N.Z. Artists can Learn from Texas

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 467, 4 June 1948, Page 6

N.Z. Artists can Learn from Texas

Ex-=Marine sends Exhibition to Auckland

) Written for "The Listener" |

by

A. R. D.

F AIRBURN

NE thinks of Texas in terms of yodelling cowboys, sixshooters, and oil-wells. It is surprising to learn that there are artists there. But, of course, if one lives in Texas one thinks of New Zealand (if at all) in terms of earthquakes and swordfish. The Community Arts Service of the Adult Education Centre in Auckland is showing an exhibition of Texan paintings in the rooms of the Auckland Society of Arts. This exhibition, the catalogue tells us, "has been assembled and arranged through Robert Willson, director of the Art Department of Texas Wesleyan College, Fort Worth," who spent some time in New Zealand during the war. We must, be duly grateful to Mr. Willson, and to the C.A.S., for going to the trouble of arranging this show.

Nothing is more necessary to New Zealand art at the present time than that the work of painters in other countries should be seen by our own painters, and by the New Zealand public. In the ordinary way we may expect to see a limited amount of English and Australian work. Opportunities of extending our range of vision, and gaining other "points of reference,’ are rare and welcome. What do we know, for instance, of the art of South America? If rumours and reports are true, there is vitality and splendour in the work of many of the South American painters and craftsmen. Even if the work we obtain from other countries is not of a high standard, it may still be interesting, and helpful to us in extending the foundations of judgment. This show of Texan paintings comes, I think, under the heading of the "interesting" rather than the "good." And I am compelled to say that I think it is interesting for reasons that are related to the bad rather than to the good. Most of those who go to see it will no doubt feel that they have been deep in tlie art of Texas -and will feel, perhaps, that they have been taken a little out of their depth. Most of this work is "experimental." Now, in criticising adversely any art that has the appearance of: being "modern" one runs the risk of appearing to lend support to the theory, popular’ in some circles, that art came to a stop with Sir Edwin Landseer and Lord Leighton. I might be deterred from passing too adverse a judgment on these Texan paintings if I did not consider that there is an even greater risk in létting incompetent painting get by -whatever its style or character. That, I think, is the trouble with many of the works in this show. They are incompetently painted. An artist may lack technical sophistication and_ still produce work that is valuable. But he must in some sense realise his artistic intention, and let us realisé it. The

level of technical ability in these paintings is not high. But in most of them any simplicity or intensity of meaning that might have struggled through to the light is obscured by an obvious and (I fear) pretentious desire to be experimental and "modern" at any cost. The cost in this case is too great. There was, I should say, more misdirection of effort, more waste of technical skill, and more misunderstanding of the nature of art, in 19th and early 20th century "academy" painting than has occurred in any other -period of history. What is often called "modern" painting has been, in some degree, a reaction against the futility of the academy. All over the world the "modern" movement is in full swing. Its productions, at their best, are full of truth and vigour: they represent the most valid kind of art that is produced to-day. But at their worst, or at the level of mediocrity, they are no better than any other sort of bad or inadequate painting. I think that anybody who had understood and responded to the work of Braque, Matisse or Paul Klee would feel disappointed with this Texan show -and even, in the case of some of the pictures, a little disgusted. In several pictures-such as Norma WHenderson’s "Red. Figures"-there is a pleasantly decorative quality. Robert Reed’s "Bird Sanctuary" and "Sylvan" are attractive, and could be lived with happily for a month. But there is a fairly high proportion of paintings that are self-consciously "modern." In such a painting as "Two Suns" (by Forrest Bess, who, is described as being one of the three "leaders of the experimental. ists, at war with the traditionalists"), (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) there is such a paucity of meaning, of any kind at all, that one wonders just what private impulse it is that has gone astray; or whether Mr. Bess was just working on the assumption that any sort of pictorial surface -that is as unlike an academy painting as possible must on that account be good. The logic of art is not so simple. Those who complain (a8 I do) that it is unreal for a 20th century New Zealander or Texan to try to dress like a 16th century Englishman, or to paint like a 17th century Dutchman, should be equally critical of a New Zealander or a Texan who tries to paint like a Parisian. Nothing is more fictitious, or more boring, than those paintings done by simple colonials in close imitation of Picasso or Chagall. It reminds one of New Hebridean natives wearing nothing but bowler hats and brightly coloured cricket belts in an attempt to be European. (I am not denying that it is possible for a sophisticated colonial to paint in a sophisticated way-but in that case there will not be any crude regurgitation of undigested European models.) The catologue® tellsgus that "as in any other contemporary national school, the artists of Texas can be divided into four groups: (1) Those who

paint in a modern or expressionistic manner. ... (2) The French-influenced school. ... (3) The experimental group, who try to avoid schools and work as individuals. Most of the work in this show comes from this group. (4) The academic realists." Whether they "work as individuals" or not, there is little doubt that these painters would not have painted as they do if they had not become more strongly and less sensitively aware of contemporary European painting than has been good for them. In any case, if an individual is merely an individual, cut off from any organic tradition, he is likely to prove as "individual" and "original," and to inhabit as private a world, as the man who imagines he is a tea-pot. The best things in this show (best because they are simple and honest, and obviously related in some sort of organic way to life in Texas) are several lithographs. In "Invasion" Merritt Mauzey gives us a record of something he has obviously grasped and understood. This_ is not great art, but it is genuine art. Mauzey’s "Andrew Goodman" is also a good, straightforward piece of work, slightly marred by some jiggery-pokery in the background. I repeat that it is interesting, and useful, to see this work from Texas-if