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Those were that it was our experts in the field of. Mixed really have an assessment of the place of modern art by Barbara Hepworth who was one of the best known British sculptors of the abstract school she recorded this talking home in St Ives Cornwall where she was working on a large stone group commissioned for the one nine hundred fifty one Festival of Britain here is Barbara Hepworth. Fortunate to be living at a time when new forms are being created in architecture culture thinking and rules like new forms which not only derive from the basic nature and life but which at the same time come to terms with the particular difficulties which a civilised nation prevent these new forms and new sounds a patterned in the cultural pattern of today are the very core of our life tomorrow and they are the forms which often provoke the greatest resistance on account of that force which strikes and Ruth are deeper level of consciousness. They are all in this in true across with past tradition springing from a profound response to life itself from our common roots. Living here in Cornwall that I have done for eleven years very near out of the tip of the peninsula of land and facing the Atlantic with all its splendor of sea and sky a conviction have been growing in Lee from new air prevention of basic life forces is necessary if we are to survive the mechanical destructiveness of our time. It seems to me urgent that we in Europe and you in America should through an understanding of the art of. Of Will the art of culture join hands in a great endeavor to regain attach was a simple primeval forces which Naresh mankind and which prepare the ground for a healthy fighting culture. These forces are simple and the artist is constantly aware of them but they are forces of passionate intensity from the impact of which our civilization has been shrinking. The visionary could be as a doer of human being's good great strength. And I think we are becoming more aware of the necessity for in his third you could protest to life and the need for greater balance between head and hair and mind and body but it needs more than a knowledge of firm color and movement and gesture it demands a tremendous effort of reassessment revaluation or a whole position to understand the primary new man in order to relieve all those same for billet is which would make each one of those desire to create and understand more of the beauty of life and so make a humble approach whether we work in field or factory office all to do it. In America understand the position of the artist in society you understand the importance of the activity of creation as well as the part played in the social structure that the capacity to receive creatively interchange. A festival of thought and the impact to be made upon the social structure breaking the craft of resistance and the. Growth of interplay between the practicing artist and the rest of society an absolute necessity if we are to maintain a proper articulation between members of communities and of nation Iraq a different point of that was put forward by Geoffrey Griggs for many years a writer lecturer and broadcaster on the subject Geoffrey Griggs. What I'm going to say may make me sound rather too much like twenty below zero at midsummer as I don't run at any rate in Europe there is one thing which makes me a prince and that is the division between the appreciation of the arts and the making about. The problem it's how the words go the problem is presenting the visual arts to the public well is it what is most of the public are kind of public in the twentieth century doesn't want their we've no problem of presenting in physics or mathematics we all understand then this is a good thing. But only a certain necessary part of the public are acquired to be physicists and mathematicians. And no problem arises but presenting their sciences to other parts of the public to other people whose professional concern and they be sweeping the sidewalks representing a country the United Nations or selling author they don't need physical mathematics is our assumption that all of the media are valid in any way a top must reassume it's our duty to initiate all of them into the paintings of cancer or the enjoyment of nobles by sending called Well let me ask another question what proportion of any people in any given community is in civilization began have needed the arts or have been able to respond to the arts I believe our situation in which most people are content without the arts is merely an old old situation greatly exaggerated statistically exaggerated the cause the population of the world has greatly increased and many more people in any community are literate but that doesn't mean that they want to read Here's a little dog or can be in need to read years and years it and or with any profit to themselves if only we present the poems to them skillfully or not if there is a problem well I'm not sure I just a farce one or an insuperable one or one there is no need to pose a tall because those who need to get so Alexander Caldo it on will come to them so long as opportunity is provided mind you only opportunity and not necessarily explanation we make too much fuss altogether about the appreciation of art and too much democratic process without bothering to analyze either art or democracy. I don't one thing is a product of society and our real problem now is with the producer and not the product our problem is to preserve our promote the kind of society which will incidentally respect and in direct to profit by the kinds of value conveyed by art and emphasized by art and preserve freedom of Spirit provided you cation avoid exclusive fanaticisms allow no one pressure to become too extreme and the art will go on and to be appreciated by the proportion of the community which can appreciate them let's not make a mistake of being missionaries for art itself. William Blake had a word for our commissioners he said they were hired by the devil and to depress art and right in the railroad car suspected all those in the art linked professions to him they were the worst enemies are simply as far as art goes I believe it's enough if we can insure that artist their lives and if we insure that for those who can profit by their work there are places where pictures can be seen in music played and of books printed published and read and so on just as we make certain that our liberties with because one Englishman Windham that is defined as a stronghold of the pedestal human consciousness well society can get along good Hell if it doesn't have too few artists or too few appreciators of that strong to act as a lever if it had to mend well let another matter too many it might be as bad as having to it might and our own society every bit as dentures. And lastly here is that little tale that art critic of the New Statesman a nation weekly and lecturer at the Royal College of Art This is battle tested speaking to you from the studios of the B.B.C. in London. The chief problem I think which faces the critique of painting and sculpture today is that the it clicked this isn't of our period and eclecticism which will be which must be reflected in this imaginative and I would guess unique enterprise of station W N Y C During the past seventy five years the range of our knowledge and our experience of works of art has enormously increased the works of Africa Pollan easier I think in Mexico the Bushman for example have moved over spiritually at least from the museums of it now graffiti and anthropology into the galleries of art the Western Hemisphere has explored and studied the art of the east instead of just allowing it to touch the fringes of its taste we've given value to the work of the child and the untrained amateur we've rediscovered all revalued those periods of European and Near Eastern culture which would have seemed quite unworthy of our attention no more than a century ago and these discoveries we've stored up in books and photographs and reproductions so much as on tomorrow as recently suggested every man may make his own museum this process has coincided with and he skeptic which states in various forms that the valuable work of art its reality what keeps it alive resides in its form what our critic English critic Mr Clive Bell called back in one hundred fourteen it's significant form and the work of all the period I've mentioned we're called to witness to this truth it was used in fact as a theoretical justification for modern painting. I think it's ultimately a dangerous belief to be left floating around dangers if we allow it to distort our view of the history of man's making paintings and sculptures dangerous I mean when it encourages us to believe that an African mask a Celtic illuminated manuscript Romanesque carving in the temperament of some church and El Greco to cast so are the same sort of thing dangerous when this generalization is allowed to destroy the particularity the identity of the work of art and then the work of art becomes an object a fetish even an object of an irrational uncritical reverence I should like to see the critic today work to preserve the identity of the works of art of the past no longer to generalize but to tease out the particular significance of every work and not only its formal significance either and that leads me to the art of the present if you like myself you have to write week by week about what appears in the in the galleries you will encounter all the extraordinary diversity of Contemporary Art Now if the critic is to be of any use if used to be more than a gossip writer is because it is and I believe should not be a mere rationalization of his tastes and preferences and how much criticism today is very little more than that and nor should his criticism be a defense or an attack he shouldn't attempt to anticipate the verdicts of posterity any more than a painter should strive after a masterpiece or of the beauty the critics job or so it seems to me is to describe it is to offer a verbal account of that world of ideas and forms and emotions which in their growth arrive at the work of art to be concerned with facts and not with opinions to tease out again the identity of the work which confronts him. This is being called an Age of Criticism rather than of creation and unfortunately that is meant to that much criticism is also tried to be art the critic is a craftsman and should be set up and if we are to apply to be able to apply any standards to the diversity of contemporary art then criticism I believe must accept that row. This is Basil Taylor speaking to you from the London studios of the B.B.C. And that concludes the programme introducing experts in the field of British art this was transcribed especially of our station W N Y C by the B.B.C. This is the British Broadcasting Corporation.