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Salient. An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria College, Wellington, N.Z. Vol. 2, No. 10. June 14, 1939

Golden Mean

Golden Mean.

Mr. E. C. Simpson, speaking at a recent Phoenix Club meeting, appeared to fall into the same error when he endeavoured to demonstrate some aspects of his theory of aesthetics. Mr. Simpson talked at length on the famous "Golden Mean"—a geometrical law, based on the quantity square root of 5 plus 1 divided by 2, by which, since the days of Greece, men have tried to find a mathematical standard for artistic harmony. Although artists may, consciously or unconsciously, apply the "Golden Mean" In the proportions of doors, crosses, etc., It Is Inconceivable that it should apply as a general rule. It certainly cannot apply with mathematical exactitude in such work as the Cezanne landscape shown by Mr. Simpson to demonstrate his point. All that can be said is that certain proportions are pleasing and others are not: to endeavour to reduce these proportions to three places of decimals is to destroy the whole basis of art.