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PARTISAN REVIEW
the arts into the Imaginary Museum suggests to us that all art is an
order; that destiny is vanquished in proportion as things are reduced to _
the human-when the world loses its autonomy." To this central thesis
of his book, Malraux returns again and again from different angles, with
a desperate reiteration that indicates the emotional importance he at–
taches to it; but there is no point in dealing at length with the minor
variations he plays on this theme. Let us, in concluding this section, sim–
ply quote one of his strongest professions of faith in art, where he
daringly gives it religious rank. "The discovery of art, as in every con–
version, is the rupture of an anterior relation between man and the
world. Creators and amateurs, all those for whom art exists, that is, all
those who can be as sensitive to forms created by it as to the most mov–
ing of mortal forms, are distinguished by their faith in a special power of
man. They devalue the real as the Christian world devalued it, and as
every religious world does. And like the Christians, they devalue it by
their faith in a privilege, by the hope tha t man,. and not chaos, carries in
himself the source of his eternity."
III
Along with the ideas outlined above, there is another current
of thought in Malraux which, for a time, accompanies them, providing
a menacing undertone to the clear note of joy sounded about modern
art. This undertone, which has to do with the influence of primitivism,
is abruptly dropped just at the point where it might come into embar–
rassing conflict with Malraux's contention that modern art is controlled
only by a functional value- the pure, transforming nature of art it–
self-rather than by any extra-aesthetic value springing from the sub–
stance of modern culture. Malraux is too honest a mind, too unremitting
a sensibility, to disregard the primitive influences on modern art. He
writes about this "barbaric Renaissance," as he graphically calls it, with
unforgettable expressiveness, and with a full consciousness of the under–
world of passion and terror in which primitive art has its roots. Yet he
shrinks--or so it seems to me-from trying to test the possible meaning
of this influence against his own theory of modern art; and prefers, in–
stead, to let it quietly drop out of sight. Still, before doing so, he tells
us enough to reveal the contradiction he no doubt sensed but refused
to grapple with-the contradiction between the extra-aesthetic values
of primitive art, and the belief that modern art, strongly influenced by
the primitives, obeys only an aesthetic imperative.
Malraux makes his most telling point against himself when he
