Daphnis and Chloe by Longus (review)

254 Books visual arts in the U.S.A. Intimations of the importance of the School and of the Institute to Chicago and to the States of the middle west pervade articles by Donald J. Irving, Director of the School, by Norman L. Rice, Dean from 1938 to 1943, and by Katherine Kuh, gallery owner, writer on art and Curator of Modern Painting at the Institute until 1959. For example, Irving notes that the Institute took its character from the business men and industrialists who ‘in their businesses strove aggressively to shape and develop the most advanced, often high-risk, endeavors , while in their cultural lives they sought traditional values, the ideal, the established’. Kuh gives another facet to the same issue when she remarks: ‘Compared to the late nineteenthand early twentieth-centuryartists of the Eastern seaboard,those trained at the Art Institute may seem more conservative, less experimental, more deliberately moored to accepted practices. Yet at the same time Chicago was burgeoning lustily, its freewheeling profile aggressive and raw. ... It is curious that writers and builders were able to accept the exuberance of the city, incorporating it creatively in their work, while artists were not.’ Perhaps a celebratory catalogue is not appropriate for illuminating this sort of history, yet, having presented the thought, might not one as well go on with it?The cultural history of this region cannot be reduced to simple contrasts of business and architectural venturesomeness to conservative painting and sculpture. Such a polarity does not sufficiently take intoaccount the vigor of such phenomena as regionalism, which used a jingoist, calendar realism for darkly humorous fantasies-cataclysmic threat and violence under the guise of small-town and farm scenery and familiar events like baptisms and school truancy. Nor does it make a connection between this curiously surrealistic genre of work and the startlingly necrophilic, realistic works of Ivan LeLorraine Albright, the outrageous carpentries of H. C. Westerman and the things like cigaret butts and toothpaste tubes that serve as subjects for Claes Oldenburg. Most of the more than 50 illustrations are in black and white, but are of a size that enables readers to get some idea of surfaces and fine details. The order in which they are arranged is a visual gain but a historical continuity loss, although the selection of works does not actually represent any clear continuity. The captions are helpful, but one misses the dates of the connection of artists with the Institute and whether they were at the School as students or teachers or both. This catalogue, which is good enough to elicit the query Why not more? Why not better? is probably a casualty of the reduced personnel and budgets currently besetting art programs and institutions in the U.S.A. The Institute, its School and the artists are a suitable subject for a fully documented, well-illustrated book by a historian of art and of culture in the U.S.A. The Apocalyptic Vision: The Art of Franz Marc as German Expressionism. Frederick S. Levine. Harper and Row, London, 1979. 200 pp.. illus. €9.95. Reviewed by John F. Molftt. I found Levine’s book a most welcome contribution to the still unfolding study of German Expressionism. In fact, he is so persuasive in his supple arguments and wide-ranging documentation as to make me (one who admits to a dislike for much of the more primitivistic crudities associated with this violent style) desirous to reappraise my previous position in regard to German visual art of the early 20th century. Although the subtitle is rather misleading, suggesting that readers will gain knowledge of the wide spectrum of variations and attitudes encompassed under the sweeping rubric of Expressionism, the author only in detail deals with Franz Marc, a painter whom I find one of the more attractive and thoughtful artists associated with the style through the Munich Blue Rider (DerBlaue Reiter) Group, which was formed in 1912. I regard the works of this Group as more aesthetically appealing (due, I think, to their knowledge of developments in French painting of the time) than those of the other German groups (in Dresden, The Bridge (Die Briicke) Group, founded in 1905, and...