LUNCH HOUR ART IN WELLINGTON.

New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 358, 3 May 1946, Page 5

LUNCH HOUR ART IN WELLINGTON.

Sir,-I was not disappointed on reading the article by J.C.B. under the aboye heading in your journal. It seems that The Listener is the only paper which dedicates space to problems of culture and art, dealing with these matters with an understanding never to be found in the daily press, which with few

exceptions mentions such Pig 9 with little heart and less conviction. Between this article and the letter by "One Who Wants to Run Away" (Auckland) is an organic connection, although J.C.B.’s article is only meant as an appreciative art criticism. But when one reads the letter and considers the title one finds the New Zealand tragedy in the words "Lunch-hour art in Wellington." : On seeing this one-man show, I was immediately reminded of the polemic letters published’ in your paper and in others about exhibitions of the "rejects" and also of the long getters pointing out what a loss to the nation it is, that so many New Zealand scientists and artists are going abroad or have to go abroad, for reasons known to all of us. In my agar the arguments about exhibitions "rejects" did not arise from those who va annoyed by being rejected, or from those who pretend to understand artthey were the result of the wish to escape from the utter boredom. of walking around the walls of Academy exhibitions, and of looking at ‘the eternal sugary still lifes, the photographic tight landscapes with no impetus and at pictures which do not show any ‘aspect of the world in which we live, As far as I could find out, James Bowkett Coc was not among those whose pictures were rejected — perhaps only because he did not enter his canvases. I can quite imagine that a painter who paints pictures of the horror of jungle warfare, who was one of those who lay in the foxholes of Vella Lavella, has not the nerve to stand such a rejection and prefers rather to have his pictures at home I can only hope that one day a hanging-committee might start thinking about the deterioration of the art life here and find some new solutions, some new ways and ideas. One of these would be to encourage new progress im’ert, by asking artists. not working im the traditional way to exhibit in the: National Gallery thus giving the walls new colour, and the visitors a real ides of art and its trends. Then might be awakened the clear consciousness that art can not grow in a vacuum but is dependent on and influenced by our life, our surroundings, social, economic and political.

RICHARD

SCHACHERL

(Wellington).

( Abridged.--Ed. )