By Mary Lackie

“Culture to a lot of people,” said James Pace, Atlanta artist, “is something that has to have cobwebs and smell musty and be looked at with reverence. But culture, whether you like it or not, is simply what people like.” And what do people like? Pace answers, “The jukebox, the color TV, a sidetrack Pontiac. So if a man has $400 to spend and doesn’t own a painting--culture--smultchure--he wants a color TV.”

James Pace, a North Carolian graduate of the Chicago Art Institute, does more than paint watercolors. He is an instructor at the Atlanta School of Art and enjoys discussing what Jacques Maritain described as “the painter’s theories.” “Frank Lloyd Wright said one time that ‘this country is the only one to go through a decline in culture without really having it,” Pace said. “The result is frustration for the artist and for the museum director, too.” Pace hopes that the new Atlanta art center will be more than just a memorial. “The design of the building is great -- it looks like a perforated parthenon; it is beautiful. But interest in art must not stop at the building.”

“The artist today has more freedom than ever before and a creative instinct to make something,” said Pace. “But contemporary art is becoming more subjective. We have past the age of the iconoclasts; the standards of art are breaking down to the lowest common denominator.” Pace sees this as a healthy situation in the long run, for more people than ever before are painting.

“From these attempts, a new art form will develop, but it will take generations. Andrew Wyeth, considered perhaps the greatest of the contemporary artists, didn’t just pop out of an eggshell,” Pace said. “He had a whole history of art behind him.” “People are confused today by modern art,” he said, “and the artist is distracted by style and searching for identity.” He said the explanation for this lies partly in the fact that with the advent of the camera, “the artist ceased to be the magician. The machine became the magician.”

He added, “The artist is not a camera; his work is not intended to be a snap shot. Working within the limitations of his craft and following his creative instinct, the artist develops a picture that is more than just a representation.”

“Unlike a photograph, a painting is neither abstract only, nor realistic only; it is a reality. It is a little world that evolves from the artist’s creative instinct and exists as a reality within a frame,” the artist said.