MODERN ART

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 7853, 15 July 1911, Page 1

MODERN ART

« dead these MANY YEARS.” A BASE MECHANICAL AGE. 'Tvo one will, I think, deny that the present ago is one of red-hot menta activity, and of expanding of human interests,” observed Mr W. S. La Tro , director of tho Wellington Technical School, in the course of a paper read bj him on “Sincerity in Art,” at the Arts Club on Thursday evening. “But, he added, “tho field of that activity, i shall be told, lies outside the spheres of artistic influence. ’Tis a base, mechanical a-o—an ago of speed, an age of science, an ago in which tho purer spirits arc shiled, in which the vulgar is the ideal, and art an exotic. So much tho worse for art—tho only true and lasting art must be rooted in tho times and in tho people. THE REAL WEAKNESS, “The artistic spirit, the mystery, the deep emotion, the beauty of things artistic are lost, wo arc told, in the hurry and rush and hustle of modern life; the steam engine and the factory have between them banished all the higher emotions. The scientist and the artist are at the opposite polts of thought, so we are told every day by those who rau at tii i« practical, money-making, energytransforming. soul-racking, . and beauty destroying age. Tho artist n,nd J-ho scientist, we are told, are spiritualistsa nasty modern word —and loox at <ui ferent things. True, tho bread and butter necessities of tho people, then homes, their furniture, their apparel, their instruments of labour, their drinking and eating utensils, their books, their pictures, and all that they meet i,n evorvday life, oven their music and their amusements, are mulfciplicatod by, machinery, and tho trail of tho stock pattern is over them all. True, also, that tho increasing output of common- : place work seems to stifle true feeling and to discourage real progress in living art. Nevertheless, I am inclined to think that the very lack of sympathy that appears to exist between art and science and between art and the mechanical world is the real weakness of modern art. MUSEUM DRAWING-ROOMS. 'Kxo into the average drawing-room, and what will you. find? Mainly a museum, containing scarcely a.- sign of living ant, scarcely an indication of any artistic thing true to the people and the times. In this craving for beauty and art man collects—in default of living art —such scraps as he may, copied scraps mostly, dragged from the museums of ’archaeology, or things of -beauty torn from Nature's breast. Ho brings, home scraps from his travels, aud digs ruts Ip his mind by oft retelling * dead tales of these scraps. Collecting is a silly--habit. Do you wish to have a mind covered witii nits like a nutmeg or polished by contact with all Nature and all art? No man wants to live in these museum draw-ing-rooms; everyone seems to want to own one, so that his wife may receive his visitors among the wreckage of dead civilisations. Art, in fact, has been dead these many years, to the changes in the conditions of life; has lived too much on the past; has too much followed th<* footsteos of those who interpreted tho attitude and 1 , thought of thtir times. ,but not of our times. The artist, in fact, in many realms, especially of applied art. has been insincere for many years; in sincere in that he has not sought to represent that which he can study a' first band; has turned a deaf ear to modern whisperings CLINGING TO PRINCIPLES. “ 1 do not mean to say that the vital principles of true art can change; in fact, I am maintaining that they cannot change. But if these principles do not change with the age, the expression of them in net. In fine, sincerity in art means clinging to tbo principles whilst ever-changing the expression to keep it true to the place, the people and the time, and finally, to the materials and means at hand. In this list is perhaps the most essential condition in all applied art work. And here let me say that obvious crudity and inutility of any object for its purpose is no proof that it has an artistic vaiuo; and, on the other hand, obvious fitness and nicely adjusted suitability are no proof of the inartistic in any object, Quito the reverse. it 1 seems a pity that art should cling so closely to worn out traditions, when, by 1 some thought, some study, some growth, new garbs for tho living principles of art might be discovered, suitable to our times and temper. SUPREME ART AGAIN. Signs are not wanting that some bread generalisations of knowledge in many departments which are now too complicated to be fully mastered save by a lifetime of study, will by and by be* noasible, and then, X think, we *may hope for art again. It is not enough, for example, that the engineer should havo the assistance of an artist lu designing his structures; he must bo an artist hinuelf. Sincerity in art craftsmanship means that tho engineer, tho M'tist and tho scientist must be one and the same man, each supreme Lu his own domain. Hence tho poverty, in the art sense, of our modern inventions —the bane of this age of specialists. . . . Looking back—for the gku© and closeness prevent one from seeing clearly the work of the present time, and it' requires the judgment of posterity to fix relative values —we are judged by our children—we may see that in every age the groat art work has been done by men who were right among tho pioneers lu civilisation, who were not only cognisant of all that was best in their ' times, but were oiten themselves leaders in science or sociology. The man. who would do great work in art must first a creat age to live in, must have sincerity of heart and head aud hand, ,and must walk with the great pioneers of his age. It matters not. then, what the subject of bis conversation may be, the language he speaks, the thought he expresses wul bo the expression of the leading ©pint ot uis own age; will be, in fact, really modern in the true sense of the term. \ot consciously so, but simply because he is himself with tbe pioneers, sees with tneir eyes, and transmutes the strong but base nu’tal of their achievements into the glittering gold of artistic creations by the alchemy of his imagination and the power of his emotions."