The Arts Betrayed

Inbunden bok. The Herbert Press. 1978. 258 sidor.

Mycket gott skick. Skyddsomslag i mycket gott skick. Ägarsignatur på försättsbladet. Fotoillustrerad i sv/v. Språk: Engelska. "This is an unusual and provocative study of the development of art (in literature, painting, music and sculpture) since 1900. Beginning with a chapter on Rodin, Rilke, Mahler and Rouault, the author brackets together major artists working in different disciplines at much the same time and shows fundamental similarities in each group's approach to art. Some of these artists have been critically compared before; other juxtapositions are more surprising. Along with a separate chapter on Ezra Pound, they include: Maeterlinck, Debussy and Proust; Yeats and Bartók; Schoenberg, Berg, Klee and Webern; Stravinsky, Eliot and Picasso; Brecht and Hindemith; Giacometti, Beckett and Bacon; Camus, Duchamp and Cage; Henry Moore, Dylan Thomas; Michael Tippett and Patrick White. Fascinating in themselves, these comparisons reveals a gradual development in the arts that leads the author to question the long-term reputation and real intentions of many current idols of the art world and to criticize the direction of the modern movement as a whole. In spite of their acknowledged genius, John Smith asks, have not such revered figures as Duchamp, Bacon, Beckett and Giacometti, by the self-indulgent exploitations of excessive private neuroses, connived at the betrayal of the arts in our time? Or have social and technological changes during the century been such as to make it impossible for the artist to continue to play the role he once did?"