MEANING OF ART

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIV, 22 January 1931, Page 8

MEANING OF ART

EXPRESSION OF THE INFINITE Art and its relation to life and its expression was- the subject of an address by Professor J. Shelley to teachers attending the Summer School at Christchurch (reports the “Press”). “Art is a thing which we talk a lot about, but about which we do very little,” commenced Professor Shelley. There were two directions in which people could realise themselves —in the scientific and in the aesthetic —and the latter ended in art. Life could be looked at in only one direction ; art was very much the same. It told lies from the scientific point of view, as science did on the aesthetic side. Science should state the limitations within which it worked. It sought to fix a ltd define things, while art was always looking for new forms. All early language was said to be poetry. It might be true, because the application of scientific abstractions was then unknown. Art gave humanity what science failed to give it; it provided the personal equation. Unfortunately, art could not set down evperiences in a record. It was something to study, to give one’s life to. Nothing less than the whole aesthetic effort of mankind could be included in the definition, art. The record of science must necessarily be a dead thing; the record of art must necessarily be alive. A Greek temple gave an impression of completeness, white a Gothic cathedral was always an infinity. Art was infinitely more important than any depression New Zealand might suffer. As a, matter of fact, the Dominion had suffered far more from its prosperity than its adversity. One turned people to material things, while the other stirred them to overcome their difficulties. Each age had to re-create its own living universe in art.