PARTISAN REVIEW
to escape the ambiguities of pure thought, where can a man find a
norm excluding sheer "folly" except
in
a zone intermediary between
truth and dream,
in
a sense of quality suggested not by any abstract
idea but by a pattern of images: a plastic form of some sort?
This
is the sense in which one can speak of aestheticism, in
Malraux. He is too keenly aware of the implications of his own atti–
tude to see in action anything but the occasion of a struggle whose
motives must be those that are most avowable
in
human history:
cultural values and qualities. Qualities and values are what is at stake
in action. Their meaning, however, lies beyond its sphere, and can be
found only in the forms which visibly express it: the forms of art,
man's supreme "conquest." Because art appears to him the highest
form of action, Malraux cannot avoid seeing the ultimate intent
of his enterprise mirrored in the world of artistic forms as in a strange–
ly baroque frieze illustrating the
battle
between Man and Destiny.
Malraux's latest work is
The Imaginary Museum.
The book
expresses Malraux at his best. It is a unique attempt to reinterpret
the whole history of art from the point of view of modern art and
its effort to come to
grips
with the world outside of all conventions
and canons. It is impossible to summarize the wealth of dazzling
aperfUS
and bold generalizations which make of
this
volume a kind
of extraordinary intellectual rhapsody. One can only isolate from it
the dominant theme, which is the ambiguity of modern man as re–
flected
in
his artistic adventure. On one side, Malraux sees in the
modem artist "the will to submit everything to his style, beginning
with the rawest object, and the barest. His symbol
is
The Chair,
by
Van Gogh." On the other side, this will to control the given, and to
impose on the world of appearances the rigor of style, reveals itself
to
be
a demonic
will
to destroy all forms rather than yield to the
deceitful seduction of external appearances: "The artists know how
false has become any accord of man with himself (and with the
world) .... The accord of man with himself has become
the
lie, the
infamy that must be crushed. From Cezanne to the surrealists, the
modem painter is a fanatic. . . . (The artists) look for
all
sorts of
worlds except the one that is imposed on them."
Because of a profound need for truth and authentic expression,
art has ceased to be a representation of the external world submitted
to
the canons of the "ideal beauty." The disappearance of the world,
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