CONTEMPORARY ART
Sir,-Mr. Thornton’s letter bristles with irrelevancies and by their means he hopes to put himself on side with the layman so that together they can deride the "local intellectual" interested in art. The very term sneers at the New Zealand intellectual, not because he is inconsistent, but because he is local. If he speaks to defend his interests the local intellectual is full of "pointless profundity," if he is silent I have no doubt that he lives in an "ivory tower." Mr. Thornton ends his letter by suggesting that we should be impressed by quality rather than quantity, yet-in the previous paragraph he expects us to believe in the authenticity of his responses to painting on the strength of the ‘amount of travelling and listening to "informed critics’ he has done. Alas, we are ‘at cross purposes, for precisely at this point I was interested not in the quantity of pictures he had seen, but in the quality of his response." Such bandying of words can, I admit, go on for ever. It offers a cheap victory to every protagonist and I enjoy it just as much as Mr. Thornton. Nevertheless it is a long way from the true object of our pursuit, namely the critical consideration of paintings. And in that connection I feel bound to support Mr. Snadden when he stressed the advantage of seeing works in their actual size and colour. Painting is not a wholly spiritual art (what art is?), but depends both on the spatial relationships within the picture and on the relation of the size of the picture to the beholder. Suppose one reduces, for example, any of the vast mosai¢ pictures of the early churches to page size, will Mr. Thornton have the temerity to suggest they lose nothing of their original splendour? As well might one reduce the Colossus of Rameses and sell it over the counter in the native market of Cairo.
JOHN
SUMMERS
(Christchurch).
ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS J.W.C. (Dunedin): People are already doing ‘that sort of thing in letters. : Netta Gibb (Wellington): Many thanks. The recordings will be heard early next year. Details will be printed in The Listener when precise dates are known,
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 22, Issue 550, 6 January 1950, Page 5
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366CONTEMPORARY ART New Zealand Listener, Volume 22, Issue 550, 6 January 1950, Page 5
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