ART COLLECTION

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 108, 8 May 1937, Page 11

ART COLLECTION

IN NATIONAL GALLERY

OPENING CEREMONY

There was the usual large and interested crowd at last night's openIng and private view of the autumn exhibition of the. New Zealand Academy ,of Fine Arts. Mr. D. A. Ewen, the academy's president, remarked that it was a happy augury that the 21s,t autumn sketch exhibition should ■ coincide with the first exhibition in the academy's own gallery. The standard of work was good, and the selection and hanging committees had done their work well. He welcomed Mr. Lamorna Birch whom they had come to regard as an old friend, and he welcomed, too, Professor Shelley whose wide interest in the arts was known to them alt.

Professor Shelley, prior to declaring the exhibition open, said that he came from a job where things were heard and not seen, but that state of, affairs Avas.now reversed. He congratulated the academy upon the "dressing" it was able.to give its exhibition, and remarked that the pictures stood up very well to the test of being hung with those ,of such a famous painter as Mr. Lamorna Birch.

In New Zealand art exhibitions, as a rule, he said, there were very few indications that there were any human beings living in the country, and, what might be regarded as a sign of the times, that any New Zealanders ever did any work. Wellington and its suburbs, .however, presented many ready-made modernistic landscapes for artists. But, joking apart, it was pleasing to see the walls so free of pictures, just put there to fill up space. New 'Zealand needed above all else the establishment of standards, and even if it meant being severe it would do culture most good, at the present time to cultivate a high standard in art, or else artists might be too easily satisfied.? It would be an excellent thing, he! thought, if a few more eminent artists from overseas could be persuaded to-, come to. New Zealand, so that local - artists might learn how, their country, looked to other eyes.

; The artist's fob was to show people what they, v did riot normally see, to make life more intense. If all saw as artists saw, much that was in Wellington and in other cities would not be tolerated for a moment. If artists had possessed sufficient power at the beginning of the nineteenth century, slums . would * never.. have . existed. Human life could only be controlled in terms of vision, hence the business or' an artist was rather a serious one.