454
PARTISAN REVIEW
to the same causes as the failure of most official democratic art to
date,-thc reactionary orientation of the system to begin with. Under
present conditions it is possible to produce good work only in com·
parati\·e privacy. A truly free
soci~ty
would have to be orientated
differently,-for this reason all artists look forward to it; and then
perhaps they will no longer have to be "let alone". Read pins his
hopes for the future on what he describes as a sort of "guild socialism."
My divergence from Read's standards of quality can perhaps be
shown by quoting such pronouncements as the following: "if an
object is made of appropriate materials to an appropriate design ...
it is
automatically
a work of art. ... When the profit system has to
place function before it, as in the production of an aeroplane or
racing·car, it also inevitably produces a work of art." Now I admit
that a handsome automobile is far more impressive than most products
of the contemporary art·market. But a truly distinguished painting
{which is and always has been a rarity) betrays an indefinable imprint
that for me transcends the
expre~sive
range of any machine·made,
functional organism. As in all esthetic matters, Time will probably
provide the test; in a number of years our beautiful bombers may well
look out·moded and not a little silly. I attribute Read's fondness for
surrealist pictures (so many are as devoid of the sensitive touch as a
racing·car) to his denial of this qualitative distinction between art and
machinery. However, in another section he maintains "that there is a
sense in which art is expression and not merely making"; and he does
differentiate surrealism, which echoes the break·up of our disease·rid–
den, capitalist world, from abstraction,-a true revolutionary expres–
sion, that is keeping the essentials of art alive through a critical period.
Samuel Kootz, in his analysis of modern art·currents in America,
plunges with unbounded confidence upon a heroli.c undertaking. The
subject turns out to be even larger than his title indicates; for, as our
cultural movements are based on what took place in Europe during
the last half-century, Kootz gives considerable space to "ancestors",
from Cezanne to the cubists and their heirs. A further chapter is
devoted to the
ti~ly
task of "exposing" painters who are not modern
in any sense, but which the 'museums put forward as such; this is to
my mind the liveliest portion of the volume, for the author convincingly
ties the "American scene" school to other nationalistic revivals that
sprouted throughout the world in the wake of the depression. I liked,
too, his debunking of eclectic moderns such as Weber, Hartley, and
Kuhn.
The remainder of the text is given over to such "advanced" painters
as are most active in America today. Kaotz has organized them ac–
cording to tendencies and the result forms a sort of appraisal-sheet; he
tells why each artist succeeds or fails, and gives reasons. There is no
