Volume 10, Number 12 · June 20, 1968
Waiting for Cézanne
By Ernst Gombrich
The Disintegration of Form in the Arts
by Erich Kahler
Braziller, 144, 32 plates pp., $2.95 (paper)
Vision and Image (to be published in the fall)
by James Johnson Sweeney
Simon & Schuster, 192 pp., $4.95
Sixty-six years ago the German art historian Carl Justi, author of masterly monographs on Winckelmann, Velazquez, and Michelangelo gave a lecture in Bonn under the title, Der Amophismus in der modernen Kunst (Amorphism in Modern Art). He denounced the lack of form in the paintings produced by the younger generation, by which he principally meant the Impressionists. The title of professor Erich Kahler's series of three lectures, now published in book form, is almost identical. He speaks of the 'disintegration of form in the arts,' and raises his voice against what he calls 'the triumph of incoherence' in concrete poetry, contemporary music, and the visual arts.
Review, 3038 words
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