THE ART EXHIBITION

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21883, 20 August 1934, Page 12

THE ART EXHIBITION

Sir, —1 have * observed with some astonishment that the letters- in your correspondence column concerning the Art Exhibition have nearly all exhibited a iitrain of the most bitter aud_ dogged conservatism. In no place but New Zealand, I fancy, would one at the present time find so much reiteration of the eld slogans—the demand for photographic reality and narrow literalism.; fc'O we get such statements as the following from your correspondents:—A demand that we should see the human form "as the Greeks did. and a'll the great artists of the civilised west since then." Now, to begin with, wo do not know quite how the Greeks saw the human form; with one possible exception we have no original Greek statues; what wo have are more or less inaccurate copies, with various degrees of fake; and the Gothic carvers and window designers, who were certainly ''great artists," were by no means realistic in their treatment of tho human form. Loose and random statements about '"hideousness," etc. This is simply to substitute a cliocolate-box top standard for a genuine standard of beauty, taking into consideration not the mere "prettiness" of the picture, but its rhythms of form and colour. Talk of "these heads of criminals and morons," which is simply a refusal to judge the artist by his own standard. I would agree that if the artist's criterion were a photographic one. the extreme left-hand figure in the "Chess Players would be simply a microcephalic. But we cannot apply this standard to Robert i work as he sh„pws clearly that ho will subordinate the size of an individual head to the requirements of the general scheme of his work. An appeal to the judgment of "common folk." Tins is a fallacious argument —it takes it 311 axiom that the common man has a natural unbiassed instinct for good art. Whereas the average man in New Zealand, through 110 fault of his own, is simply in the unfortunate positioner having absorbed a prejudice for Victorian art, without ever getting a chance to sec anjfeSothcr kind. This is probably no longer true of London, for example, where the average man can see modernist paintings in the art galleries, and Epstein statues in pubiio places. In conclusion, might I suggest that there is no occasion ior the rancour which has been shown over tin* question. Art is one question *'! . discussion of which we should still' able to retain our tempers Personally* 1 am prepared to take artistic beauty wherever 1 can find it—in a Gotnio cathedral, in a. Japanese print, in a cubist painting, even in a Victorian (Whistler for example)—and be thankful for it. That is why 1 feel that the exhibition, which shows us first-rate examples of various schools,, deserves a prayer of heartfelt gratitude, not 4 howl of enraged conservatism. luMA.