PUBLIC OPINION AND MODERN ART

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 393, 3 January 1947, Page 5

PUBLIC OPINION AND MODERN ART

Sir,-And why, if the modern generation chooses to go and live in poky little rooms, should the. painters all have to pander to them there? There are plenty who do and will, and "Brown Sable" (Listener, November 15), likes them, and he does not like the others; but why should he make a morality out of his dislike? It is indeed the sign of a diseaseand of a deficiency disease at that-the way "the red spots break out" in art society exhibitions. The deficiency is in any sense at all of greatness in painting. If we accept it as inevitable that we should live in poky little rooms, it is because we have forgotten how good for us a big space indoors is. That is a kind of malnutrition, too. I should like to see, in all houses, one big living room, no matter how small any other rooms may have to be. But if a man wants a big picture, and can get no other sort of house, he can knock out a wall between two rooms, or he can hang it where he can look at it through the door from another roomthere will be something he can do, if he wants it. The shops exist for people who want to buy a picture to suit their room, That -function ought not to invade the art gallery at the time of the annual exhibition. The artist’s business (and this is well appreciated by the Rutland Group) is to do his utmost to paint what he needs to paint, how it needs to be painted. And that is what the public also needs to see, however unconscious it may be of its deep need. And for this need and this only should the art galleries be used. All the rest is abuse. The real artist is above price. The chaser of markets. ought to. be in the

shop.-

"A GOOD STIFF HOGS-HAIR"

(Mapua).