HOW LINDSAY SAW AMERICA

Hawera Star, Volume LI, 21 May 1932, Page 14

HOW LINDSAY SAW AMERICA

IVCHRMAN LINDSAY is a -first-rate observer. At past fifty he is as quick as ever ho was to gather impressions, and they mover go stale in his mind Returned from America and England, he is full of interesting talk. No one should get the idea that he has “gone literary” altogether. He is still an artist. And, oommg from America, he is an artist amazed, writes Colin Simpson in the Sydney “Daily Telegraph.” ' Norman Lindsay returns to Australia convinced -that the Australian school of landscape painting is the finest in the world. The light in Australia, he says, is incomparable. The sky is bluer. Bluer than the blue Mediterranean skies, bluer than it is at vaunted Capri.

“The general public In Australia have an appreciation of painting that simply does not exist in America. Americans are very confused in what they know of painting; the majority know nothing at all. “On the other hand, Americans are in advance of Australians in their appreciation of writing. Everywhere prose, especially the novel, is discussed and admired.” Art in Americm, lie says, has- foundered between • S-cylla and golden Ohaiwbdis. The advertising artists and illustrators for the big magazines are entirely (i.arate from the rest, and are a remarkable class. Many of them are

Horror of Commerciality Gone Mad

amazingly skilful technically. They work entirely to the orders of the proprietors; of magazines and advertising agencies and have absolutely no opportunity or doing creative work. These artists make enormous salaries. Their pay can be gauged from the fact that Norman Lindsay himself did a job of illustration for a well-known American magazine, and was paid for it dollars equalling; £2OO. They spent money like water, these artists, and they spend most of it on liquor. T , , , “Booze!” says Norman, “I thought the Australians could drink, but chaps I met in New York were terrific drinkers. Their high life is completely amazing. ” He says that they make their money so easily that they despise themselves for it as much as they are despised by the art-for-art’s-sake- fraternity.

Tliis group makes no money at all, and in endeavouring to escape the horror of commerciality has gone mad. Its members live mainly in art colonies outside the towns, and paint picture's out of touch with everythingAmong the prominent illustrators lie speaks of the Australian king of black-and-white, John Richard Flanagan, instancing the remarkable specialisation that has taken hold of art. All Flanagan’s commissions are for illustrations to Chinese stories of the Sax Rohmer type. He draws practically nothing else.