Fraternity-Testvériség, 1963 (40. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1963-08-01 / 8. szám
FRATERNITY 9 ment was progressive, as were his political ideas. He simply disagreed with the philosophy of modern art and had the courage to reject it, fully realizing what sacrifice of notoriety this would entail. In his own work he experimented constantly with his materials. He invented a new kind of illusionistic low-relief by concave under-cutting; and his mastery of granite in which he rivals the sculptors of Ancient Egypt could only have been the result of long and studious experiment with the material to discover and exploit its peculiar properties. His motto was: “Learn something new each day.” Neither his spirit nor his art were those of a reactionary hack fit only to carve the phony tableaux of Forest Lawn; nor were they those of the gesticulating fanatics who, under the banners of “progressive” art, massacre the tradition of the West and make a public spectacle of their shattered nerves. Finta’s was an immense talent which he steadily refused to prostitute to a movement that he regarded as catastrophically decadent. This is not the place to re-assess the modern movement in art. If one were to reject the ideological valuations and interpretations of it made by its promoters; if one could survey the phenomenon from an independent position, not as an art critic or art historian, but as a general historian of the twentieth century or as a sociologist, one might come to consider it amon» the great failures and “destx-uctions” of the modern world. One might simply account it as indeed the expression of its age, an age that has seen the rise and prosperity of totalitarian societies, the re-institution of human slavery, the re-birth of tribal hatred and holy war, systematic mass- murder, the abolition of the rights conferred bv the Enlightenment, the enslavement of science to vicious ends, the stupefaction of the masses by commerical and political propaganda, the suspicion and persecution of cultivated intelligence, the levelling and regimentation of standards of value, the
