138
HAROLD ROSENBER6
But is it as a poor substitute that the public of the art book ac·
cepts the work in it? Or is the "imaginary museum" of reproduc.
tions more suited to its tastes and its needs than the original paint.
ings and sculptures?
In addition to dispensing with the time, cost and fatigue
in·
volved in tracking down individual creations, art-book art has one
overwhelming advantage over the artist's product:
it
appears in
12
context of knowledge.
A book on Piranese or Matisse, on Zen washes or Szechwan
reliefs, "covers" its subject or a defined portion of it. Through it
you have not only "seen" Piranese, you have "placed" him, once
for all. Aided by text, chronology, bibliography, lists of major
works, you know more; perhaps most important, you know what
you know. "
Looking at paintings will not guarantee an equivalent mental
gain. On the contrary, suggesting an infinity of creations, with end·
less possibilities of discovery in each, the direct experience of
art
contributes a lively sensation of Ignorance.
It seems to me that the current vogue of art books arises from
an appetite for knowledge which the book is better suited to
satisfy
than are art works themselves. It coincides with the emergence of
art as a branch of learning and as a source of data for other
branches of learning. Images in paint, metal, stone, have been made
objects of investigation by historians, anthropologists, psychiatrists.
He who has learned how to
read
a work of art will find in it valu·
able matter about individuals and societies. On the other hand, he
who depends, as his grandfather might have done, on the normal
processes of his social environment to introduce him to the paint.
ings
arid sCulptures that form part of his culture will end
with
neither art nor knowledge.
'This is another way of saying that art has become part of "lan–
guage"; it is a writing of sorts; and there is a growing difficulty
in
detaching the work from meanings of a literary and theoretical
order. A painting now seems
to belong
in
a book, instead of
in
its
hiding place on a ceiling or in the gloom of a cathedral.
1
Pressed for disclosures by the social and historical sciences,
art
I
