Page 64 - Studio International - March 1974

Battcock were able to make that distinction, the degree of interest of, say, the information the reason for, his the dansant ideology.
he might not have produced this book for retrievable from a book is a function of its Professors from English universities only
people to read. But maybe he would have : mappability on to one's experience (whatever pretend they don't like philosophical cranks :
informational meat is increasingly rare in art- that is). As something is mapped in various everyone does in one way or another.
world publications, and it is usually less ways and in various depths on to that experience, `Knowledge and Experience in the Philosophy
digested than played with. So maybe this book so the amount of information and the dialogic of F. H. Bradley' is quoted (p. 148) — `To
didn't take so much guts to publicly expose strength of that enterprise increases. If the realize that a point of view is a point of view is
(re-publish), after all. But what about the reader of the book is also the writer, the already to have transcended it.' But he fails to

ecological morality of publications like 'Idea mappability/dialogic strength of the book may feel the reverberations of this and asymptotic
Art' ? While fuel crises are 'on', perhaps this is be of a high degree. The notion of 'interest' here saws which seem fair diagrams of self-
catered for in the human heat generated by a is not to be identified with a sense of novelty, and consciousness. The very last things the expert/
little book-burning. Still, I must agree with `new' and 'old' are being used in a somewhat professional wants are any new points of
Jonathan Benthall when he trumpets to the quirky way. Anyway, interesting books do help reference. The book rests at this level of
world on page 39: 'In all sobriety it may be to set up conditions in which learning can concert-interval-interview and does not enter
claimed that new modes of thinking are called occur, and famous officials usually get in their into the idea of radical criticism. The dialectical
for.' own way. ground (in the Platonic sense) inhabited by
BARBARA M. REISE `On Art and Mind' is a collection of essays Professor Wollheim is one in which various
spanning a period from 1963 to 1972. Most of groups are fighting more-or-less bitterly
them have been published in some form before. amongst themselves over the scanty surplus of
The dansant There are, however, three essays which haven't modernism's, the mind's, art's production.
On Art and the Mind by Richard Wollheim. appeared before and most of those that have are We don't learn much.
335 pp, 13 black and white illustrations. considerably revised and/or extended. The It's hard to say much more than this, in so far
Allen Lane, London. £6.00. ground covered may be guessed from as a condition of a critical attitude may be that
Wollheim's previous output. We have a number one sees his situation as problematic. This
Reading is hard to detach from `learning'; of posh indispensables : Sigmund Freud, Ernst suggests that one shouldn't conform to the
nobody knows what learning is like, but it seems Gombrich, Adrian Stokes, Walter Pater, conditions of rationality: the ideology of the
to have to do with mapping 'new information' F. H. Bradley, Ludwig Wittgenstein and book is so out of phase with that of anyone
on to 'old information' . . . from experience. Nelson Goodman . . . and 'Art and Its Objects'. except the connoisseur-consumer that all we
And it isn't rational. In this context, faute de The tactic structure of the book seems to be have is an infinite resonance. Pace Lukacs :
mieux, one might be interested in ordering fairly arbitrary: it is based neither on topic nor `the icy finality of criticism in the dialectic is
which might be more-or-less interesting, naïve, upon the (specious) temporal order of writing only the margin of our soul contents.' q
complex, etc. There will be various nodal points (so far as we can make out). Each essay seems to GRAHAM HOWARD
which are a function of various modalities. Now follow more-or-less the same pattern : the first
three-quarters is usually devoted to the torpid
rehearsal of eminence or to the reiteration of his Hard edges
own well-known and much written about The paradoxical nature of reality by
position on the 'physicality' of the art object. George Melhuish. xix+196 pp. Bristol,
The remaining portion contains a synopsis of St Vincent's Press, 1973. £2.90.
the first part tinged with mild speculation as to
how it might or might not be significant. If most The argument of 'The paradoxical nature of
of the topics, writers, etc. dealt with in this book reality', like that of the author's earlier book
are unfamiliar to the generality of potential `The paradoxical universe' (1959), is based on
readers, the book may be thought of as an the idea that the changing nature of experience
introduction to them, and to their 'topics' cannot be adequately described by a conceptual
(setting figures against grounds). However, if we scheme based on orthodox logic. This latter, he
are to apply the strictures outlined above, the says, provides only a selective view: in order to
strength of the enterprise will depend upon the account for pure change the laws of identity and
resonance of the topics/figures introduced. contradiction, which are traditional Aristotelian
The situational parameters are importantly him logic's central tenets, must be modified. In
and them, them and us, him and us and him and introducing this concept the author re-examines
him, etc. Professor Wollheim's situation seems Zeno's paradoxes of motion and the various
to be frozen in a coterie. The fact that the book attempts to solve them, surveys the treatment
is a confident collection in the grand style of change and motion in philosophy from
doesn't help, but taken individually most of the Heraclitus to Bergson, and quotes Hegel to the
essays are officiously anachronistic. There are effect that something moves . not because at
two which seem quite interesting; they are one moment it is here and at another there, but
`Walter Pater as a Critic of the Arts' and 'Eliot because at one and the same moment it is here
and F. H. Bradley'. One suspects that this is due and not here, because in this "here" it at once
mostly to the antique patina that these areas is and is not . . . motion is existent contradiction
present. Wollheim seems to preserve himself itself'.
qua philosopher in relation to the difficulties Although elsewhere Hegel denies
encountered with these antiques. Much of the contradiction the status of a final category,
professorial confusion which Wollheim Melhuish rejects this and argues that we
encounters in dealing with Eliot is symptomatic: should accept the paradox of the law of identity
the confusion may be understandable given and the rest of orthodox logic (which he calls
Eliot's predilection for the obscure, but the the Tautological System) being extended to
confusion is the result of, and, parenthetically, include the non-static anti-identity logical order
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