Newspaper Art.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 28, 10 July 1902, Page 18

Newspaper Art.

The Buenos Ayres newspapers are not very complimentary to the artistic work which appears in Borne of their number. The Southern Croxs says : ' We are now " in full illustration," to use a Spanish phrase applicable to illustrated journalism. Possibly some of the illustrations are better than nothing, but it ought to be a fearful quarter of an hour for an Argentine public man of note when he looks forward beyond the grave and contemplates the horrible blurs which the papers of his native land will call his portrait. The illustration of our daily press is, however, advancing. formerly it was done with a spade, now it ih done with a whitewash brush. Great is progress.' The reference here ia evidently to the efforts made in the direction of art by daily newspapers. This is Itself a noteworthy illustration of the euterprine, journalistic as well as mercantile, now manifested in South America. A daily illustrated press is still a thing of the future, and will remain ho until Borne quicker and cheaper process comes to light. Modern methods of newspaper printing lend themselves more easily to rapidity of production than to artistic effect. So long as a picture must b e stereotyped for reproduction, so long is the attainment of artistic effect impossible. It may serve well enough for a diagram, or even for the outlines of a building, a S3ene, or a face. But it is impossible to reproduce tones, and the most trifling misadventure produces a truculent portrait, or a blurred scene that causes the printer to despair and the cynic to Jscoff. Nevertheless, the illustrated daily newspaper will come ; it is the lineal descendant of the 'snippet' journal and the accredited ambassador of a literature that demands no thought.