100 Artists 100 Years

Leonardo

100 Artists 100 YearsReview by: LeGrace G. BensonLeonardo, Vol. 14, No. 3 (Summer, 1981), pp. 253-254Published by: The MIT PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1574305 .

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Books Books Books Books

What could count as an answer? Clark is sensitive to these problems and, as a consequence, talks as if he does not wish to engage in a theoretical approach to them. He sidesteps the approach by focussing on actual examples of masterpieces. But the question raised in the book is essentially theoretical, and this issue cannot be sidestepped effectively.

What warrants the initial choice of masterpieces? Clark's examples range from Raphael's 'The School of Athens' to Velazquez's 'Las Meninas' to Breughel's 'Christ Carrying the Cross' to Watteau's 'Embarcation for the Island of Cythera' to Rembrandt's 'The Night Watch' to Picasso's 'Guernica'. I cannot fault Clark for including these artworks. But I fault him for excluding other examples. He does not include a single masterpiece that is not figurative and representional in style. Picasso's 'Woman with a Guitar' is the closest he comes to nonrepresentationism. Evidently, he does not think any masterpieces in the categories of highly abstract and of nonfigurative painting were produced in the 20th century.

In the summary paragraph of this little book Clark says: 'Although many meanings cluster round the word masterpiece, it is above all the work of an artist genius who has been absorbed by the spirit of the time in a way that has made his individual experiences universal. If he is fortunate enough to live in a time when many moving pictorial ideas are current, his chances of creating a masterpiece are greatly increased. If, to put it crudely, the acceptable subjects of painting are serious themes, touching us at many levels, he is well on his way. But in the end a masterpiece will be the creation of his own genius.'

Nowhere does Clark indicate what counts as a 'serious theme'. Nor does he indicate what are the pertinent levels at which a masterpiece must touch its viewers. It seems that one is still left with the possibility of subjectivity in whose 'coffin' Clark is so anxious to drive 'one more nail'.

The Spirit of Surrealism. Edward B. Henning. Indiana Univ. Press, Bloomington, IN, 1979. 186 pp., illus. $29.95. Reviewed by Peter Fingesten*

Part of the endless fascination with Surrealism is its collision between the strictly visual and the strong verbal aspects of the symbology employed, which has deep roots in psychology, mythology and the most private dreams and fantasies of artists. Laymen are taken mostly by its visual aspects, while critics try to penetrate deeper to uncover its hidden layers.

Henning's book is a lavish hardcover exhibition catalogue. It lends permanency to a relatively short-lived loan exhibit entitled The Spirit of Surrealism, held at the Cleveland Museum of Art, 3 October to 25 November 1979. The mounting interest among museums, galleries and critics in Surrealism is not only expressive of historical interest, but also of a certain nostalgia in the spirit of freedom that animated it. During its heroic period, it held center stage for challenging the forces of reaction from art to morals and politics. Many are endlessly attracted to these exhilarating forays into the aesthetics of the subconscious that could produce such lastingly beautiful objects. This in itself proves the validity and genuiness of Surrealism.

The challenge Henning faced was to present new insights. He used the philosophic scaffolding of Structuralism. Indeed, it gave his book an additional clarity of viewpoint, organization and description. Logically enough, he starts with Dadaism and some of its leading artists (Arp, Man Ray, Schwitters), each with a short but authoritative, illustrated essay. He also reaches back to Redon, Gauguin, Rousseau and Chirico. Among the spiritual fathers (direct and indirect), he cites not only Rimbaud, Jarry and Lautr6amont but also Hegel, Kant and Marx. I found his expositions crystal clear. More text and illustrations are dedicated to masters: Ernst, Mir6, Masson, Magritte, Tanguy, Klee, Picasso, Giacommetti and Delvaux. An interesting chapter on the New York School of Surrealists concludes this book with fine illustrated discussions of Gorky, Matta, Pollock, Barziotes, Motherwell and Cornell.

























* 145 East 26th Street, Apt. 5C, New York, NY 10010, U.S.A. * 145 East 26th Street, Apt. 5C, New York, NY 10010, U.S.A. * 145 East 26th Street, Apt. 5C, New York, NY 10010, U.S.A. * 145 East 26th Street, Apt. 5C, New York, NY 10010, U.S.A.

253 253 253 253

I recommend the book to Leonardo readers as an intelligent presentation of the major artists who are responsible for this style and the intellectual forces underlying it. The book is as useful as pleasing a contribution to the growing contemporary literature of Surrealism.

Chardin and the Still-Life Tradition in France. Gabriel P. Weisberg with S. Talbot. Indiana Univ. Press, Bloomington, IN, 1979. 93 pp., illus. Paper, $9.95. Reviewed by Peter Cannon- Brookes*

Much ingenuity is now demanded of museum administrators to overcome the surfeit of exhibition catalogues and the consequent difficulty of selling sufficient quantities to make them economic to publish. These problems become particularly acute when the works to be included are not of sufficiently distinguished quality or interest to encourage the production of a full-scale scholarly catalogue that, by virtue of the research it embodies, will have substantial sales outside the exhibition. Thus, alternative strategies have been evolved to develop markets for publications linked to modest exhibitions. The actual catalogue entries for this exhibition are confined to the last two pages. In the words printed on the last page 'This volume is one of a new series of books about art, art history and artistic expression being published by the Art History and Education Department of The Cleveland Museum of Art under the general editorship of Dr. Gabriel P. Weisberg, curator of art history and education', and the Exhibition, as such, disappears into the body of the four essays by Weisberg and William S. Talbot.

Seventy-seven works are illustrated, of which 33 are listed as forming part of the Exhibition, and, despite a slight lack of visual coherence, the result is not without interest, though curiously evocative of a slide lecture in its impact. Much more disturbing, however, is the sharp divergence in quality between the works actually exhibited and the level of expectation raised by the sequence of illustrations, and the implications are worth considering in more detail.

The list of lenders on page six identifies the publication as an exhibition catalogue, albeit in an unusual format, and the essays are perhaps a little longer than might be expected as accom- panying such a modest group of paintings, but, since the catalogue is intended to accompany the Exhibition, the impact of the production is oddly ambiguous. Eighteen Chardins are illustrated, but not one is included in the Exhibition, which no doubt accounts for the detail of a Vallon reproduced in colour on the cover, and I am reminded of an earlier exhibition, with an impressive catalogue, entitled From Giorgione to Poussin, which contained works by neither master. No doubt the title was chosen because Chardin is the only name of a French still-life painter of the 18th century familiar to the general public, and an educational publication could be considered to be a separate entity to the Exhibition it accompanied. Nevertheless, it is published with the support of the National Endowment for the Arts as a catalogue, and I was left wondering whether ingenuity has not here possibly exceeded the accustomed limits.

100 Artists 100 Years. Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, 1979.67 pp., illus. Paper. Reviewed by LeGrace G. Benson**

For its Centennial Exhibition, the Art Institute of Chicago (a museum) has produced a catalogue that seems to have been conceived not as a means of anticipating the questions viewers would raise about the artworks exhibited and about the past years of the Institute's School, but as a marketing tool directed at prospective students and financial supporters.

This is more unfortunate, since the history of the School and of the works shown is of interest to historians of culture and of the

























*National Museum of Wales, Cathays Park, Cardiff CFl 3NP, Great Britain.

**Empire State College, Public Affairs Center, State University of New York, 50 Wolf Road, Room 200, Albany, NY 12205, U.S.A.









visual arts in the U.S.A. Intimations of the importance of the School and of the Institute to Chicago and to the States of the middle west pervade articles by Donald J. Irving, Director of the School, by Norman L. Rice, Dean from 1938 to 1943, and by Katherine Kuh, gallery owner, writer on art and Curator of Modern Painting at the Institute until 1959. For example, Irving notes that the Institute took its character from the business men and industrialists who 'in their businesses strove aggressively to shape and develop the most advanced, often high-risk, en- deavors, while in their cultural lives they sought traditional values, the ideal, the established'. Kuh gives another facet to the same issue when she remarks: 'Compared to the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century artists of the Eastern seaboard, those trained at the Art Institute may seem more conservative, less experimental, more deliberately moored to accepted practices. Yet at the same time Chicago was burgeoning lustily, its free- wheeling profile aggressive and raw. ... It is curious that writers and builders were able to accept the exuberance of the city, incorporating it creatively in their work, while artists were not.'

Perhaps a celebratory catalogue is not appropriate for illuminating this sort of history, yet, having presented the thought, might not one as well go on with it? The cultural history of this region cannot be reduced to simple contrasts of business and architectural venturesomeness to conservative painting and sculpture. Such a polarity does not sufficiently take into account the vigor of such phenomena as regionalism, which used a jingoist, calendar realism for darkly humorous fantasies-cata- clysmic threat and violence under the guise of small-town and farm scenery and familiar events like baptisms and school truancy. Nor does it make a connection between this curiously surrealistic genre of work and the startlingly necrophilic, realistic works of Ivan LeLorraine Albright, the outrageous carpentries of H. C. Westerman and the things like cigaret butts and toothpaste tubes that serve as subjects for Claes Oldenburg.

Most of the more than 50 illustrations are in black and white, but are of a size that enables readers to get some idea of surfaces and fine details. The order in which they are arranged is a visual gain but a historical continuity loss, although the selection of works does not actually represent any clear continuity. The captions are helpful, but one misses the dates of the connection of artists with the Institute and whether they were at the School as students or teachers or both.

This catalogue, which is good enough to elicit the query Why not more? Why not better? is probably a casualty of the reduced personnel and budgets currently besetting art programs and institutions in the U.S.A. The Institute, its School and the artists are a suitable subject for a fully documented, well-illustrated book by a historian of art and of culture in the U.S.A.

The Apocalyptic Vision: The Art of Franz Marc as German Expressionism. Frederick S. Levine. Harper and Row, London, 1979. 200 pp., illus. ?9.95. Reviewed by John F. Moffitt*

I found Levine's book a most welcome contribution to the still unfolding study of German Expressionism. In fact, he is so persuasive in his supple arguments and wide-ranging docu- mentation as to make me (one who admits to a dislike for much of the more primitivistic crudities associated with this violent style) desirous to reappraise my previous position in regard to German visual art of the early 20th century. Although the subtitle is rather misleading, suggesting that readers will gain knowledge of the wide spectrum of variations and attitudes encompassed under the sweeping rubric of Expressionism, the author only in detail deals with Franz Marc, a painter whom I find one of the more attractive and thoughtful artists associated with the style through the Munich Blue Rider (Der Blaue Reiter) Group, which was formed in 1912. I regard the works of this Group as more aesthetically appealing (due, I think, to their knowledge of developments in French painting of the time) than those of the other German groups (in Dresden, The Bridge (Die Brucke) Group, founded in 1905, and in Berlin The New













*Dept. of Art, New Mexico State University, Box 3572, Las Cruces, NM 88003, U.S.A.



Secession (Die Neue Sezession) Group. But what Levine has to say about Marc (whether or not it in the end proves applicable to the whole of the German expressionists) is very valuable.

His book is praiseworthy on various levels of endeavor. On the one hand, it is an affecting, comprehensive biography of a shy, obsessed and very human individual who was tragically to die at Verdun, France, during World War I, when only 36 years of age; it is also a vivid description of a brief but tense historical moment of consequence in the visual arts. For me, the most useful aspect of his book is the reconstruction and analysis of Marc's specific kind of figuration abstraction, which is described as the organic, physical means for expressing a meaningful content or narrative interests.

The cornerstone of the book is a fascinating study of a large painting called 'The Fate of the Animals' ('Das Tiereschicksal', 1913). Levine leads up to this climactic work by describing the mood of alienation felt by some German artists, poets and philosophers, who rejected a society they perceived as over- burdened by excessive materialism, and, accordingly, they sought visionary means to restore what they considered a lost spiritual unity and harmony and so to break down the barriers of what Marc called 'the mask of things [that] so blinds us that we cannot find the truth'. In short, he was part of a group that sought to 'spiritualize' German art and culture as a whole. A corollary was an idealistic conviction, prevalent on the Eve of World War I, that held that some total, penitential, apocalyptic catastrophe was absolutely necessary for the regeneration of the corruption inherent in industrial societies. And, as shown skilfully by Levine, the 'apocalyptic vision' was widespread among many German writers and artists in that period. He reveals how Marc's prophetic and tragic 'Fate of the Animals' is a painting that can 'be fully understood only within the context of its [myriad] sources. It is, in short, a plea for apocalypse; the expression of a longing for the destruction of the present world of corruption, evil, and degeneration, and its replacement with a world of innocence, goodness, and purity. Indeed, 'Fate of the Animals' is a specifically German plea for redemption, drawn from the sources of centuries-old tradition that can be traced at least as far as the ancient Norse myths.'

The manner in which Levine pinpoints these literary and visual sources, and the way he identifies the manner of their re- employment in 'Fate of the Animals' are a model of historical detective work.

Daphnis and Chloe. Longus. George Moore, trans. Marc Chagall, illus. Sidgwick & Jackson, London, 1977. 222 pp., illus. ?30.00. Reviewed by Susan Montgomery*

In the long, long line of 'coffee table' art books, another 'white elephant', originally produced by the publisher George Braziller, New York, that will be read once, if at all. A few Chagall devotees will purchase the book at the price to add it to their collection of memorabilia, for the book contains 42 color reproductions out of the original 58 lithographs by Chagall on the Daphnis and Chloe theme.

It is difficult to assess the value of Chagall's illustrations in the climate of reverential treatment of an artist of such an advanced age that his sheer persistence in life is a remarkable feat. His familiar style will comfort those not ready to acknowledge the last 50 years in the history of art, and the selection of a Greek myth as inspiration is as unassailable as the Bible in its emotional and historical interest. But this collaboration between Chagall and translator George Moore I found told me nothing new about either Chagall or about human life as revealed in Occidental traditional literature.

In the Preface, readers are instructed in art historical jargon of the 'soaring color harmonies' and the 'infinite softness of the air on the island of Lesbos' and Chagall is praised for depicting a 'universal Eden where the figures seem to float in an atmosphere of infinite happiness whose warmth is all-pervasive'. I wondered

















*5 Lloyd Road, Watertown, MA 02172, U.S.A. *5 Lloyd Road, Watertown, MA 02172, U.S.A. *5 Lloyd Road, Watertown, MA 02172, U.S.A.

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100 Artists 100 Years