Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1924-10-18
ART AND LIFE
BY H. Addingt0n Bruce

TN HE increasing attention paid in our
schools to education in the appreciation
- Of music painting and sculpture, the
steady growth of art museums, the expand
ing of facilities for the enjoyment of operas
and concerts-all this is progress in the
truest sense.
1t indicates a clearer understanding of the
important part that art should play in the
life of every human being. For aSt is not,
as the PhiIistines would have us believe, a
cispensable luxury. 1t is among the real ne
Cessities
And t is more than ever a necessity in
our age OF stern competition and unprece-
denied material development. On the masses
of men and women the practical more ana
more !nsis entity presses it's claims. Less and
less in Their everyday activities do they ind
it possible to satisfy that craving for the
beautiful instructive in the race.
Too often is this instructive craving I'M
derestimated. Yet, as Surette has pictur-
esquely put it:
eff there is any one certain fact it is
that from the earliest times until now, man
has continually sought some escape from
reality-some building up of a perfect
world of ideal beauty, which should quieten
his eternal dissatisfaction with the imperfec
tions and inconsistencies of his own life"
Art, in its various aspects, presents an
avenue of escape, an unfailing means for
satisfying the craving for beauty of thought
and feeling. Hence a genuine and wide
spread appreciation of art makes not only
for personal contentment but for social sta
bility and progress.
SO that it even becomes possible to pre-
sent the case for art on distinctly sociologi-
cal grounds, as Otto Kahn, for example, has
done.
Some of the unrest, the unruliness, the
tTansgressi0ns even, of the day, some Of the
seeking after sensations, some of the eX-
tran and c11h yror toyo1 ajo ri n
small part, l believe, from an impulse of
reaction against the hundrumness ana lack
of inspirational opportunity of everyday eX-
stence.
Much can be done by art to give salts
faction to that natural and legitimate i'm
pulse, and to lead it into fruitful channels
instead of letting it run misguided or even
destructive course.
cart is mighty element for civic prog
ress. 1t leads us to seek and to appreciate
that which is high, worthy and eXalting, and
to despise and turn away from that which
is vulgar, cheap and degrading.
Among those fields where the rare and be-
nign herbs grow from which healing may
be gathered for the ills Of the world. one Of
the most fecund is that Of art"
These manfestly are the words II IN ar
dent lover of art. But they are also the
words of predetermined man, man
widely known for his ability to meet the
concrete demands Of workaday tasks and
problems.
And to my own way Of thinking the
philosophy underlying what Otto Kahn here
says, is a philosophy borne out by human
experience through the ages and having its
basis in human nature itself.
Copyright, 1924)
as Mrs. Rise at homer" inquired Mrs.
Chatters standing in the shadow Of the door
way
Il don't know, ma'am," the new maid re-
LIied. Il can't tell till I get a better look at
you. If you've got wart on the side of your
nose, she's out
Mounta Everest is nearly as high as the
combined heights of Mount Cook, the high
est mountain in New Zealand; Fuji-Yama,
the highest in Japan; and Ben Nevis, the
highest in the British Isles.
Thackeray lifted his hat every time he
passed the house in which ne wrote VANITY
Fair"