Page 62 - Studio International - July August 1972
P. 62
Fernand Khnopff: I Lock the Door upon Myself, 1891
The Symbolists at the Hayward Sex and art: revolution or continuity?
Gallery. 'Visitors to this most In the post-war Western world the
rewarding exhibition will reach out sexual revolution has often seemed to
with both hands for Gustave Moreau go hand in hand with the artistic one.
by Jean Paladilhe and José Pierre, just Yet Edward Lucie Smith's Eroticism
out from Thames and Hudson at in Western Art gives us the
£7.50. This is an inside job, in part by perspective of a chronological history
the veteran curator of the Moreau from earliest times to the present day,
Museum in Paris, and it has some very together with a classification of erotic
fine colour-plates to bring home to us art in terms of its basic symbolism,
the voluptuous to-and-fro of Moreau's showing how it speaks to us in both
high-keyed colour. Another relevant conscious and unconscious terms. We
new book is Edward Lucie-Smith's confront its delights and terrors — and
Symbolist Art (Thames and Hudson penetrate its secrets. 273 illustrations,
£1.50, £2.50 hardback). This is by no 29 in colour. Clothbound £2.50,
means restricted to the period 1860- paperback £1.50.
1900, but reaches back as far as the
Renaissance: a crash-course in insight,
most ably carried out.'
John Russell, SUNDAY TIMES. Thames and Hudson
48
