ESTIMATION OF ART

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 151, 22 March 1939, Page 9

ESTIMATION OF ART

Essentials Of Great Works

Guidance in the estimation of art was a topic referred to by Mr. T. D. H. Hall in his address in the National Art Gallery, Wellington, at the open-, ing of the Carnegie facsimiles exhibition. “I would suggest,” said the speaker, “that we do not allow ourselves to be dominated by the present reputation of a painter. Some came early into their powers and into their metier. Others were notorious experimenters. It is absurd to claim everything they did as a masterpiece, though they may be interesting. I regard El Greco in that way. Some of his work is very great. Some left me cold. Cezanne copied and improvized on almost every style of painting, and to my mind had many failures which he himself would ndt have preserved. Yet theorists seize on their failures to found a new style. “I heard the Slade Professor of Art at Oxford give some lectures during the war,” said Mr. Hall. “He gave three ingredients as essential to a great work of art. It must be conceived in emotion, treated with, imagination, and executed with sufficient technical skill. Each of the three elements is essential. That is sound and saves us from extravagances. “Do not try to take in too much at once, but come often. There are many fascinating lines of study. You may trace the development and gradual coalescence in Italian art of two main streams, the Byzantine and Greek traditions. The former was represented by mosaics, with their flowing forms and translucent colour the’ latter by the three-dimensional Greek sculpture. Or you may observe how painters gave vent to their desire to paint animals and the natural scene by introducing quite irrelevant cameos into some portrait of a saint commissioned by a church. To me these prints give vivid expression to the manifold activities of the spirit of man, a spirit in which we share.”