MODERN ART

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 409, 24 April 1947, Page 23

MODERN ART

Sir,-How true it is what P,O.C, (Auckland) writes, that "artists are only public servants after all." To reach even a semblance of some means to exist, they. must do the familiar, and pander to public taste, thereby losing the all important freedom necessary for the making of a genuine work of art. "The familiar" in art is the accepted idea that the artist must go to nature, and paint what he sees. This he does by copying down the tone values present at.a certain time, in a particular light, which means he ‘rejects the substance for the shadow. For an artist to reject this academic formula means he becomes an outcast from official art circles, is abused and discouraged by men in responsible positions; and to persist in his foolherdiness of being truthful to himself and his art means his social downfall. How easy it is for the philistine public to wallow in the so-called "thrill" they receive from painted replicas of things and people. There is no "thrill." The ecstasy brought about is false; for all that happens is that something known, is recognised, and the procedure is to go into ecstasies over a mere piece of technical dexterity in reproduction. The faculty for a proper discernment of what is genuine or false in art does not function, and therefore the surface appearance of nature is made the end and all of art. The modern movement in art is in direct revolt against this vulgar bourgeois taste; against the academy, and its born-too-late renaissance teachers, and the consequent brood of little ptople practising a dead art which has no social relevance or meaning. As for the modern philistine who knows what he wants, and refuses to be bothered with anything unfamiliar to his own small experience, the majority of artists do keep within his familiar experience, becoming servants to smug-minded individualists. The result is that the artist loses his integrity and is denied the privilege of the plumber who is never questioned about how he does his work.

M.

MRKUSIC

(Auckland). |