The Art of Social Conscience by Paul Von Blum (review)

Books 75 response, a display does nothing for either communicator or recipient.’ Having thus established the principle of relativity in communication, Smith presents a wealth of material on procedures, observations, experiments, etc. directly linked with meaning and function. He lists categories of responses and functions, taking proxemics into account, as he also analyzesthe r61eof distance in the process ofcommunicating. Thus he tries to place relevant elements firmly into the framework of his analysis. The results are much too many to be listed here, soreaders will have to consult Smith’s text, and, I hasten to add, much to their advantage. Some of the most outstanding results can be mentioned briefly: Subhuman communication is almost invariably a transmission of messages about the communicator, not the environment, and these messages indicate the kinds of behaviour the communicator may choose to perform. So, if an animal ‘warns’its mates of an oncoming danger, the message is not ‘danger approaching’ but ‘I am afraid-I may choose to run away’. The more widespread a behavioural message, the more general or even banal it is. The importance of such messageslies in making information available that would otherwise be essentially private to the communicator. The context is responsible for the sometimes very specific responses to those general messages. Thus a species expands the capacity of its display behaviour, as it can now be functional in very many different situations. Smith also discussesthe different forms of messagesand their relevant responses, the functions connected therewith and then, finally, the evolution of display behaviour. In the final chapter, the discussion is extended to embrace formal patterns of behaviour that, unlike displays, are beyond the capability of individual performers-most human nonverbal behaviour of communication is structured at this level. ‘The performance of formalized acts may have significant effects on interactional behaviour. because the information that is provided makes the communicator‘s behaviour more predictable than it might be otherwise.’ But: ‘As yet, we are not in a position from which a comprehensivecategorization of responses and functions can be established to guide research.’ Smith’s book is very stimulating and not too difficult to read even for non-specialists. It offers onean excellentopportunity to learn more about oneselfand about others, and that issomething each artist should do-constantly. The Art of Social Conscience. Paul Von Blum. Universe Books, New York, 1976. 243 pp., illus. $5.95. Reviewed by Christopher Crouch* Von Blum gives a very broad and, by the very nature of his immense task, a necessarily brief examination of the social aspects ofspecificartists’ work, or more precisely.what one has is an examination of their moral and ethical attitudes. The work examined ranges in scope from Breughel to recent photography, taking in on its route those as artistically disparate as Munch, Heartfield and Picasso and. in particular, some works of immense power by the inmates of the disgusting Nazi concentration camps of World War 11. He has approached his book not as an art historical task, but as an exercisein ‘interdisciplinarystudy’, and this is, perhaps, his problem. He says that ‘a serious consideration of this subject (socially conscious art) requires the thoughtful personal synthesis and integration of several fields of study. Neither history, nor art history, nor politics, nor sociology alone will enable a student to acquire a sufficient understanding of this theme. This is both the book‘s failing and. strangely enough. its strength. There is in many ways too much material for anywhere near detailed enough study of specificthemes, but thisdoes allow for a book that is free from any kind of social and political dogma. It is humanistic and liberal in the proudest sense of the words. The artists whose work he chooses must fulfill his rather tenous philosophical premise of ‘the art of negativity’, where he holds that a work of art that negates a social reality within the “36 Springbourne Road, St. Michaels in the Hamlet, Liverpool 17 7BJ, England. correct dialectical framework is eventually a positive act. The dilemma is to decide what constitutes the correct aesthetic framework for such a dialectic. What would have been useful, and what we do not get, is an examination of the phenomenon of an art whose...