Page 55 - Studio International - March 1973

chronological order.) Goebbels issued a decree banning art criticism:
In the early chapters Dunlop quotes at great 'From now on, the reporting of art will take the
length from the critics of the day and one place of an art criticism which has set itself up as
suspects this is a kind of masochism: 'Lack of a judge of art . . . The reporting of art should not (1)
knowledge was one reason why I wanted to be concerned with values, but should confine
undertake this book. But there was also a more itself to description. Such reporting should give Max
personal reason. I used to be an art critic for a the public a chance to make its own judgements.'
London newspaper and I have a natural Today we hear much the same thing. Art Beckmann
sympathy for the way other critics shape up to magazines increasingly contain not criticism but
FRIEDHELM W.
the challenge of writing about new work.' But 'information' about what's happening,
FISCHER
there is a limit to what the common reader can descriptions of artists' works taken at their own
An enlightened study
take of this. Dunlop could have written a assessment — and Studio International is no of one of the most
different book on the critical response to modern exception in this. Much of this comes from original and powerful '
art — which might have better fitted the present artists themselves who affect to despise criticism painters of the early
20th century. The magnificent colour plates
title. (Neither the expressionist work included in and set up 'information registries' which — in one give an excellent idea of his achievement
the Degenerate Art show, nor that in the instance I know — gives the brush off to artists in portraiture, landscapes, still life and
International Surrealist exhibition was in any who do not belong to the old-boy network of allegorical figure compositions. 96 pp,
28 illus, 21 in colour, 15 drawings,
way new to either critics or general public.) 'Are ex-art students and art school lecturers.
11 3/4 x 10in, March 22, £8
there writers or critics today to compare with Dunlop points out how the surrealist
Baudelaire, Thoré, Zola, Maurice Denis, Roger exhibition opened like a smart society gathering_
Fry, Julius Meier-Graefe and Apollinaire ?' and continued to attract a fashionable crowd of Phaidon Dictionary
Dunlop asks. But these names come from a bird-brains. He quotes a writer in the Nouvelle of Twentieth
spread of half a century of activity. Although the Revue Française who pointed out that such
majority of art criticism written in English in the manifestations 'attract the most odious, the most Century Art
last few years is, as always, deplorable — and is irresponsible and the most down-graded of A concise and immensely useful guide to
no doubt even worse in other languages — an age publics — the trendies, who correspond on the artists, art movements and groups of this
century. Artists included range from Van
which can come up with two critics of the calibre social ladder to the Lumpenproletariat, but
Gogh, Seurat and Picasso to current stars
of John Berger and Harold Rosenberg cannot be because it forces everyone to speak in low of the avant-garde firmament, Oldenburg,
described as lacking good critics. Rosenberg's voices, as in a hospital, there being no greater Bacon, Hockney, Vasarely and Warhol.
There are over 1,600 entries on individual
new book The De-definition of Art must rank as constraint, no greater form of censorship, than
artists and over 140 on groups, together
one of the most intelligent collections of critical trying to be up-to-date' — which is just like the with 66 illustrations of characteristic works
essays of the last hundred years. As to Dunlop's audience at many of today's happenings and of art. 476 pp, 66 illus, 10 x 7 in, £5.50
list, Apollinaire's reputation as a critic is quite events which artists protest are aimed to get art a
unfounded, as can be seen by glancing at the wider audience than 'the gallery circuit'. Quite
recent reprint of his criticism in English often it is narrower.
Apollinaire on Art. Roger Fry is consistently In each of the exhibitions Dunlop discusses, Painting and Experience
in Fifteenth Century Italy
overpraised in Dunlop's account of the post- the work of one artist was pushed to the fore in
impressionist exhibition at the Grafton Gallery the critical and public furor — with the exception A Primer in the Social History of
Pictorial Style
in 191o. As a useful corrective there is Derwent of the surrealist and degenerate shows, which
Michael Baxandall
May's excellent article on the fossilization of as noted above were neither new nor shocking in
'There is nothing more original this season
Fry's criticism, 'Christ or a Saucepan' in last the sense of Dunlop's title. In the early than Michael Baxandall's little book .
.
month's Encounter (February 1973). twentieth-century exhibitions the importance of Anyone with an interest in painting or society
In his chapter on the surrealist exhibition these 'stars' was exaggerated and continued to be in the early Renaissance will be enlightened
and most who have written on either will have
Dunlop quotes critics who pointed out that this subsequently. Duchamp's Nude Descending a cause for shame.' — Lawrence Gowing in The
showed a movement in decline — which I would Staircase got a disproportionate amount of Observer 4 colour plates 81 photographs in
have thought was quite clear now with attention at the Armory Show and this resulted text £3.25
hindsight. Dunlop comments that it is tempting in the over-praise and baleful influence of
to conclude that the exhibition 'marked not the Duchamp's work in the USA ever since. At the The Appreciation of
death of Surrealism but the slowly dying craft of post-impressionist exhibition Cézanne was the Byzantine Art
art criticism and public interest in art. The most discussed and promoted, and the David Talbot Rice
impressionists, the fauves and the cubists were consequent overvaluation of Cézanne's work ' Anything Talbot Rice has to say on the
subject of Byzantium is worth reading, and the
better served by their critics, even if they had to had a disastrous result not only on English book is clear and beautifully organized.' —
accept a good deal of fierce opposition in the painting and art criticism, but also abroad. Edward Lucie-Smith in the Sunday Times
process.' Not on the evidence of Dunlop's ickert alleged a 'dealers' operation' here. He 69 plates (8 in colour) 2 maps £4.50 paper
covers E2.75 The Appreciation of the Arts 7
quotations they weren't. was supported independently by D. S. MacColl,
It is certainly true that much less space is the future director of the Tate. This charge has
now devoted to the formal criticism of the never been refuted satisfactorily. El Industrial Ceramics
visual arts in newspapers and magazines, and the PAUL OVERY Tableware
big exhibition is a far less important medium of Neal French
In order to design ceramics to be made by
communication than it used to be. But the furor industrial processes it is vitally important that
over the David Bailey film on Andy Warhol Art in wonderland these processes should be understood. The
shows that the same passions can still be Outsider Art by Roger Cardinal. I92 pp, author describes the intricacies of the
manufacturing methods and shows what scope
aroused as any described in Dunlop's book. 79 illustrations, 14 in colour. Studio Vista, they offer to the designer. 40 photographs
The chapter on the degenerate art exhibition London, 1972. £4.80. £1.10 Oxford Paperbacks Handbooks for
is the most useful, bringing together a great deal Artists
of hitherto untranslated material. There are This book is, without doubt, one of the most
interesting parallels with today. In 1936 interesting and refreshing to be published in Oxford University Press
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