THE PLACE OF THE ARTIST IN LIFE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22020, 1 August 1933, Page 13

THE PLACE OF THE ARTIST IN LIFE

KATHERINE MANSFIELD AND RHONA HASZARD. By Piiuxida. Although, in trying to find the secret of an age, it may be tempting to draw one's conclusions from the masses whose behaviour is a direct result of the pressure of the times, to accept only mass behaviour as revealing the secret is erroneous and one-sided; for muss behaviour is a reaction, a reflection, an echo, following from something which has gone before and as blind and mechanical as it is unconscious of itself. To approach more closely to the desired secret, it is necessary to study behaviour not unconscious, but conscious, aware and living and not merely reactionary; and to do that one must leave the masses and go to the other extreme—to those individuals who are so truly individual as to be unaffected by what sways the whole and, on the contrary, are aware of life in its pristine vitality. Standing alone, and as sensitive as the strings of an iEolian harp, it is these rare spirits who hear the voice which caused the echo, and see the original of the mirrored reflection, and they, also, who embody that which characterises the human race —the desire to create. They are the artists of the age—letting the word " artist" cover all those whose eyes and ears are open to the movement of life—poets, writers, musicians, sculptors, and so on. But they are worthy of study only if the result of their perception belongs to the moment of time in which they live; for those who, aware only of the urge to create, go back to the past or yearn to the future for inspiration, are misusing their opportunities and denying their privileges. The true artist is age-conscious, thrillingly alive to the beat and pulse of the present; and what he creates is a symbol of that present, life expressing itself as steadily as it breathes, and, once expressed, satisfied. It is-gratifying to realise, when considering this question of age-consciousness, that the two artists whom New Zealand has produced and who are recognised as such by the whole cultured world, are both artists in this important'sense; One is Katherine Mansfield, the writer; fhe other is Rhona Haszard the painter. And the reason why each has earned an enduring name in the annals of art is that she was in touch with life and gave expression to what she experienced. Also, each lived in the present century. Life seems to flow more swiftly for the artist in some ages than in others; in the Victorian age it was more available to the scientists, and the artists had less contact with it. Indeed, in the Victorian era, art seems to have been always veiled, so that its expression was given strange embellishments and appeared in hangings and trappings. But now it comes nakedly and without disguise, and, when it is given expression by those artists who are able to realise it, 'that expression is also naked and without disguise. One concludes as much after a study of the work of these two women. It is a well-worn maxim that beauty unadorned is adorned the most, and that silence is the only speech which will express the inexpressible. Both Katherine Mansfield and Rhona Haszard realise this, their work, in their widely different spheres, being so unadorned, so devoid of superfluous explanation, that it gives voice at once to the life which' inspired it' and which has been as sensitively interpreted as it was sensitively felt. Read Katherine Mansfield's stories. There are no adornments here, no addition of anything meretritious to her clearcut thought, no unnecessary passages. The result is stories which present life itself to the reader —real moods, real actions, real people, real situations —life given verbal expression, and so, satisfied. Study Rhona Haszard's pictures and the same applies. Oh, radiant spirit which could see so much beauty, such colour, such light, and so much poise and rhythm in Nature! But even more radiant spiritto be able to communicate it, and, in purity of pigment, simplicity of line, and a refusal to add anything which might seek to offer explanation, give to the beholder what she herself beheld—that colour, that light, that poise and rhythm—and move him to ecstasy—either of peace or of exultation —as she herself was moved! Her pictures, like Katherine Mansfield's stories, possess the real quality of art: They " hold, as it were, the mirror up to Nature." It seems that, despite everything, life is still beautiful. From the mass point of view the world at the present time is not a happy place, and there have been several ages when it was kinder and gentler and less able to be ashamed of the ignorant way in which it_ uses its liberty. But, underneath, life is no different from what it has always been, and, at its source, is as vital and energising as when Greece carved her statues, and Germany wrote her sonatas. The secret of our own age lies, as always, with those chosen ones whose ears are attuned and whose eyes are open, so that they may recognise life beneath its coverings. There are still those who can interpret it to us in such a way that for us, too, it becomes life, a reality whicli, but for them, we should never have known. And two of them sprang from our own New Zealand soil—Katherine Mansfield and Rhona Haszard. Artists whose work the world acclaims, these two women beheld the beauty at the heart of life and then showed it to the world. The secret of our age was their heritage.

A memorial exhibition of the works of the late Rhona Haszard, who. died in 1931 at the early age of 30,"is at present open to the public in the Bristol Concert Chamber. First because she 'was an artist in the best sense of the word, and secondly because she was a New Zealander, having spent all but the last five years of her life in the Dominion, Rhona Haszard deserves attention from her own people. It is hoped that every opportunity of seeing the exhibition during this one short week of its appearance in Dunedin will be taken, especially by children and young people whose chances of studying good art are not always very great. Yesterday, at the private view, those present were deeply moved by the I splendid range of pictures which make the Bristol Concert Chamber glow with colour and express so vivdly the life which inspired them.