Arts on the Level: The Fall of the Elite Object by Murray Krieger (review)

Books 329 example, one taken at the foot of a lander shows a collection of rocks, the largest of which is about I m across. Craters and volcanoes are sharply detailed, revealing a beautiful but alien place. The book, however, is not intended for the reader casually interested in Mars. It is "aimed at the informed scientific reader. A working knowledge of physics and chemistry and a familiarity with scientific units are assumed. Also assumed is a basic vocabulary of geology, although the use of specialized terms is avoided where possible. Those that might be unfamiliar to most scientists are explained" once. The language is scientific, with infrequent concession to ordinary folk. For example, storm is described as having winds of" I7 m/sec. with gusts up to 26 m/sec.". A translation into earth-based velocities of 61 and 94 km/hr would have been helpful. The pictures are fabulous and for everyone;the text style is that ofdry, graceless scientific paper. Particles and Fields. Readings from Scientific American introduced by William Kaufmann. W. H. Freeman, San Francisco, 1980. 137 pp. illus. Text ed. $17.50. ISBN: 0-7167-1233-4. ISBN: 0-7167-1234-2. Reviewed by Nan Conklin* The ten Scientific American articles in this volume trace the steps in modern research for the ultimate building blocks of matter. The introduction summarizes the individual articles in considerable detail, in some cases with greater clarity than the originals. However, it is impossible to improve the first two articles written in 1953 by the great and articulate physicists, Schrbdinger and Dyson. These 'dated' writings would hardly be expected in a collection of current research publications, but they give a background to current research that is both olympian and comforting to those who learned physics in a less chaotic time. The next two articles (1957 and 1964) continue Kaufmann's plan to show how "the greatest human minds began struggling with the perplexing issues that faced physicists in the 1950s and 1960s." This scheme invites the reader to participate in a real and complex search. However, I soon found it hard going. This is in part due to the unfocused nature of the research discussed. It is difficult to concentrate for much time on the accumulation of elaborate symmetries and properties of a whole 'zoo' of particles. In typical Scientific American style the articles are elaborately illustrated and well edited. A little clarity appears in the article by Drell (1975), written in lucid and graceful prose. It is here that quarks are first discussed. The following sections proceed into the complexities of "colors", "flavors", and "strangeness" of quarks, thought to be the ultimate constituent of matter. In fact, this may be "all you wanted to know" and a bit more. Although there are a few flights into the philosophical implications of the discoveries, this collection primarily represents reviews of work in progress. They require readers willing to apply themselves to understanding some difficult material. For someone newly interested in the subject, I recommend beginning the book with James S. Trefil's article, From Atoms to Quarks. A Seventh Man: A Book of Images and Words about the Experience of Migrant Workers in Europe. John Berger and Jean Mohr. Writers & Readers, London, 1982 (1975 first edition) £2.95. ISBN: 0-686-32051-4. Reviewed by Lucia Adams** This book defies rational analysis, being the inspired manifesto of an inspired amateur. As usual Berger harks back to the pre-positivist world ofinchoate experience and general impressions about life. We find a few facts, some philosophy, some feelings, some vague ideas that sum up the romanticization and alienation of the author. The incarnation of the devil-<:apitalism-<:reates "unfreedom," the general theme of the book. This is illustrated by an amalgam of black-and-white photographs by Jean Mohr of Turks, Croats, and poor peasants from around the world who flee north to man factories and take jobs western Europeans no longer want. The sly canny faces that peer from the pictures simply do not bespeak the misery and horror Berger and Mohr insist that we feel; the uniformly lovely, often serene, faces of uneducated simple people stare at the camera with amusement and the *Clay Road, North Thetford, VT 05053, U.S.A. **535 N. Michigan Avenue, Chicago, IL 60611, U.S.A. inevitable loneliness that accompanies farewells. One is left with a sense ofoptimism that these men and women might be doing the best things to better their economic situation when they eventually return to their native sites. The hagiography English intellectuals often express regarding the "superior virtue of the oppressed" (Russell) is present not only in the photographs but in the marxist harangue accompanying them. We are left with a vague feeling ofenlightenment for experiencing the situations of others. A Seventh Man has little else to offer students and scholars of the visual arts. Another Way of Telling. John Berger and Jean Mohr. 1982. £6.95. Reviewed by Lucia Adams* To depict the lives of mountain peasants through photographs is the avowed purpose of this book, much of which is given over to the competent but unremarkable photographs of Jean Mohr. The authors' narrative and literary intentions outweigh their esthetic concerns. This is the fourth collaboration between John Berger and Jean Mohr, and it is more disjointed and impressionistic than their previous books. Berger's text is a general rumination about photography, encompassing various philosophical enquiries concerning perception, ambiguity, and individuality. It might stimulate photographers to think about what they are doing, but the end result of the exploration is usually trite or incomprehensible. Thus such nonprofundities as, "Appearances both distinguish and join events", and "Appearances also cohere within the mind as perception" pepper the text. Perhaps we are on the brink of a new language of the esthetics of feeling, but it is insufficiently developed to have much value. Another Way of Telling assumes too much knowledge or thoughtfulness on the part of the reader. It is so elliptical in style and conception that it is difficult to respond to in any but the most unthinking way. Arts on the Level: The Fall of the Elite Object. Murray Krieger. Univ. of Tennessee Press, Knoxville, 1981. 71 pp., illus. Cloth, $7.50. ISBN: 087049 -308-6. Reviewed by Hans Brill** Professor Krieger attacks recent approaches to criticism which he feels have tried to 'level' the arts. He asks for a new aesthetic that, while acknowledging some strictures of the 'levellers', will reinstate art to its spec.ial place. The levellers have a pathological need to tear things down and make them 'equal', usually by applying some universal formula that is found to be reductionist, for example, bad political systems can only produce bad art! The professor begins with a pleasing conceit: 'level' is not only a palindrome, but looks flat and dull and is emblematic of its meaning. Art, on the other hand, is dedicated to the exceptional and the elevated: the romantics liked mountains (not the sea?), and Kant showed that art could create its own special reality. Art lies in the realm of disinterestedness, where the art object is free and self-sufficient. But, although free, art is purposive because it seeks form and our formseeking minds respond to art objects with aesthetic judgements. Krieger's discussion of how traditional aesthetics isolate the work of art as an object of value and end up by making a fetish of it leads to the disastrous levellers, at work in various ways. One approach, which might be termed "critics lib", claims that criticism has the same status as imaginative literature. Structuralism treats art as it treats any other activity, as a text for deconstruction. Conceptualism reduces art to the level of undifferentiated flux and experience, as at that antiart gallery, the Beaubourg. Minimalism and its analogues in poetry try to reduce the art object's control over the viewer's responses. Most corrosive of all, egalitarianism argues that if all of society's values are materialistic, art cannot escape: connoisseurship becomes investment-counselling to fulfill the role assigned to art by the socio-economic forces of an acquisitive society. Classless society, on the other hand, needs classless art. Distinctions must be suppressed on moral grounds, and art works with aristocratic connections must be discarded along with their outdated socio-political systems. We cannot accept the masterpieces and reject the systems that produced them. *535 N. Michigan Avenue, Chicago, IL 60611, U.S.A. **Royal College of Art, College Library, Kensington Gore, London SW7, U.K. 330 Books All these movements reject metaphysical values and take art off its pedestal. But they forget the needs of the human imagination. "The desire to create a closed medium, however distorted from the real world, is the definition of the aesthetic mode. Twentieth century art and literature is full of elite and closed forms. The egalitarians are right that this is myth-making, but they only assault the aesthetic object because of their antagonism to the valorizing of the humanly created order." Experience transformed into art creates a higher order which ordinary life will never reach, and this is something levellers do not like. Art is about commitment to order and value which does not have to reflect any given social order and instead can subvert it. It fulfills the mind's desire for closure-the picture frame, proscenium arch, narrative structure, and our sense of ending, of fulfilling expectations, of realizing purposes immanent in the story-and for having form while being open to the formless world. "In the end ... it is the critic's power to lift that art object off the level and to reconstruct it at its full height, that sustains us as it sustains their culture and the uneven arts themselves." The dialogue between art and literary criticism has often been fruitful. It is well worth looking at this book in that light. The professor's worst enemies are not the anonymous horde of levellers but his own involuted style and confused thinking. It seems fairer to paraphrase Krieger's argument than to take issue with it. These lectures, printed on paper designed to last for at least 300 years, are riddled with unsubstantiated generalizations. Although the rationale for the book is other people's ideas, there are almost no references, names, or quotations. Krieger's basically interesting objectives, "to set forth the elitist aesthetic ... against which the anti-elitist programme of levelling has been directed" and "to see the consequences for the contemporary criticism ofthe arts" have to be taken largely on trust. Krieger's heart may well be in the right place, but can one accept these essays as a serious contribution to the continuing battle of Kant versus cant? Your reviewer, for one, can't. Arts in Cultural Diversity. A Selection of Papers presented at the 23rd World Congress of the International Society for Education through Art in conjunction with the 7th Biennial Assembly of the Australian Society for Education through the Arts, Adelaide, Australia, August 1978. Jack Condous, Janferie Howlett and John Skull, eds. Holt, Rinehart & Winston, London, 1980. 292 pp., illus. Paper. ISBN: 003-900234-9. Reviewed by Hans Brill* This congress of art educators assembled teachers from thirty-five countries, including "14 keynote speakers from countries which collectively represented variegated hues and tints in the Mansell colour tree that is the arts." (Could Dr Skull mean the Munsell colour solid which describes colour in hue, chroma, and value and does not deal with tints?) It was obviously a splendid jamboree, and we have here 50 of the 300 papers presented. This souvenir of a congress devoted to the arts in education with a strong bias towards the Commonwealth and the Anglo-Saxon world might be expected to attract few readers. That would be a pity, for this gathering of missionaries and enthusiasts in a large and important field, produced some excellent papers. Well-argued and commendably brief statements of position abound and the keynote speakers do not disappoint. This publication offers a conspectus of the current concerns of art educators. The papers display an emphasis on popular versus fine art, on cultural hegemony versus ethnic art, and, inevitably and rightly, on the role of art in the world today, the importance and influence ofwhich depends to a large extent on art educators. This book demonstrates how seriously they take their responsibilities. It would be invidious to pick out individual contributors, but a particular gem comes from Paul GreenArmitage , writing appropriately enough on colour: "What I have done, in effect, is the same thing as Newton but on a rather larger scale." The scale and enthusiasm of this gathering compels admiration. Space Light-A Holography and Laser Spectacular. Paul Walton, photographs by Roberta Booth. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London. Reviewed by Nancy Gorglione** *Royal College of Art, College Library, Kensington Gore, London SW7, U.K. **L.A.S.E.R., P.O. Box 42083, San Francisco, CA 94101, U.S.A. Current publications on holography, the three-dimensional imaging process based on wave front reconstruction, deal with the technical and scientific implications of the media. Photonic phenomena and mathematical theorems, while illuminating the scientist with the physical attributes of holography, often leave the general public in the dark as to this unique and beautiful new media based on laser light. With the welcome publication of Space Light by Paul Walton, we now have a compact volume on holography and related laser art forms. Beautifully illustrated with color and black-and-white photographs by Roberta Booth, Space Light makes a convincing argument for the recognition of artists working in this twentieth-century art media. With time, the historical overview will lend objectivity to the review of holography and the artists who employ for their creative expression. Quantization of time and the resulting rapid development and use ofthe technology might soon find the public embracing and collecting holographic art as the unique artistic expression of this era. Meanwhile, Walton's impressions of the art and ofthe artists who employ this threedimensional process will guide us. Obviously well researched, Space Light opens with arguments in support of the reexamination "of technology's place in Society", along with easily understood graphics and explanations of the holographic process. A fascinating chapter, designed as background history, contains information on the pioneers of laser development and holography. Parallel development of mass communication and travel have allowed Walton, as an art historian, to examine and record this social phenomenon as it develops. While this necessarily limits the objectivity of time in assessing universal impact and acceptance of holography as a fine art form, it does allow personal communication between the historian and the artists, scientists, and purveyors who have dedicated their lives to the propagation of the media. Beautiful color photographs of works by Rudy Berkhout, Dan Schweitzer, Sam Moree, and others, accompanied by statements by the artists, illuminate the reader with their esthetic intent. Roberta Booth's exceptional photographs help the viewer understand the threedimensional impact of these holograms, an intrinsically difficult feat to achieve in a two-dimensional medium. In several instances multiple views of the holograms portray the strong spectral shift and kinetic visual quality of holography. A different angle often offers the viewer an entirely new, although related, set of imagery. These subtle holographic phenomena are captured to the full extent of photographic capability. Although the size of the book excluded a number of artists who deserve wider recognition, Space Light generally makes a solid case for the fine art qualities of holography. It also provides an index of museums and galleries where holograms can be enjoyed and purchased. A less effective argument about laser scanning (a closely allied medium to holography) as art is also presented. The laser scanning arts represented in Space Light suggest intriguing possibilities, particularly in Geoffrey Rose's Laser Harp, a sound and light sculpture. However, the full-page photograph of Richard Lefrak's laser scanning, featuring a twentieth century Teutonic maiden, complete with snake breast-plates and space-age loin cloth, would be more appropriate in a comic book than in this volume triumphing laser media as fine art. Walton is careful to distinguish between scientific developers and artists working in holography, he admits to some arbitrary categorization, especially in view of essential overlaps between the two disciplines. Space Light instills a deep appreciation for the long hours and financial commitment of those involved in holography. The reader will treasure this book as an essential addition to any contemporary fine arts library. Books by Artists. Tim Guest and Germano Celant. Art Metropole, Toronto, 1981. 128 pp. Reviewed by Richard Kostelanetz• "Artists' books" is an epithet new to art discourse, and what it means or includes is less evident than one might think. Tim Guest, the young Canadian who edited this bilingual book and organized the exhibition accompanying it, defines his subject as "artworks which exist within the formal structure of the book." He describes these as "books which are intended to be artworks in themselves." That seems clear, until the reader discovers that this book, as well as the exhibition, is really about something else-not books as art objects, per se, but creative books made by people with established visual arts reputations. Guest speaks *P.O. Box 73, Canal Street, New York, NY 10013, U.S.A. ...