THE CHARM OF INDIAN ART.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19328, 15 May 1926, Page 7 (Supplement)

THE CHARM OF INDIAN ART.

INFORMATIVE ESSAYS

Many books which ostensibly deal with I the art of a particular country are much more ethnological than artistic in substance. This cannot be said about " The Charm of Indian Art" (Fisher Unwin), a series of essays by W. E. Gladstone / Solomon, who is the principal of a school of ait, in Bombay. The author is concerned entirely with the aesthetic content and inspiration of Indian Art, and much that he writes is both informative and pleasant reading. One cannot, however, escape a certain misgiving that he has given us an account of his own emotional reactions to the art of India, rather than the spirit of that art itself. He attributes to it an effusiveness, almost a sentimentality, which one ventures to suggest is scarcely in accord- // a ripe with the evidence. It is true that writers of sensational fiction about India too often depict the national temperament as possessed by a superhuman calm, and a contempt for any expression of the emo--1 irnis, which gives a picture of something less rather than more than human. But there i.s « reasonable mean, beyond which Mr. Solomon's commendable enthusiasm would appear to have led him. Also he has not quite escaped • the common error of moulding /facts to support his case, as in that otherwise admirable passage upon the fill-important truth that the artist u.-es ;he visual facts as a vehicle for his artistry, before all else. Ihe writer r.ays that " the fiery re■bgious zeal of I,'enaissant Italy, with all •ier pictorial symbols, does not seem to hare deterred her artists from becoming painters than preachers." The l.'enaissnire in Italy together with its eonstnji filiation was also a definite revolt the religious tenets of its day, and was, classic rather than religious spirit. It, was (he Northern races wiui.Ti direefrd the new revelation into broader > hnnnels and kept it alive by a ' -fiery teligious zeal.'' 1 h>' three concluding essays on "The Indiaii Art Student'' prove that Mr. Solo- , timri aware, of the risks which must ' always attend any attempt by a European to lead Asiatic art students in the way they should go. ft may easily result in the grafting of an exotic growth upon the native stork. t-« the detriment of loth. •i