The nature of modern American painting and how it fits in with environment and tradition was the subject that three Law School Symposium speakers discussed last night at New Lecture Hall.

Lawrence Kupferman, of the Massachusetts School of Art, began the discussion. He observed that the modern stress on mathematics and the sciences has been one of the most important influences on abstract painting.

Reflect Environment

The reason is that artists in every age must reflect their environment; the fantastic, tense, bewildering civilization that we have today can be portrayed only in the abstract, he added.

Benjamin Rowland, professor of Fine Arts, said that realism was one of the important feature of American art today. He compared the attempts of the sensationalists to a remark of Thoreau's: "Oh, for a sentence no intelligence can understand."

Man Under Microscope

Frederick Wight, of the Institution of Contemporary Arts, concluded that modern painting was an attempt to get at man more directly and place him under a microscope.

At 8 p.m. tomorrow the Symposium moves on to modern American theatre, when stage designer Jo Mielziner, playwright Marc Connelly, and producer Herman Shumlin speak at Rindge Tech. Shumlin won praise for his productions of "The Little Foxes," and "The Male Animal."