IDEALOGIES IN ART

Wairarapa Times-Age, 31 July 1939, Page 2

IDEALOGIES IN ART

TRADITIONAL VERSUS MODERN TRENDS. “In the artistic, as in the political, world two different ideologies exist,” said Sir William Rothenstein in opening a broadcast debate, “Traditional versus Modern Art.” “The so-called revolutionary painters today affirm that one long phase of painting has been achieved, from Giotto, we will say, to Degas, and that the time has come to form a new one. ‘All right,say the traditionalists, ‘but we've got to see that the foundations for that new tradition are going to be solidly laid.’ Our physicists, too, are searching for a new law to explain the universe, but remerpber that when scientific men put forward new theories, unless they answer all the tests which can be applied, they are scrapped; and I don’t see why a good deal of the artistic experiment today which is perfectly legitimate may not be scrapped, too. But the chief point of difference, I think, is this: the younger generation of artists and sculptors say that form need no longer be subject to the laws of appearance, that form has its own laws; the traditionalists say that form is the symbol of the hidden reality which man will never understand. Therefore to subject yourself to that appearance is, if we keep our artistic integrity. Io interpret something of the hidden reality of which, otherwise, we would know nothing.”