Renderings by Max Kozloff (review)

266 Books to create forms in two or three dimensions. Here the various systems, in East and West, for depicting space are analyzed. The illusion of Movement takes the next chapter and, finally, the manner in which all these elements work together in the chapter on Design . The book is illustrated by diagrams, photographs and reproductions of paintings from many places and periods up to the recent Op and Pop art movements. Renderings. Max Kozloff. Studio Vista, London, 1970. Paperback, 335 pp., iIIus. £1.25. Reviewed by: Norman Narotzky* The critic's role is a complicated and ambiguous one that has never been, and probably never will be, clearly defined. It has varied with time and continues to do so, its variety being conditioned by the multifarious interests and personalities of the critics themselves and the epochs and ambiences in which they live. Should he limit himselfto describing what he sees? Should he deal with narrative content (where this exists) or with the purely formal relationships of the work? Should he try to discover and communicate the artist's intentions or present his own responses to the work? Should he judge the value of a work or should he use it as a point of departure to create another art work which is the critical essay itself? This collection of writings of the author was published over a period of7 years in various periodicals and covers the last hundred years in art from Courbet to the latest (1967) manifestations of new ideas. In some, the author has appended a commentary at the end of the essay in which he clarifies or revises his opinions. He is well aware ofthe many problems involved in art criticism and, though he is continuallycoming to grips withthem, does not seem to have come to any definitive resolution of them. In his 1965 lecture 'Critical Schizophrenia and the Intentionalist Method', he sees the critic's responsibility to be '... an exploration of the intention of the artist ...' but in his posterior comment admits the difficulty of applying this approach as a critical method. Two years later he maintains that criticism should be '... an introspective process and a tool to gain self-knowledge . . .. Perception of the self through the medium of the work of art and perception of the work of art through the medium of the self-this is the dialectical nature of criticism.' In his comment on this lecture he says that this position -which now misrepresents his criticism--emerged as a reaction to the role of the critic as advocate, saying: '. . . one gives art a needlessly secondary status by demoting it to a testing situation for one's id.' In an essay of December 1967, the last in the book, he views criticism as a creative process in its own right, aiming at locating the symbolic equivalents of sensations. 'Brought to its highest ... criticism projected on this level approaches literary art.' Several months later, in the preface to this *Corcega 196, Barcelona 11, Spain. book, written in March 1968, he modifies this stand when he says, '... criticism's merit lies exactly in the fact that it is neither a work of art nor a response, but something much rarer-a rendering of the interaction between the two.' All this indicates a restless, probing and flexible mind that is not entrenched in dogmatism but open to multiple approaches. In principle he does not emit value judgements but allows these to be inferred from the context of his writings. They, however, sometimes can be devastating. For example, he makes the folIowing comment on the sculpture of Judd and Morris in the Primary Structures Exhibit: '... their position has been most uncompromising, without eliciting, in me, at least, the slightest scintilla ofemotional reaction. It is not after all, a great virtue unswervingly to follow a straight line if it leads out the window.' He is not a formalist, though he does not hesitate to discuss an artist's work from this viewpoint when he feels the need. The piece on Bonnard is a brilliant example. Primarily he analyzes and interprets the meanings and intentions ofa work in all its psychological complexity. The important relationship in art for him...