FASHIONS IN PAINTING

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXVI, 22 July 1935, Page 2

FASHIONS IN PAINTING

“DEVASTATING REMARKS” Addressing students of Glasgow School of Art, Dr. 0. 11. Mavor made some devastaing remarks on some ot the things done in the name of modern art. “Many artists appear to consider the word ‘modern’ to. be synonymous with exciting and original,” he said. “I hope you -realise what ‘modern’ means It,means ‘in the fashion.’ There is nothing more rigid, more emptily capricious, more murderous of individuality and clear thinking and acting. It makes young artists cover canvas with anaemic creatures with necks like those of,giraffes and shaded down both sides, with features like those of camel afflicted with hebephrenic dementia praecox. lam not referring _to schools of painting, however revolutionary and bizarre they may be. The schools at least are not bastards.. They have some origin we can trace. It is one of the strange and mysterious ways of Providence that a great and original artist is quite frequently recognisably and hopelessly mad. One faculty has been left him unimpaired, and it has grown to a superlative stature. His disciples try to find the undiscoverable way to his genius by copying his eccentricities. Behind his disciples come a string of hangers-on. They have no more powerful reason .for imitating. the master than have little boys who follow the palsy-stricken idiot down the village street. So if T must put up with derivative work, I like first of all, work that springs from a philosophy.”