RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume C, Issue 29501, 1 May 1961, Page 24

RANDOM REMINDER

MODERN ART

One of the great difficulties that faces practical, successful men, such as city councillors sometimes and other civic leaders, is that occasionally, just occasionally, there creeps into their mind the suspicion that maybe they don’t know the answer. They get rid of the thought as quickly as possible, of course, but it is quite uncomfortable while it lasts. The best example is the attitude of so many successful New Zealand men to socalled modern art. They write letters to the newspapers condemning it, they cite the cases, reported faithfully every year, of some hoax on an art gallery, of some competition being won by a four-year-old who used the business end of his mother's broom to paint on canvas, and they toss

disdainful laughs at paintings they can't make head nor tail of in some local art competition (not of course, in Christchurch). “I know what I like” they say; and they emphatically don’t like modern art. But what upsets them sometimes is the knowledge that somewhere in the world shrewd businessmen, who are also connoisseurs of the arts, are buying pictures just like the ones they condemn, paying good, hard-earned money for them, putting them away and then re-se’J-ing them years later for a big profit. ‘lt makes you wonder,” a deputymayor (not, of course, in Christchurch) was once heard to say in this regard when some painting at which he and his wife had burst into roars of mirth won an international compe-

tition, worth, believe it or not, a considerable amount sterling (you know, that stuff you can buy a new car with if you’ve got enough of). And so. gradually, modern art is coming to be taken seriously. After all you can’t really scoff at something semeone else is prepared to payseveral hundred pounds for. It might solve all the problems of choosing paintings for art galleries—not of course in Christchurch, no trouble here—if the yardstick was a valuation put on paintings in pounds, shillings and pence. Councillors in these unspecified cities could then tell the ratepayers: “I don’t like this painting much myself, but it is worth real money.” It might even be a better yardstick than the one we have now—in some New Zealand cities.