Page 64 - Studio International - May 1966

Book reviews

The Dutch response to landscape the Dutch landscape painters. But it seems to me scrutinizes the terminology of Eastern aesthetics,
that attempts to make the conception of space the and in pondering clear definitions on the basis of a
Dutch Landscape Painting of the Seventeenth
criterion of a personal style or the style of an critical investigation of these terms prepares the
Century by Wolfgang Stechow ground for a distant meeting point of aesthetic
494 pages, 370 monochrome illustrations entire generation or period have greatly suffered thought. Whether a logical approach in the field
Phaidon 60s from the failure to co-ordinate the investigation of mystical experience can lead to valid results is
Dutch landscape painting of the seventeenth cen- of this special problem with that of the paramount a significant question. It amounts, in fact, to a
tury is an unpromising subject on the face of it, at one of two-dimensional organization, that is, the confrontation of cultures and the human element
once too small and too large. No doubt the general- criterion that alone decides the rhythmic struc- behind them.
T. P. HODIN
ist will want to know less about more than an ture and therefore the artistic essence of the
intensive study allows; he will want to see the painting. Three-dimensional space, in other
artistic history of the new Dutch republic unfold words, is much more clearly related to subject Protagonists of kinetic art
along with her political and intellectual history. matter than to organization; it therefore has an
He will want to understand the incredible quicken- iconography of its own, which, while it has a Kinetic Art: Four essays by Stephen Bann,
ing of Dutch visual sensibility in a century of civil strong bearing on form, must not be confused Reg Gadney, Frank Popper, and Philip Steadman
with it.
and foreign war. To concentrate upon landscape The body of the book bears out these contentions 70 pages, 7 colour plates, 66 monochrome
at the expense of genre painting and portraiture is illustrations
to lose the meaning of the expanding tradition. informally. Motion Books, St Albans, U.K. 15s.
The specialist will want perhaps to know more What of the general readability of the volume? At a moment when kinetic art has an obvious and
about less. A near view reduces the subject to It is slow going. Virtues of narrative pith and pace new importance this inexpensive but well-produced
minutiae; in a field rank with forgeries and un- are missing—in part owing to the complexity of the book provides extremely useful documentation and
certain ascriptions, the first task of scholarship material and to the necessity for exhaustive com- comment.
remains to establish what can by known. parisons; but also the apparatus of scholarship It consists of four separate essays. Frank Popper
Professor Stechow is well aware of these difficul- impedes; detailed notes speaking to crucial points gives a survey of artists who have in the past ex-
ties, but he realizes also that the study of Dutch are at the back, as are most of the illustrations, perimented with movement: this is comprehensive,
seventeenth-century landscape is unlikely to pro- referred to repeatedly in the text. One is obliged but rather uncritical. Philip Steadman traces the
duce new major surprises. The important artists to turn these pages a great many times in the course history of colour music, paying particular attention
have been discovered and ranked. The main of reading; I was therefore particularly dismayed to those pioneers who have made keyboard instru-
developments, still open to interpretative dispute, to have a few of them come loose in my copy. ments for playing colour. Reg Gadney brings the
are at least well documented. What he has at- Given the nature of the argument, some colour discussion back to the present day with detailed
tempted, therefore, is a first comprehensive survey. plates would have been helpful. accounts of the work of Frank Malina, Nicolas
It is addressed both to the studious amateur and to Still, these are minor failings of presentation; the Schöffer and the Groupe Recherche d'Art Visuel (GRAv)
Stephen Bann also writes primarily about the
GENE BARO
the enlightened pedant—to the reader already con- study is of the first importance.
siderably knowledgeable, who is prepared to see GRAv, but in the wider context of kinetic and so-
broad issues and patterns within the speciality. An aesthetic confrontation called Op art.
A survey taxes ingenuity. The chronological ap- Mr Bann's essay seems to me the most satisfac-
proach simply reproduces the chaos of the record, Oriental Aesthetics by Thomas Munro tory, because he evidently realizes the need for a
the biographical depends too much upon guess- 138 pages, 1 colour plate, 8 monochrome illustrations more critical approach to the subject. One can
work and irrelevance. Happily, the author has The Press of Western Reserve University, begin to see that some of the artists involved are
struck upon subject matter as his organizational Cleveland, Ohio much more interesting than others, and this aes-
principle. The book is grouped into sections on Barely had Professor Munro published his standard thetic consideration is not always applied by the
Dunes and Country Roads, Panoramas, Rivers and Canals, book Evolution in the Arts, the work which put protagonists of kinetic art. It is not enough to praise
Woods, Winter, the Beach, the Sea, the Town, Foreign and American aesthetics on the map more than any anyone who experiments in this direction; as the
Imaginary Scenes, and Nocturnes. The bit of dodging previous work by an American aesthetician, be it book makes clear, interest in relationships between
forward and back that one has to do in order to Santayana or Dewey—for Professor Munro's work is painting and movement is not new, but only today
keep a particular painter in view is worthwhile, on the corner stone of a tendency in aesthetics which do the artistic possibilities seem real and alive. It
the whole, given the convenience of watching com- claims to be both philosophical and scientific— was no accident that Gabo made the first kinetic
positional conventions come into being or decline. when he embarked on another major objective, the sculpture in 1920, and then turned to other things.
This book has almost nothing to do with social reconciliation of Eastern and Western aesthetics. ALAN BOWNESS
history and its shaping forces exerted upon the This was already obvious at the Fifth International
arts. Intellectual influences are not much dwelt Congress of Aesthetics in Amsterdam, 1964, when Myth and modern art
upon. The emphasis falls steadily upon painterly he presented his paper, Oriental Traditions in Aes-
practice. The concern is with how artists met the thetics, with many Indian scholars among his Nuovi Riti Nuovi Miti by Gillo Dorfles
visual and technical challenge of the immediate listeners. The 1965 autumn number of The Ameri- 282 pages, 32 plates
past and of their contemporaries, or how they can journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, of which Giulio Einaudi, Turin, 3,500 lire (£2 approx.)
failed to meet it. Composition is the touchstone of Professor Munro was formerly editor (he is now In this theoretical and informative volume Dr
this survey; its analysis provides the author with contributing editor and honorary president of the Dorfles continues his researches into the rapidly-
Arte
what might well have become an elaborated thesis American Society of Aesthetics), was a special issue changing art scene. His Ultime Tendenze
but is restricted to a few observations in the Epi- on Oriental aesthetics with a supplement on The d'Oggi (1961) and Simbolo, Comunicazione, Consumo
logue. aesthetic attitude in Indian aesthetics by Pravas Jivan (1962), the predecessors of this volume, have
Professor Stechow writes: Chaudhury. proved already how deeply rooted are his investi-
That which has been shown to be a tendency of The basic problem seems to be whether there is a gations. He is not only an aesthetician; he makes
many masters throughout the century: their par- possibility of bridging the abyss between them or his study a sociological as well as a philosophical
ticipation in a development starting with multi- rather bringing under one denominator the pre- one, scrutinizing the techniques in a time in which
farious elements in composition, proceeding to valently 'rationalistic' aesthetics of American coin- techniques have replaced content in art. In pene-
unifying elements in composition and ending with age and the 'spiritualistic' one of the Far East. The trating into myth and ritual, Dr Dorfles widens his
a new emphasis on more complex but characteris- difference is that between Zen and Puritivism or theme to embrace the basic religious feeling of the
tically firm structure, is not a development of between the Indian 'rasa—the act of relishing' and human psyche. He is a believer in `modernity'—he
space—as a three-dimensional phenomenon—but the Western concept of the Beautiful or, in a more does not yet sound the pessimistic chord heard in
of picture plane organization. Now it is obvious spiritualized way, between `Karma, the Third End Herbert Read's The origins of form. After having
that every painting of the seventeenth century is of Man' and the theory of meaning in modern accepted everything modern as a genuine expression
a compromise between picture plane organiza- aesthetics. of our time Read has started to doubt whether our
tion and ostensible space as it is represented in the The great merit of Professor Munro's book is not time has anything to express at all, or rather wheth-
painting. Freedom and ability to suggest great that he confronts Western and Eastern thought in er the artists of the newest coinage have anything
open spaces was of course an important goal of aesthetics (that has been done before), but that he essential to say about it.
J. P. HODIN
224