Dominican College of San Rafael - Firebrand Yearbook (San Rafael, CA)

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Both Mr. Schnier and Mr. Mac Agy are interpreters of the ne vest trends. To them modern art is the ex- pression of the natural impulses of the artist, the term natural including the vagaries of dreams, the gro- tesque, and, according to nineteenth century expecta- tions, the bizarre. According to Mr. Mac Agy, art must not grow out of rigid disciplines of governments and the conventional standards of the art schools. He drew the attention of the audience to the signifi- cant return of the totalitarians to neo-classic art; rigid discipline, he holds, cuts off individual flexibility and he insisted that art must be individual and sincere. The pictures that he showed seemed mostly ridicu- lous, but he focuses on one aspect of modern art, the grotesque and the bizarre, in order to do away with the old prejudices that must be shaken loose by vio- lent methods. Mr. Schnier ' s views pleased in general, especially those who frankly wish enlightenment; Mr. Mac Agy seemed more puzzling, and stirred up those who be- lieve that they know. Strangely enough Father Kennedy kindled the strongest fires of all. His criticism of modern drama showed too much sympathy for the great writings of the past. He ruthlessly opposed the hollowness, the moods of despair, the acceptance of false standards of 116

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tieth century art, and those who believe themselves competent to judge modern art or at least to appre- ciate it. The former are really more docile than the latter, for they admit that their expectations can not be satisfied and so, hope for a glimmer of understand- ing. The others are not willing to accept anything that conflicts with what they have already learned, but a third group, wiser than the others, know some- thing of the new seethings and the new accomplish- ments and wish to correct, as far as possible, whatever may be short-sighted in their viewpoint. Mr. Mendelsohnn ' s suggestion that the buildings along the waterfronts in San Francisco be torn down, fired a faction of those who love their city as it is and have no mind to think with the great architect of architecture as a world concern; and still others leaped up, the supporters of the Romanesque and the Gothic styles that Mr. Mendelsohnn says should no longer be. The profound changes of the present age, he main- tains, have brought modern architecture to life, and this new birth has an important function in the new social life man is trying to start. No one of us can deny the beauty and fitness of Mr. Mendelsohnn ' s Palestin- ian architecture as we see it in the photographs in our art gallery, but some of us still wish to cling to the beautiful designs that mean the best to us. 115

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living that are mirrored in so many of the most popu- lar plays on Broadway. His comments on the good acting and good staging did not seem to soothe. Many of the modern students had seen the plays and could not accept this devastating point of view. Those who still live by the old ideals were pleased. Mr. Schorer talked on Modern Fiction, a huge subject, which he limited almost entirely to a discus- sion of British novelists, men whose writings reflect the social dislocations of a world in which the old sub- ject matter is dead, the new not yet born. This new literature, he pointed out, has lost much of what is good in the Victorian novel, so concerned with plot and morals and the relations of character to external circumstances. Yet this literature so barren of plot and of idea, so concerned with the finesse of style, this tumbling out of the stream of consciousness, this fiction that em- phasizes the individual and plays with the new psy- chology that alters our understanding of character, has its gain. The modern novelists, Mr. Schorer re- minded us, have not falsified; they have opened the naturalistic surface and revealed the depths of the human spirit. Their technique is not merely external, it is a deeply organic process that discovers the whole of modern consciousness. Modern fiction has had its 117