The Painted Message by Otto Billig and B. G. Burton (review)

164 Books Thus, it will be seen that the geographical scope of the book is far wider than French Symbolism. But, again, one can resort to the argument that the term Symbolism as used in art history is distinct from the term French Symbolist Movement, and covers a whole, very important new direction in Europe of visual and verbal art towards the end of the 18th-century. Its meaning becomes clearer when the breadth of its effect is grasped. It is a turning inwards to the 'inner man', as Kandinsky described it. Mainly, it is a return to introspection, to an emotional content in art, after the unquestioning Naturalism and Rationalism of the impressionists in France and, more or less, of naturalists in other European countries. Gauguin, Redon and Munch emerge as the key figures (Goldwater wrote often of Gauguin). I find the discussion of Klimt less successful, because the decorative quality of his pictures is emphasized at the expense of content, with which it is so closely interwoven, even to the extent that decorative motifs are themselves highly charged symbols. Seurat, on the other hand, is analyzed well, and his potential opposition to Symbolism due to his basic reliance on scientific and materialist ideas derived from those of Henry is brought out. The book is divided into chapters thematically, thus avoiding a dry list of important names and uniting very different artists through common cause. It is a pity that the sketch of Goldwater's final chapters was not published. Perhaps it would have suggested the importance of Symbolism for the 20th-century and for the beginning of non-figurative or abstract art. Kandinsky and Mondrian, amongst others, could be said to owe a great deal to Symbolism in its wider context. But, as far as it goes. it is an intelligent and discerning book. It contains many points that are contentious, but none for which there is not reasonable defence. It is well illustrated in monochrome, and at a reasonable price is most welcome. Creative Man: Five Essays. Erich Newmann. Eugene Rolf. trans, Princeton Univ. Press, 1979. 264 pp. $17.00. ISBN 0-69109944 -8. Reviewed by Michael Knausz* These posthumously published essays by Neumann (Jungs student. associate and friend) are about the persons and works of Kafka, Chagall, Trakl, Freud and Jung. Each is interesting-full of insights and anecdotes-within a Jungian interpretative framework. No sustained development of the Jungian view about creativity is directly offered, and so the analyses of the works of these men is mostly illustrative. Neumann says of the analytic approach, 'it is the coordination of archetypally conditioned phases of development which enables us to distinguish what is "progressive" and what is "regressive", what is to be regarded as healthy and what as sick in the context of normal human development. This genetic approach makes it possible for us to realize how the unity of the trans personal and the personal dimensions produces the unique fate of a human individual' (p. 141). He thinks that a sufficiently rich account of the transpersonal and personal dimension will yield a causal explanation of an individual's condition. Yet the transpersonal dimension (characteristically expressed in the vocabulary of anima and animus) is so highly abstract as to make it doubtful whether an objective check on interpretive mistakes is available. Here the temptation to describe the personal dimension in terms that easily coalesce with the transpersonal is difficult to avoid. When such valuative notions as progressive/regressive, healthy/sick and normal/ abnormal are involved, the consequences of such questionbegging are the more significant. This is a problem for one who desires a critical evaluation of the method. But, for that the reader should look more to Neumann's, Art and the Creative Unconscious, [Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1974J to which these essays are a sequel. Women Artists of the Arts and Crafts Movement 1870-1914. Anthea Callen. Pantheon, New York, 1979.232 pp., illus. Paper, $10.95. ISBN 0-394-50667-7. Reviewed by Naomi Boretz* *4702 Mansion si., Philadelphia. PA 19127, U.S.A. **15 Southern Way. Princeton. NJ 08540. U.S.A. Comprehensive, wide-ranging in source, punctilious in documentation and scholarly in approach...