John Dobson, Architect and Landscape Gardener by Lyall Wilkes (review)

Books 73 other universities followed this admirable example, it would do much to further art and nurture artists. Knowing both Jonson and his works, I feel that this book is a valuable record and analysis and a finepiece of literature. I dedicate this review to the memory of Arthur H. Jonson, the brother of Raymond and for 15 years the curator of Jonson Gallery. He was a rare and noble individual, accomplished both as a writer and musician. Jim Dine Figure Drawings 1975-1979. Constance Glenn. Harper& Row, London, 1980. 93 pp.. illus. Paper, €5.95. ISBN: 0-06-4300102-8. Reviewed by Harry Rand* Published on the occasion of an exhibition organized by The Art Museum and Galleries, California State University, Long Beach, October-November 1979, this book is a lovely addition to those volumes that are appearingwith fair frequency that document theart of our times. Most of the book istaken up by photographs of the work that Dine has produced during the period in question. These photos, large, clear and abundant,supply all the information one could want about the nature and quality of the artist’s work as a draftsman. None of the illustrations of his work is less than half-a-page, and many of the blackand -whites are full page, which in a large book is sumptuous documentation. Besides these 68 photos are 27 full-page color reproductions of Jim Dine’s drawings. On the basis of such thorough reportage, the interested reader can easily draw an informed and legitimate opinion of the artist’s work, for, if the black-and-white photos seem a bit distant (oddly seeming to rest ‘behind’ the page as if cropped from larger images), the color works leave very little to be desired in terms of reproducing the soft tones and subtleties of the charcoal and pastel that are the artist’s preferred instruments. An Introduction by Constance W. Glenn supplies insight into Dine’s source materials- which are themselves reproduced as text figures,just so complete and meticulous an effort is this. Following this brief introduction is an interview between Glenn and Dine. This interview completes the attempt to rely on nothing but prime sources, and a cycle is thus completed, a circle of inquiry that starts with the works themselves, or the artist’s sources, and works back either to images produced or relied upon. As a model for a small-scale, thorough, exhibition and publication, this work leavesvery little to be desired.The scale of the enterprise was not gargantuan, but human, and the publication, if not exhaustive and exhausting in pursuit of its materials, presents all that could be wanted by the interested reader. The work should appeal to art historians, critics, students,and above all to the artist wishing to compare hidher own working methods and assumptions with that of Jim Dine. At the price, the book is a handsome bargain considering the lavish use of color and the complete photographic documentation supplied. There is no question but that volumes such as this supply the model by which the entire spectrum of art history could be informed, chapter-by-chapter, with inexpensiveand honest expressions, carried out with obvious zest and concern. Proudhon, Marx, Picasso: Three Studies in the Sociology of Art. Max Raphael. I. Marcuse, transl. Humanities Press, Atlantic Highlands, N.J., 1980. 174 pp. $10.00. ISBN: 0-391-00596-0. Reviewed by Berel Lang** This volume of three independent, although related, essays was first published in French translation in 1933. Like almost all of Raphael’s work, it preceded its public; only since the publication in 1968 of his most systematic theoretical work, The Demands of Art (which itself followed Raphael’s death by 16years), has Raphael’s writing even begun to receive the attention it deserves. The essays collected in this volume underscore this neglect. The themes Raphael develops here, in his analyses of the visual arts and of aesthetics more generally, bear comparison with the most searching and sustained Marxist reflection, and the fact that Raphael accomplished this at a time when most Marxist writers were still tentatively groping for direction and an idiom makes his accomplishment more notable still. *National Museum...