Page 68 - Studio International - November 1970

contributes to their staying power. chauvinistic inconsistency. Similarly, while
Dennis Reid notes that 'The intricacies of there is apparently such a thing as SCOTTISH
their stylistic development as individuals and ART, James GANDON's works just happen to
as a group are poorly understood'. He goes a be in a town called Dublin, and Jack Yeats
long way towards clarifying them himself and may never have lived at all.
his book will be an essential guide, as clear­ I am bothering about this partly because I
sighted as one could ask, to anyone else who have wanted to get it said, but also because of
tries. the immensity of the task of managing the
It is not criticism of this admirable document, information which this book actually contains.
but it is a disappointment, that there are no Let me try to tackle the thing by making some
plates in colour. Many of the works look very more or less random observations and a few
tame and banal in monochrome. This may general criticisms.
not be of consequence in Canada where they A number of vital art-historical terms do not
are familiar but the reader elsewhere must be appear as entries at all. These include 'avant­
reminded that no judgement is possible on the · garde' (a brief note on its military origin is
Group of Seven without consideration of their really necessary in this volume), 'imitation',
use of colour. Their common antipathy was 'isocephaly' (less essential), 'motif ' (another
We offer for the 'tonal' painting that preceded them. necessity), 'quadratura' (treated, but without
even using the word, under ILLUSIONISM),
Tone is the weakest criterion by which to
'refinements' (mentioned in GREEK ART, as if
a . appreciate their work. D frequently mis-used), and my all-time favour­
WILLIAM TOWNSEND
that were its limits), 'rhyton' (because it is so
Companionship ite, that word, meaning a form originally
PAINSTAKING conceived in a different material, which
sounds like 'ski-omorph', · but which is not
The Oxford Companion to Art edited by Harold even in the OED. I expected to find it here.
Osborne. 1277 pp, 393. figs. in the text. The There is a good entry for THE ANTIQUE, except
METICULOUS Clarendon Press, Oxford University Press. £6. that there is no hint that 'antique' and
'Everyman, I will go with thee and be thy '_ancient' are overlapping but quite discrete­
COMPLETE guide .... ' Now that art at last has an Oxford and at certain times actually opposed­
notions. I find nothing at all to indicate that
Companion the question is, will it, in our
'most need' be at our side. There is no easy some of the artists who used either or both of
these words grew on occasion quite impatient
SERVICE ai;iswer, no simple way to indicate its degree with others who preferred something called
of utility for a given reader. Its sheer enormity
makes it difficult to review. 'modern'.
Physically, in the timeless dignity of its CLASSIC Of.course, what one man wants to say about a
(q.v.) Oxford blue buckram, i):s crisp paper word may not be whal\ another has in mind,
and perfect type, it is a well-made thing. The and, provided what he says is not completely
illustrations, which are, of course, of only inadequate, we should not criticize him unless
PAUL KOSTON supporting importance, are excellently what he says is really wrong. But whoever
chosen-even more excellently than was wrote about REAPSM and NATURALISM was
Bookseller necessary, so that in many cases we find things indeed muddled to the point of error. This is

which are accurately typical but, to me at
42 Newman Street least, non-standard as well. Instead of the important, too, because when Everyman
takes this book down from the library shelf
LondonW1 same old Alinari photographs the emphasis is to look up either of these words it is surely
because he wants to know, in the simplest
on prints '(giving you two glimpses of time
instead of one) and drawings and diagrams. I possible terms, how it differs from the other.
don't know if anyone has said this before, but So much hangs on the Zola/Flaubert distinc-
modern �tuderits are particularly grateful for - tion, and yet we find Zola, -Flaubert, and -
this because, like the books their professors Courbet. himself blurred together under
grew up with, now well worn in libraries, they NATURALISM. No wonder these words seem
are xeroxable. opaque to the layman if the editor of the
WE CAN SUPPLY Editorially, the Companion is up to the high British Journal of Aesthetics has to be told by me
ALL BOOKS Oxford standard of tidiness) I find it marred that Realism is 'realistic' as against nominal­
only by the odd blunder with an American
istic, while Naturalism is 'realistic' only as
against idealisti'r:; a simple fact which, briefly
place name-nothing worse than that. Follow­
ing British custom, this laxity extends also to explained, would leave fewer readers in the
institutional titles. Roger FRY was never
REVIEWED or MENTIONED actually director of the Metropolitan. The dark about 'socialist realism', a phenomenon
which is really little more than the advocacy
IN museum on the Charles may never be called of 'real' (i.e. categorically valid, rather than
anything but the 'Mµseum of Fine Arts,
idiosyncratic; also 'actual' or 'realizable')
THIS Boston', in that order; 'Museum of Modern ideals (i.e. universals, models; not types, the
Art' and 'Metropolitan Museum of Art' are evasion of actuality). Q.E.D.
ISSUE not mere descriptions (they occur here under As a matter of fact it is just in the area of
NEW YORK) but proper names on the same aesthetics that one begins to find holes in the
level as BRERA or LOUVIU:: putting 'NATIONAL net of the OCA. BUkKE is in, but Shaftesbury
GALLERY, London' under 'N' becomes a is out: not even a trace of a 'characteristic'.
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