TILT AT MODERN ART

Evening Star, Issue 21742, 9 June 1934, Page 13

TILT AT MODERN ART

"SHOCK TACTICS" DENOUNCED [By F. H. Bhowne, in ‘ John O’London’s Weekly.’3 There is a story about a student at one of. our important schools of art who recently produced a fragment of stone and showed it to the teacher. “ The teacher was enthusiastic, and implored the student not to add another stroke to her beautiful work, but the student, in fact, had never touched the stone; it was just a piece of stone which she had picked up in a quarry.” Sir Reginald Biomfield scores a hit with this story in ‘ Modernismus.’ Ho is, indeed, in excellent form at the Aunt Sally shies. It may seem unkind to dub Modernism in art an Aunt Sally, but it has undoubtedly a peculiarly unnatural appearance reminiscent of that grotesque figure. Sir Reginald mentions one-picture, ‘Box Match: JeffriesJohnson,’ by Josef Capek, which consists of “ five dark circles which may represent eyes or heads or black eyes, a circular mark which doubtless symbolises a right or left swing, one or two straight ■ lines, presumably straight lefts, and a complicated diagram which possibly represents the heroes clinching.” “ COMPOSITION.” He recalls another picture, “ a panel of flat slaty blue on which was painted a white circle about the size of a Dutch cheese, in which was a smaller half-circle painted yellow.” Four black lines and two white _ dots completed this masterpiece, which shared with ton other out of the forty-one works in this exhibition the title of “composition.” In the face of “ creative art like this the author takes comfort in’ the reflection that “ when Nature creates a tree, it is a tree that she creates and not a cauliflower.” Modernism, by which Sir Reginald means the theory of art which deliberately turns its back on the past, prides itself on being functional. But is it? Sir Reginald remarks that a Danish jug shown at the Paris Exhibition of 1925 was shaped like a head of negroid type. Out of the front came “ a horrid spout like a horn.” The only way of filling the jug was by pouring water down the spout! Nor can he agree that an architecture is functional winch compels one to sit on chairs that wobble in the inescapable draughts and unrelieved light occasioned by stretches of windows, while the absence of windowsills and convenient cornices (dear to a less enlightened age) makes the > outer walls pleasingly damp. THE SOUL OF CONCRETE. Again, Modernism pleads that new materials give birth to a new form of art. Tho soul of concrete must have its own expression. Tho design of the Potsdam Observatory was supposed to be dictated by reinforced concrete, but “ unfortunately the supply of steel rods failed, and I am told that the building had to bo finished in brick.” And the new facade of Olympia has been so much admired as an example of design in concrete that “the company who supplied the bricks for this building issued an advertisement on which was shown the facade of Olympia with the superscription : ‘ This is not a concrete building at all.” Sir Reginald devotes one chapter to attacking the arguments of Mr R. H. Wilenski, who in a recent book on ‘ The Meaning of Modern Sculpture ’ set himself to prove (in Sir Reginald’s words) “ not only that Greek sculpture is negligible, because we really know very little about it and that what we do know is not worth knowing,” but that practically everything else “ except the work 'of the negro image-makers is to he relegated to the dustbin ” as “ useless for all serious purposes of modern sculpture.” Mr Wilenski holds that extant Greek sculpture is the “concoction of restorers to suit the taste of the time, carefully nursed by dealers and assiduously advertised by professors and archeologists, the propagandists of the Greek prejudice.”

VENUS DE MILO. ■ ' Sir Reginald has made particular inquiries about the Venus de Milo and the Victory of Samothraco in the Louvre. Of the Venus do Milo he says:—“ln 1820 Dumont d’Urville, a junior naval lieutenant, stumbled on parts of the statue in the Island of Melos, in what might once have been a lime-burner’s kiln. He told the Marquis De Riviere, who bought the pieces and sent them to Pans. There they were put together. ...” There are, he learns, “ only two pieces put together, the torso and the lower part; the statue was originally made that way. These pieces were put together without difficulty, not at all ‘ clandestinely,’ and there has been no real restoration and not concoction at all.” As to the Victory of Samothrace, this was “ excavated in Samothrace by the French Consul, M. Champorteaux. It is true that it consists of some 118 pieces, and that the left half of the breast and the right wing are restorations.” But “ there is no question of the statue having been ‘ concocted ’ in the stylo of the Parthenon sculpture: the fragments were complete enough to avoid any important mistake.” Mr Wilenski claims that “ tho sculptor’s function is tho organisation of microscopic symbols by means of formal imagination, which i-s apprehension of tho principles of formal analogy in tho universe.” What does this mean? “ I giro it up,” says Sir Reginald, “It reminds mo of that memorable dictum of the _ landscape gardener, that ‘ a beyond implies discovery.’ ” FIND THE MEANING. Turning his attention to literature, Sir Reginald is equally puzzled. He suggests that the editor of ‘ The Best Verso of 1922 ’ might offer five pounds for a reasonable explanation of the following verse by Mr Carl Sandburg : The morning paper lay bundled Like a spear in a museum Across the broken sleeping room Of a moon-sheet spider. ( And when Mr Sacheverell Sitwell describes the Pillars of Hercules as “the lintels of the Mediterranean ” —well, tho less said the better. Poor Aunt Sally! There is not much left of her by the end of this book. But it would be unfair to give the impression that Sir Reginald’s aim is entirely destructive. He_ pleads for a continuity of tradition in art, for the beauty which justifies its name, and for sanity and good manners instead of shock-tactics. Such demands are no more unreasonable than that of Mr A. A. Milne’s King, who insisted that; Nobody, my darling, could call ms a fussv man— BUT I do like a little bit of butter to my bread.