MODERN ART.

New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 539, 21 October 1949, Page 5

MODERN ART.

Sir,-The 1ZB Citizens’ Forum discussion on modern art, broadcast on Octobet 1, was interesting if for no other reason than that the two "ordinary people" seemed to have a broader knowledge of the subject than the two "experts." (In fairness I note that the experts did not formally claim that distinction, theugh they gave the impression of assuming that they knew more about the subject than the laymen.) One of the experts made much play of the fact that people once roared with laughter and exploded with invective when confronted ; with the works of ‘Gaugin. This, to me, proves nothing, for people laughed at the works of hundreds of other artists besides Gaugin, and in 99 of.each 100 cases they were right, and only in isolated instances (as with Gaugin) were they wrong. Therefore, how can the 1ZB experts (who admit that they do _ not viper Picasso’s Wounded Bird) be ceftain that Picasso is a great artist, and heap scorn on the laymen who frankly admit that, because Picasso conveys nothing to them, Picasso may not, after all, be as great as the experts would have us believe? ba Time alone will tell whether it is the experts or the laymen who are right, but in the meantime we should not forget that perhaps Picasso did not mean his Wounded Bird to be taken. seriously, and that it might have been his intention to observe how many "arty" people he could delude while he concentrated on formalism, to which he has now returned after his years spent producing experimental pictures. In conclusion, might I congratulate the laymen of the forum on injecting the first piece of humour I have heard in these sessions?

JACK

THORNTON

(Upper Hutt).

Sir-In my opinion the speakers in the’ 1ZB Forum discussion on modern art did not get to the core of their subject. While Piéasso, Mare Chagall, Miro and the rest of their tribe use an abstract, indefinite, individualistic "impression,’ they relate that impression to a definite idea of a reality which is ‘intelligible to everybody. Picasso, for example, paints a series of somethings which he claims represents impressions that are, his personal reactions to a certain reality. He then relates those impressions, which he alone can under-. stand, to that reality and calls his impressions, "A Wounded Bird"-to which the common understanding of reality retorts that it is no such thing! The only logical method for this modern art to adopt is to relate the painters’ impressions to the language of some of the impressionist "new" writers, and to exhibit the joint works in mental hospitals, which are national institutions devoted solely-to individual impressionalism.

ARTHUR

CLARK

(Taupaki).

Sir-Following the discussion on modern art, as conducted by the ZB Citizens’ Forum, I would like to congratulate one of the speakers for his courageous and common-sense stand. The gentlemen who extolled Picasso’s fantastic Wounded Bird as an original and beautiful work of art were satisfied that the ordinary Philistine could not be expected to understand or appreciate it, Why then, in the name of common-sense, should the artist go to the trouble of perpetrating a work of art merely expressive of his own peculiar thought-processes for the purposé

of exhibiting it to ordinary people to whom he knows it must be an enigma? It is my contention that this so-called new art, which is the most ancient of all arts, dating back to the cave-draw-ings of primitive man, is just a gigantic bluff on the part of artists bored with the accepted canons of art. It is a hoax on those gullible patrons of art who are willing to be instructed as to what they must admire and who feel immensely superior in their pretence of finding beauty and significance in the hideous and obscure. It is the outcome of the eternal quest for "something new under the sun" with which to startle, shock and amaze jaded mental appetites, and it is so old that it can be passed as new. The worst feature of it is that the artists themselves are so skilled that they can with diabolical cleverness present their travesties with such richness of colouring and technique that even the most sane of us is tempted to believe that the thing is genuine and that perhaps we are lacking in perception. But do not be deceived or misled. Trust in your common sense. Believe your eyes. This. too. will pass.

ISABEL M.

CLUETT

(Auckland).

(Abridged~Ed.)