The Wanganui Chronicle. SATURDAY, MAY 8, 1948. HERRINGS AND LOBSTERS

Wanganui Chronicle, 8 May 1948, Page 4

The Wanganui Chronicle. SATURDAY, MAY 8, 1948. HERRINGS AND LOBSTERS

| OBSTERS and crayfish as a comlement to an over-indulgence in intoxicating liquor have long been the properties of the comedian and the cartoonist. Why the thirsty ones should indulge in the consumption of shellfish is a matter for psychologists. They may discover in such conduct the operation of the law of association of ideas. The psychologists, too, might'be employed in quite another field, namely, the art world of today. Why is it that modern pictures are painted? What prompts the artists to paint them? What rules do judges apply when evaluating them? These questions are prompted by the discovery at the Royal Academy exhibition in London that “Herrings and Lobster” by Edward Le Bas Ara had been hung the wrong way up.

“I havq never seen it any other way up,” chuckled Sir Walter Lamb. “I am a member of the hanging committee and we often have great difficulty in determining which way an artist intends his picture to hang.” The explanation is more interesting than the incident.

It may be that the artist was not very much concerned how this particular picture should be viewed. A dead herring can hardly be said to be upside down at any time, and it is still a mystery to most people which end of a lobster comes first. Incongruity is not confined to fish pictures. In the Sarjeant Gallery is a splendid or terrible (choose your own term, reader) example of the incongruous. It is a picture entitled “Spring in the Tyrol” by Averil Burleigh. Three peasants have succeeded in setting themselves down among a bed of crocuses without breaking one of them. Don’t ask how they did this. Crocuses are the first of the year’s flowers and succeed in breaking the snow covered ground and are therefore regarded as the harbingers of Spring. What sensible peasant folk are doing sitting on the cold damp earth is hard to divine. But are these sensible folk, with their clean unnailed boots and the hayrake nearby? The greatest incongruity of all is the presentation of two womenfolk taking tea, engrossed in each other and yet each has her mouth firmly dosed. The picture presents no reality of peasant lift in the Tyrol: it is of the theatre. Why go to all this trouble for this bit of stagey back-curtain presentation? If one wants to paint a picture of Spring in the Tyrol, why not give the Tyrol instead of the stage peasants It can be argued that subject doesn’t matter. It is colour and form that matter. If this is so, the exclusion of commonsense, then there is po place for argument. But it is still desirable to enquire what does matter? In judging a picture it should at least be desirable to discover the artist meant or intended to convey when he was engaged in painting the picture. If colour and form count then the diet of herrings and lobster offered upside down by Mr. Ara may convey the desired flavours just as well as they do when topside up. But it does leave the public wondering whether there are any canons of art whereby judgment can be passed on modern art. If art is to be regarded as self-expression, with all the emphasis on the “self” half of that term, then each individual goes his own way, and there can be no other judge of the picture than the artist himself. He can say, “It satisfies me and that is enough.” To that assertion it may be said “for the artists, yes, but expression that is not communicable may be no more than gibberish.” It does not follow that because' a man uses language that is 'not comprehendible that he is a tremendously elever fellow: it is more likely to turn out to be evidence that he is a particularly dull sort of individual who is lacking in sufficient wit to see how futile is his effort. Why express oneself at all if it is not to be comprehended by anyone else ? It would be wiser to let it bubble along in the mind like water in a kettle without going to the trouble of writing books or painting pictures that nobody else can understand. When a body like the hanging committee of the Royal Academy can sit in judgment on a picture that is upside down it is time to ask what is the method—if any—adopted in assessing the worthiness of a picture to be hung in an exhibition. The establishing of the Royal Academy and its maintenance may only be justified on the ground that its influence is to promote a higher standard in artistic execution and a more cultivated appreciation of artistic work by the general public. When it gets into a condition that it doesn’t matter whether pictures are to be seen upside down or sideways it is about time to say that modern art lias gone mad. It has certainly forsaken sanity. Art has always responded to the conditions in which it is produced. When the Emperor was the all powerful patron art was but a means of Emperor worship. When the Church was its chief patron, religion was art’s theme. The rise of Venice turned artists towards a commercial community and its magnificent buildings in the city of canals. In the 18th century England the aristocracy were dominant and art reflected its grand manner. When the middle classes rose to prominence in the last century art switched its focus to the homes in which they gloried, the families that were their pride and the emotionalism in which they indulged. Has the rise of a reading protelariat which has still to throw off its original challenges to established society been responsible for the singular productions of modern times? But do the masses buy these “advanced” pictures? It does not appear that they do, at least any more than other sections. Pink roses and pussycats and praying cows still adorn the walls of too many homes to make it possible to claim that the masses are more than sentimental in a small way in respect to their art. But there is in the world of letters and polities a marked tendency to the use of terms which sometimes have little or no meaning or which mean to ordinary people something quite different. Is it any wonder that Roger Fry. for instance, an eloquent writer on art, could praise a caricature of the crudest kind as evidence of the artist’s intimate knowledge of anatomy. While men are so willing to assert the contrary of what is presented by the artist, small wonder that some artists contrive to go one better and see how much the public and the critics will swallow 1 Hence the galleries purchase pictures of alleged Tyrolean peasants in impossible get-up and environment propped up by their feet against the frame and the Royal Academy hanging committee examines a picture with so little ears that the fact it is upside down is never noticed, while Sir Alfred Munnings has to threaten to resign the presidency of kite Royal Academy in order to get accepted a picture of which it was said, “The skill of such a tour de force is undeniable,” and which Munnings deserib-ed-as “one of the most remarkable pictures we have received this year.”