ART AND MODERN LIFE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 14888, 13 January 1912, Page 1 (Supplement)

ART AND MODERN LIFE.

Where modern artists have been strong enough to keep in touch with the great artistic tradition, which is the great social tradition, they look uncouth and somewhat out of place. There is no home for their work in our social scheme. Rodin's statutes stand cold and remote on pedestals instead of being woven into the fabric of a resplendent architecture; Wagner's operas are sung voluptuously in fashionable theatres by over-specialised and overpaid artistes, instead of in the theatres of a free people who themselves are a part of the very performance; Frank Brangwyn's paintings are too often imprisoned in frames and hung in private mansions, instead of singing joyously from the walls of our public buildings; and the noblo craftsmanship of William Morris, expressing itself in tapestry and stained glass, in superb printing and design, becomes the passing fad of Mayfair rather than the practical expression of a revival of national taste. Indeed, this great common art, which, after all, is the most important of all art, receives so little encouragement that only the most vigorous artistic personalities survive the strain the rest die, or renounce art, or worse still, sell themselves to the system and become its panders and entertainers. There can be little hope for the. seemliness of modern lifo until this attitude towards art undergoes something like a revolution. The aim of all lovers of art should bo not to rest content with the aesthetic delight given them by art works, but to translate that delight into personal power. Art, to be of any lasting social value, should so refine and stimulate the critical faculties that no art lover will be happy until his surroundings are as beautiful as the art he appreciates.