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Books 371 colors to name his paintings), Whistler shares the innovating force in the art of that time with the French artists of the period. It was this tendency which led him into collision with the influential critic and ardent defender of Victorian art, John Ruskin. Despite the inconclusiveness of the libel trial between them and his lack of support from fellow artists, Whistler insisted uncompromisingly on the autonomy of the artist. In contrast to Ruskin’s demand for ‘truth to nature’, Whistler argued then and later in his ‘Ten O’clock’ lecture that art should not endeavor to embody literature or morality but rather that only through being free to utilize whatever of nature he will can the artist succeed in achieving beauty. The last part of Spencer’s brief survey focuses on the early 1880’s. He discusses designers that were active during that period, men like A. H. Mackmurdo and C. F. A. Voysey, and, especially, graphic artists like Walter Crane and Randolph Caldecott, whose children’s books are still being published and read. And he showsfinallyhow in the late 1880’sand early 1890’sthe Aesthetic Movement was displaced by Art Nouveau. Spencer has written a worthwhile and useful book. Within the brief space at his disposal, his coverage is comprehensive and detailed and one has a sense of the many individuals, tendencies and influences of this period in English art. A time of some historical importance it is, too, for it saw the emergence of interests and concerns in architecture, design and the use of artistic materials in general that prefigure what are perhaps the most vital activities of 20th-century art. One of the book‘s virtues is the large number of black and white reproductions that provide excellent illustrations of the text. Yet Spencer’s practice of treating this movement chronologically rather than by tendency or aspect has led to somewhat of a bewildering recurrence in different contexts of the same names and of the same phases. This confusion is increased by the introduction of new phases and topics without warning. Perhaps this is an unavoidable result of trying to turn a brief period in English art history into a ‘Movement’. To one who is not a historian, this is not convincing, for there were many diverse influences at work during this time, with no homogeneous artistic result such as occurred in the final decade of the century. Whether it is history or the historian that is responsible for such confusion, Whistler’s own denial in the ‘Ten O’Clock‘ lecture that any artistic period had ever existed but that only Art, which persists despite all fashions, had gone on is likely the best comment on this (or any) time. Other Criteria: Confrontations with TwentiethCentury Art. Leo Steinberg. Oxford University Press, New York, 1972. 436 pp., illus. $17.50. Reviewed by :Ethel Schwabacher“ This is a series of essays written over the last eighteen years. A large part of the book is taken up with three essays on Picasso, each in its way peculiarly fascinating. The essay ‘Picasso’s Sleepwatchers’ deals with Picasso’streatment of the ‘wake-slumber’ theme-a favorite of his-beginning with the Blue Period and continuing in later works where its function, according to Steinberg, was to keep a lifetime, brooding on the interplay of substance and fantasy uninterrupted. In the second essay, ‘The Skulls of Picasso’, Steinberg makes a startling judgment of ‘Death’s Head’ (1944) as the most powerful single mass sculpture of the 20th century. In the essay, ‘AlgerianWomen’,agroupofvariations on Delacroix’s painting of the same title done when Picasso was seventy-three, the author gives an exhaustive analysis of the day-to-day development of these paintings that should be of great value to in-depth students of Picasso. Steinberg’s lively and knowledgeable response to this artist brings us into the orbit of actual participation in creative work and he is concerned with this goal rather than with the pronouncement of ultimate judgements. The essay, ‘Picassoat Large’,contains a brilliant analysis of Cubism and studies of Picasso’s erotic drawings, ‘Drawing as if to Possess’, ‘Multiple Mirror Reflections’and ‘Serpentination’,ananalysis of how Picasso...

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