Proceedings of the Seventh National Sculpture Conference, 27, 28, 29 April 1972 ed. by Elden C. Tefft (review)

312 Books The sudden international fame of the magazine, TheStudio, upon its first publication in 1893 is perhaps the clearest pointer to its role as an artistic catalyst. Not only did it report upon the latest developments in art and design from London, Paris and elsewhere but it became one of the earliest disseminators of Art Nouveau and, perhaps more important, one of the first international magazines of contemporary art, sufficiently widely published to affect artistic development as well as public taste. The author in this selection has limited himself to black and white graphic designs ranging from an advertisement for the Royal Academy Student’s Club Smoking Concert of 1897 to Anning Bell’s Ex Libris for Lord Leighton. Gillon’s choice does not reflect the magazine’s editorial policy and his selection does not take account of the magazine’s coverage of painters far from Art Nouveau (Grieffenhagen or La Thangue, for example) or sculptors like Leighten or Pomeroy, who were perhaps more substantially represented than were Beardsley or Toorop. Nor was The Studio,as such, the lavish mouthpiece of a movement as were Pan, Jiigend and Ver Sacriim on the continent. The Studio rapidly moved on to cover cottage architecture and local arts and crafts groups. Gillon has chosen his Art Nouveau work well but it is at the expense of less obvious developments covered more thoroughly in the magazine’s own pages. Thus he presents without text one aspect among the many described in The Studio’s pages in the 1890’s. The book‘s justification is presumably that it illustrates the most influential aspect of The Stiidio but therein too lies the limitation of its usefulness. La Peinture, le gate, I’action (I’existentialismeen peinture). Margit Rowell. (In French.) Klincksieck, Paris, 1972. 162 pp. Reviewed by Nicole Magnan de Bonnier* Action painting as an art style was born in the 1940’s. It bears the influence of the surrealist painters and reveals a desire to find once again a lost innocence in a period characterized by materialistic values and war. The author attempts to discern the fundamental characteristics of action painting: ‘The search for a universal unity, the basic aim in action painting, is the implicit aspiration for a state of fusion, fusion between dreams and reality, the high and the low, and it is also the coincidence of the subject with the object, of man with nature, of being with nonexistence.’ The author begins by constructing a series of supports around her subject: first the description of a mood or spirit, of an American ‘myth’ (based on the differences in the territorial areas and in the histories of European nations and of the United States, differences in mentality and, hence, in vision and in making pictures). Given the territorial expanse of the United States, the author finds it necessary to situate her subject in time: American values are balanced by the dehumanization and anonymity of modern civilization to which the chilling horrors of World War I1 contributed their share. As a result, artists had to adopt a new attitude in order to survive: they found it necessary ‘to leave their ranks, consenting passively and anonymously to society, and to turn their backs to the narrow blind alleys of nationalism and functionalistic pragmatism. No longer to create for society, for otherwise it would lead only to compromise. To create for oneself in order to find one’s real identity.’ The author, after having delineated the circumstances present at the time of origin of this new kind of painting and having rapidly reviewed its influences, seeks to define art itself. And her definition of action painting as a manifestation of existence with, in particular, the metaphor that she develops of an artist before his canvas like the bullfighter in the arena is rather appealing probably because, done a priori, she avoids slipping into the trap of drawing in too many details. *28 rue Muller, 75018-Paris, France. (Original text in French.) But even so she must move on to the ‘illustration’ of her thesis. She starts with an analysis of Pollock‘s work. At least it can be said that his style was not simple. And...