THE NEW ART

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 491, 19 November 1948, Page 5

THE NEW ART

Sir-H, M. Helm (Listener, November 5) says that "the more extravagant forms of the new art are*the outcome of a childish desire on the part of some artists for public notice. . . ." If he would leave out the word "childish," used for emotive effect, I would agree; for his statement is mere tautology, and therefore not open to correction. But as criticism it is valueless. Even the

most extravagant critics can’t base their criticism of a whole movement on that portion on which they have already dismissed as "extravagant," As for the suggestion that art and intellect are "to a large extent incompatible," I would refer him to Havelock Ellis rather than to Dr. Carrel, Artistic faculties tend to atrophy in an environment more sympathetic to reason than to revelation, but no one has done anything worthwhile in any of the arts without superior intelligence as well as more than ordinary sensibility. Your correspondent’s insinuation that the artist is the production of arrested intellectual development is exploded poppy-cock. Distaste for the so-called New Art springs inevitably from the misconception that artists necessarily paint what they sec with the outward eye. Every artist is to a greater or Fesser extent a commentator as well as a recorder. He interprets a particular experience in the light of his own unique vision. This leads me to a definition which explains a difficulty inherent in any work of art. Every work worthy of the name is a fresh exploration, and to succeed completely it must create an audience prepared to share in the artist’s discovery of a new territory or technique. To share in the discovery we must be prepared to put in some effort: to overcome prejudice, and to follow the intellectual as well as the emotive pattern. I don’t need to remind H. M. Helm that because a work of art is an experiment an experiment isn’t necessarily a work of art. There are plenty of failures now, as there always have been. But he would be wrong to assume that a work is a failure because it looks "ugly" at first sight. The important thing is to judge whether the artist has told the truth as he sees it. T. S. Eliot and Picasso have portrayed our Waste Land in their different "ways, but to

the same purpose. They have demonstrated that we can get at the truth about ourselves only by a fusion of art. and intellect, and that the truth is often shocking. But in the long run it is more aesthetically satisfying than the facile repetition of the pretty lie.

ANTON

VOGT

(Lower

Hutt).

Sir,-In your issue of October 8 appeared an "ink drawing" by M. T. Woollaston, alleged to be a pictorial representation of his mother. If this is the best he can do, no doubt many other readers besides myself are wondering why a whole page of The Listener should be wasted upon an attempted extenuation of sheer rubbish. There is a small clique of misguided persons in this country which tries to impose upon the intelligent majority a perverted view of art, in the shape of sham music, sham drawing, sham painting, sham literature and poetry. The Listener could render a real service to the community by ruthlece axnosure of such charlatanry.

L. D.

AUSTIN

(Wellington).

(We gave Sur space because we are not quite as sure as our correspondent seems to be that everything had been said in_ literature, music, and painting, before the death of Queen _ Victoria.-Ed.)