MODERN ART

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 59, 7 September 1937, Page 4

MODERN ART

LANDSCAPE PAINTING

A W.E.A. LECTURE

The concluding lecture of the series on "Understanding Modern Art," which was given for the W.E.A. by Mr. E. C. Simpson, 8.A., on Monday night, dealt with further aspects of landscape painting and was illustrated by a number of fine lantern slides. Every artist is aware, said the speaker, that the' more complex and majestic the subject he paints, the more must he adapt it in a picture, avoiding the attempt to give an illusion of the thing seen, but giving in Us place a symbol of his experience. This necessary alteration of the appearance of a landscape is largely determined by the artist's thought. Goethe's words express this well when he says: An artist would speak to this work through,an entirety, but this entirety he does not find in Nature: it is the fruit of his own mind." The search for an "entirety" in landscape painting had depended on one of two great methods 6i approach, the Romantic and the Classical. These two fundamental, irreconcilable modes of thought had been the determining forces in European art. Where the Classical artist envisaged the world as an orderly system and stood apart to observe it, the romantic identified himself closely with it and was interested in the part he himself played. . CLASSICAL STYLE. After pointing out the main distinguishing characteristics of these two separate tendencies, Mn Simpson showed examples of landscape art from Poussin and Picasso, which offered typical examples of- the. classical Style in painting. .The work ,of Cezanne and Seurat was responsible for the revival in. classical painting culminated'in the:;work of the ,C.ubiste. Their landscapes showed a ■.•classic calm and; finality, and; h,ad provided the - inspiration.' for .the landscape painting*of living artist sUch^a*,Paul Nash, Wyndham, O'Keefe, and others, examples of whose work was^shown; The romantic painter, basing his pic-, ture on some emotion, made that emotion the exclusive subject of his painting: and Rubens, the German ex-; pressiomsts, and Van Gogh provided obvious illustrations of this method.' Romantic art belonged naturally to the men of Northern Europe. One would expect to find it predominating therefore1 among English landscape painters, said the speaker, who showed several illustrations from the work of Constable, whose paintings were founded on what Cezanne called "a powerful, sensation when face to face with; Nature." But the greatest, achievement of romantic landscape was the work of Turner, who had what Spengler called, the. Faustian souk whose prime symbol was pure and limitless space.- Turner's landscapes, were concerned with his over-gigantic: and infinitely complex visions; they; constituted a profoundly 'personal means of expression, in terms of space, of the artist's relation to the. universe. •An interesting discussion followed, and Mr. Simpson was accorded a hearty vote of thanks for his informative course of lectures.