Art.

How the war has changed the average man's opinions on art! Before the outbreak he did not think much about it. He might have wandered up to the National Art Gallery of a dull Sunday afternoon, paid his sixpence to leave his umbrella at the counter whether he wanted to or not, and wandered through. But, he did not really see much. He concentrated on not losing his way in the maze, and if he saw the same picture twice he realised that he had made a grave mistake. Unless it Was a nude.

He saw in his "Life" or "Picture Poet" now and then coloured photographs of Old Masters, or good modern work. He quickly passed on to the pictures of the latest and juiciest murders, or wars, if there is any difference. There is not much photographically, anyway. Or the latest photographs of the nude.

He might even have encountered, at one stags of his disturbingly thoroughly dressed passage through life, some Medici reproductions. Sources quite independent of the producers say that these are very good reproductions, so perhaps they are. But this does not penetrate to the average man. Rembrandt and Terboch languish dustily on the walls of the entrance hall of Victoria College. A cartoon by Minhinnik would be more appreciated.

But now the average man in New Zealand has found a work of art which he appreciates, heart and soul. It not a great work, as works of art go. It is only a reproduction, and, a very small