“MODERNISM RUN AMOK”

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 858, 30 December 1929, Page 12

“MODERNISM RUN AMOK”

PARIS SCHOOLS CRITICISED BY N.Z. ARTIST HON. MRS. R. VANE RETURNS London schools of painting are now far better than those of Paris. This is the opinion of the Hon. Mrs. R. Vane, formerly Miss Kitty Mair, of Auckland, who has been studying abroad as an artist for the past 17 years. “The French schools have run amok with modernism,” she told The Sun after her arrival on the Rangitata last evening. “They have spoiled more artists than they have made.” At the same time Mrs. Vane, who is a daughter of the late Captain Gilbert Mair, of Auckland, an authority on Maori history, hastened to explain that she was not a sweeping critic of modernism in painting. “It has done a lot of good,” she said. “It has made people look at the way a picture is painted rather than to regard it as simply photographic work. It has made them take an immense interest in technique. The point is ■that flashy technique can be carried too far and become insincere.” Slim and vivacious, Mrs. Vane is paying her first visit to New Zealand since 1921. With her are a large number of her pictures, and she intends to hold an exhibition in Christchurch and one in Auckland in April. “First, however, I want to paint in New Zealand,” she said. “I want particularly to paint Mount Cook scenery which is the finest in the world. I know that because I have seen the rest, having painted in France, Italy, Morocco, Algiers, California, Scotland and England.” Mrs. Vane, who paints in water colour and tempera, specialises in landscape work. Her picture, “The Mill at Drift, Cornwall,” was hung in the Royal Academy exhibition last year. She considers New Zealand a country of great opportunities for painters, but also great difficulties, because of the clarity of the atmosphere. An old student of Mr. Kenneth Watkins, of Auckland, Mrs. Vane paints under the name of “K. Airini Vane.” In England she studied under Lucy Kempwelch and Miss Lorna Burch, R.A., as well as at most of the London schools. Although the majority of American students are ardent modernists and invariably go to Paris, she considers that New Zealand students cannot do better than to go to London where the Slade School is still unexcelled. One of Mrs. Vane’s paintings has been purchased for the Dunedin Art Gallery and she has had others hung by the Royal Institute of Painters and Watercolour.

Mrs. Vane hopes to include in her Auckland exhibition the pictures she proposes to paint in the next month or two. She will remain in New Zealand until the winter.