In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

80 Books would have been rather different from the author’s list. I associate Classicismwith the Platonic ideal ,with nameable and discrete parts, and, consequently, with a self-consciousgrasp of the questions of articulation, making possible the play of rhyme, rhythm and proportion. On this understanding one would expect far greater representation of works by sculptors in Britain and the U.S.A., works that are often preceded by clear-headed exploratory and generative drawings and accompanied by equally practical working drawings. Part Two, entitled Rodin to Oldenburg, forms the bulk of the book and is a series of informed and interesting essays that are the vehiclefor the undoubted connoisseurship of the author.The book is illustrated with nearly 450 plates and there is a useful appendix containing biographical notes on 63 sculptors of the 20th century. Ensor. Roger van Gindertael. Trans. from French by Vivienne Menkes. Studio Vista, London; New York Graphic Society, Boston, Mass.. 1976. 157 pp.. illus. f8.50; $22.50. Reviewed by Alfred Wemr * ‘He was excefional in that he was completely autonomous, owing npthing to anyone and offering no example but that of fundamental originality and ferocious individuality.’ Thus van Gindertael sums up a master who is well represented in Belgian museums, but not in collectionsin the U.S.A. and in Britain. His is the second large book available in Englishabout the recluse of Ostend, as important as an anti-naturalist forerunner of Expressionism as were his contemporaries Van Gogh and Munch. James Ensor (186&1949), who had no wife, no friends, no pupils, and who, after the completion of his studies at Brussels, rarely left his native town of Ostend, was able to do his living,his traveling, his suffering and rejoicing within his art work. It is bamingly many-faceted and rich-nearly five hundred oils, pastels, drawings and prints are extant-despite the relative shortnessof the period of Ensor’smain artistic effort (ca. 1879to 1893). Fantasy invaded his hide-out above the family-owned souvenir shop (whichsold seashells,weird masks and outlandish bric-a-brac). Ensor’s imagination led to masks and marionettes even stranger than those craftsmen had fashioned elsewhere. Whatever provocative ideas may have come to him from such inventive storytellers as Rabelais and Balzac,and especially Poe, out of them he produced visual magic such as had not been seen before. Though in the work of this stay-at-home there is little direct reference to the world conflagrations, to the misery endured by millions, Ensor wasquite awareof brutality and injustice,and his work is filled with attacks-sometimes in the coarse, primitive and even scatological manner of Flemish folkways-on demagogues. false educators, vivisectionists, alcoholics and others whom he had reason to loathe. Through frightening masks, monstersand idiots, there took place,on canvas or paper, a continuous symbolic exorcising of the demons that preyed upon Europe. But there was also much sardonic laughter along with the apparent dripping of blood, and there were also occasions when the irony was puckish rather than ferocious, that is, when the master, relaxed and euphoric for a change, found pleasure in making droll littlecaricatures, reminiscentof a child’s unconscious humor. The gist of his philosophy is given in his key work, ‘TheEn& o f Christ infoBrussels’, where Jesus is a wide-haloed little figure on a donkey amid what seem to be thousands of leering, ugly mask-likefacesof placard-carrying, Belgians. He gave Christ his O H I ~features. In big letters, a long frieze carries the inscription, Yiw la Sociale (Long Live the Socialist State). Yet Ensor was never active in politics. Many prints are reproduced in the book. The author compares Ensor to Rembrandt: ‘Wehave here two of the world’s greatest painters, who were just as successful in working in black and white . . . as they were in handling brush and colors.’ Painting, Photography,Film. Laszlo Moholy-Nagy.’Trans. from German by Janet Seligman. Lund Humphries, London, 1969. 150 pp.. illus. f2.92. Reviewed by Nathan Lemr** This book. which originally appeared as one of the Bahausbiicher series in 1925, is Moholy-Nagy’s first organized published statement on the interrelationship between social forces, new technological developments and the biological need for self...

pdf

Share