"ART IS NEVER EASY"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 817, 25 March 1955, Page 5

"ART IS NEVER EASY"

Sir,-May I suggest that we are in danger of making rather too much fuss about our expatriates, and, in the process, being slightly unjust to our own society? In his review of E, H. McCormick’s study of Frances Hodgkins, Dr. Sutch quotes Frances as saying to a fellow New Zealand artist in London: "They're lovely people, the New Zealanders, so hospitable and so charming. But for God’s sake, don’t talk to them about art!" This recalls Samuel Butler’s often. and uncritically quoted saying about the sheepmen of Canterbury, that "it does not do to speak about John Sebastian Bach’s Fugues, or preRaphaelite pictures." There are three replies that can be made to this. First, later in the same book, Butler modified or retracted this comment, where he mentioned that a volume of classics had been found in a mountain hut. Second, it could have been said to him: "How many people in England, outside your own selected circle, would you find ready to talk about Bach and the pre-Raphaelites?" I believe appreciation of Bach in Eng-

land was then in its infancy. Third, Butler fourld in the centre of this Canterbury settlement, a small pioneéring town only a-few years old, a néwspaper prepared to publish his essays, including the germ of Erewhon. The amount of education and culture in Canterbury in those early days was remarkable. I have no wish to diminish sympathy for our expatriates, but let us look squarely at facts and reasonable deductions. If Frances Hodgkins had gone into the mass of the people in the English middle and upper classes, how many would she have found interested in art? Critics will persist in confusing the select and the average. We are now coming to realise, I think, that the Wellington of Katherine Mansfield was not quite so culturally benighted as has been made out. It is quite possible that Wellington then, and Frances’s Dunedin, enjoyed better plays and music by visiting professionals than did some towns of a similar size in Britain. The would-be artist in such a town today lights out for London or Paris, and there is no difference in kind but only in degree between such a pilgrimage and what a New Zealander undertakes when he goes abroad. If our centres have been backward in appreciation of art, we may properly regret it, but should we be greatly surprised? The main responsibility surely lies with the distant sotiety from which we have sprung. More than fifty years ago I bought my first picture-a coloured reproduction of "A Reading from Homer" by Alma-Tadema. I thought it was wonderful. It disappeared long ago, and among my pictures I now have a Van Gogh reproduction and originals by some recognised New Zealand artists, including an early Frances. Hodgkins. That Alma-Tadema picture was in the taste of my time, not only in New Zealand but in England. I suppose I may be said to have advanced, though I am conscious I can’t keep up with the advance guard. But I am just wondering what my grandchildren will think of my taste.

VICTORIAN

(Wellington).