CIVIC ART

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 371, 2 August 1946, Page 5

CIVIC ART

Sir-May I venture to suggest that by encouraging the use of The Listener as a forum for the discussion of questions of Communal or Civic Art you would add greatly to its interest and value. I know of no other journal in New Zealand so suitable for this purpose. You have already made a notable beginning with the publication of the article "New Towns for Old" by A.M.Rand more recently, the interview with Charles Cameron on Town and Country Planning in England. Keep up the good work, May I also, as a corollary, suggest to those of your readers who expend so much time and thought in polemics over the merits or demerits of this or that school of painting, that they should exercise their critical faculties on something of greater community value-the design of buildings, for instance, or the embellishment of our streets and parks. A well-designed building, a fine group of statuary or a living pohutukawa tree is of greater significarice in the life of the community than the finest painting hanging on the walls of an art gallery. After all, it requires a conscious effort to see a picture, unless one happens to live with it, but badly designed and dilapidated buildings and incongruous advertisements thrust themselves for-’ cibly on our attention whether we like it or not. The facile reply to this is that it is the business of our civic authorities to prevent abuses of this kind. It is ‘true that these authorities, in addition to the standards they can themselves ‘get in the design of civic buildings and ‘other amenities, are armed with the power to control the external appearance of privately owned buildings and to protect objects or places of natural beauty. Local body policy, however, is largely dictated by public opinion. If that opinion is non-existent or fails to manifest itself, a local body’ would naturally be loth to assumé the role of arbiter of public taste and refuse a building permit on aesthetic grounds. I could count on the fingers of one hand the instances in which public opinion has manifested itself through the Press in the last 15 years, on some important question of civic art; and the only case I can recall of the design of a building being publicly criticised is that of the proposed Anglican Cathedral in Wellington. In that time hundreds of buildings have been erected throughout New Zealand which in my opinion are little short of an outrage on public decency. In the final analysis, I suppose, the formulation of a sound public opinion on any question of aesthetics is a matter of education. I find it difficult to believe, howevef, that anyone who had enjoyed the privilege of an education in New Zealand can plead ignorance of the principles of civic art, namely order, integrity, unity, harmony, and fitness for purpose. It has been said, indeed, that the human mind instinctively searches for and appreciates these qualities. Can it be, as a distinguished visitor to our chagee once said, that judged by the manmade environment in which we live, we are a barbarous people? The cult of the primitive which appears to have such a substantial following in New Zealand would seem to lend colour to the succestion. :

J. W.

MAWSON

(Wellington),