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252 Books inventions of the last decade of the previous century, such as cinema and electric light, were coming into their own. Although Gosling touches on various arts during these years, he gives special emphasis to the visual or plastic fine arts. The first French art salon, the Salon des Artists Franr;ais, later to become the Salon National and its subsequent offspring , the widely known Salon des Independents and later the Salon d'Automne, are discussed in detail and the stage setting for each is meticulously described. Such a faithful rendering of the Salon National of 1900, for example, enables readers to grasp the revolutionary character of one of Cezanne's tiny studies squeezed in amidst the huge crowded canvases of Sargent, Boldini, Degas, Carriere, Bourguereau, et al. Two vividly contrasting groups appear from the pages: The first represents the end of the 19th century in which fine art was still the privilege of the affluent and of the literary salons assembled by the pillars of French culture and the second, the new generation of artists such as Picasso, Utrillo, Brancusi and Juan Gris, the band from Montmartre, Paris, most of its members inexorably poor. The latter heralded a new age in the visual arts from their first realistic pictures based upon the misery that surrounded them to Picasso's painting 'Les Demoiselles d'Avignon' with its shocking break with European painting traditions. The way Gosling tells the story, nontraditional 20th-century visual art began with Cubism, and Cezanne furnished the basic ideas. The efforts of this band of artists to depict the visible world in ordered pictures without resort to the illusion of depth provided by perspective led to much that followed: Dada and Marcel Duchamp's anti-art, de Chirico's dream-like Surrealism and Kandinsky's attempts at what became known as nonfigurative or abstract art. According to Gosling, these developments began in Paris during those miraculous years. Running through the book as an undertone is the transformation of classical European music. Gosling seems equally intrigued by the parallel development of music and dance, in particular by the public reactions to the new sounds introduced by Debussy and later by Stravinsky, to the new dancers of the symbolistic and mystical, Loie Fuller and Isadora Duncan, and to Nijinsky's highly impressionistic interpretation of his role in the ballet 'L'Apres-midi d'un faun'. There is a cycle to these first years of 20th-century art-as one generation of artists becomes accepted, another appears, some of whom are accepted and take their place as leaders. In spite of his attempts to present as complete a picture as possible, Gosling's references to historical events at times do not seem to me to be appropriate. It is as if he wishes to prove that he is aware of the role of politics and economics in the world of the arts but is unable to explain convincingly what that importance consists of. Another subject mentioned but on which I, for one, would have welcomed more detail is the role of art dealers, such as Vollard and Kahnweiler, and impresarios, such as Diaghilev, who carried on their operations during the period. One would like to know more about those who offered both moral and economic support to innovative artists and promoted, often at their own expense as in the case of Diaghilev, the new developments. In spite of these weaknesses and the limitations of a book of this scope, Gosling presents a striking picture that anyone seriously interested in this phase of 20th-century art can read with pleasure. Constructive Concepts: A History of Constructive Art from Cubism to the Present. Willy Rotzler. Rizzoli, New York, 1977.299 pp., illus. $38.50. Reviewed by Christopher Crouch· Rotzler's book is an attempt to survey definitively the history of constructivist art through the means of a major collection in the U.S.A., the McCrory Corporation Collection. This is an extensive and impressive collection of 600 constructivist-orientated works stretching from the origins of geometrical nonfigurative or abstract art at the beginning of the century to *36 Springbourne Road, St. Michaels in the Hamlet, Liverpool 17 7BJ, England. works...

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