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Show , - Art Talks By, (iOKDON COl In a rather hysterical novel, "La Vie de Boheme" by the French man Henri Merger, and in Puc-(. Puc-(. , i.pera of the same motive, "La Boheme," artists are presented present-ed in a distorted and romaniic light. The picture present a life of poverty wherein the writer, the musician, painter and poet live in a childish abandon, seeming seem-ing not to mind too much the lack of necessary comforts of which they are deprived; colorful and productive in spite of maladjustment maladjust-ment in a practical world. It is true that many masterpieces master-pieces of art have been created under the most difficult of physical physi-cal circumstances. To look backward back-ward a short space, we find Shu-bert Shu-bert producing the greatest of lyric music while in tatters and on the verge of starvation; Rembrandt Rem-brandt at the peak of his powers harrassed by debt and worry, but painting with courage and genius; Spinoza, giving to the world the products of one of the greatest metaphysical minds of all times while excommunicated and isolated from all human contact and suffering suf-fering extreme poverty and America's Amer-ica's own Stephen Foster giving the new world its first native music mu-sic while in dire phyiscal need. Here is courage and color and romance. Surely all nice at a distance. For art's sake! But, let us look to the results: Shubert's voice was stilled at the age of thirty-one; Rembrandt died in poverty; Spinoza of consumption and neglect, and Stephen Foster of malnutrition. The world cannot can-not appraise the value of the works lost that might have been born of these men and others had it not been for such conditions. "It is well," writes a historian histor-ian in a preface in "American Civilization" "to emphasize the fact that artists and writers live by patronage. It has always been so." Until of late times, the sum total of the world's lasting art not commissioned by some one and for which the artist was not recompensed, was of very small proportion. Under the stimulus stim-ulus and encouragement of the patronage system, art flowered and gave to one age alone a de Vinci, Michael Angelo, Raphael and many others. In every period where a public has been sympathetic sympath-etic to the cause of art and artist, art has flourished and men of importance have left a trace in history with their works because they have either been put to work or allowed to work. Mr. Cahill, national head of art projects, upon the occasion of his visit to Salt Lake City and Springville, Spring-ville, made the following comments: com-ments: "What Americans need to recall is that greai art is not necessarily dead, but that art must be actively supported if it is to attain its creative possibilities. "Our nation could exist no more than a few days of it were operated oper-ated on the same basis as art has been in this country. "What if 85 to 95 per cent of our national income went to foreign for-eign countries for products 50 to 300 years old, while only 5 to 10 per cent was spent with living producers in our own land?". |