YOUTHFUL IDEAS IN ART

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIII, 13 July 1929, Page 4

YOUTHFUL IDEAS IN ART

There were some 10,000 rejections this year by the selection committee of the Royal Academy exhibition, and some of the, critics havq protested that in striving’ “to guard with narrow jealousy the citadels of the past,” the committee has failed “to keep pace with and to encourage the best of the, vital modern ideas in art which are an inevitable part of a vital modern environment.” A defence of the committee was undertaken by the Yorkshire “Post.” It says: “In art and life if there is to be growth and mature development, there must be some stable basis which represents the territory that our ancestors through the centuries have rescued from the black chaos of ignorance If every generation began anew, our hopes of progress would be negligible, and the modern, however fiercely he may revolt against, the tyranny of tradition, is forced to avail himself of the achievements of the oast. Inspiration can work miracles, but •it cannot dispense with the cunning of technique that is based on the toil, experiment and thought of every .artist since the world began. It is the function of the Royal Academy to give'to art. a certain stability despite .all the fluctuations of taste and fashion. It sets a standard which, in the nature of things, cannot be fixed as adamant, a standard that at least imposes sanity upon excessive extravagance, and recognises our debt to the past. It is natural that youth should rebel against that standard and'flout tho Academy. In the _ end all that youth achieves is absorbed into the tradition and becomes a part of that artistic heritage which a' later generation will attack as hide-bound and outworn ’’