MATURED ART

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 796, 22 October 1954, Page 5

MATURED ART

Sir,-I always marvel at the temerity with which people summarily condemn the work of an artist. Recently there has been a spate of derogatory criticism levelled at Russell Clark, on whose

painting and sculpture an article appeared in The Listener not long ago. Three correspondents in _ particular voiced their disapproval in no uncertain terms (it being fashionable in this country to do so) but, running true to type, they propounded their arguments with hopeless inconsistency. To begin with J.H.H., who glibly misquotes Shakespeare, Granted, his quotation is textually accurate-but surely the most important thing about such an extract is its true meaning, and to whom can we make a better appeal for elucidation of this than ‘the playwright himself, in his own application of art? Are Shakespeare’s plays merely conversations, faithfully recorded from life? They must be, if Hamlet’s speech has been properly interpreted by our correspondent, who would eliminate by his interpretation all artistic selection. "The mirror up to

nature" has a far more profound meaning than was ever dreamed of by J.H.H. when he used it to infer (with his illustration from Picasso) that Giotto, Rembrandt and the rest simply rendered accurately the visual aspect of nature. The fatuity of this contention becomes, of course, obvious when one compares these masters. Nothing need be said about N. R. Williams-his own epithets "prudish" and "barbarous" are well chosen and could not be more apposite. I would remind him of the critic who attacked Michelangelo, calling the great Last Judgment a "voluptuous bathroom": the voluptuousness lay in himself. As is to be expected, L. D. Austin indulged in his usual pointless dithyramb. The whole matter, as the article so aptly put it, is one of conventions and their acceptance by the (often reluctant) public; this preoccupation with external appearance, to which so many people seem to attach so much significance is itself nothing but a convention-and a comparatively modern one at that.

D. E.

CONLING

(Mataura).

Sir,-Your correspondent J.H.H. is a public benefactor for quoting that statement of Picasso about his painting aims. In July the English Listener printed on its cover a reproduction of what it described as "The Athlete, by Picasso, one of the masterpieces from the Sao Paulo Museum of Art now on exhibition at the Tate Gallery." My immediate’ reaction was, where’s the athlete, and where’s the masterpiece?-and I was glad to find a correspondent in The Listener sharing my doubt. It is easy to see the mental process behind the caption, Here’s a foreign exhibition, and in it a work by Picasso; it must be a masterpiece. J.H.H. has helped us to be wiser, The superior attitude of art critics aeeds periodical hosing with cold com.mon sense. Some months ago the Manchester City Council declined to buy a

"Draped Torso" by Henry Moore, and the Spectator, with an acrimony one dees not expect from it, chided a councillor for making a joke about the work, It received two somewhat stinging letters in protest. If this councillor liked beauty and failed to find it, asked one correspondent, might he not say so unashamed? "It seems an unsatisfactory though too common implication that art which is Modern must be cotton-woolled against crude reactions of the uninitiated; that current vogues are gospel truth while beauty is stale and obsolete; that Art is to be approached with breath bated and head bowed; that a few Modern artists and critics know, and we ought to know they know. It won't do; it won’t do at all." "It is far from being only the Philistines to whom the vogue in modern art is suspect," wrote the second correspondent. "The Philistines only ‘know what they like’and dislike; is there any articulate evidence that the cognoscenti do more than just that?" I may add that I am acquainted with some of Henry Moore’s work through illustrations, and am aware of his high standing in Britain and Europe.

VICTORIAN RELIC

(Wellington),

Sir,-H.B.S. pays tribute to Russell Clark but qualifies it so far as his illustrations are concerned. "I feel," he says, "profoundly sorry for the writers whose ideas are often completely twisted." As one whose occasional stories and articles in The Listener have been illustrated by Russell Clark I would say that on the contrary his illustrations add point to the stories and articles. I did not choose my illustrator, but I am sure ‘tthe Editor could not have made a better

choice.

JOHN

BUCKLEY

(Wellington).