IMPORTANCE OF ART TO COMMUNITY

Manawatu Times, Volume 61, Issue 298, 17 December 1936, Page 31

IMPORTANCE OF ART TO COMMUNITY

whom I am addressing are many of you engaged in art in some practical form. You are people of education, ability and standing in your respective communities, and you are representatives of wider circles similarly engaged. You are advocates of a more effective teaching of the arts in our schools and colleges and the societies which you represent are similarly engaged in trying to advance the appreciation of art in the community generally. Thus Dr. Washbourn, of Nelson, president of the Association of New Zealand Art Societies, addressing the.annual meeting of that organisation recently..

when it was first formulated, and that everyone that is doing anything worth while with their lives, is, whether they realise it or oot, on one or other of these ways. For reasons which are beyond our present comprehension man has been set down in tho world to find his way to God by his own personal effort, and there is the choice of these three ways. This may seem at first sight to conflict with orthodox religion, but it is not so. Eeligion, that is communion with tho Divine, is only one half of tho picture. It is of little value unless it finds outward practical expression in one of the threo ways. On the other hand, a traveller on any of these Ways must find God at last.

Has it ever occurred to‘y° u > he continued, to try to get to the root of the matter and ask yourselves what justification there is for a body of intelligent citizens, whoso energies could be used in more ob%-iously useful directions, spending their lives in painting pictures, carving in wood and stone, or in the kindred crafts?

To the pure materialist this is mere nonsense. If he is consistent, art cannot have much significance for him. At best, a picture, even a great picture, can only be a more or less decorative bit of colour to break the monotony of a bare wall. But I am asking you to consider whether to believe that is not to miss the whole meaning of the great Art movement which began in the dim and misty ages before history began, and has been gathering force ever since, as men have emerged from barbarism. Baces and civilisations have been born, matured and died. Now what is the most lasting and indestructible contribution that they havo made to the progress of the race? It is their Art, using the word in its widest sense. The artist has always striven to see the beauty of the work of the Great Artist and Master Craftsman of the Universe, and, so course between these extremes. That being so, it means that the scope of Art is unlimited. We can never come to the end. I like to think that as Kipling puts it, when our last earth-picture is painted and after we havo had a rest “the Master of all good workmen shall set us to work anew.”

I suppose thatothe majority of people to-day are frankly materialistic in their outlook, and in choosing their own careers or careers for their sons and daughters, the main consideration in their minds is the probable return in money, and in some cases the social standing of the trade or profession chosen. This is all very human and natural, but is it as it should be?

As in so many things the anwser depends on one’s philosophy of life. If you are a convinced materialist then there is no good reason why you should not enter upon the business that promises the best money return, nor why you should not (as is the custom) pursue it with a ruthless disregard of tho interests of others. If you believe that this present life is all that thijre is, then by all means keep within the law, but grab all that you can and make the most of it. Bather a stone-age philosophy, but quite a common one. On tho other hand if our life here is but a stage in the progress of the individual, then the nspect of things changes. To me, and I expect to most of you, tho most plausable explanation of our life here is that it is an educative process, a sort of school period where certain things can be learned which cannot be learned elsewhere. The man who cannot see in the visible Universe the plan of a Master Mind, must, it always seems to me, be suffering, from some form, of congenital mental and spiritual blindness. There is evidence of design and law and order and sequence whether you examine tho interior of the atom, or the structure and movements of a nebula a hundred million light-years away in the abysmal depths of space. If these things do not show the plan of a Master Mind then all human reason is stultified, and wo are the product of an unregulated chaos. No strictly sane person believes this, but some of us, while believing in a God-created Universe, do not always follow the belief to its logical conclusion. You cannot accept, the plan as partial. If you accept it as governing the composition, arrangement, and movements of the thousands of millions of suns comprising one of the “island universes” to be seen in tho sky at night, then you must accept it for the arrangement of the coloured scales on the wing of a tiny moth. It is all or nothing. The Great Master Pattern must be perfect and cover everything, from the motions of a giant sun to the microscopic pigmented cell in.a butterfly’s wing or a flower.

. . If.the true artist is the man or woman whose life’s work is to search out the beauties.of the. Creator’s handiwork and to show these to others by means of whatever may be .tho tools of his particular art, then you must .see. that .the. artist ranks, in the importance, of his. work, with the greatest of those who “serve His. world.’.’ There can bo no.higher calling..

• ■ -Not everyone who paints pictures is inspired.- --Most of our exhibitions show much that -is extraordinarily dull and sometimes technically bad; Selection committees have even-been-known-to rejeet pictures! I expect that most of us have been victims at some time or other of this wholesome and necessary discipline. We should be careful, however, how we discourage genuine effort, because, even in the perpetrators of the worst of tho rejects, there must be some groping effort towards the right way. Historian of the Future. Looking 1 back over the history of our people what comment do you think tho historian of the future is likely to make? What will tho perspective of time show him in 'regard to the last hundred years? Probably the most striking things of tho period are, first, the growth of scientific industrialism, the mechanisation of everything and tho substitution of machine for manual labour. Next is the rapid growth of knowledge in the physical sciences, and notably the idea of evolution enunciated by Charles Darwin, not so much in itself as in its influence in so many ways on the thought of tho period. The influence was profound and for the time being rather disastrous, for it led to a wave of materialism, so that for the greater part of the Victorian era science and tho scientist wero almost wholly materialistic.

Time will not permit me to elaborate this thesis, nor is it necessary, for I think you will all recognise that it lends a dignity and importance to human life, human actions, and human progress. It means that the aspirations towards something higher than we have yet achieved, and there are evidences of these aspirations in every race, however primitive, will be seen to have a clear significance, and not to be merely the froth on the surface of a troubled chaos. Ancient Thinkers. We are too apt to under-rate the mental and spiritual status of the great thinkers of the ancient world, but we have much to learn from them. Some of them saw that men in their spiritual striving towards The Light took one of three pathways.

Wo havo not quite emerged from this period, but the pendulum is swinging rapidly the other way. The historian of the next century will find this wave of materialism rather amazing. He will also resognise its deadening effect on the progress of art as a whole. There havo been some who have carried the light, but where materialistic ideas havo bitten deeply into tho intelligentsia of a people Art must suffer. Those bad old days are passing and we aro coming back to a sense of real values. We are coming, very slowly I am afraid, but still we are coming to seo that big business, successful industrialism, and all. those things, most of which we unthinkingly include under the term “modern, civilisation," aro not necessarily good or bad in themselves, but in so far as they have diverted us from the things that matter and hindered the spiritual progress of our people, they aro bad without any qualification whatever.

I cannot toll you exactly where or when these were first formulated, but they are at any rate as old as the Golden age of Greece and possibly much older. They called them:

(1) The Way of Truth: that is tho Way of those who search out the secrets jf Nature —the naturalist, the biologist, ihe mathematician, the geologist and so forth.

Saner Ideas. There are better days coming. The somewhat sordid value of a period so largely subjected to industrialism, the era of big business and ruthless cut-throat competition, is giving way to saner ideas and a groping after real values and a putting of first things first. The tide has turned. I tried to show in,the first part of this address that Art and the artist were not merely ornamental excrescences, but that they have a real and lasting place in tho spiritual progress of the individual and to the race:, that the Way of Beauty which we try to follow is one of the true and eternal Ways to the Light.

(2) The Way of Goodness: that is, the Way of those who seek their 'spiritual growth and advancement in the service of their fellow men.

(3) The Way of Beauty: this is the Way of those who' seek to find God in the beauty of tho things Ho has made, and to show.'as "far as ih them lies, this beauty of some fraction of it, to others. This is the Way of every true artist.

I suggest to you that'this classilicatioi has never been improved on, and that i stands as true to-day as that far-off day

Real and Lasting Peace in Spiritual Progress of the ' Individual and the Race : It Will Eventually Come Into Its Own.

If we have ever doubted tho value and importance of our work let us do so no longer, but go confidently forward seeking beauty for ourselves, and, still more important, seeking to show others the way. That is what our society is for. Much remains to bo done. I haven’t time to go into the question of the teaching of Art in our schools and colleges. It is as yet only the most primitive of beginnings and leaves much to be desired. Our exhibitions are doing something to educate public taste. For various reasons they are not as good as they should be. Wo can make them better. Greater facilities are required to enable us to find gifted students, and if necessary help them by scholarships and otherwise to develop their talent. Our public galleries need development, so that everyone may have access to good work even if they cannot have the originals of great masterpieces. In this connection I have often wondered why we do not procure copies of great pictures. Most of you have probably seen students at work copying pictures in the European galleries. As you all know it is comparatively easy for a senior student to copy a painting so that the copy can scarcely be distinguished from the original. What become of all these copies? It seems to me that the best of them might bo bought through an agent or agents at a cost little in excess of that of a Medici print, and that they might serve, at least in our smaller galleries, a very useful purpose.

We need not be downhearted. Art and the artist are coming into their own, and it lies with us as individuals, and with societies such as ours to help forward tho coming of that day. I have been thinking mostly of pictorial art and its allies, but the same considerations apply to the art of music, and of words, either in poetry or prose.

If our present civilisation does not crash in tho near future the Arts will certainly come to take their right place, and it is a high one. If, as many of us fear, tho crash is coming, then the civilisation which will arise out of the ruins must place first things first, and the arts are among the first things. A civilisation built on greed, jealousy, distrust, and ruthless industrialism must in the long run always crash. Meantime, let us push on our good work lest “the night come when no man can work.” far as his perception went, and his materials allowed, to show it to others. Artists of great inspiration aro rare, but what is the man of the rank and file doing but taking some aspect of Nature in which he sees beauty, and, according to the spirit that is in bim, trying to show to others who havo not his gift of sight.

I cannot tell you what beauty is. It is an elusive thing and very hard to define. This has been well expressed in some verse by Denise Gerard our youngest and I think our most promising New Zealand poetess. , Where is beauty born In the dark of the restloss sea In the floating veils of dawn Whence is beauty drawn Into the heart of me? Where does beauty hido In the woods like a nesting bird Where flickering waters glide Where do her feet abide Where is her. laughter heard? Where does beauty rest In the lips and eyes and hair On the beloved’s breast Dearest and loveliest Is beauty waiting there? Where does beauty dwell? Ah, who can tell! Definitions. We need not worry unduly about definitions, since most of the higher and more sipritual things of life defy adequate definition. What we do know is that it is not an accidental or casual thing, but that it runs like a golden thread through the whole fabric of creation. It is always there except where sometimes man has damaged the fabric. It is present everywhere for those who can see—in sky, mountain, river, lake, sea and in ten thousand other things. Equally is it present both outwardly and in tho inner structure of every living thing. It is there by the design and intent of the Great Master Artist. Can you doubt it?

The man in the street might perhaps object that what I have been saying was idealising Art and the artist, putting them away up on a pedestal dressed in finery that wouldn’t wash, and wouldn’t stand the weather, or the winds of common-sense criticism. Well, you must either be a materialist, which is the dreariest and incidentally the most illogical and unreasonable creed in the world, or you must believe that there is plan and design in everything, and that the perfection and beauty of that design must exceed anything that the human mind can conceive. If you consider it carefully. you. will see that there is no middle