Mutual Aid in the Arts: From the Second Empire to Fin de Siècle by Teddy Brunius (review)

76 Books to the limits of its vision. And artists, in their vast variety and unpredictable ingenuity, are engaged in an endless exploration of these sources. Art and Anarchy. Edgar Wind. Wildwood House, London, 1974. 212 pp., illus. Paper, 90p. Reviewed by David Mandel* Edgar Wind was a noted German art historian who became a citizen of the U.S.A., taught there and then spent the remainder of his life teaching in England, dying in 1971 at Oxford. This book, which first appeared in 1963, is composed of six half-hour lectures broadcast by the B.B.C. with added notes. I find that it is highly relevant for those who take an interest in art and that it well deserves to be reprinted, As evidence of the author’s scholarship, the text is shorter in length than the notes and index: One should not be put off by this, for Wind gets in much that is novel and interesting. The book takes its title from the first essay, which is based on Plato’s ‘sacred fear’ of the art of his time when art was central to the life of a sector of his society. Baudelaire, too, saw that the anarchic energies of artists were not noticed in his time when art had become merely pleasing or a distraction for art enthusiasts. Wind feels that art in Western industrial countries has been driven to the periphery of life, while commerce and science have pre-empted the establishments. Furthermore, the wider diffusion of art has caused it to lose its sting, so that people today are immune to its dangers. Wind further suggests that art will not become important for more people unless their mode of life is changed. Hegel is cited for the belief that art would not be connected with the energies of societies, as societies would be concerned with a spirit of rational inquiry. So, while PIato could not foresee that the leaders of a society might become immune to the dangers of art, Hegel could not imagine that art might become dangerous. Wind disagrees with both, foreseeing that art will become dangerous once more for human beings. He convincingly demolishes Clive Bell’s thesis that significant form is the sole basis of aesthetic experience by showing that content adds to aesthetic value in Raphael’s ‘School of Athens’ and that aesthetic appreciation can be improved by knowledge of the content of pictures. While not denying the usefulness of the scholarly study of parts of a painting to establish its correct attribution, he feels that such a scholarly preoccupation is not the road to art’s power, but rather a dissociation arising from the fact that art is not one of society’spreoccupations. He quotes Henry Adams: ‘All the steam in the world could not, like the Virgin, build Chartres.’ Art in the early Renaissance was not an end in itself, but was related to the daily life of believers in Christianity. Wind says nothing about a culture where the response of children to form and color is undermined by training for useful occupations. I believe that too few are exposed to art too late in life, so that for most people an aesthetic response cannot be developed. But Wind insists that art will not remain marginal in life if a social scene arises with less emphasis on the scientific and the economic. A book of rare insights for those in my shaking world. The Story of Art. E. H. Gombrich. Phaidon, London, 1972. 498 pp., illus. Paper. Reviewed by Barron M. Hirsch** To review this book is like trying to review the Bible. *Perth Amboy National Bank Bldg, 313 State St., Perth Amboy, NJ 08861, U.S.A. **5469 Mary Court, Saginaw, MI 48603, U.S.A. First published in 1950, it is certainly one of the most respected introductory art history texts in use and is currently in its 12th edition. One is provided with an enthusiastic, well-organized journey through the history of man’s involvement in art from prehistoric times through the 20th century. Artists of genius are emphasized and a reader is given an understanding of how they were related to...