On Art - Addresses and Writings

VI

For Discussion And Thought

In order to stimulate thought the following points are offered to the art-student:—

I.¹ Modern art is dominated by techenique or in other words the greatest triumphs of modernist art are in the field of technique.

II.² There is too much domination of " theories "— intellectual ideas—and "isms" in modern art.

III³ Most productions of modernist art are expressions of the undisciplined subconscient, suggestions from the lower vital world, full of impulses and crude material and other dream-stuff, fancies and random freaks.

¹I quote Herbert Read to show how he agrees with me on this point. Says he, " Pioneers like Saurat and Signac will be held in honour; others like Manet, Monet, Camille, Pissaro and Pierre Bon-nard (to mention only some famous names) will grow more obvious and acceptable with years. But it is already evident that they do not reach beyond lyricism, beyond surface, to the magnificent banality of the Grand manner"—

"Monet strove to communicate the transcience of light, Degas always communicates the unceasing flux of human life, the immense, unspectacular narrative which is human society." Basil Taylor

2Here also Herbert Read says:— "For the main tendency of modern art, inspite of certain romantic exceptions, has been towards a reintegration of the intellect."

3To live in the Subliminal world, to dwell there, and to forget the conscious world..-It denies the reality of the sufficiency of normal perceptions; the vision of the eye is arbitrary and limited, it is directed outward. Inward is another and a more marvellous world. It must be explored".

Herbert Read

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IV. The question may be put: Are we moving towards a Universal art or decadence in art? I have already suggested a line along which a true answer can be found : Modern art is on the right track in the sense that it stresses the subjective expression of the artist. 2. But the subjectivity that he brings into expression is infra-rational. 3. What might help the artist to create truly is his ascent to or contact with, higher levels of his being, the Suprarational. The higher the plane and truer the contact of the artist the greater would be his art.

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