HILARIOUS ART.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19376, 10 July 1926, Page 12

HILARIOUS ART.

A DECORATIVE FANTASY. ELAM STUDENTS' EFFORTS. DISPLAY AT MASQUERADE BALL. Patrons of art who attended the Elam School students' masquerade ball last evening did not find it necessary to talk about the weather. Indeed, it was hardly necessary to talk about anything; the pictorial decorations not only spoke for themselves, they raised their brazen voices so land as practically to silence any mere human effort. Last year, the principal of the Elam School and his assistants produced a series of. colourspasms that transfixed art-loving Auckland. This year the students were given a free hand, and the result as seen last evening at the Society of Arts Hall, tvas in every sense of the word striking. " The students produced a fantasy in decorative art before which even the efforts of their masters paled. As art, one can but quote Kipling's immortal lines dealing with Adam's first sketch, scratched with a stick in the mould of the Garden of Eden:— The first ntdo sketch that the world had seen was joy to his miehty heart. Till tho devil whispered behind the leaves, "It's pretty, but—is it art?" And the decorative fantasy was far, far from pretty. Spectacular, diverting, hilarious to a degree, but not pretty. It was not meant to be, of course. Art and beauty,- according to the modern ideal, have no more in common than art and morals. And the decorative fantasy was strictly in accord with the best principles of modern art. The Fun oi tho Pair. All the fun of the fair was there to help along the care-free spirit of revelry. Bight round tho hall ran a wide frieze emblazoned with scenes of a country fair in full swing. No half-tones or nuances, or artistic blendings of light and shade in that running hundred feet of hectic eye-shock. All the primary colours, worked in with the joyous abandon of youth, told the story of the " Colossal Fair." A masterly panel of " scenes at the Gate " served as a good introduction to various sections of tho " fair." Here were all the old friends resurrected from Dunedin's dead show, the scenic railway, the helter-skelter, the " living skeleton " --unfortunately only the tent was shown —Punch and Judy, Bronco Bill, Captain Kidd, Dick Turpin, Aunt Sally, and other famous characters of fact and fiction. One of the most striking panels w r as that of the zoo, with a red and white serpent lolling across the top like a striped candy-stick, a ludicrous creature of prehistoric origin leering at a giraffe, and other incredible beasts. The circus was a masterpiece, depicting all the charm of elephants playing the cymbals, performing monkeys, trapeze artists and others of that time-honoured band. Skilful Perspective. The waxworks was another masterpiece that attracted much attention, while the Chinese juggler was the subject of much comment. He looked like a figure of doom in a snake-charmer's nightmare. One point should be specially noted in connection with this bizarre and arresting display, and that is,the general excellence of the drawing and skilful handling of perspective. The colour-scheme, as hinted above, looked after itself. At the foot of the stair:3 was a panel that attracted much attention. It was a " futurist," both in design and import, for it depicted a mighty stream of artstudents racing np a wide blue highway to a rose-red university building set on the crown of a hill. If the artist's dream comes true, and the Elam School has ceased to exist as an entity tins time next year, Auckland will await with bated breath the next pictorial outburst on the part of its budding artists, /