Modernist Artist Attacks Modernist

Chronicle (Levin), 7 May 1949, Page 3

Modernist Artist Attacks Modernist

" LONDON, May 6. Delivering the Selwyn Brinton Lecture before the Roval Society of Arts, the Italian painter Signor Giorgio de Ohirico (one of the originators of surrealism), returned to his attack upon the modernist school of painting. The great golden age of painting, he said, began with the Renaissance. The iniddle of the last century marked the turning point and the beginning of a decadence which quiekly undermined all the other arts. To-day one could no longer speak of decadence so mu'ch as of • a complete artistic collapse. Modernism was not born of a sudden siiiritual need surging ujj in the late nineteenth century painters, but of their incapacity for producing line painting. ' ' What is called spirituality in art today," said de Chirica, "is mainly a screen to hide the true state of art. We are witnessing a phenomenon in art history — an era which invents innumerable theories to hide the fact that it does not possess the profound knowledge proper to genius. "Portunately the fashion for modernism is beginning to wane. I am quite hopeful that the time will come soon when painting' onee more will be valued for its beauty and quality alone. 7 7