The Meaning of Art by Herbert Read (review)

BoNoks 75 thus no longer a quest for truth but the endless search for valid questions to ask. Further, it is seen as a global activity that cannot limit itself to any one possible interpretation of a work but must seek to encompass and make explicit the totality of meaning that it embodies. No single question, no single exegetical technique will be satisfactory: Mauron’s psychocriticism or Goldmann’s Marxist sociology produce results as fragmentary as Picard’s biography. Nothing short of a phenomenology embracing the totality of a work’s meaning will suffice. Doubrovsky defines the philosophy that will provide a new credo for the critic as existentialist psychoanalysis. The existenceof a work of literature can be objectified only in so far as it consists of the convergenceof the creative consciousness of the author and the observing consciousness of the reader or critic. The critic’srole is therefore essential, since it is he who will, at a precise moment in history, endow the work through his reflective consciousness with the consciousness of its own ‘authentic and transhistoric truths’. As the writer finds himself, and thereby readers, by finding his language, so the critic finds himself, and readers, by finding the writer’s language and it is in this continuous and totally subjective circuit from writer to critic to reader that criticism experiences,experiments and creates. In 1966 this Criticism was New. Yet one would hardly guess from Edward Wasiolek’s introduction and biography, which attempt to situate Doubrovsky’s book in the context of Anglo-American New Criticism and Russian Formalism, what advances have been made since then. There is no mention of Barthes’s more recent work, nor of that of Lacan, Derrida or Kristeva, among others, nor indeed of any significant text written since 1968. The question asked by Doubrovsky’s original title is still valid, but the answers he provided need to be seen in the historical context of a lively debate that is still going on. The Meaning of Art. Herbert Read. Praeger, New York, 1972.280 pp., illus. Paper $2.95. Reviewed by Vic Gray* On re-reading this book I was transported in time to the 1940’s to renew those feelings of pleasure experienced when I first became acquainted with Herbert Read, the brilliant writer and wide-ranging thinker. My tattered and faded paper-backed Pelican suffers in comparison with Praeger’s gloss-colour covered, clear-type printed and hand-comfortable sized re-issue. Presentations, such as this, common in the paper-back genre I find irresistable. The type-face is so attractive and clear and the illustrations (black and white) so well chosen to complement the text that reading is facilitated to felicity. Before going further, let me make it clear that in editions succeeding the first in 1931 Read added sections such as that on Tachism, ‘The Bridge’ and the ‘Blue Rider‘ Groups, and Kadinsky, and made corrections in the interests of clarity and accuracy. It has thus stayed alive as a developing argument. This edition includes additions and changes up till 1968. Here, then, is a work ofestablishedexcellence purporting to be an introduction to the understanding of art. It is that and more, for like all good introductions, it whets appetite for further study, exposure and involvement.The presentation is in three parts: definitionsof terms and concepts, application of these to the myriad expressions of art in the world and philosophic considerations of the why of art and compulsions of artists. Read takes great care to avoid ambiguity in the meaning of terms. The range includes definitions of. beauty, the Golden Section, distortion, harniony, tone, colour, line and so on. These terms are useful aids to mental processes involved in aesthetic judgements. Indeed, Read even examines the complexities of those mental processes that are involved in contemplating works of art. In his survey of art throughout the history of humanity Read ranges from Bushmen paintings to those by Jackson Pollock, from the Pyramids to the sculpture by Barbara Hepworth, from Chinese pottery to the Surrealism of Max Ernst. He discusses the differences between movements into which artists are grouped and his perceptive analyses of the Gothic, Baroque and Rococo...