The Avesta, Volume 21, Number 2, Summer, 1942 Page: 19
36 p. : ill. ; 30 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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31n efense of Color anb coberencte
d .
D
Y
. rM J19
ME, I'm one of the hoi-polloi, a very bourgy bourgeousie. I like Victor Herbert, A.
E. Housman, and ham and eggs. Like any ordinary citizen. I like "The Blue
Boy" and secretly have an eye for a bright calendar. I go for the shade of purple
on a three-cent stamp and try not to mix sky-blue ankle socks with a pea-green dress.
The only times I ever meet Art with a capital A are those occasions when, as
a reporter subject to call, I am ordered to "cover" assorted recitals, concerts, and art
exhibits.
Recitals and lectures and dance programs are all very well. I can conduct my-
self like a lady journalist, jot down some sweet talk about tone and pitch, sign
thirty, and relax. I have written a story. I know the score. It's down there in black and
white.
But-O gosh-awful day-when fate gives me the old one-two and hands me
an art assignment, I'm out for the count; I go; I stare; I stagger; I bite my nails; I
ponder; I pout; I trail a pencil across a page, but nothing comes out. Calendars were
never like this.
Like a lost soul I wander from red daffodils to purple adding machines, seeking
a reaction that might be printable.
See what I mean? I just don't know the score when it comes to modern art.
Take for instance one time when, in a desert of floating zebras and dancing
umbrella stands, I finally spotted an oasis which promised to yield an item for my
story. There in the corner, as any one could plainly see, was a picture of a kindly old
gentleman wig-wagging in the semaphore code. Unusual, yes, but its very original-
ity promised good copy. Armed with this stimulating discovery, I took to my type-
writer and tossed off a slight case of masterpiece on the drama of defense and art and
the part of the older generation in the great war effort of today. It was two days later
that T discovered the picture was named "Cleopatra Floating down the Tigris in a
Glass-Bottom Boat" and that its secret meaning was the eternal beauty of free trade
with Canada.
See what I mean? I don't get it.
Like others of the common herd, I want to understand it. I want to find a mean-
in. I want to have a fact to get my teeth into, and that is where we laymen find frus-
tration. There is no fact, no bedrock; there is meant to be none. But we, prosaic mod-
erns that we are, are never satisfied with that: our pride is piqued, and we square the
pugnacious law of our mind and swear that if some other guy produced it, we're going
to understand it if it kills us.
I do not accuse the modern artist of being insincere; I believe he feels every bright
slash of color, every square circle, and every four-cornered triangle. I am sure, too,
that he sees all the symmetry, all the balance, and all the color harmony which allegedly
dwell in modern art.
But I wonder if this is the art to which the large middle class should be exposed.
(Continued to page 36)
VIRGINIA PATY is a defender of the old art,
of pretty colors, and calendar pictures. She tries
to take modern art, views it skeptically, and
decides that she can't even make the least of it.
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North Texas State Teachers College. The Avesta, Volume 21, Number 2, Summer, 1942, periodical, Summer 1942; Denton, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc2105649/m1/21/: accessed July 16, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Special Collections.