transformed. Taste has changed and has been enlarged. Where our grandfathers only found a virtuosic patience of workmanship ana an antiquarian curiosity in the exotic character of the works, the present century finds a rare artistic quality. A Chinese statue, a Japanese screen, a Siamese bronze, an Indian drawing, all are seen as manifestations of art, and each one brings its wave of influence. And now the advancement and refinement of photographic reproduction make these works available in a form that is cheap and easily acquired. They have come as revelations of new worlds to the European artist, offering possibilities for development in entirely new directions.

Is it to be wondered at that the [|ye-seni-day.artist in Europe and America, overwhelnied himself by realising the immensity and variety of the whole field of art, now opened up for him for the first time, should astonish us by the rapidity of change in his modes of expression. Our artists are -no longer trained in a narrow tradition, trying to say over again what the older masters have already said with such consummate skill. But their works, if more difficult to understand and bewildering in their variety, are of extraordinary interest and illumination.