ART IN WESTLAND

New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 766, 26 March 1954, Page 5

ART IN WESTLAND

Sir.-Your correspondent Mr. A. G. Richards invites me to clarify some points in your article under the above title. I will gladly attempt to do ‘so, although I think that the difference between his point of view and mine over the matter of distortion (leaving out his garbage tin) will only tend to become greater the lengthier the discussion. I think the word "distort" can only have meaning in relation to the basic idea of copying things seen. It is a variation from the kind of correctness appropriate to making a copy. Mr. Richards implies, in his remarks about refraining from reproducing faithfully every blade of grass, that none. the less it is still essentially a correct copy of a subject that he requires of an artist. But I never think of myself as copying at all; and therefore it fgllows I do not think of myself as distorting, either. I draw things as it seems most desirable for the work in hand. For example, in the picture reproduced, had I copied the scene as I saw it (and my eyesight is good normal), I should have had to make the house-roof in the centre foreground seven or eight times larger in area than I have it, and the tower in the upper centre seven or eight times smaller. That is, the tower would then have taken about a hundredth of the area of the house-roof. Now, strange as it may seem, I believe that in this painting I have arrived at. a more correct and pleasing proportion between the house-roof and the tower than that offered by their appearance from my front door. A photograph of the scene would appear to me horribly distorted. You see how far from a copy a painting has become for me. The term "good drawing," therefore, must have totally different meanings for Mr. Richards and myself. I mean by it, the use of lines that makes a pictur sound rhythmic structure, well knit together and balanced in its parts, ample and satisfying to a trained aesthetic sense; purposeful, and at the same time sensitive and subtle. I do not see how the idea of distortion can gain a foothold in this conception. The sense of earthquake mentioned, I think, would largely or altogether disappear if Mr. Richards could be persuaded to look at the picture as something different altogether from a distorted copy of a scene in Greymouth. As to the other matter he referred to, namely,the "movement and tension relations between planes and volumes," I regret that so technical a term was used in that article. I think I know what it means, but I think that any explanation would require more technical talk than is fitting in a public discussion. But I would earnestly recommend Mr. Richards, and anyone interested, to read an excellent book, Cezanne’s Composition, by Erle Loran (University of California), which contains an admirable and wellillustrated treatise on the subject.

M. T.

WOOLLASTON

(Greymouth).