BACK TO THE ATTIC WITH ART?

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 438, 14 November 1947, Page 16

BACK TO THE ATTIC WITH ART?

¢ ISCOURAGEMENT, rather than encouragement, is best for the artist," said Roland Wakelin, in a recent interview with ‘The Listener, but not all artists appear to be in agreement with this heterodox pronouncement. Upon _inquiry, we found a fairly even balance of opinion for and against, as the comments on this page show.

' STIMULUS OF HARDSHIP

| QUITE agree that the more an artist has to struggle for recognition the better will be the work he produces in the long run. Too much spoon-feeding is not good for any sort of creative artist, although that is possibly the tendency to-day, with the many scholarships given to encourage artists. Within limits, scholarships are valuable because they bring the young artist to the big centres and into contact with the leading ideas, but there is always a possibility of their having an adverse effect and making things too easy. There must always be the stimulus of hardship and struggle behind the artist to make him fight for success.

H. H.

Tombs

HELP SHOULD BE GIVEN

DON’T think we should place too much stress on what Wakelin has said, It was only a passing remark which he would probably qualify on more mature consideration. After all, discouragement is only a relative sort of term, and one can’t make a sweeping statement condemning any sort of assistance to the professional artist. Personally, I consider that no matter what help artists get from whatever source they. must. always suffer much more than other people. I think that encouragement such as the awarding of scholarships is very much for the good of the struggling artist. The younger students especially find it difficult enough as it is to get along, and they should get as much help from the rest of society as

possible.

T. A.

McCormack

HARD WAY IS BEST

MUST say I thoroughly agree with what Wakelin has said, and although

this may seem an oldfashioned idea, I do think an artist needs to suffer hard knocks before success comes. It is most dangerous for a young artist to think he has arrived before he is properly mature, but this can quite easily be caused by too much encouragement, and it is bound to result in mediocre work. For = any artist, if he is to get to the top, discouragement is a good thing; he must go through the schools and get a _ thorough training. If he has too

much encouragement and thinks he can sell whatever he paints, then it is the | end of effort as far as he is concerned.

Stewart

MacLennan

THE WIND AND THE LAMB

THINK that discouragement is good for artists, but the wind should be tempered to the shorn lamb, and most of the lambs are shorn in some manner

or other.

Barc

TOO MUCH BACK-SCRATCHING

Y own experiences, in contrast with those of other artists, make me think I have, perhaps, been fairly lucky. I didn’t become a full-time artist till I was 25, when I gave up my job as a jewellery engraver. I would say, however, that discouragement in the form_ of constructive, informed criticism is good, but indiscriminate praise is very bad. I often feel that there is too much "back-scratching" going on amongst a number of our artists, with the result that although in their own opinions they are pretty good, they are actually not getting anywhere at all. That is the wrong kind of encourage-

ment.

Mervyn

Taylor

YES AND NO

HISTORICALLY, such a statement as Wakelin’s could be justified. Frances Hodgkins, for instance-when she was in Paris she achieved a fairly modest success with watercolours of a certain type, but suddenly gave it up and lived a life of great hardship and poverty in order to change her style. You might say that this was accidental or voluntary discouragement, but the point is that she was prepared to take the risk. Whether that life of poverty (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) was necessary for her later work to be the success it was, I, personally, don’t know. Byt 1 think it illustrates the fact that the artist must be prepared to pay the price, whether he eventually has to or mot; in order to produce first-rate work he must be prepared, I think, to face every kind of discouragement, Of © course, historically, it may be possible to justify also the opposite point of view, lu music, for instance, Bach and Mendelssohn had every kind of encour-

agement,

Howard

Wadman

JUDICIOUS ENCOURAGEMENT

(GENERALLY speaking, I positively disagree. We can’t foster a system of discouragement of art, and even if we tried, it is against the whole spirit fe 4 art and educatign. With artists who have,’ say, a certain individuality and character about their work, continual discouragement may quite easily, prove a vital factor in causing them to. soft-pedal and become more orthodox, or even to cease altogether when they find that their manner of communication is so limited with the people to whom they feel they should appeal. I would go further and say that some of the finest artists have had their work made much richer by judicious encouragement of the vital spark of genius. Even Van Gogh, who suffered the greatest discouragement, did have the confidence of one person whose opinion meant a lot to him---his brother. Discriminating encouragement, then, from people who know what they are talking about, is good, provided it does not give the artist a false sense of

values,

Roland

Hipkins

SLUIFFERING INEVITABLE

N artist "who wants to break new ground and do original work must inevitably expect to go through a certain amount of discouragement and hardship. In my own case I have been content to stay more or less on traditional lines and I have been able to make a fair living out of my work, But to mention two New Zealanders who have had a very hard time-Frances Hodgkins (who died recently) and T. A. McCormack-they were trying to

get away from the orthodox. In any. case ‘the very fact that a man sets out to be a professional artist makes it certain that he will yndergo much more | suffering than most people, It would be a good idea to have some sort of system to ensure the sale of his paintings for a fair price without having exhibitions swamped out by the work of amateurs, whose livelihood doesn’t depend on their sales. Then the artist should be protected from unscrupulous dealers. Frances Hodgkins’s work is absolutely unobtainable now-you. can’t get the slightest sketch of hers for under 40 guineas. But why didn’t she get the benefit of that money when she was still living? a

Nugent

Welch