EXPRESSION IN ART

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIII, Issue 167, 14 June 1933, Page 8

EXPRESSION IN ART

APPLICATION TO COMMERCE. “DEMAND FOR NEWER FORMS.” “Post-war movements in the fine arts have led to a widely enlarged conception as to what is to be regarded as beautiful, as to what is art, and what is not art. There is now a demand for the newer forms of art,- .something more in keeping with the spirit of these restless times. Modern art is coming to New Zealand. It is rampant in the Old Country and has to be studied. It has a meaning all. important _ and significant. It cannot bo dismissed with a shrug of the shoulders.” This was the statement made by Dr. A. R. D. Carbery, C.8.E., of Wellington, president of the New Zealand Association of Art Societies, in a striking address which he gave when officially opening the Manawatu Society of Arts annual exhibition at the Showgrounds entertainment hall last evening. “Youth, in popular music, are no longer to be charmed by languorous waltzes or romantic ballads,” he added. “They require jazz with a punch-ball rhythm, something to symbolise the high speed, staccato, ‘all-in’ life of the moment. All this is attempted by the ultra modern painters and sculptors. It is the snme spirit which makes people cultivate a prickly cactus for admiration in their front room when once they were contented with geraniums. “Pattern and design follow these leads in textiles, ceramics, furniture and interior decoration. All forms of applied art are being modified by this 20th Century renaissance. What is more significant is that ultra-modern art has found a place in commerce. Many people like it because it is something different. Fashion is a best seller. One gains the impression that every chocolate eater is not a great art lover, but art helps to sell the chocolate box, and it lias been found that in this simple designs are preferred. The modernistic movement is manifesting itself in metal furniture. “It is not the jiroducer of the primary necessities of life who makes the largest profit,” continued Dr. Carbery. “It is the luxuries of life that are now its prime necessities. Fashion directs the interchange of commodities and not the law of supply and demand. While the economists of sixty-six nations are now gathered in conclave to seek a solution of the problem of adjusting wornout economic formulae to the needs of modern production and distribution ruled by a technocracy whose only law is unlimited production, fancy and fashion are amenable to no laws, except those of an artist designed to tempt the buyer and to confound the producer. Napoleon said that England was a nation of shopkeepers. He was wrong; he should have said it was a nation of engineers. It was because of machines that England, after the Napoleonic Wars, became the wealthiest and most progressive nation in Europe. England’s machines have been vastly improved since, but their products have fallen from favour in foreign markets. Last year a Royal Commission was set up to inquire into the cause, and the conclusions reached were that the English manufacturers were handicapped by their indifference to the prejudices of modern buyers, who now require that beauty shall be combined with usefulness. It was stated that most British manufactured goods were unduly low in aesthetic quality, and for the sake of national self-respect, as well as profit, it was imperative that the fullest use should be made of the nation’s artistic genius. The report added that the question of the art instruction provided in art schools, technical colleges, primary and technical schools, was of fundamental importance in the development of any country. We have all these instructional facilities in New Zealand and it is most desirable that we should support them so ns to encourage art appreciation. Throughout the whole world the graphic and the plastic arts and their application to the needs of industry and commerce are attracting an intensive study. England is now coming into line. UTILITY IN ART. “I am a firm believer in the usefulness of art, quite apart from its aesthetic attractions,” Dr. Carbery added. “Man cannot live without arts. Even when the primitive cave-dweller was groping towards the pathway of civilisation art was his companion. The making of art objects seems to be co-eval with the birth of modern man. The very first pages of written history. disclosed in the inscriptions of age-long dead peoples, are copiously illustrated by the contemporary art of ancient Egypt. Fragments of Chinese proto-porcelain have been found in buried palaces of Asia Minor that were in ruins before Troy was built. There were china collectors even in those days. Art advanced to great achievements when Tutankhamen was laid to rest. For a thousand years the arts progressed' until they bloomed with greater beauty in Athens and filled the temple of the virgin goddess of the Acropolis with miracles of loveliness. Later the Roman plutocracy adorned their seaside villas of Herculaneum and Pompeii with treasures which the outpourings of Vesuvius could not destroy. Art did not die utterly in the Dark Ages. We have testimony in that gorgeous illuminated manuscript, the Book of Kelt. From the ornamental designs of this the Gothic cathedrals were conceived, while the loss of Constantinople restored to Italy all the liberal arts and humanities of Greece in the Renaissance. It is said that art flourishes in periods of national exaltation. The age of Reynolds, Romney, Gainsborough, Raeburn aud Constable coincided with the birth of England’s greatness and that brilliant period of English literature.

PLACE IN LIFE. “The objective of such an exhibition as this is to bring to the widest possible audience examples of oar national artistic skill, so that even those who run—as many do— through art galleries, may read that it has a place in our civilisation,” Dr. Carbery continued. “If they could only be brought to know that art to-day is no idle man’s hobby, but has a strong part to play in our working life, then much would have been achieved. New Zealand artists and producers could be brought together in helpful co-opera-tion and a stimulus would be provided to distribution by making our exports more attractive to the buyer, whose tense of values is often only eye-deep. But I would not have you devote too much to the contemplation of utilitarian art harnessed to industrial aims, or chained to an oar in the galley of commerce,” concluded Dr. Carbery. “I would have you take pleasure in beautiful design for its own sake, and in the recreation of aesthetic contemplation. The appreciation of art objects is a harmless sport, and if it does nothing else, it may serve to keep us out of mischief, lhink of art appreciation as something to which one can retreat in times of trouble.