ART AND PAINTING

Evening Star, Issue 23130, 2 December 1938, Page 10

ART AND PAINTING

PUBLIC LIBRARY’S DISPLAY Hendrik Willem Van Loon has written on the history of the arts a book .which has been universally praised, The Arts of Mankind.’ It is a book in which the painters, architects, and musicians who had imagination and .vigour to match the vitality of their race and their civilisation are prepresented to the reader. Van Loon is not a specialist, but an intelligent and absorbed layman who urges the more general practice and understanding of .the arts by the ordinary layman. To the amateur he gives the warning, 1 Keep this fact in mind: In the arts [(just as in Nature) there are no shortcuts. Success is not a matter of inspiration, but a matter of patience, and more patience, and then still more patience.”Another book is Herbert Read’s ‘ Art and Society,’ which sets out to illustrate the nature of tho links between the form of society at any given time and the forms of the contemporary society. ’ Mr Read suggests that art is not just a by-product of society, but rather one of the original and vital elements which go to form a society. Beginning with the function of art in a primitive society, _ this theme is developed through higher and more complex forms of society. Other hooks included in the display which the Public Library is making during the period of the exhibition of the Art Society are Clive Bell’s ‘ Art,’ John Dewey’s 1 Art As Experience,’ Eric Gill’s ‘ Art,’ Roger Fry’s ‘ Vision and Design.’ O’Neill’s ‘ Relation of Art to Life.’ Plekhanov’s ‘ Art and Society,’ Read’s ‘ Meaning of Art,’ Eric Gill’s ‘Beauty Looks After Herself,’ Grigson’s ‘ Arts To-day,’ Upton Sinclair’s ‘ Mammon Art,’ and Wilenski’s - The Modern Movement in Art.’-