The Arts and Man by Raymond S. StitesReview by: E. Baldwin SmithThe Art Bulletin, Vol. 24, No. 1 (Mar., 1942), pp. 95-96Published by: College Art AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3046802 .

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BOOK REVIEWS RAYMOND S. STITES, The Arts and Man, New York,

McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1940. Pp. 872; 640 figs. $7.50. There is something both magnificent and pathetic

about one man trying to compress in one volume the whole, uninterrupted development of sculpture, painting, architecture, music, minor arts, drama, literature, and philosophy. That it can't be done is no discredit to the author, for no mortal mind is equipped to cope with a task demanding such omnis- cience. Hence, in spite of much hard work, some good ideas, and a large number of illustrations, the result is after all a very human one. By necessity the book is largely made up of facts and question- able generalizations based upon secondary sources which are too frequently out of date. For those who believe that all great art has taken shape with conviction and purpose it may come as something of a surprise to learn at the outset how all art is "simply doodling (aimless scribbling?) tempered by need or social purpose, and design." If this concep- tion of art were what the author was trying to demonstrate, then it would be poetic justice to call the book just another example of "doodling." Actu- ally, however, the author had the conscientious pur- pose of unfolding art as "an expression of man's inner faith in his own ability to overcome life's vicissitudes." Among the vicissitudes which he en- countered was the difficulty of integrating literature, philosophy, and music with the visual arts. What value is there in knowing the synopses of Aeschy- lus' and Sophocles' dramas if there is no means of measuring their greatness and understanding some- thing of their ethical significance to the Greek mind?

His definition of art as "an expression of the nature of man in significant patterns which tend to induce feelings for the Beautiful, the Energetic and the Sub- lime" comes the nearest to describing the author's instinctive approach to all works of art. All through the book the reviewer had the feeling that the author in his classes is accustomed to have his students ana- lyze the linear patterns of sculpture, architecture, and painting by making outlines from photographs, because the three-dimensional qualities of sculpture are usually disregarded, and even in painting he fails to mention Rubens' spatial handling of color and movement, Watteau's exquisite use of the major and minor triads, and Velasquez's change to a new treatment of spatial values in his last period, while Claude Lorrain is only twice mentioned by name, once as an early acquaintance of Turner. In other words, the emphasis is largely on pattern.

The author apparently believes that man by racial temperament has been foreordained to ex- press himself in one of only four ways: the Primitive, the Mediterranean or Humanistic, the Celto-Ger- manic or Gothic, and the Oriental. Contrariwise he also believes that students in his classes can be rapidly educated to evolve from a Primitive at- titude, through the Humanistic, Gothic, and Ori- ental, to the self-expression and eclecticism of the modern. By resemblances, which must be super- ficial, he is able in the Oriental Cultural Pattern to equate "Byzantine illumination, Gothic stained

glass, the works of certain German and Flemish masters, the paintings of Gauguin, Cezanne, Matisse and Redon, and the sculptures of Brancusi." Having established these comprehensive patterns, the actual styles become difficult to handle; the Baroque style he never clearly differentiates from the other styles, but appears to include under Baroque Styles nearly everything in the seventeenth and eighteenth cen- turies, with the result that Rubens is categorically presented as inferior to Frans Hals in universal significance.

It requires confidence to write an all-inclusive volume. This the author seems to have, because he carefully defines his method as an objective and scientific study of all art. The implications of such a method are, of course, a challenge to those who doubt the ability of the human mind to be objective, and who question the possibility of applying sci- entific methods to the evaluation of human ideas and feelings. There is also a sharp challenge for someone in the statement that "those who have aboriginal African and American Indian back- grounds cannot help approaching art from a more vital, colorful, and creative angle than does the de- scendant of a New England Puritan." Leaving aside the personally troublesome question of how long the reviewer and his descendants must go on being cursed with a Puritan ancestry, can one escape the deduc- tion from these two positions that only the author can be objective and scientific because everyone else will be limited and prejudiced by somewhat different ancestral backgrounds?

Even though this is not the place to debate the value of the so-called scientific method as applied to art, it is necessary to mention a few of the many statements where generalizations outrun facts, or where there are reasonable grounds for strong differ- ences of opinion. Scientifically is it a fact that "the earliest house form in Europe is a Hallstatt dwelling at Grossgartach," because the reviewer believes he could name scores of houses which are commonly dated from one to two thousand years before the Hallstatt period? When the author says that a New Mexico kiva "shows the probable origin of all domed architecture in the beaver-hut," is he not getting a little outside the confines of scientific fact? Can the original home of the Germanic peoples, and hence the whole Aryan problem, be settled out-of-hand by the assertion that the Germanic epics were written "by a people whose original homes were in the lake dwell- ings of Switzerland"? Few writers on Egyptian architecture would agree that the early Egyptians built tumulus tombs of which the stone dolmens remain. All through the early chapters is the danger- ous assumption that stone dolmens must belong to the Stone Age. Had the author realized how accur- ate Baedeker is as a guide to Egypt, he m~ight not have described the kiosk at Philae as a sun-temple directly connected with the architecture and sun worship of Mesopotamia, and would not have said that it was designed to make the "God accessible to all," for that was what the Egyptian religion and architecture never thought of doing. Dynasties are not of overwhelming importance in a general book

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96 THE ART BULLETIN

on art, but it is startling to get the gratuitous infor- mation, just after a description of the IV Dynasty Sheik-el-Beled, "that the sculpture of the first three dynasties was on the whole more realistic than later work."

Not everyone would agree with everything in the following sentence, at the end of the chapter on Mesopotamia, "Much of the later Greek drama owes its power to elements derived from Mesopotamia through Syria and Cyprus, where there was a temple to Ishtar-Astarte." The same can also be said of the introduction to Greek art where he writes, "Beneath the early Greek mentality lay the freshness of the cave man's cultures as developed around the shore of the Aegean." From here on the treatment of the Cultural Influences in the Formation of Greek Style muddies up the none too clear waters of the early origins of pre-Hellenic cultures. It does not clarify this period to find Cycladic used for all island cul- tures in the Mediterranean, and nothing seems to have been gained by bringing the "Grimaldi-

Negroid folk" into the formation of Greek culture. Therefore, after reading in the chapter on Attic

Style I, "The student who has not followed carefully each step in the evolution of Greek design will be

tempted to ask at this point whether the writer is not simply reading all these things into the composi- tions," the inevitable reply seems to be, "Of course

you are, but we hope that a fair percentage of what

you say may have been true." This is said because the author does not distinguish between his own per- sonal ideas and the objective facts. It is not convinc-

ing, for example, to take one statue and call all Etruscan art the "art of disintegration," because "the lines of the human figure displayed as broken and sagging remind one of the process of disintegra- tion." The Etruscans may not have been highly artistic, but they were not always putrid, as witness the illustration of the Corneto fresco reproduced on the opposite page of the book.

Regarding the Pantheon at Rome, he says that "the dome, like that of the beehive tomb, was built

upon the corbel principle," and the building was "a

logical development of Stonehenge." Is it true that all circular structures, regardless of time, space, and

purpose, are related, and would there have been no Pantheon if there had been no Stonehenge? While

everyone will agree that the Romans were the first builders to develop the interior, spatial possibilities of architecture, it does not help to prove it by say- ing that "the Pantheon is said to have been the first

building in the Western world designed for interior rather than for exterior effect," because one thinks of the great Baths of Agrippa which it partly re-

placed and wonders exactly how the Pantheon's in- terior was used, if it was only a monument to the

Julii family. Even if concrete played a most impor- tant part in the evolution of Roman architecture, why was it advisable to insist that it came to Rome from Syria when we don't know where it originated and find most of the imperial buildings in Syria made of cut stone?

There is certainly a fair amount of mis-emphasis and implied misinformation in the following state-

ment: "The chief difference between the Christian church and the Egyptian temple now becomes clear; the temple ended in a shrine, while the Christian church, like the democratic Greek bouleterion, or the Roman basilica, had behind the altar a public organization of human beings to which any man in the congregation might be elected," for early Christi- anity was "oriented toward the living." It might be thought that the best reason for introducing the Greek and Roman parallels would be to account for the Christian apse. The result of this forced contrast is to give the impression that both types of sanctu- ary were for congregational use, but that the Egyp- tians had a real Holy of Holies, which was the center of the service, while the Christians, with their inter- ests centered on the worldly ambition of getting to the top of their organization, were unaware of the altar of God from which came salvation and the hope of eternal happiness.

This harping on mistakes of fact and judgment is most unpleasant for both author and reviewer. Neither should have gotten into this situation. In all this expensive and ambitious book is there noth- ing good to be found? Yes, some of the quotations are excellent. Also it must not be overlooked that Mr. Stites half realized the necessity in education of presenting history, religion, philosophy, and the arts as related facets of culture which reflect the growth of ideas under changing environmental con- ditions, so that we today may have a clearly visual- ized body of experience by which to guide our efforts to evaluate life and adjust ourselves in a period of drastic change to something more than mere physi- cal existence. That he fell far short of accomplishing any such purpose is because his command over the material he was trying to use was too limited. A plethora of undigested and unrelated information is more likely to produce mental confusion than to help students to understand either the past or the present. In order to arrive at this unpleasant judgment, it should not be thought that the reviewer has causti- cally emphasized all the important inaccuracies in this review. Actually only the most self-evident mis- takes have been selected from a few chapters, and only from those fields of learning in which the re- viewer has some competency.

If our modern educational system makes these super-omnibus courses necessary and so establishes a demand for such books, then it is the responsibility of the publishers to see that our students are given the best information possible in the space available. Therefore, when books of this type are written, no matter by whom, they should be rigorously edited by a competent group of specialists, for in the long run such revision would pay even the publisher. Also the publishers of this book should sit for the seventy-odd hours necessary to reading its 833 pages of text and hold its five and a half pounds, in order to see if the physical effort does not prove discourag- ing to intellectual and artistic interests. After all, this is an age of laboratory methods.

E. BALDWIN SMITH Princeton University

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