AID TO THE ARTIST

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 153, 2 December 1938, Page 10

AID TO THE ARTIST

No native art can flourish in any

country unless it receives some supwort and encouragement from the people of that country. Thus there is everything to be said in favour of a response to the appeal by Mr. Richard 0. Gross, president of the Auckland Society of Arts, at the opening of the summer exhibition in the northern city, to the people of New Zealand to do more to encourage the Dominion's younger artists by buying their pictures and giving them commissions to execute work. New Zealand has always suffered, probably more than any other Dominion, from a tendency to extol the imported produqt and depreciate the local 'article and the local producer. This, of course, applies to many more things than the work of artists, but the effect is particularly detrimental when the local artist is discouraged from making the best use of his talents here and on the spot. It should not be forgotten that one of the world's greatest cartoonists, David Low, is a New Zealander, just as one of the greatest artists in literature, Katherine Mansfield, was a New Zealander. But it is more than doubtful whether they would have accomplished anything like so much as they did had I they remained in this country. Mr. Gross rightly speaks of New Zealand people suffering from an "inferiority complex" and "adopting a defeatist attitude" about the work of New Zealand artists. This is not to suggest that standards should be forgotten as criteria of local art, but that signs of ability should be recognised in the only practical way that will help the artist lo live—that is, by the purchase of his work and giving him more; tq do* - v xU