Goya: The Origins of the Modern Temper in Art by Fred Licht (review)

Books 77 generally understood, but to a technical usage within Kant's philosophy. In five chapters he presents a revisionary view of Kant's 'transcendental aesthetic'. He stresses repeatedly that Kant's concepts often have not been rightly understood in their historical context by prior writers who have dealt with them Work~ng from that context, Smyth suggests new readings revealing more compelling interpretations of them than some others have found. Smyth's arguments appear to be careful and persuasive. However, I do not have sufficient familiarity with Kant's concepts to evaluate them as a Kant scholar would. , This is. not a book on intuition in general, neither is it an introduction to Kant's corpus. Those who wish such an intro.duction would do well to seek it elsewhere. Moreover, despite such phrases as 'transcendental aesthetic' the author has nothing particular to say about the arts. It is a highly technical treatise, a seemingly careful and innovative piece of scholarship for specialists. Art in the Seventies. Edward Lucie-Smith. Phaidon Press, Oxford, 1980. 128 pp., iIlus., £5.50. Reviewed by LeGrace G. Benson* This book, I believe, will almost certainly become an important doc~ment. Lucie-~mithhas taken on the useful but risky task of sortmg out the pieces of a decade in which there were many amorphous and often ephemeral 'isms' without the clear boundaries, say, of Courbet's Realism or of Marinetti's Futurism. With aforehand caveats concerning the fluidity and overlapping of the categories under which he discusses selected artworks of this decade, he has attempted to place some order and reach some lucidity of statement about a body ofworks that may, upon historical reflection, be seen to be fully idiosyncratic and ineffably murky. Although it is not hard to tell that the book was written from a British point ofview, he does make an attempt to call attention to art~orks produced, for example, in the People's Republic of China, eastern European countries, Japan, India and a scattering of 'Third World' countries. From my (U.S.A.) point of view this is refreshing, as much art writing in my country tends to be confined to the art world of New York City. His book properly reflects worldwide cultural diffusion and, to some extent, homogenization of the visual arts that has been developing over a number of decades. Some believe that Rome, Paris, Berlin, London and New York City, although still art-market centers, are no longer the cultural capitals they once were. He does not discuss this directly, but such thoughts occurred to me as I read and looked at this responsibly selected overview. More directly, he does deal with the lack of an esthetic or of an idealogical center and the probable dissolution and disappearance of what some have called the 'avant-garde'. He refers to 'the abolition of the dialogue of styles, and its replacement by something infinitely more complex, yet in many ways much closer to the concerns of ordinary life ... .', claiming that 'the artists of the 70's, sometimes without fully meaning to do so, have overturned a whole system of categories'. His chapter headings and subsections are almost guidelines for the changing order of things, using for them the previous categories of Abstract Art and Figurative Painting side by side with HighTech , Kinky and Ecological Art. A category like Feminist Art gives him both a puzzle of fittingness and an opportunity to demonstrate how problematic any of the categories really are. Those who follow the art world closely will think of good artists who could have been selected but were not and would want to exclude some who were included, but this is a matter of personal taste. I think that the selection here is reasonable and fair, providing a substantial starting point for a reflective assessment of what happened in the difficult era of the 1970s. *Empire State College, Public Affairs Center, 50 Wolf Road, Room 200, Albany, NY 12205, U.S.A. Goya: The Origins of the Modern Temper in Art. Fred Licht. Uni~erse Books, New York, 1979. 288 pp., illus, $16.50. Reviewed by Nicholas Orsini* Licht believes that Goya was an artist whose...