The Art Critic and the Art Historian: The Leslie Stephen Lecture 1973 by Quentin Bell (review)

Books 251 informed that man ‘stores water and food, marries, establishes scientific laboratories, builds cities and joins churches’! Feibleman delights in aphoristic statements such as ‘art is the ultimate theology’, ‘art is the picture of possibilities’, ‘the purpose of art is appreciation’, which are either absurd or totally unsubstantiated. He is also revealed as a reactionary with a mechanistic view of man when he claims (pp. 35-6) that, although the artist is fully aware of immorality and evil, he does not try to change this state of affairs or to suggest changes, rather ‘he merely observes and records’. What flabbergasts me is that a full-time professor of philosophy at a university in the U.S.A. could remain blissfully unaware of the writings of Adorno, Barthes, Chomsky, Eco, Goodman, Marx, Moles, MerleauPonty , Saussure, Wollheim. Wittgenstein, etc., etc., which are crucial to any discussion of contemporary issues in aesthetics. Therefore, you will not be surprised to learn that the book has no bibliography, no notes and no citations to periodical articles. Is there nothing to be said in its favour? Oh yes, it is well printed on good quality paper and it has a sound binding. The Art Critic and the Art Historian: The Leslie Stephen Lecture 1973. Quentin Bell. Cambridge Univ. Press, London, 1974. 34 pp. Paper, 40 p. Reviewed by Michael Rasenthal* Published lectures can make unsatisfactory reading, mainly because the spoken performance is not designed to cater for complex arguments or involved problems. The author concentrates on one point that is illustrated by subsidiary discussions, so that, while he does not explore the full potential of the positions that he adumbrates, he has managed a fair compromise. His concern is with critics as subjective interpreters of art works and with why nowadays there is practically none worth taking seriously. The fact that the role of critics has changed-for instance, photography means that they no longer have to describe the visual-is accepted but not taken as an excuse for poor criticism. It is suggested that art historians are concerned with the whys and wherefores of particular work, but they now find themselves in a false situation through their dependence on subjective value judgements in defining their own field of study. The author suggests that this problem is particularly acute as regards the history of late 19thcentury art, which is too much interpreted by historians as a struggle of ‘goodies’ against ‘baddies’, with too much emphasis on the idea of an advant garde. Because critics were wrong about the impressionists, historians now give kudos to artists who invented something, which is an historically fallacious approach. Meanwhile, critics now find themselves unable to make any subjective value-judgements. This point of view is quite unexceptionable and it is good that it should be advanced. Within this main argument, however, there are one or two debatable points. For instance, the premise that ‘we are drawn to the study of a work by reason of an aesthetic emotion’ is perhaps too sweeping and the suggestion that art historians study only artists whom they positively like cannot be justified very easily. Similarly, the author supposes that, once a historian has been drawn to a work, it will be studied from the point of view of how it illuminates the age in which it was made. But the result of this would be ‘art history without artists’ and it is artists in whom many still are primarily interested. Furthermore, while it is about time someone stated that modern critics are useless, their plight is an aspect of a larger cultural situation in which criticism, as such, may be an impossibility. The author at least might have mentioned this, but then, this is a lecture. I find that its main value resides in the way it states one important point with clarity and intelligence. *41 Clarendon Square, Learnington Spa, Warwickshire, England. Voices from the Stone Age: A Search for Cave and Canyon Art. Douglas Mazonowicz. Allen & Unwin, Hemel Hempstead, England, 1975. 211 pp., illus. f5.95. Reviewed by Sherly Famess** This book contains an autobiographical account of I5 years devoted to the painstaking copying of depictions in prehistoric caves at European, African and...