100 Artists 100 Years (review)

Books 253 What could count as an answer? Clark is sensitive to these problems and, as a consequence, talks as if he does not wish to engage in a theoretical approach to them. He sidesteps the approach by focussing on actual examples of masterpieces. But the question raised in the book is essentiallytheoretical, and this issue cannot be sidestepped effectively. What warrants the initial choice of masterpieces? Clark’s examples range from Raphael’s ‘The School of Athens’ to Velazquez’s ‘Las Meninas’ to Breughel’s ‘Christ Carrying the Cross’to Watteau’s ‘Embarcation for the Island of Cythera’ to Rembrandt’s ‘The Night Watch’ to Picasso’s ‘Guernica’. I cannot fault Clark for including these artworks. But I fault him for excluding other examples. He does not include a single masterpiece that is not figurative and representional in style. Picasso’s ‘Woman with a Guitar’ is the closest he comes to nonrepresentationism. Evidently, he does not think any masterpieces in the categories of highly abstract and of nonfigurative painting were produced in the 20th century. In the summary paragraph of this little book Clark says: ‘Although many meaningscluster round the word masterpiece,it isabove all the work of an artist geniuswho has been absorbed by the spirit of the time in a way that has made his individual experiencesuniversal. If he is fortunate enough to live in a time when many moving pictorial ideas are current, his chances of creating a masterpiece are greatly increased. If, to put it crudely, the acceptable subjects of painting are serious themes, touching us at many levels, he is well on his way. But in the end a masterpiece will be the creation of his own genius.’ Nowhere does Clark indicate what counts asa ‘serioustheme’. Nor does he indicate what are the pertinent levels at which a masterpiece must touch its viewers. It seems that one is still left with the possibility of subjectivity in whose ‘coffin’ Clark is so anxious to drive ‘one more nail’. The Spirit of Surrealism. Edward B. Henning. Indiana Univ. Press, Bloomington, IN, 1979.186pp., illus. $29.95.Reviewedby Peter Fingesten. Part of the endless fascination with Surrealism is its collision between the strictly visual and the strong verbal aspects of the symbology employed, which has deep roots in psychology, ’ mythology and the most private dreams and fantasies of artists. Laymen are taken mostly by its visual aspects, whilecriticstry to penetrate deeper to uncover its hidden layers. Henning’s book is a lavish hardcover exhibition catalogue. It lends permanency to a relativelyshort-lived loan exhibit entitled The Spirit of Surrealism, held at the ClevelandMuseum of Art, 3 October to 25 November 1979. The mounting interest among museums, galleries and critics in Surrealism is not only expressiveof historical interest, but also of a certain nostalgia in the spirit of freedom that animated it. During its heroic period, it held center stagefor challengingthe forcesof reaction from art to morals and politics. Many are endlessly attracted to these exhilarating forays into the aesthetics of the subconscious that could produce such lastingly beautiful objects. This in itself proves the validity and genuiness of Surrealism. The challenge Henning faced was to present new insights. He used the philosophic scaffoldingof Structuralism. Indeed, it gave his book an additional clarity of viewpoint, organization and description. Logicallyenough, he starts with Dadaism and some of its leading artists (Arp, Man Ray, Schwitters), each with a short but authoritative, illustrated essay. Healsoreachesback to Redon, Gauguin, Rousseau and Chirico. Among the spiritual fathers (direct and indirect), he cites not only Rimbaud, Jarry and LautrCamont but also Hegel, Kant and Marx. I found his expositions crystal clear. More text and illustrations are dedicated to masters: Ernst, Mirb, Masson, Magritte, Tanguy, Klee, Picasso, Giacommetti and Delvaux. An interesting chapter on the New York School of Surrealists concludes this book with fine illustrated discussions of Gorky, Matta, Pollock, Barziotes, Motherwell and Cornell. *145 East 26th Street, Apt. 5C, New York, NY 10010,US A. I recommend the book to Leonardo readers as an intelligent presentation of the major artistswho are responsiblefor this style and the intellectual forces underlying it. The book is asuseful as pleasing a contribution to the growing contemporary literature...