Page 66 - Studio International - October 1966

Book reviews

Chinese art notion of the ink rubbing, i.e. a rubbing taken Berenson has been dealt with harshly by some
from pre-existing, or, and increasingly as time goes commentators, seen with a too devastating clarity
Chinese Art: Painting, Calligraphy, Slone Rubbing, on, from specially prepared engravings on stone. by others. Miss Mariano redresses the balance. Her
Wood Engraving by Werner Speiser, Roger Goeper, The earliest examples of the latter appear to be of memoir supersedes all others. It is, first of all, about
Jean Fribourg the sixteenth century, and as an art they lead herself; it tells how, as a young woman made a
362 pages, 174 plates (half tone and colour) naturally into the art of the wood-cut as something refugee by the First World War, she took up the
0ldbourne Press, London, £1212s existing in its own right, and not merely as the post of librarian at the Berenson's home I Tatti;
illustration of books or Buddhist pamphlets. Dr the job had been offered to her by Mrs Berenson,
This fourth volume of the Oldbourne Press's series Fribourg wisely limits his plates to examples of apparently without her husband's knowledge, not
on Chinese art deals with all the graphic media, the woodcuts in western collections, which he has him­ as an act of goodness, but to embarrass Geoffrey
principal section on painting being followed by self studied, and takes many of his colour plates Scott, who was then one of the Berenson proteges.
shorter chapters on calligraphy, stone-rubbing and from the remarkable prints preserved in the British What a strange beginning to a relationship that
wood engraving. The last three sections provide Museum, which owes them to Sir Hans Sloane, made her the beloved friend and confidante of her
the only readily available synthesis of their sub­ who in turn had them from the widow of Engelbert employers.
jects. The quality of reproductions, half-tone and Kaempfer. The latter had bought them in Nagasaki Because her memoir is a chronicle of her own feel­
coloured, maintains the previous high standard. in the 1690's, and their present condition has hardly ings and because it concerns her daily tasks and
The colour plates are even a little better on changed from the day they left the shop. pleasures, the Berensons and their friends are
average-perhaps because prints and paintings do In the make-up of the book there are some faults shown in natural light. There is no attitude put
not tempt editors and photographers into fancy which argue haste and are lamentable in so between them and the reader. Instead, there are
contrasting backgrounds. expensive a production, one piece of calligraphy the myriad reflections of sympathy and friction
The late Werner Speiser of Cologne was charged is upside-down. WILLIAM WATSON that make up a life.
with the text on painting. His account is leavened Berenson comes through as he might have wished,
with too much digression on the broader aspects as a man absorbed by work, dedicated to the
of Chinese history and philosophy, but Chinese Berenson without the legends experience of art. His quenchless curiosity and
aesthetic theory and artistic movements are suffi­ capacity for delight is one of the pleasures of this
ciently outlined, and there is opposite each plate a Forty Years With Berenson by Nicky Mariano book. His tartness a·nd egoism are seen in a context
wealth of comment and anecdote. Speiser's enthu­ With a foreword by Sir Kenneth Clark of events.
siasm informs it all and the choice of subjects for 298 pages, ill us. His methods are here, as much between the lines
illustration is excellent. He represents what we now Hamish Hamilton, London, 35s as in them. His limitations arc not made to seem,
must call the older school of western criticism of as in some reports, acts of aggression. Yet Beren­
Chinese painting. He makes clear at the start his Few art historians influence taste as decisively as son is not sweetened. Miss Mariano does not senti­
belief that Chinese artists were higher-minded Bernard Berenson did. He brought Italian Renais­ mentalize.
than their western compeers, and so achieved sance art in to a new prominence, first with scholars, There are many striking vignettes as well as
greater things. collectors, and dilettantes, then with the general developed portraits of Mrs Berenson, a trying
But as a publishing venture the succeeding sections public. He was particularly influential in America, woman, to say the least, and of Edith Wharton,
have greater originality. Dr Goeper of Berlin, where his advice proved crucial in the formation of another. GENE BARO
writing of calligraphy, goes even beyond the cur­ a number of distinguished collections. For many
rent Japanese treatises on this subject in an effort years he acted as expert for the dealer Duveen;
to give the development of this art historical shape subsequently he served Wildenstein in the same The theory of motion
and significance beyond the whim and skill of the capacity. An authentication by Berenson, or his
individual. Hitherto, in the west, we have had denial of authenticity, was enough to transform The Nature and Art of Motion, ed. by Gyorgy Kepes
only Chiang Yi's charming manual, which mingles the picture market. 195 pages, 193 black and white illus.
aesthetic homily with practical advice, flattering Does disinterested scholarship mix with the busi­ Studio Vista Ltd, London, 63s
us with the assumption that we might all try our ness of selling art? Not, perhaps, comfortably.
hands one day. Goeper sees the course of the art Berenson's detractors were enraged to see him en­ The essays in the first part of the volume deal with
as a rhythmical rejection and reassertion of classi­ riched. His admirers felt that he deserved what he broad, general aspects of motion; those in the
cal values, these being the square hand of Han got. Berenson himself was sensitive to any number second concentrate on art forms where motion, or
(and later that seen on Buddhist manuscripts) on of contradictions in his life, but refused to make the feeling of motion, is a major constituent. Basic­
the one hand, and on the other the freer style attri­ much of them. He was tough, an idealist with a ally, they are an attempt to interpret and under­
buted to all but legendary Wang Hsi-chih of the practical streak, and he survived quite happily by stand mankind's 'runaway environment' through
fourth century A.D. He rightly emphasizes the in­ making the best of both worlds. He lived like a the writings of various experts, looking at subjects
fluence of stone inscriptions, and makes a good grand seigneur and worked like a donkey. He was like the evolution of the comprehension of motion,
point in explaining how the great eighteenth­ an ascetic amid luxuries and a gourmet of the stylistic change in art, motion perception, and the
century scholar Juan Yuan established the respecta­ spiritual. His brilliant table talk, his wealthy and aesthetic devices of the cinema. They are not al­
bility of the early Buddhist stone inscriptions of famous friends, his art collection, his style of life ways easy to understand; some of the essays apply
North China as models to be assimilated into the did not prevent him from cherishing a private a jargon which seems designed to add to the con­
sophisticated tradition. Goeper is firmly and credit­ sense of separation from sheer material concerns. fusion which the book sets out to examine. Hence,
ably on the side of square character and its more This is the stuff of which legends are made, and from essay to essay we find references to man being
conservative derivatives as against the grass charac­ Berenson knew it. His autobiographical sketch is tossed 'in an accelerating rhythm barely within
ter which in the west is so awesomely admired and stiff with posturing. Late in life, he wrote in his our control' and being 'scarcely conscious of the
which Chinese writing masters rank lower. The diary: 'I fear the mass of anecdotage that will be development of certain events which set up im­
illustrations of this section are quite superb. written and read, savory, smelly, stinky even, about portant transformations in his sensory, perceptive
Dr Goeper also introduces us to the little-familiar an animal who at best is only human.' and proprioceptive activities,' or 'As the pace of
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