COMMENTS ON ART

Manawatu Standard, Volume LI, Issue 7, 8 December 1930, Page 2

COMMENTS ON ART

THE GENIUS OF TITIAN. ADDRESS TO ROTARY CLUB. “Observations on Art” was the topic chosen by Dr. F. H. McDowall, of the Dairy Research Institute, Massey College, who addressed the Rotary Club to-day. Rotarian W. A. Swinbourn was in the chair. Dr. McDowall said there were many definitions of art, and no single definition would encompass its full dimensions. G. K. Chesterton has discussed at some length the science of terms, and to express ideas of the imagination in words was a very difficult task. Words were merely a means of putting an opinion before the hearers, who had to decode them and form their own views. Human beings had an extraordinary faith in the capacity of words as a means of expressing ideas. There were, however, many people who felt that words alone were not adequate to express what they wished to say, or rather who found that they'could express themselves better in media' other than those of words alone. These were the artists. The arts, then, were means of expressing ideas which the artists felt, but could not express in words, saul the speaker. It was, therefore, quite wrong to expect to be able to understand and enjoy a description of art. A description could give some indication of what it meant to the describe! - , but only an inkling. The meaning of any work of art must finally be apprehended in the medium of that work of art. The first essential of an artist was that he should have a capacity to think and feel. This might be either conscious or unconscious. The next essential was that he should have the capacity to transact his thought or feeling to others through his artistic mediums; that he should have technique, though this was the means, not the end in itself. Art was not only to be found in art galleries, Dr McDowall continued. Art permeated life, and was to be seen in everyday tilings such as the design of a church, tlie building of a home, or the lines of a motor car. It was worth more to know thoroughly some piece of artistic creation than to know a whole library of ideas about artistic creations in- the same way that it was of greater worth to see one of Shakespeare’s plays than to read all the commentaries about it. The comment by itself .was of no interest, except as an expression of the views of the writer.

Dr McDowall displayed, for the purpose of pointing his remarks, a copy of Titian’s masterpiece “Bacchus and Ariadne.” Titian, he explained, was one of the great fifteenth century painters, when the renaissance' was in full swing. The prepossession of artists for religious paintings was disappearing, and the more human and obvious side of life was attracting attention. After outlining the Greek myth of Bacchus and Ariadne, he stated that the picture was remarkable in that it utilised all the artist’s devices of drawing, light and shade, colour, form, line and rhythm or movement. He commented on the absorption of Ariadne in her grief for her lost lover, indicated by the “parry” of her arm as she swung along the cliff. In the foreground was a sntyr, with a grin that spoke volumes. Behind it all wa* the flame of action, a marvellous sky with bright clouds and seven stars, furnishing a remarkable contrast of temporal with eternal.

“To me the picture is a representation of the great • drama of life,” said the doctor. “The most dramatic thing in life is life itself—the fact that human beings live for a small space of time on a small portion of the great universe. Our lives are but as a tale that is told, and yet we become absorbed in the things of the day, and we feel that there is some significance in our lives. To my mind Titian has given us in his own medium a representation of this drama, man absorbed in his desires, his aspirations, thrown up against a screen of the eternal, unchangeable current of the universe.” A vote of thanks was conveyed to the speaker by Rotarian R. H. Billens.