MODERN BUNKUM

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 18, 20 July 1935, Page 6

MODERN BUNKUM

NOVELTY CONDEMNED

.'"This bunkum of modernity," was the phrase used by Professor T. Harold Hughes in an address on present-day art at the Royal Institute of British Architects' ' conference at Glasgow, says the "Daily Telegraph."

, Professor Hughes, who is Director of Architectural Studies at the Glasgow School of Architecture, declared that 90 per cent.'of so-called modern work in music, painting, sculpture, and architecture was "rubbish."

As far as building was concerned, they had the case of factories where sheets and sheets of glass were varied with a little flat facing material which might, or might not, have good weathering properties. "The designs suggest that those who created them are interested in the dividends of -the glass companies and the coal and coke merchants," he added.

"It is the same everywhere," he continued. "In decoration, in furniture, and in motor-cars. Streamlining in 9D cases .out; of 400 is an affectation and adds nothing to' speed. • Streamlines are even being' painted on various vehicles. It is always the craving for novelty. "Book illustrations are pushed to the corners of a page to become thumb-marked and' dog-eared; capital letters are omitted from proper names. Why ;,do not these modernists go the whole hog and split the infinitive and forget the aspirate?" The majority of modern buildings were produced merely to be novel, to catch the eye and to become easily .notorious. The speculative builder had seized his opportunity and produced his version of modern atrocities to desecrate the country. The shop-fitter, with his blatant absurdities, destroyed the town.

"It is novelty of features—the outer fashion in dress and not the true spirit of building progress—that we seem to catch.

"Most modern architecture bears to real architecture the same relation as hot jazz to Weber, or a pump rumba to the stately minuet."