Evening Republican, Volume 23, Number 136, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 June 1920 — WAR AND FUTURE OF ART [ARTICLE]

WAR AND FUTURE OF ART

Fresh Creative Force May Reasonably Be Hoped for, Ie Conclusion of Noted Writer. As for the action of the world’s great war upon the world’s great art, it is a theme too vast for easy handling, writes Agnes Repplier in Art and Life, New York. It was said in the spring of 1915 that the Quartier Latin had ceased to produce, having nothing which breathless humanity could pause to look at. Death took its toll of artists and month after month saw the blighting of hope, as men died with their work undone. Mr. Pennell, an acute, but not a sanguine observer, says plainly that new Inspiration—as a result of the conflict —is not to be hoped for. Yet if National fervor was fed by the simplicities of art, by the cartoon, the verses of the trench, the “half articulate songs” that set the soldier’s blood atingling, it is reasonable to believe that the high tide of human passion will not ebb before impregnating a lethargic world with fresh creative force. Rodin,, brooding over the darkest hour aid minimizing no peril or calamity, spoke with heroic assurance of the future: “Our young soldiers and our old cathedrals fall that there may flourish again a youth, pure, ardent, healthy, hostile to materialism, keen for spirituality; and that a renewed and sublime art may spring from the soil washed and fertilized by blood.”