MATURED ART

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 793, 1 October 1954, Page 5

MATURED ART

Sir,-It takes a lot to move me to join the ranks of those who write to the Editor, but your issue of September 10 is more than enough. I refer in particular to (a) the cover picture, and (b) the pictures and article on "The Matured Art of Russell Clark." I. find myself in complete agreement with B. Osborne, of Hamilton, when he writes "These drawings are decadent." How anyone in their right mind can honestly say that the reclining figure shown in your paper is either beautiful or even decent is beyond me. Call me an ignorant barbarian if you like; call me a prude if you want to, but I shall still maintain that it is ugly, crude and positively indecent. As for that monstrosity that you have seen fit to give pride of place on the cover... "Matured Art?’’-matured as cheese; it smells! And yet we have people going into raptures over it. I think Hans Andersen put his finger on the crux of the matter years ago. What was it he Said? "Now none of the people wanted to appear fools, so they all pretended that they could see the Emperor’s wonderful new clothes." I am content to be like the little boy who didn’t know what he was supposed to see. I say that it isn’t art. It isn’t beautiful.

N. R.

WILLIAMS

(Te Awamutu).

Sir,-Isn’t it high time that the world woke up to the great hoax that some "artists" (save the mark!) have triedand are still trying, with a good deal of apparent success-to foist on a simple and credulous public? You gave us something more than a page on the work of Russell Clark. Well, for Russell Clark’s sketches I have nothing but admiration: he can draw and he can show character, and he has a sense of humour. But surely when it comes to sculpture, as illustrated, this lively faculty has deserted him. Or has he, like Picasso, his tongue in his cheek? I am, of course, a Philistine, and not "artistic" enough to appreciate the ‘new manner." I believe, with Hamlet, that painting and sculpture, in common with acting and other forms of art, should "hold, as ‘twere, the mirror up to nature." But, of course, it is the public that has accepted the rubbish and will continue to get what it asks for. And speaking of Picasso, just in case your readers don’t believe me, here is what he himself wrote (Libro Nero): "In art the mass of the people no longer seeks consolation and exaltation, but those who are refined, rich, unoccupied, who are distillers of quintessences,. seek what is new, strange, original, extravagant, scandalous. I myself, since cubism and even before, have satisfied these masters and crities, with all the changing oddities which passed through my head, and the less they understood me the more they admired me. By amusing myself with all these games, with all these absurdities, with all these puzzles, rebuses and arabesques, I became famous, and that very quickly. And fame for a painter means sales, gains, fortune, riches. And today, as you know, I am celebrated. I am rich, But when I'am alone with myself, I have not the courage to think of myself as an artist in the great and ancient sense of the term. Giotto, Titian. Rembrandt, Goya, were great painters; I am only a

public entertainer, who has understood his times and has exhausted as best he could the imbecility, the vanity, the .cupidity, of his contemporaries. Mine is a bitter confession, more’ painful than it may appear; but it has the merit of being sincere."

J.H.

H.

(Ngongotaha).

Sir,-If Russell Clark will substitute a sublime stone figure for the hideous grotesque that defaced your issue of September 10, he may possibly succeed, not only in placating outraged womanhood, but in justifying his claim to be an artist.

L. D.

AUSTIN

(Wellington).