ustxtxb_obs_1955_05_09_50_00006-00000_000.pdf

……………… \\ sz. x, :: ‘ By DON SNELL AUSTIN The Texas Fine Arts AssoCiation’s fifth annual Art Mart was held, as the year before, in the City Coliseum of Austin. This is an effort to present and to promote the work of the Texas artist both in the fields of the fine arts and the crafts. The idea is sound. It gives many amateur artists scattered throughout the state a chance to meet, assimilate, and exchange ideas and techniques. This gathering every year for three days should serve to raise the general level of art and the appreciation of ‘the arts in years to come. This year the show was divided into two sections. One half was the TFAA jury show, the other the Art Mart. As for the jury show, one thing was outstanding: a conspicuous absence of some of the better artists in Texas. This is. bad. Two reasons that come to my mind immediately for this absence are, one, the higher entrance fee of $5 instead of $3, and, two, the single cash prize of $500 that was offered. The TFAA should have broken down the prize money into two and possibly three sums, with the largest figure going as the purchase prize. If the TFAA is an organization that is sincerely interested in the Texas artist, I suggest that it make an all-out effort to include in next year’s show every talented person in the state. The jury show this year had a tonal greyness over it that left me asking the question, Was I realy attending an exhibition of one of the lively arts? On the Art Mart side, there seemed to be a general lack of excitement. One suggestion I’d like to make would be to include some of the industrial arts, as well, not only as an added attraction and demonstration, but to show a possible higher integration of the arts on a social level. This would tend to give greater meaning to both. Don Snell, 33-year-old native of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, will be back in the University of Texas this summer to finish up his bachelor of fine arts degree. His oil, “The Sun Is the Source,” won the Texas General art competition $400 purchase prize at the Dallas State Fair last year. ART MART EXHIBITORSSome of the work presented at the Art Mart in Austin last week by the Texas Fine Arts Association is pictured here. Below left is an untitled painting by Bernice Fix of Lubbock. Upper left is the first place winner in amateur wood carving by Samuel Reed of Austin. Above is “Plant Alight,” by Emalita Terry of College Station, and at upper right is a charcoal, untitled, by Lorna. Bath of Austin. At bottom right is “Family Affair,” by Mona Pierce, Lubbock. Art Mart Ortega’s Makings? \(We wrote a social scientist in Tulsa about the meaning of the Southwest, its zeitgeist, and its future. He wrote back offguard in a letter, and we have obtained his permission to I wonder if the southwest has a zeitgeist? Can it really be differentiated from the rest of the country, culturally? We have myths about the “friendly” southwesterner, the manly Texan, the open and honest frontiersman. Personally I am very much attached to this part of the country; it’s home to me. But I wonder what validity these stereotypes hold. Once they were no doubt true, yet the old order is rapidly vanishing. I was told by a businessman the other dayone who had forty Years in the large Eastern cities and Chicagothat the only thing wrong with Tulsa is you can’t trust people here. David Riesman mentions incidentally in his Lonely Crowd that the “inner directed” personality type is still more in vogue in this part of the U.S. than elsewhere. Yet I see few expressions of individualism, on either a collective or personal basis. And Tulsa is second only to Houston and Dallas as a citadel of proto-fascism. Not even the deep Southprobably because it is still ruralcan boast such intolerance \(except on race, which is lahoma. I mean intolerance of “alien ideas,” of eccentricity, of deviance in thought and action. Most of your book banning has occurred, not in the backward South, .but in the “progressive” and prosperous Southwest. Here the hostility to the UN runs highest, and in Tulsa, at least, support of the UN is tantamount to subversion. I imagine urbanization has a great deal to do with it. A colleague of mine mentioned the other day that Southwestern cities combined the worst of both North and South. The greed and materialism of the North with the bigoted, Protestant fundamentalism of the South. There is a remnant of fake piety in this part of the country. Church-going is more important than it is in the East or North. An outspOken atheist or “agnostic would be punishedif possible. Yet I see few efforts to put the spirit of Christianity in operation. It is perhaps significant that the churchy people make much over the Old Testament, and the Book of Revelations is one of the most popular of the New Testament. Radio preaching, the real sin-killing, fire and brimstone sort, is one of the most profitable business enterprises in Tulsa. Even the educated the idea of evolution as heresy: Most astonishing of all, to me, is the pronounced moralistic tone of Tulsa and other Southwestern cities. Tulsa thinks itself the most virtuous town of the continent. “It is such a clean city,” everyone says. Yet for all our goodness, there .are more divorces per year than marriages, and the psychiatrists are working overtime with neurotic women and maladjusted. children. CLEAR CHANNELS Hi-H, Plus TV –Zero By JACK SUMMERFIELD I only area in which strange bedfel AUSTIN lows are found. If you are,the kind of person who likes to catalogue your friends, there is a new twist which can prove interesting. Make a list of the modern media of communication, including especially those forms which seem to be of dubious value. This may include comic books and Hi-Fi as well as radio and television. Next, in the horizontal column, place the names of your favorite people, about the same number of them as you have in the first list. Then, beside each name indicate whether the person likes or dislikes each form of communication. Finally, subtract the likes from the dislikes in each column and find the total of all the columns. This figure will probably be zero, in which case your “communications catalogue” has proved at least one thing: that politics is not the The town is dry, but bootleggers advertise through the mail, and the city has one of. the highest rates of alcoholism in. the country. In Tulsa, and I fear the same is true of Dallas and Houston, there is little of the Southwest left. Here we have the makings of a real mass society, after the fashion of Ortega. I feel that is the source of our cultural inferiority feelings, which makes such fertile ground for the growth of intolerance, anti-intellectualism, etc. had no intention of writing at such length …. This kind of word game makes more sense when we considerseveral developments in broadcasting In some parts of the ‘country, the people most interested in the success of , non commercial , educational television are the very successful commercial station owners. Maybe they have become. hopeful that someone else will try to satisfy the “highbrow taste” for awhile. As for radio, the commercial and social failure of the Frequency Modulation movement, especially in the South and Southwest, can be largely attributed to the decisions of AM and FM station operators themselves. The short-run savings of simultaneous AM-FM programs were irresistible to these small businessmen. Moreover, with few new programs on FM to compete with those available on AM and with marked apathy toward “staticfree reception,” the majority of Americans were reluctant to purchase FM sets. Not long after the decline of FM, “high fidelity” becomes the rage, thanks to a small number of stu-, dents of serious music and audioengineering, quite a few enterprising merchants and manufacturers, and a great many more citizens who, after all, really. are trying to like somethink they are supposed to like. In any event, it has become easy to find friends who are addicted to Hi-Fi but who also never displayed any sorrow over the passing of FM. It is probably not unusual for many of us to spend several hours a day listening to radio while claiming to become nauseated at the mere sight of television. By now it is quite common to read the funnies religiously on Sunday and attack the comic book industry on Monday It may be these seeming inconsistencies of our communication preferences are really healthy reactions to rapidly changing social. and industrial circumstances. It is quite likely though that our attitudes toward television or comics or Hi-Fi, like our other attitudes are only partly scientific and quite individual. If you like radio it is probably a specific program you like, not the medium. If you abhor television it may not be the sound-and-picture which basically offends you but the program offerings: When you take stock of your own personal reasons for liking or disliking movies, comics, radio, television, newspapers, magazines, pocketbooks, or Hi-Fi, and when you assess the opinions of your friends, the great diversity of views is clear. Broadcasting makes strange bedfellows because there is an everchanging complex of community needs and special interests. It is for this reason that our communications media would do well to reorient their aims away from the pursuit of mass audiences and toward the need for particular kinds of programs for particular segments of the population.