IMPORTANCE OF ART TO COMMUNITY

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 295, 14 December 1936, Page 10

IMPORTANCE OF ART TO COMMUNITY

Real and Lasting Peace in Spiritual Progress of the Individual and the Race : It Will Eventually Come Into Its Own.

\ r, )l whom I am addressing are nianv of you engaged in art in some practica form. You are people of education, ability ami standing in your respective communities, and you are representatives of wider circles similarly engaged. You are advocates of a more elFeclive leaching of the arts in our schools and colleges ami the societies which you represent are similarly engaged iu trying to advance the appreciation of art in the community generally. Thus Dr. Washbuurn, of Nelson, president of the Association of New Zealand Art Societies, addressing the annual meeting of that organisation recently. Has it ever occurred to you, he continued, Io try to get to (he root of the mutter and ask yourselves what justification there is for a body of intelligent citizens, whose energies could be used in more obviously useful directions, spending their lives in painting pictures, carving in wood and stone, or in the kindred crafts? I suppose that the majority of people 10-dav arc frankly materialistic in their outlook, ami in choosing their own careers or careers for their sons and daughters, the main consideration in their minds is the probable return in money, and in sonic cases the social standing of the trade or profession chosen. This is all very human anil natural, but is it as it should be? As in so many things the anwser depends on one’s philosophy of life. If you are a convinced materialist then there is no good reason why you should not enter upon the business that promises the. best money return, nor why' you should not (as is the custom) pursue it with a ruthless disregard of Hie interests of others. If you believe that this present life is all that there is, then by all means keep within the law, but grab all that you can and make the most of it. Rather a stone-age philosophy, but quite a common one. On the other hand if our life here is but n stage in the progress ol the individual, then the aspect of things changes. To me. and I expect to most of you, the most Mansable explanation of our lite here is that it is an educative process, a sort of .school period where certain things can be learned which cannot, be learned elsewhere. The man who cannot see in the visible Uni verst die plan of a Master Mimi, must, it always seems to me. be suffering from some form of congenital mental ami spiritual blindness. There is evidence of design and law ami order ami sequence whether you examine the interior of the atom, or the structure ami movements of a nebula a hundred million light-vears away in the abysmal depths nt space. If these things do not show the plan of a Master Mind then all human reason is stultified, and we are the product ,H' an unregulated chaos. No strictly' sane person believes this, but some of us, while believing in a God-created Universe, do nol always follow the belief to its logical conclu sion. You cannot accept the plan as partial. If vou accept it as governing the composi lion, arrangement, and movements of the thousands of millions of suns comprising one of the. “island universes” to be seen iu tin sky at night, then you must accept it for i he arrangement, of the coloured scales on the wing of a tiny moth. It is al! or no thing. The Great Master Pattern must be perfect ami cover everything, from the mo lions of a giant sun to the microscopic pigment.ed ceil in a butterfly ’s wing or a flower Time will not permit me to elaboratt this thesis, nor is it necessary, for 1 think vou will all recognise that, it lends a dignity and importance to human life, human actions, ami human progress, it means that llie aspirations towards something higher than we have yet achieved, and there ar< evidences of these aspirations in every raw however primitive, will be seen to have a Hear .significance, and not to be merely the froth on the surface of a troubled cbauo Ancient Thinkers. We are too apt to under rate the menial and spiritual status of the great thinkers ol the ancient world, but we have much tc learn from them. Some of them saw that men in their spiritual striving towards The Light took one of three pathways. I cannot tell you exactly where or wher these were first formulated, but they are al any rale as old as the Golden age of Greece vml possibly much older. They called them: (1) The Way of Truth: that is the Way of those who search out the secrets of Nature —the naturalist, the biologist, the mat hemal iciau, Hie geologist and so forth. (2) The Way of Goodness:* that is, the Way of those who seek their spiritual growth and advancement in the service of their fellow men. (3) The Way of Beauty: this is the Way of those who seek to find God in the beauty of the things He has made, am! to show, as far as iu them lies, this beauty of some fraction of it, to others. This is the Way of every true artist. I suggest to you that this classification has never been improved on, and that it stands as true to-dav as that far-off day

vhen it was first formulated, and that every - urn: that is doing anything worth while with their lives, is, whether they realise it. or of, on one or oilier of those ways. I'or reasons which are beyond our present comprehension man has been set down in the world to find his way to God by his own personal effort, ami there is the choice of these three ways. This may seem at first <ight to conflict with orthodox religion, but it is not so. Religion, that is communion with the Divine, is only one half of the picture. It is of little value unless it finds outward practical expression in one of the three ways. On the other hand, a traveller on any uf these Ways must lirid God at last. In the pure materialist this is mere nonsense. If he is consistent, art. cannot have much significance fur him. At best, a picture, even a great, picture, can only be a more or less decorative bit of colour to break the monotony of a bare wall. But L am asking you to consider whether to believe that, is not to miss the whole meaning of the great Art movement which began in the dim ami misty ages before history began, and has been gathering force ever since, as men have emerged from barbarism. Races ami civilisations have been born, matured and died. Now what is the most lasting and indestructible contribution that they have made to the progress of the race? . It is their Art, using the word in its widest sense. The artist has always striven to see the beauty of the work of the Great Artist am! Master Craftsman of the Universe, and, so course between these extremes. That being so, it. means that the scope-of Art is unlimited. We. can never come to the end. 1 like to think that as Kipling puts it, when our last earth-picture is painted and alter we have had a rest •’the Master of all good workmen shall set us to work anew.” If the true artist is (lie man or woman who.ve life’s work is to search out the beauties of the Creator's handiwork and to show’ these to others by means of whatever may be the tools of his particular art, then you must see that, the artist ranks, in the importance of his work, with the. greatest of i hose who “serve His world.” There can be no higher calling. Not everyone who paints pictures is inspired. Most of our exhibitions show much that is extraordinarily dull ami sometimes technically bad. .Selection committees have even been known to reject pictures! J expect that most of us have, been victims til. some lime, or other uf this wholesome ami necessary discipline. We should be careful, however, how we discourage genuine effort, because, even in Hie perpetrators of the worst of the rejects, there must be some groping effort towards the right way. Historian of the Future. Looking back over the history of our people what comment do you think the historian of the future is likely tu make? What will the. perspective of time show him in regard to the lysl hundred years.’ Probably the most striking things of the period are, first, the growth of scientific industrialism, the mechanisation uf everything and thf substitution ot machine for manual labour. Next is the rapid growth of knowledge in the physical sciences, and notably the idea of evolution enuncia’ed by Charles Darwin, not so much in itself as in its influence in nianv ways on the thought of the period. The influence was profound and for the lime being rather disastrous, for it led tu a wave uf materialism, so that for the greater pari, uf the Victorian era science ami the scientist were almost wholly materialistic. We have nor quite emerged from this period, but Hie pendulum is swinging rapidly the other wav. The historian of the next ccniury will liud this wave of materialism rather amazing. He will also resognise its deadening effect on the progress of art as a whole. There have been some who have carried the light, but where materialistic ideas have bitten deeply into (he intelligentsia of a people Art must suffer. Those bad old days are passing and we arc coming back to a sense of real values. We are coming, very slowly I am afraid, but still we are coming to see that big business, successful industrialism, and all those things, most of which we unthinkingly include under the term “modern civilisation,” are not necessarily good or bad in themselves, but in so far as they have diverted us from the things that matter and hindered the spiritual progress of our people, they are bad without any qualification whatever. Saner Ideas. There are belter days coming. The somewhat sordid value of a period so largely subjected to industrialism, the era of big business ami ruthless cut-throat competition, is giving way to saner ideas and a groping after real values and a putting of first things first. The tide has turned. I tried to show in the first part of this address that Art aiid the artist were not merely ornamental excrescences, but that they have a real anti lasting place in the spiritual progress of the individual and to the race: that the Way of Beauty which we try to follow is one of the true ami eternal Ways to the Light.

If we have ever doubted the value ami importance of our work let us du so no longer, but go confidently forward seeking beauty for ourselves, and, still more important, seeking to show others the way. That is what our society is for. Much remains to be done. I haven’t time to go into the question of the teaching of Art in our schools and colleges. It is as yet only Hie most primitive of beginnings and leaves much to be desired. Our exhibitions are doing something to educate public, taste, l or various reasons they are not as good as they should be. We can make them better. Greater facilities are required to enable us to find gifted students, and if necessary help them by scholarships and otherwise to develop their talent. Our public galleries need development, so that everyone may have access to good work even if they can not have the originals of great masterpieces. In this connection J have often wondered why we do not procure copies of great pictures. Most of you have probably seen students at work copying pictures in the European galleries. As you all know it i.comparatively easy for a senior student to copy a painting so that the copy can .scarcely be distinguished from the original. What become of all these copies? It seems to me that the best of them might be bought through an agent or agents at a, cost little in excess of that of a Medici print, and that they might serve, at. least in our smaller galleries, a very useful purpose. We need not be downhearted. Art ami the artist are coming into their own, ami it lies with us as individuals, and with societies such as ours to help forward the coming of that day. I have been thinking mostly of pictorial art and its allies, but the same considerations ap)»ly to the art. of music, ami of words, either in poetry or prose. If our present, civilisation does nol. • rash in the near future the Arts will certainly come to take their right place, and it is a, high one. If, as many of us fear, the crash is coming, then the civilisation which will arise out of the ruins must place first, things first, and the arts are. among the first things. A civilisation built on greed, jealousy, distrust, and ruthless industrialism must in the long run always crash. Meantime. let. us push on our good work lest “the night come when no man can. work.” far ns his perception went, ami his materials allowed, to show it to others. Artists of great inspiration are rare, but what is the man of the rank and file doing but. taking >"ine aspect of Nature in which he sees beauty, and, according to Hie spirit that is in him. trying to show Io others who have not his gift of sight. I cannot tell you what beauty is. It. is an elusive thing and very hard tu define. This has been well expressed in some verse by Denise Gerard our youngest and 1 think uur most promising New Zealand poetess. Where is beauty born In the dark of the restless sea In the floating veils of dawn Whence is beauty drawn Into the heart of me? Where does beauty hide In the woods like a nesting bird Where flickering waters glide Where do her feet abide Where is her laughter heard? Where does beauty rest In Hie lips ami ryes and hair (In the beloved's breast. Dearest ami loveliest Is beauty waiting there? Where doe.- In mil v dwell ? Ah, who ran trll! Definitions. To need not worry unduly about, definitions, since most of the higher and more sipritual things of life defy adequate definition. What, we do know is that it. is uot an accidental or casual thing, but that it runs like a golden thread through the whole fabric of creation. It is always there except where sometimes man has damaged the fabric. It is present everywhere for those who can see—in sky, mountain, river, lake, sea. and in ten thousand other things. Equally is it present both outwardly and in the inner structure of every living thing. It is there by the design and intent of the Great Master Artist. Can you doubt it? The man in the street might perhaps object that what 1 have been saying was idealising Art and the artist, putting them away up on a pedestal dressed in finery that wouldn’t wash, ami wouldn’t stand the weather, or the winds of common-sense criticism. Well, you must either be a materialist, which is the dreariest and incidentally the most illogical and unreasonable creed in the world, or you must believe that there is plan and design in everything, and that the perfection and beauty of that design must exceed anything that the human mind can conceive. If you consider it carefully you will see that there is no middle