The Public Arts: Print

PRINT
The distinguished English critic, Sir Herbert Read, has gathered some seventy essays representing every phase of his critical activity (art, literature, philosophy, and political theory) over the past fifteen years as A Coat of Many Colours (Horizon Press, 224 W. 42nd, NYC, $3.75). The title suggests the richness and diversity of the book: on literature--Henry James, George Herbert, William Morris, Coleridge, Shelley, Milton, James Joyce, Hawthorne, Hopkins, Walter De La Mare, Wordsworth, D. H. Lawrence, and T. E. Hulme; on art--Klee, Cezanne, Bosch and Dali, Ben Nicholson, Henri Rousseau, Toulouse-Lautrec, Ruskin, Picasso, Roger Fry, Seurat, Leonardo, and Rouault, in addition to several general essays, such as art and the people, primitive art, art and war, art and ethics; Etruscan, Indian, and Chinese art; and socialist realism.

There are a number of reasons why this book can provide the teacher who is trained in literature but weak on the plastic arts a splendid perspective on all the arts. For one, Read has a coherent and clear point of view that combines an intellectual awareness of Marx and Freud with a fundamental faith in the primacy of the sensuous in art. He also shows how logical and important it is to use one's knowledge of tradition to provide a critical perspective on technological arts. Indeed, the most rewarding essays for me personally were those in this area: "The Architect's Place in Modern Society," "Machine Aesthetic," "The Poet and the Film," and "Film Aesthetic."

The very fact that most of these essays were casual, if not journalistic, in nature is a decided advantage for a person approaching serious consideration of the non-verbal arts for the first time; for they do not require much background, and the pleasure derived from reading them will lead one to Read's more difficult and systematic books.

If my remarks last month on John Marin did not convince you of the relevance of visual art to the teaching of language, let the more persuasive Read try: "Art is a language, and though we may at first need the symbols of our written language to initiate us into its secrets, essentially it is a language with its own symbols, and it cannot be properly understood unless we learn to read these symbols directly, with our eyes."

Print pries open our eyes; that is the function of criticism, and that is why our new anthologies should begin to print essays like these. Until publishers oblige us in this way, we shall have to be content to bring Read to our students second-hand, by our own reading of essays like "The Poetry and Prose of Painting" and "The Language of the Eye." Read at least those two essays if you don't have time for the whole book. If you do that much, you'll find time for the rest of it.