BLIGHT OF UGLINESS.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 18230, 14 November 1924, Page 9

BLIGHT OF UGLINESS.

ART AND INDUSTRY.

(FKQM OUR OWN coßßzspoKDSjrr.)

LONDON, October 9

Sir Lawrence Weaver, Director of the United Kingdom Exhibits at the British Empire Exhibition, speaking on art in industry at the conference of the Brit-* isli "Commercial Gas Association, said great Examples of fine art, like Liverpool CathadraJ, had to be financed ultimately by industry, which was at present' -the great souroe of wealth in CEis country, and if the fine arts were not so' supported they wculd die. Industrialists had laid a very heavy hand on this land because they had been ivery heedless and hasty in making wealth, and knew' 110 better. When they considered the devastating blight of .ugliness which the' industrial development of the Nineteenth Century laid on this land they would see the public had some -right to demand something better from industrialists. To-day, now that the latter Jjnew better, no doubt we got the measure of uglinessi in our common life that we deserve, just as we got the Government we deserved.

"Yen industrial people have got to support, artists," he said. He pleaded fcT seemliness in common things, and for a kind of art which, everybody could understand. Real art in the ordinary things of life was no more costly than ugliness. Art was not a coating which was applied to things normally base and ugly. It was a character in things, not something stuck oh the outside. There was no reason why all the things used in industry .should not bo. seemly and decent, .