ART AND THE COMMON MAN

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 381, 11 October 1946, Page 5

ART AND THE COMMON MAN

Sir,-A, R. D, Fairburn has struck the tock of truth when he affirms that art must be related in some measure to the experience of the common man. It is good to hear a practising artist of the abilities of Mr. Fairburn speaking thus. It is certainly a healthy contrast to the attitude of the arty "snob-mob" who affect art as they affect what they imagine is a cultivated accent. They speak of art in terms which are quite, I suspect, deliberately unintelligible to the ordinary commonsense. It is a deity to be worshipped behind the veil that guards the Holy of Holies. They are its high priests, the oracular few to whom, alone, are its mysteries to be revealed, which is all a lot of bunkum. Art as a manifestation of culture must run deep in the stream of a people’s consciousness, the best art is that which has sprung directly from their experience-the folk art, a form which no sophisticated artist, not even A. E. Housman in his Shropshire Lad, has ever succeeded in mastering completely. It is something that comes naturally both to the expression and the appreciation of the people (New Zealand has no such art, not even a song

with the splendid rolling lilt of a "Waltzing Matilda" to evoke the flavour of her life. It is a serious lack). On the other hand an appreciation of sophisticated art demands some measure of sophistication, in that it must be a taste acquired by learning something about art; here, as Mr. Fairburn has said, the gulf between the artist and the common man may best be bridged by the practise of the arts by the common man. It is perhaps too late to re-educate adult New Zealand, but we could teach our children to love the arts so that they may grow up sensible of the power of’ thought and beauty and truth over the human mind and ultimately of sense prevail over human destiny. Yet even if they learn all this, it may be a lesson learnt too late in human his‘tory. They used goats at Bikini, but that was just a dress rehearsal and the goats were acting as understudies for the part we are doomed to play. So perhaps we should throw in the spongé, say’ farewell to beauty, and acclaim the

jitterbug.

SARRAS

(Ellerslie)