A
METAPHYSIC OF MODERN ART
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all, the artists of the Renaissance did more than merely revive Greco–
Roman forms: they brought to them a new sense of the inner life of the
spirit, the result of the Christian centuries, which gave these forms an
individual poignancy they had never possessed before. Similarly, modem
artists a re using dehumanized styles-essentially the styles of anonymous
collectivities- to express a rampant individualism that gives them an
entirely new character. Yet this is quite different from saying that the
extra-aesthetic values of these styles have had no part in their influence.
In comparing Greek art with the Near Eastern styles that preceded
it, Malraux writes, in a distinction reminiscent of Worringer: "The art
of the world reduced to the earth finds its greatest force in its accord
with man ; the art of the world of eternity and destiny finds this in its
disaccord with man- in stylization." Modem art thus is based on a
"disaccord with man," or, to use Wilhelm Worringer's description of
dehumanized styles, a dualism between man and nature. Out of this
dualism springs a need for an absolute source of values, which, as
Worringer explains in
Abstraktion und Einfuhlung,
find s expression in
a dehumanized, abstract style. H erbert Read, the best informed writer
in English on modem aesthetics, has accepted Worringer's theory as
the "only one that accounts at all adequately for the geometric, abstract
nature of various types of art" ; and in an epilogue written in 1947 to
his book
A rt Now,
Read adds: "The humanistic tradition which has
prevailed in Europe for four centuries has not only declined: it is dead.
. . . Art, in this respect, is merely fulfilling its mirroring function."
Modern art, then, has rejected the anthropomorphic values of the
Greco-Roman and Renaissance tradition because modem culture, after
a lapse of centuries, is once more troubled by "the world of eternity
and destiny"; and this is why the dehumanized stylizations of primitive
and transcendental art occupy such a prominent place in the Imaginary
Museum.
IV
A criticism of Malraux's book confined to this level, how–
ever, would fail to touch the vital nerve of his thought, the powerful
metaphysical urgency that is at the root of his concern for art. It is easy
enough to point out his inconsistencies; somewhat more difficult to show
whence they arise; h ardest of all to explain why one must honor him for
championing the very doctrine that is the source of his intellectual con–
fusion. For at the center of this book is not a rational construction but a
burning faith-Malraux's belief that art, as a pure function in itself, has
