Letter 1, Toss Woollaston, ‘Modern Art (To the Editor)’, Nelson Evening Mail, 13 September 1934
Letter 10, C.N. Wilkinson, ‘Modern Art (To the Editor)’, Nelson Evening Mail, 17 October 1934
The exhibition ran between 2-10 September and was one of three exhibitions Scales exhibited in in New Zealand directly after her time at the Hans Hofmann School of Fine Art in Munich, Germany.
The eight works shown are undocumented and remain unknown but would no doubt provide a great insight into the immediate results of Scales’s training at the Hofmann School. Woollaston described works in which “colours glowed from deep space…Dark, rubbed drawings extended deep into their own grey surfaces by virtue of lines that had been worked for a whole month.”1
It was at the suggestion of Woollaston that the Nelson Suter Art Society resolved to write to Flora Scales asking her to contribute some pictures to the exhibition. He recalled, “…I had a fortnight during which I could go to the Gallery and look at her pictures every day. The Art Society people hated them; but they were the only things in the show I found it constructive to look at. One of them was a drawing at the grease-proof paper stage. The strains of the process had torn the paper, and the artist had pinned the torn edges in place with drawing pins. This sort of presentation proved to the people how shocking these pictures were. That an artist should have things on her mind that made a tear held together with pins not matter was something that could not find room in their thoughts. “Like frying-pans!” was the best thing an Art Society stalwart – Marjorie Naylor – could find to say about them. Art only fit for a kitchen!”2
One of several possible explanations for the lack of information about or known locations of the artworks shown in these three exhibitions is that Scales may have taken them back with her to France in 1936. The tragic extension of this supposition is that they then shared the fate of much of her European work from the late 1920s and early 1930s, stored in Wheatley’s & Co., 32 Rue Caumartin, Paris, that was plundered in the early 1940s by the German Army of Occupation.
1 Excerpt from Bieringa, Luit, Two New Zealand painters: the thirties and forties - foundations and changes in the work of M.T. Woollaston and C. McCahon, Unpublished Thesis, School of Fine Arts Library, University of Auckland, New Zealand, 1971, pp 59-60. Taken from biographical notes on this period in the possession of the artist. [Now held in the Sir M.T. Woollaston Unpublished Autobiographical Notes 1991, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington]
2 Excerpt from Toss Woollaston's essay for B. de Lange, 1992
Letter 1
‘Modern Art (To the Editor)’, Nelson Evening Mail, 13 September 1934
Sir, — There was on view at the contemporary exhibition in the Suter Art Gallery, some work which offered, if diligently studied, enlightenment of a kind hitherto withheld from Nelson by overwhelming circumstances.
Of this set of eight pictures, one was for sale at the low price of twenty pounds.
Should the trustees of the Art Gallery purchase such a work, not only would their foresight merit emulation from other New Zealand centres; it would lay the foundation stone of a needful emancipation for students in this town — emancipation from the stagnant idea that the wide strong river of painting has stopped over fifty years ago, and since then goes round in a backwash perpetuating the manner of nature interpretation then in vogue.
Those who attended the forceful lecture given in the Art Gallery on Wednesday evening will surely see now that to take a constructive step onward, such as this, is imperative as often as we are able. Let us be unselfish and consider the higher practical necessity, which conditions always the true study of art. The satisfying of our taste, our connoisseurship (by which we mean chiefly declining to like anything but what we already "know we like"), is a very small thing, and is fatally apt to become isolated and petrified.—I am, etc.,
AN URGENT VOICE
Nelson, 6th September.
Letter 2
‘Modern Art (To the Editor)’, Nelson Evening Mail, 17 September 1934
Sir, — A letter was published recently urging the purchase, for educational purposes, of certain modern works at a recent Suter exhibition, evidently considered by the writer to be representative of modern art.
Not unnaturally, one asks what is meant by the term "modern art," for it is hard to conceive of a less definite term. The literal dictionary meaning is "art pertaining to the present time." This will embrace subject, composition, and treatment.
The subject and composition in these particular paintings under discussion was certainly not unusual. This narrows it down to treatment and more particularly, drawing and colour, and the application of the latter. In these respects they run to extremes which might well be termed inconsequent.
No doubt, works of this nature have their important place if art as levers to urge us to depart from weak, over-detailed painting, but should they be held representative of the best modern work, which incorporates fine drawing, a strong broad treatment, a disregard of extraneous detail, and a real interpretation of the beauty apparent to the artist in the subject?
Are we still to appreciate a picture for its decorative qualities and for its ability to bring the interesting and the beautiful into the home, or must it be regarded as an abstruse psychological study to be confined in art galleries, with perhaps, an explanatory notice for the benefit of the less mentally acute? Any unfairness lies in failing to accept certain contemporary work as extreme; bearing in mind that little advancement seems possible without the influence of the extremist.
Looked at in this light such work has undoubted merit and a certain appeal. It is not, however, rather dangerous matter to place before the developing student as a precept?—I am, etc.,
F. ALAN ELLIOTT.
Nelson, 15th September.
Letter 3
‘Modern Art (To the Editor)’, Nelson Evening Mail, 21 September 1934
Sir, — I acknowledge Mr. Alan Elliott’s reply to my letter. He appears to have stated what he knows about the paintings in question. Though he did not definitely pronounce the precept he reduces them to, the suggestion is strongly of one called "Slop it on," which has already been so popularised here that it is laughable to hear it called dangerous. One must be an academicist to find any precept dangerous—technical and professional conventions are endangered more than vitality.
He desires painting to be decorative pleasantry for the home, and so conjures up a dreadful picture of obtuse psychological study and explanatory notes in art galleries to make a serious philosophy of art look ridiculous.
Extremists we have always with us. I except the paintings under discussion, but on different grounds though by no means promptly opposite to Mr. Elliott’s. that the subject and composition are not unusual. If he means about extremists that they are prime movers in advancement, then his terms are topsy-turvy to me. There is tradition, and its power is movement, the normal life-and-growth which bursts through the orthodoxies the academists make, and sweeps the extremists with it like straws on a flood. Cézanne says that he who has not the taste for the absolute contents himself with a tranquil mediocrity. The search for the absolute—if that is the extremism then it is certainly the prime mover in advancement. There is much of a fashionable modernism, academicism walking up-to-date, and there seem to be no rules for the unwary to discriminate between this and the real tradition.
A more profound study of recent and present-day development in Europe might render Mr. Elliott sensitive to certain qualities in those paintings at the exhibition—which he could then study again were any of them in a public place!
To introduce so great a study is neither proper to nor within the scope of this correspondence, which can only hope to stimulate any worthy wondering that the pictures may have aroused.—I am, etc.,
AN URGENT VOICE.
Nelson, 17th September.
Letter 4
‘Modern Art (To the Editor)’, Nelson Evening Mail, 28 September 1934
Sir,—A certain strain of bitterness in “Urgent Voice’s” latest contribution is indicative that New Zealand is not alone in a reserved acceptance of the type of work under review.
The vogue of to-day is to-morrow as obsolete as last week’s popular song. Manipulative art will require more than the attribute of modernness to ensure its lasting for ten years, even if we do agree with Mr C. T. W. Nevinson’s views on the futility of immortality.
As regards foreign travel, a literary friend of mine sums it up very neatly. He says, “I have yet to meet the man whose intellectual capacity was increased by travel, but I have met men whose stock of jargon, platitude and terminology was considerably enhanced thereby.”
Why should “Urgent Voice” assume that an interpretation of art suitable to crowded Europe is suitable or desirable to New Zealand, where we live much closer to nature? A distinguished exponent of modern art asserts that, so far from being full of philosophical meanings, the ultra-modern picture appeals more than ever through the senses, and its decorative pattern is its greatest point. Realistic drawing is subdued to the general pattern. One can see sense in this; the practice of making real objects subservient to design is as old as the hills.
The truth is, that we are so filled up with all sorts of philosophical rot that when we see an ultra-modern work of art, we say to ourselves: “What the deuce does it mean?” as though it were one of Bernard Partridge’s cartoons in “Punch.” (Even he usually provides an explanatory footnote for the benefit of we simple-minded Englishmen).
“Urgent Voice” does not make good his original contention as to the suitability of the proposed purchase for the education and influence of students. His claim would have been more soundly based had he recommended it as an interesting product of the age. Our thanks are due to an artist who has shown us something of the developments afoot in other parts of the world, and last but not least, has been the means of further disturbing our Nelsonian complacency.—I am, etc.,
F. ALAN ELLIOTT
Nelson 26th Sept.
Letter 5
‘Modern Art (To the Editor)’, Nelson Evening Mail, 2 October 1934
Sir,—I have not now to make good my suggestion that the picture being bought would be for educative purposes valuable in Nelson. Had you, sir, published my suggestion while the exhibition was open, and had the Art Gallery authorities responded to it then, it would be different. For the sake of my suggestion I took the name "Urgent Voice" and appeared to expect such a response.
Mr Elliott is again extremely derisive of “philosophical rot,” perhaps because to him it necessitates those explanatory footnotes which (rightly) offend his taste. But good painting is necessarily difficult to understand well and jargonistic footnotes will not overcome the difficulty: therefore we do not wish them. At any who loudly demand explanations of everything they see that they don't understand, I expect that such things shall be converted at once by explanation into something they already understand. It appears that they do not wish to enlarge their understanding, but rather their collection of interesting specimens. This condition is perhaps a product—an uninteresting product of the "age of specialists" in which esoteric specialistic jargons are imposed second-hand on the masses as knowledge. But as this condition does not pertain to vitality, I do not recommend any painting in that manner.
What is vital contributes to making the age. What is not will be found false and taken from the age when the tradition is discovered.
The real "modern art" is that which discovers the tradition and contributes to it. When modern art appears in opposition to the old, it is the result of unnatural conditions—either artificialness in what appears in the name of modern art, or professionalism founded in only the manners of past times. That an appreciation of great art of the past is not inspired by its great qualities is amply proven in the imitative rubbish people will admire who profess to admire also the great masters. It is from these people that opposition to modern art comes.
Art is profound, whoever says “philosophical rot.” Yet being profound it is also simple so as to be universal. If being nearer nature in New Zealand is good for our art instinct, we will find ourselves better able to recognise art when we see it, even if it is European. But everything militates against this. Here the galleries are expensively created and expensively filled with painting imitative of what is accepted: and the result is that they appear important and sustain in people the belief that we already have taste, and that taste is what determines the value of a work of art.
Taste is to tickle—it implies entertainment. Whereas art is a spiritual estimation of life, expressed in a medium that is neither realistic representation nor symbolic notation of objects, but the plastic or form quality. This quality is very hard to understand nowadays, because of all the obscuring and conflicting prejudices. But it is accorded according to the inner vision.
There is a phrase commonly used by those who think art ought to be natural-copying, when admiring a scene in nature: “A picture no artist could paint.” This does not allude to any incapability of art, the function of which is here not understood. But is evidence that natural-copying is profoundly unsatisfying.
If we study sufficiently to get a grip of the central reality of art and understand its permanent and abstract quality according to our inner vision, then we can tell whether or not this quality is in a modern work apart from that it may not be closely imitative of objects, and we can appreciate the true value of an old master painting however closely imitative it seems to be.—I am, etc.,
URGENT VOICE
Nelson, 29th September.
Letter 6
‘Modern Art (To the Editor)’, Nelson Evening Mail, 4 October 1934
Sir,—In his letter dated 29th September on the above subject “Urgent Voice” draws a conclusion that to me seems quite erroneous. He says “There is a phrase commonly used by those who think art ought to be nature copying, when admiring a scene in nature ‘a picture no artist could paint.’ This does not allude to any incapability of art, the function of which is here not understood. But it is evidence that nature-copying is profoundly unsatisfying.”
In common with many others I have often used the expression, but have always meant that I wished an artist could paint it, and thus give me a permanent record of the scene then in view. When used by me the phrase most certainly does allude to the incapability of art, and is evidence that I consider nature-copying is (at present) unsatisfactory, and not that it is profoundly unsatisfying, as your contributor states.
It would be interesting to hear what others mean when using the phrase under discussion.—I am, etc.,
C. N. WILKINSON
Nelson, 3rd October.
Letter 7
‘Modern Art (To the Editor)’, Nelson Evening Mail, 6 October 1934
Sir,—Your correspondent Mr C. N. Wilkinson, should have explained more definitely how his remarks show, as he evidently intends they should, that my conclusion is so erroneous. He admits that the phrase “Picture no artist could paint” is founded on a short-coming of nature-copying, rendering it at present unsatisfactory. The phrase, of course, necessitates such a condition. From his vehement use of my own opinion that the expression does not allude to any incapability of art, I infer that your correspondent thinks that there is no art now, so an incapability; that he thinks there is no art now because nature-copying perfected is the only thing he will call art, and it is not yet. He will consider me deeply in error when I say that I shall not mean by nature-copying what I mean by art when it is perfected.
I will emphasise, and say nature-copying is fundamentally profoundly unsatisfying. Appearances given to perpetuate in a little earthly permanence other appearances that fall upon nature (the scene) for one fleeting moment. During the labour of completing in a picture the appearance at one moment, countless thousands of other moments have brought different visitations of appearances to the scene. All this care in art for a moment which nature cares not for, having millions more. But wait! the moment to depict is gone, and depicting is slow: this is nature-memorising, not copying. The memory memorises, the artist copies the memory? What is nature? What is copying?
Art looks for substantial realities and finds the spiritual more substantial than the material. The most substantial matter for art is often not physically visible: and so the appearances of objects are transformed to be a vehicle for things felt behind what is bodily seen and may be called “outward nature.” Now we see art as a creative activity, making the invisible visible, rather than juggling with different conditions of visibility and durations of scene-effects.—I am, etc.,
URGENT VOICE
Nelson, 5th October.
Letter 8
‘Modern Art (To the Editor)’, Nelson Evening Mail, 8 October 1934
Sir,—For use in intelligible discussion words must have agreed-upon meaning.
I always supposed that an individual sitting in front of an easel, and by means of brush and paint placing on a canvas a more or less perfect impression of a material object or scene, was an artist. However, this apparently is not so, and the correct term is nature-copyer, or nature-copyist. All right, in future we will say: “An impression no nature-copyist could at present adequately portray,” instead of the more usual “A picture no artist, etc.”
The second paragraph of "Urgent Voice’s" letter points out that even while a picture is being painted countless appearances come and go, and so any picture can be more than a copy of a memory.
This is a round-about way of saying that a moving picture cannot be made with a stationary piece of canvas and stationary paints. But what alternatives have we? An art (sorry) a nature-copyist setting out to paint a picture of the Arahura entering the harbour would see a fairly stable Boulder Bank and entrance, but the steamer would appear in as many positions on the picture as the painter had given places at the scene. This would probably give the Anchor Company a fleet which would be most embarrassing in the present state of the shipping business. But seriously, either one or many steamers would have to be painted. Which is the best? For the exercise of art free from any semblance to material forms or sounds music seems to me the ideal medium. When a musician tries to reproduce what for want of a better word we will call material sounds the result is ridiculous. Anybody doubting this should get a gifted friend to play over on a piano that old favourite “The Battle March of Delhi.” The musical (?) score is liberally provided with remarks of this sort. “Highlanders Advancing,” “Artillery Opens Fire,” “Sepoys Retreating,” etc.
To my mind, this burlesque is not one whit worse than to go to an exhibition of modern art, to see on a stand what appears to be the head of an old woman of 90 years or more, and to see in the catalogue against its number the title “A College Girl.” These two examples seem to me to be just two sides of the same shield; both are perversions trying to express what can never be expressed in the medium chosen.—I am, etc.,
C. N. WILKINSON.
Nelson Hospital.
Letter 9
‘Modern Art (To the Editor)’, Nelson Evening Mail, 15 October 1934
Sir,—Mr Wilkinson and I are well agreed as to what nature-copying is. The most significant part of his letter is where he finds music the ideal medium for art as distinguished from this.
Music is called the purest of the arts, and all arts are supposed to aspire to the condition of music. This is not a comparison of arts as it appears to be. Painting, poetry, sculpture, truly functioning as art are as pure as music; but in music the fallacy of nature-copying is more easily detected—it has never grown into a great prejudice. No art is more ideal than another.
Many Arahuras painted on a canvas would be a perversion of nature-copying rather than of art. In the films the illusion of movement is a material illusion, given by a device—presenting the images in rapid succession, but only one at a time. For the nature-copyist, one Arahura certainly. For the artist, the question is irrelevant. The moment to be given in pictorial art has not its original anywhere in the material world, being a created expression and not an illusion.
Nature-copyists interpret all manifestations of pictorial art as distortions or perversions of their own way, except it be that period or school which gave the manner of their own way. (For there are different schools purporting to be imitating nature correctly.) The objection to a nature-copyist is that he cannot be wholly a nature-copyist, and no creation would be achieved could he be, but only imitation. His problem is false and unnecessary, and he cannot get outside his limitations but by distortion.
But art is absolute; when a picture is a spiritual plastic expression fully achieved, a comparative word like distortion cannot mean anything applied to it. Nature-copying not art is distortable.—I am, etc.,
URGENT VOICE
Nelson, 8th October.
Letter 10
‘Modern Art (To the Editor)’, Nelson Evening Mail, 17 October 1934
Sir, Since writing the previous letters on the above subject several people have tried to explain to me the ideas underlying some of the modernist productions.
Briefly it is that the artist sees things in a different way. The argument would carry more weight if this peculiarity showed up in their everyday life when dealing with material things. Given a bunch of assorted keys an artist has no difficulty in picking a Yale lock, so apparently his idea of size and shape is the same as mine.
When it comes to the choice of a life partner, artists generally are remarkably successful in choosing just the comely, healthy, and beautiful girls that would be considered desirable by the average man. Why then should the same woman, when translated into a lump of shaped clay, look so entirely different?—I am, etc.,
C. N. WILKINSON.
Nelson, 14th October.
Letter 11
‘Modern Art (To the Editor)’, Nelson Evening Mail, 18 October 1934
Sir,—Your contributor "Urgent Voice" seems to have a clear idea what art is not, so perhaps by a process of elimination we may get at what art is. He says nature copying is not art, so does he consider nature distorting is? In an earlier letter he told us that art was a creative force, and to have earned such a description it must have created something. Just what has that something been?
So far as I can see all that man has done so far, except, perhaps in the field of music, has been to try and make a copy of some material object, or a distortion or rearrangement of it.
Allowing for the intermediate links in the chain, an aeroplane is a large bird with a man where its brain ought to be. A Gothic cathedral is a large artificial cave with plush seats instead of tufts of grass to sit on. The Cunarder Queen Mary is a very elaborate hollow log. Were the successive changes linking the first stages with the last the result of art or science?
Assuming that man is capable of exercising the creative faculty what original thing has he so far produced?—I am, etc.,
C. N. WILKINSON
Nelson, 17th October.
Letter 12
‘Modern Art (To the Editor)’, Nelson Evening Mail, 23 October 1934
Sir,—I have said that nature-copying is not art. Your correspondent is asking more than I think he realises in asking me to say what art is. Cathedrals and Cunarders are a little outside our concern, which is plastic art, painting and sculpture, rather than utilitarian.
The works of the great masters of all times are creative art. Rembrandt, Velasquez, Manet; Claude Lorraine, Turner, Monet; Michel Angelo; Poussin; Pezanne [sic Cezanne]; Picasso, Henri Matisse. These are a few European masters who have made art in recent centuries. There are the Chinese and Japanese paintings which have influenced the European impressionists and post-impressionists. There is African sculpture which is an influence more recently. All this is art—thousands and thousands of works. Why is it art? Nothing said will convince those who do not study it.
But at the outset it is helpful to the student who will study it to be told that nature-copying is not art; for, because of the stale convention after the "old" masters being called realism, the wrong idea that this realism is the aim of art has arisen. How can the work of the old masters be appreciated for its originality by the measure of a convention made after they had worked?
Moreover, the originality of the old masters thus being lost sight of, it cannot be seen how the modern masters derive from their expression and develop it: instead, they appear to destroy the expression of past times. And, worse than all, bad unoriginal painting such as flourishes at the Royal Academy and such places chiefly, is taken to be the true expression of present times.
What little I realise of the magnitude of the task prevents me from attempting to say what art is in this correspondence. I go no further in all I say here than to urge the study of the works themselves and to try to clear the approach of obstructions where possible.—I am, etc.,
URGENT VOICE
Nelson, 19th October.
[This correspondence is now closed.]