The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1936-04-24
MUSEUMS ARE
BLIGHT, SAYS
STATE ARTIST
Art Must Be Force, Writes
Terre Haute Youth in
De Paw Magazine.


Museums chow well that word
rhymes with mauseleuIlisJ and art
dealers and connoisseurs have ster-
nized art. They do not seem to be
conscious of the real destruction
which they stupidity work"
So writes Gilbert Wilson, young
Terre Haute artists, in the current
issue OF New Campus, a magazine
published and edited by De Pauw
University students at Greencastle.
Two murals by Mr.. Wilson, done
IN chalk, adorn the lobby walls of
the Woodrow Wilson Junior High
School Building in his native city.
they give the views on economics
and politics he had at the time he
did them, and they have been widely
discussed by artists.
Fears War Imminent
He wrote in part:
With Fascism sinking more
deeply into almost every part of the
world, and with war that must in
evitably involve all civilization be-
coming daily more imminent, how
can we hope to know beauty?
Art Is not something to be placed
about in exhibition halls, to be
looked at and judged by wealthy
critical few.
1T might be better to let the
masterpieces of the past be lost
than to preserve them if they are
to be placed before the public in
preference to the work of modern
striving artists. To continue to en-
brace the centuries past creations
as the only good things is deaden-
ing. Civilization as it moves for
ward must continually create new
forms of beauty.
Throw Away Gold Frames
II say that art must throw away
its little gold frames and come to
grips with realitiesl The sooner the
artist becomes conscious of today's
social change, the sooner he dis
cards his smock and gets for him
self a book Of economics, the better.
Unless beauty contacts and per-
meates life, it is sterile. Too long
we have sought to withdraw our
selves from reality into a more
comfortable consolation of spiritual
hopefulneSS. We have ignored the
needful task of making reality it
self more liveable.
Il personally believe that we are
entering new era of thought
which might be characterized as a
healthy appreciation of reality.
What art could be greater than that
which will ally itself with science
and become sciences spokesman,
just as the church in the old days
patronized art and supplied it with
themes to pain?
Urges Art as Force
THE idea of the modern mural
is this: Art not as decoration but
as a force, graphic perturbation
of all that is not right in our society
the oppression, the 'multi-form
suffering, the dangerous drifts, the
exploitation by domineering, selfish
interests But the artist will not
say, This is the condition of the
world and leave it go 81 that. He
will only descend to negation with,
a keen pertinence to something
higher in the social state.
Social progress is the slow thing
that it is because what is every
body's business is nobody's bust
ness" The primary Office of the
new art is to awaken the mass
mind from its deep lethargy and
turn it into channels of collective
thinking. The entrenchment of
that collective realization is, of
course, a slow and tedious process.
but necessary to achieve a liveable
harmony
Il propose to paint social
philosophy on the walls of schools.
that the young mind may earlier
grasp its significant relationship to
the whole Of the social order, upon
which depends both individual and
collective welfare. Youth will ex-
perience through these murals the
chaos and dissonance that exists
and is theirs to correct"