AN ILL-USED WORD.

Otago Witness, Issue 3030, 10 April 1912, Page 72

AN ILL-USED WORD.

I Words have their successes and failures, 1 climb to undreamt of heights of popular- ■ ity and power, sink to depths of disgrace I and misuse just as nations or individuals J do. We cannot take up any old book or periodical without being struck with the different phrases and modes of expression j which belonged to the period and were ! perhaps the very flower of literary | excellence, but now are obsolete, re- ! diculous, or even vulgar. Of words indeed it may most truly be said— To what base uses may we rtme! There is no word perhaps in daily use among us which could lay fairer claim to ill usage than the word " Art." It has become, in the indiscriminate ap-

plication of our modern vocabulary, bastard and debased. It has been cheapened by misuse, commercialised by ignorance and greed until practical people look upon it with distrust and dislike. Our social, domestic, and personal ambitions are get to a monotonous shibboleth of Art—spelt, and this is very essential with a large " A." Young Darby and Joan, setting up housekeeping on the most modest basis, must have their little home adorned with Art furniture. The gifts for the bridesmaids must be of "Art Nouveau " jewellery, and the wedding bouquets be supplied by an "Art" llorifit. We ourselves respond to the lure ot the Art milliner and mince along, swathed in the mummv-like wrappings of the Art tailor. There is no department of domestic life into which that pernicious word does not penetrate. We sit on Art chairs to evolve the latest fad in Art needlework, and are soothed with a peaceful sense of being, and doing, "the correct thing " if our floors are covered with Art ruga, our doors and windows draped with Art hangings, and Palms and Aspidistras are enshrined in Art pots! Sometimes I doubt whether there is anything we may do, or have, or desire, simply and naturally, without attaching to it" that vulgarising label? I wait for an Art luncheon and tea-rooms where the people who like to be "Artistic" may maintain their traditions, and an Art undertaker who may undertake that our last appearance though passive may be thoroughly Artistic. Already I have found a mortuary yard abutting "on a crowded, bustling thoroughfare, where, above the broken lilies and draped urns', the mourning angels and marble crosses, is painted the legend "Art Memorial Co: Try us." So you see the Art movement is really spreading! Even fashionable tea-rooms and renowned department stores dare not exclude the too popular word from their list ot attractions, and some of them invite the passer by to " step in and inspect our Art Gallery]" .. Truly the word has fallen upon evil davs of vulgarising and decadence! But the thing itself lives on " Art is long, life is brief." Far and wide, up ancf down the whole earth we are drawing to ourselves the expressions of savage as well as civilised Art. The basketry of the red Indian, the lace of the English ]>easant woman, the cross stitch of the Russian, the quaint embroideries of the Breton. In our houses and our persons we vear by year cultivate a growing love *of colour 'and extravagance of ornament which the strange wave of orientalism which to day sweeps the western world encourages and intensifies. But these expressions of Art, being prompted by fashion and caprice, like them must pass, mere transitory things of the moment. Not so the Art which is expressed by the painter and the writer; they are the deathless ones of Art. Do we not still hold the Bible the most wonderful book in the world ? Are we not still fascinated by Virgil's (Jeorgics, still constrained sometimes against our will, to admit the truth of the inflexible Marcus Aurelius ; shall we ever tire of Shakespeare, or be unresponsive to the whimsical gaiety of Robert Louis Stevenson ? So too in even greater degree is the imperishable lure of the painter. Who has solved the sunning pimple smile of the Moiia Lisa ? Are not Raphael's Cherubs the smiling denizens of a million middle-class homes ? And so, amid all our silly talk and phrasing about Art where no Art is. there burns always true and strong among us the love of real Art, the Art which in portraying the beautiful things of human nature and of Nature touches our innate love of the beautiful, and draws us with magic irresistible. We are too fur from the Art centres of the world to be able to educate our taste effectually. It may be that our standards in the matter of pictures and objets d'art, are, as someone has had the courage to declare, " deplorably low "; but we mean well. Give us time and opportunity to educate our taste by the study of good pictures, statuary, pottery, enamels, carvings, and we shall respond, for as a people we are alert, intelligent, and fond of beautiful things. Thus it is of great pleasure to know that such a splendid exhibition of pictures as the Baillie collection affords will presently l>e ghown in the four large centres of the Dominion. A large number of the best Britist Artists of the different modern schools will be represented, and we shall all be eager to see the examples of Brangwvn, Arnpsby Brown, Clausen, Leader, East, Poynter, Wyllie, and a score of

others. But most of all I am anxious that facilities by rail and otherwise may be given for children to see these pictures, to be interested in them and encouraged to think and speak of them. One cannot render a greater service to the young than to develop in them a love of the beautiful in Art and Nature. EMMELINE.