Page 61 - Studio International - March 1970

Supplement spring I 970

New and recent books

More civilized England, but at the same time halted its have isolated it, here is a sketchy history. It
than thou further appreciation). Or perhaps to 1928 or was the era of the connoisseur, of the 'art­
so (when Clive Bell published a book called
expert', of the person who knew everything
Civilisation by Kenneth Clark. 359 pp. with Civilisation, in which we are introduced to a about culture, and knew that the people he
48 colour and 238 monochrome illustrations. person called 'Bill Jones', who is necessarily addressed-addressed rather than talked to­
John Murray and BBC Publications. 4 gns. debarred from any appreciation of beauty by knew nothing of it. For obvious reasons, the
reason of his plebean origin). era of the connoisseur in England coincided
Lord Clark somewhere remarks, a propos of Clark and Bell are in some ways very alike, exactly with the classic age of the English
Turner, that his paintings make us want to but Clark, without mentioning any names, philistine; theirs are the two faces of the same
'shout and stamp and clap our hands in front explicitly rejects another of Bell's notions in false coinage. Their parallel careers began in
of them'. What 'good television', as it's called, that book, that civilization can only exist on a the middle of the last century, reach a violent
that would have made! I am led to imagine basis of slavery, as in fifth-century Greece. climax in aestheticism, as in the Wilde­
our leading artistic pundit bellowing a fan­ Clearly, such attitudes are not allowed today, Queensberry clash (am I alone, incidentally,
dango through the Tate not only for its own though it's nasty to think how very recently in feeling a good deal of sympathy for
funniness but also because I'm reminded of they were admissible-and publishable. And Queensberry?), and are then continued in.
Ruskin, who used to get up to just such antics Bill Jones has a telly, and so on. The apprecia­ mutual distrust, the distrust always fou'nd
in his Oxford lectures when moved and tion of art is much nearer-more accessible, between the man who knows everything and
excited by what he was talking about. It's a more normal, more desired-to the English the man who stolidly knows what he likes,
weird and instructive contrast: Ruskin, mad, working class than it ever has been. Every­ until only a few years ago. The terminal date
agonized, wayward, and always vividly in­ one will applaud this, but we should note that of this phase in English culture was with the
volved in his judgements, however partial; there are some deficiencies in the way it's final public acceptance of the modern move­
and Clark, always sensible, never patchy, given to us. The root of Lord Clark's deficien­ ment, that bete noire of the philistine mentality,
passionlessly open-minded, and without vigour cies lies simply in the fact that he is old. For and with the wide dissemination of simple,
in describing what he knows so well. What however much he-or is it his producer?­ readable, unaffected introductions to most
has happened in the last hundred years that shows a professional mastery of the box, once aspects of the history of art, both old and new.
makes such a gap between their styles? Why, small and grey, now small and gaudy, a What I want to suggest about Clark's book is
for instance, is it that Ruskin sounds so mastery of this modern and quasi-democratic that, for all its wide knowledge, its glossy
desperate, and Clark so confident? And how, medium, the sentences of this book, no less readability, its genial manner, for all that,
above all, is it that Ruskin, in comparison to than its general alignment, cannot disguise or there is yet an old-fashionedness that makes it
Clark, feels so modern, so alert? leaven the allegiance to the tone and proce­ curiously irrelevant to a modern audience.
The answer, I think, is that Lord Clark's dures of a critical era that has long since It's partly vitiated by its connections with
book does not belong to 1970 at all, except in passed. connoisseur-style talk-Berenson and even
so far as it is a product of the telly. As far as Since the demise of this particular era is Pater are hidden among the cathodes there­
taste is concerned, it belongs to 1910 or so probably the most important thing that has but basically by its total refusal to grasp the
(when Roger Fry, who is invoked in the first h�ppened to the appreciation of art in the artistic civilization of the twentieth century,
talk, introduced the modern movement to last few years, and since no-one else seems to and I cannot see that any kind of large-

Published this month:
Art of the War.Id Series

Pre-Columbian

Terracottas

Alexander von Wuthenau Translated by Irene Nicholson
Unlike their Greek and Roman the different peoples of Meso­
counterparts, Pre-Columbian America for over three thousand
terracottas have been comparatively years. Lavishly illustrated with over
unstudied. Professor von Wuthenau 40 colour plates and 137 in
examines objects made by black and white. 63s
Methuen

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