Triad Optical Illusions and How to Design Them by Harry Turner (review)

342 Books establishment values he has no peer. But, as an apologist for a refined brand of cultural imperialism, he stands for the worst as well as the best that Britain’s elite can offer. Ironically, his popularity seemsoften to exist in inverseratio to the social status ofhisviewers,a fact that has outraged the Left intelligentsia. One of these, John Berger, even produced his own TV series as a Marxian antidote to Clark. Clark regards such things with a wry, sad bemusement that his antagonists take for smug condescension. One of the genuinely touching things about Clark is his awesome immunity to awareness of the impression he makes. Both volumes of his ‘selfportrait ’ contain hilariously poignant anecdotes concerning this infirmity. Friends, fondly remembered, reveal in memoirs that they in Fact despised him for a conceited prig. And one naval officer actually refused to accept Clark’s identity, saying, ‘Sir Kenneth Clark is a fearful shit; everybodysays so’.An only child who grew up shy of groups, Clark appears aloof and supercilious to those more impressed by him than he is with himself. TheOther Halfopens on the Battle of Britain of World War I1 and ends with his television performances. Clark gives us informative and diverting reports, and he never takes credit when he can give it to another. Yet, despite all, he is a sometimes too candid gossip with a good deal to say about prominent people, some of them still living. In similar ways he speaks of art. His opinions are sometimes unorthodox and always provocative. What puzzles Clark is why others take them seriously. The answer isobvious. It isbecause he takes his subjectmore seriously than he does himself. A History of British Wood Engraving. Albert Garrett. Midas Books. Tunbridge Wells, Kent, England, 1978. pp. 407, illus. €60.00. Reviewed by Stephen Calloway* With the return to smaller figurative work in contemporary printmaking and painting and with the tremendous revival of interest in thecrafts, the appearance of a book devoted to English wood-engraving seems timely. The development of the English school of wood-engraving can. with some justification, be treated as one continuous story from Bewick at the turn of the 18th century to the present day, and it is in this form that Garrett, who isboth a practising woodengraver and an historian of his craft, has elected to present his material. The story is punctuated by an overwhelming array of 400 illustrations, which though carefully chosen to complement the text, remain irritatingly out of step with it. The treatment of the main subject of the work, British woodengraving , is prefaced by an introductory study of the early history of the graphic processes, especiallyin the German lands in the late 15th and early 16thcenturies. Whilst informative and helpful in explaining technique, this section occupies 92 pages at the beginning of the book and is overlong. The discussion of the earliest printing from engraved blocks in China is pertinent and would bear further examination. Much less satisfactory, however , is the brief excursus on the origins of engraving in the Paleolithiccaveart of Europe. Eventhose who share the author’s ideas about the Dordogne crucible of civilisation will find this theme out of place in the present book. The main body of the text and the illustrations present a wide selection of the work of British wood-engravers. The illustrations . which with only a few exceptions are well reproduced, will provide a valuable visual anthology, particularly of the period of the wood-cut revival in the period between the two World Wars. Many old favourites and some more obscure items are included, and most accepted masters of the genre are represented by characteristic examples. Unfortunately, the illustrations have been cropped to show only the depiction, and thus the artists’ inscriptions and signatures do not appear. These would have enhanced the value of the book immensely as a source of reference. and it seems a pity that in such a lavish production this last refinement should have been missed. In the text the author has attempted to gather together an enormous amount of material (factual, theoretical and anec- *Dept. of Prints and Drawings, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, S.W.7, England...