Volume 8, Number 4 · March 9, 1967
News from Nowhere
By Francis Haskell
The Grand Eccentrics—Art News Annual XXXII
edited by Thomas B. Hess
Macmillan, 180 pp., $5.95
It is possible to sympathize with Mr. Hess's complaint that journalists tend to impose a stifling categorization on the varied phenomena of modern art, while yet deploring the book (if that is the word: it is really a sort of bumper Sunday-paper color supplement) he has edited in an attempt to remedy this state of affairs. It is also possible to have the highest regard for some of the great authorities (such as Professors Chastel, Eitner, and others) whom he has been able to call upon, while yet feeling that their talents have hardly been put to the best possible use. The fault in any case is surely Mr. Hess's. If this were intended to be merely a collection of strange illustrations accompanied by brief explanatory notes, it might serve some purpose—though admittedly it is not very easy to think what. But Mr. Hess's Preface seems to demand that we treat it with some seriousness. 'Labels,' he claims, '…seem to make easy perches upon which flocks of migratory artists can light. Nothing so necessary to a career as a label.' Over-simplified terminology, this presumably implies, encourages the promotion of indifferent art.
Review, 1526 words
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