PREFACE
Coming to terms with modern culture can be an uneasy confrontation, both for the novice and for the initiate. Through a series of noble encounters between the artist and the work of art on the one hand, and the viewer, reader, or listener on the other, enlightenment comes slowly. In matters of art and understanding,
yesterday's excitement may become tomorrow's tedium. Traditionally, even the brightest student proceeds by indirection, by picking up what he can when he can, by crises of misunderstand-incr. or by some kind of contemplative exercise—say, the long stare, which has, if nothing else, the august sanction of the ancient Chinese sage Lao-tze. In the end, however, the student becomes 1 different—and hopefully a better—person for his encounter with the arts, whatever its nature.
And vet, each day, study in the areas of the arts and
humanites becomes more difficult. Materials pile up. Where classical certainty once existed, doubt now prevails, both as to what constitutes the proper material for art and what ways of handling
se materials are acceptable. In an increasingly complex world, no matter how handsome to the eye and satisfying to the other senses. there are also increasing occasions for despair. Can one ever understand what the world is about, what art is about, and
man's place is in relation to both?
In the face of these admitted difficulties, this book does not :resume to answer such spacious questions. It intends only to make the reader's confrontation with his heritage and his mediate environment more stimulating and enlightening. No book can provide a substitute for the experience of art, but these essays
suggest useful directions and help to minimize misunderstandings and to deepen the student's perception while educating his taste. This, obviously, is no modest undertaking.
Beyond these generalities, the text also attempts to raise issues central to the arts in our time. The major questions seem to us to
asked—and a great many minor ones as well. We suggest no
doctrinaire answers and neither do our authors, save by
It is. as it always has been, more valuable to examine many
of thinking and feeling and performing in the arts and the humanities than it is to suggest any single way as the only correct
By careful design, then, this volume brings together an uncom-
.
CONTENTS
Preface ix
SECTION 1 ART AND AUDIENCE
Oscar Wilde The Decay of Lying
Sean O'Casey The Arts Among the Multitude
E. M. Forster Art for Art's Sake
Andre Malraux Art, Popular Art, and the Illusion of the Folk
Jose Ortega y Gasset The Dehumanization of Art
Randall Jarrell A Sad Heart at the Supermarket
Abraham Kaplan The Aesthetics of the
Popular Arts
SECTION 2 THE WAY OF MUSIC
Constant Lambert The Appalling Popularity of Music
John Cage Experimental Music: Doctrine
Aaron Copland How We Listen
Igor Stravinsky The Performance of Music
Barry Ulanov What Is Jazz?
Roger Sessions The Listener
Stuart Hall and The Young Audience
Paddy W hannel
SECTION 3 THE EYE OF A MAN: PAINTING AND SCULPTURE
E. H. Gombrich Meditations on a Hobby Horse
or the Roots of Artistic Form
Wassily Kandinsky Concerning the Spiritual in Art
Clement Greenberg Avant-Garde and Kitsch
Henry Moore Notes on Sculpture
Piet Mondrian Plastic Art and Pure Plastic Art
Paul Klee The Shaping Forces of the Artist Richard Lippold Illusion as Structure
SECTION 4 THE WORD ARTS: THE NOVEL
Henry James The Future of the Novel
Joyce Cary The Artist and the World
Jose Ortega y Gasset Decline of the Novel
George Orwell Raffles and Miss Blandish
Andrew Hook Commitment and Reality
Alain Robbe-Grillet A Future for the Novel
SECTION 5 THE WORD ARTS: POETRY
Mark Van Doren What Is a Poet?
Paul Valery Pure Poetry: Notes for a Lecture
I. A. Richards Poetry and Beliefs
TV. H. Auden Making, Knowing, and Judging
Dylan Thomas Notes on the Art of Poetry
Wallace Stevens The Relations Between Poetry
and Painting
SECTION 6 THEATRE AND DANCE
George Bernard Shaw The Problem Play
A Symposium
Bertolt Brecht Theatre for Learning or Theatre for Pleasure
Jean Giraudoux The Eternal Law of the Dramatist
Tyrone Guthrie An Audience of One
Dame Sybil Thorndike I Look at the Audience
Martin Esslin The Theatre of the Absurd
Merce Cunningham Space, Time, and Dance
Mary Wigman Composition in Pure Movement
SECTION 7 TELEVISION, MOTION PICTURES, AND PHOTOGRAPHY
Marshall McLuhan The Medium Is the Message
John Lardner Thoughts on Radio-Televese
Henry Steele Comanager Television: The Medium in
Search of Its Character
Arnold Hauser Can Movies Be "Profound"?
Robert Warshow The Gangster as Tragic Hero
Edgar Morin The Case of James Dean
John Szarkowski The Photographer's Eye
SECTION 8 THE DESIGN ARTS: ADVERTISING TO ARCHITECTURE
William Morris A Factory as It Might Be
George Nelson The Designer in the
Modern World
The Dead-End Room
Jane Jacobs Landmarks
1. AL Pei The Nature of Urban Spaces
Jacques Barzun Myths for Materialists
Leslie A. Fiedler The Comics: Middle Against
Both Ends
John A. Kouwenhoven What Is "American" in Architecture and Design?
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