ART IN NEW ZEALAND
Sir-May I thank you for the article, "Artists cannot Afford to Be Slack." This is a subject that needs more public attention, and your paper can give it. Art taste in this country is truly on a very low level. Why should this be in a country so beautiful and with so many people aching to draw? I meet them all over the Islands: If they could only paint, they say, if they could only paint, but there is no lead to be had. No one can tell them a few absolutely necessary structural laws; and so they give up in despair. We ‘have the material but we lack the knowledge. Some years ago Mr. Reginald Ford, then president of the Auckland Art Society, offered a five pounds prize to the society for’ a new design for a chair. There was not one entry. Why is our craft knowledge so poor? Is it not the fault of the Art Societies? They are chiefly composed of people with little practical training. The members who struggle to learn painting as a technical accomplishment have no power in New Zealand, and till they are completely in control things will not be better. The vote of an honorary member equels that of a working member at all times. In Australia the membership is entirely of working painters and they have created @ local market. I hope Professor Findlay will again speak on this subject of a better taste in New Zealand. Let him contemplate the average furniture in the average home and the terrible things called pictures on the walls, and tell us how to remedy this failure in New Zealand education.
ONLOOKER
(Wellington).
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19440616.2.4.8
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 10, Issue 260, 16 June 1944, Page 2
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283ART IN NEW ZEALAND New Zealand Listener, Volume 10, Issue 260, 16 June 1944, Page 2
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