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Show STREAMLINED BAD TASTE rvEVASTATTNG wars, as a matter L of course, bring out the evil traits In us humans. "We can't expect to snjoy the pleasure of murdering aach other by the millions and, at the same time, develop our better Traffic laws are here to stay are you? Safety means observing laws, and watching for those who don't. Traffic laws are not annoyances annoy-ances to be ignored. The National Nation-al Safety Council says they are for your protection. Don't learn about them toy accident. ttriDuies. just as the nature of your pet dog degenerates after fighting other dogs so does ours. Under the skin and just under we are animals ani-mals also. We consider ourselves :ivilized, and maybe we will be In a 100,000 years unless in the meantime mean-time we destroy the little ground we have thus far gained. This sage preamble is leading np to an observation upon the cycle of decadence in art through which the world is passing:. Very; rarely now-a-day doss the artistic art-istic fraternity produce better than mediocre talent. Consider the painting: of today; if there exists a more startling: commentary comment-ary on human degeneracy, then it can only be found in that cacophonous ca-cophonous "decay" which goes by the name of "music." Why can't we produce a Holbein or a Breugel any longer? Why not' A Brahms or a Beethoven? And, above all, why can't we produce within ourselves the good taste, and the independence, to repudiate the burlesquer of today whose pigmented, pigment-ed, and discordant, horrors will be laughed at tomorrow provided we renounce mass murder long enough to regain our judgment. It may seem a bit far-fetched to drag in mechanical objects to illustrate illus-trate the argument that we axe drifting through the low tide of art. But allow yourself a long, honest, appraising look at almost any 1948 or 1949 American automobile and you will see a product of mechanical genius clothed in the habiliments of imagery gone mad; a marvel of the Machine Age surrounded by a mishapen conglomerate of tin and chronmium;- a pot-bellied monstrosity monstro-sity occupying a quite unnecessary amount of the limited space soon to be required by our growing population; popula-tion; a pressure-cooker for the occupants oc-cupants of the rear seat who must roast under that accumulator of ultra-red rays which takes the place of a rear window; a great engineering engineer-ing achievement made almost laughable by the excesses of outstanding out-standing designers of bad taste! Did the wars bankrupt their capacities or were they plumbers to begin with? |