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potent drives toward self-destruction,
hatred and death. He quotes Tolstoy:
"Art and art only can cause violence to be
set aside."
Read has no universal plan to implement
his views. He has no faith in power
structure groups like UNESCO to bring
about any significant change. If a
change comes at all, it will have to come
from individuals in the educational process
who build centers of affirmative creative
activity that will in turn influence
others. The book should be useful reading
for all those educators who are preoccupied
with the large-scale public relations
and social aspects of education, but who
know nothing about the educative power
of individual creative action.
ROGER FRY by Virginia Woolf. Harcourt.
1940.
At first glance this volume gives off a
sad air of arty British eccentricity and lost
causes. Numerous illustrations of Fry's
inept paintings and the wan dutiful style
of the text are initially discouraging. However,
in spite of these obstacles to respect.
Fry comes out in this account as an admirable
and worthy man.
He was the Anglo-Protestant puritan
turned pagan, but without loss of zeal. He
smote the Philistines and carried on a Messianic
campaign against the dehumanizing
impact of Victorian religiosity and
Twentieth Century technology. The emotional
postures of righting wrong and rebelling
against British materialism sustained
his efforts but did not prevent him
from making aesthetic discoveries. He
was an intelligent, open-eyed man, capable
of detached, yet concentrated attention to
the vast range of visual creations available
in his day. The dated gestures of his life
—his painting, the organization of the
Omega society, the theatrical lectures, and
didactic exhibitions—do not obscure the
fact that he looked at the art of the world
with an independent eye and that he
took the trouble to analyze and relate his
reactions.
His objective concern with observable
formal structure, free of the limiting considerations
of conventional drawing and
subject matter, has affected our way of seeing.
His contagious enthusiasm and generosity
seem strange in our mean-spirited
age, and his emphasis on the importance
of formal values is impatiently rejected
by modern academicians of the "New."
However, for anyone interested in painting
as a long-time enterprise, this biography
and Fry's books, Cezanne, Vision and
Design, and Transformations are still relevant
and interesting.
THE JOURNAL OF EUGENE DELACROIX
Translated by Walter Pach. Grove. 1961.
Delacroix's Journal and the letters of
Van Gogh are two basic sources of insight
into the nature of European painting of
the nineteenth century. Both are the works
of ardent, intelligent, and articulate men
whose writings reveal their life and time,
their feelings, and their awareness of the
art of painting. Although poles apart in
worldly status and seeming success, these
artists shared a common love of nature,
color, and the process of making marks
on canvas with brushes and oil paint.
Delacroix was a paradoxical man who
loved the bizarre and exotic and spoke
seriously of the "sublime." He was a close
friend of Gericault and Chopin and, like
them, seemed the true romantic artist. Yet
he admired Mozart above all composers,
observed the political and social life of his
time with cool perception, was fiercely
aristocratic, opposed to progress, and pessimistic
about human affairs in general.
He saw his creative efforts poised
against the omnipresent reality of death.
He recognized boredom as the other great
enemy. To contend with these two threats,
he advocated for himself a life of constant
creative activity, reading, and contemplation.
He was throughly engaged in the
intellectual and cultural life of Paris in
his day. He knew many of the great creative
men and women of his time. He knew
the world of money and power. This fascinating
journal not only provides a vivid
account of his life at that worldly level
but also reveals the deeper existence of
his love, his thought, and his work.
Most of the illustrations in the volume
are printed in a miserable fuzzy sepia tone
and do the artist great injustice.
MOZART THE DRAMATIST by Brigid
Brophy. London. Faber. 1964.
For me, no other creations of mankind
are as moving as the operas of Mozart.
They seem to contain all the essential
energies and passions of human experience,
projected in forms of irresistible classic
beauty. Consequently, I am well-disposed
toward a book which states at
the outset, "Mozart stands at the very
pinnacle of Parnassus." Brigid Brophy
proceeds from there to apply her formidable
intelligence, learning, and wit to
the subject of Mozart's dramatic and psychological
power.
She maintains that Mozart was the true
dramatist of the operas, although he depended
on various writers to produce
the libretti. Quoting from his letters and
deducing internal evidence in the scores,
she makes out a good case for the view
that Mozart provided the psychological
framework for the operas, and that his
dramatic sense dominated their development.
She relates the psychological theme
of his operas to certain guiding convictions
and preoccupations of the Enlightenment.
She uses Freudian concepts to
reveal how psychic patterns of the Eighteenth
Century and of Mozart's private life
are reflected in the operas.
The book is full of interesting insights.
Chapter headings such as: "Women and
Opera," "Singing and Theology," "Anarchy,
Impotence and Classicism," "Compulsive
Seduction," "Hell, Love and Society,"
"Don Giovanni and Hamlet" give
an indication of the range of her exploration.
All this is interesting to read about, even
though it may be peripheral. No matter
how subtly Mozart relates his score to the
libretto (as in Cosi Fan Tutte), what really
counts is the music. Indeed, the ironic
and poignant disparity between the mere
words of the text and the grand verve
and tragic power of the music is one of
the reasons the operas are so appealing.
However, Miss Brophy's literary and
psychological probing does add another
dimension to our perception of the genius
of Mozart.
THE ANXIOUS OBJECT; ART TODAY AND
ITS AUDIENCE by Harold Rosenberg. London.
Faber. 1964.
Here is an example of the current demand
for Instant Art History.
Rosenberg is a smart, tough-minded,
New York literary man turned art analyst.
In this collection of magazine articles he
transforms the painters of the New York
School into legendary prophets and heroes
then assigns them niches in his own
chauvinistic Pantheon. He writes in an
aggressive, omniscient style, full of paradoxes
and perverse twists that jolt the
reader. It is hard to tell how much of
this is literary fun and games, promotional
mythmaking, or serious art criticism.
The author has been most deeply concerned
with the action painters of the
Fifties, and consequently they loom up
large in the book. As that school is now
either written off by currently dominant
tastemakers as ancient art history or dismissed
as a romantic bore, these essays
are already beginning to have a dated air.
For example, it now seems incredible that