Volume 7, Number 8 · November 17, 1966
Holes in Moore
By Hilton Kramer
Henry Moore: A Study of His Life and Work
by Herbert Read
Praeger, 284 pp., $7.50
Henry Moore: The Life and Work of a Great Sculptor
by Donald Hall
Harper & Row, 181 pp., $7.50
To have somehow become the favorite sculptor of the Philistines is not the worst fate that can befall a modern artist. Among its many benefits, it permits a sculptor, who is likely to face immoderate expenses if he works steadily on an ambitious scale, to go on making sculpture. Yet it is a fate guaranteed to induce a certain discomfort—if not in the artist himself, then in those who have followed his accomplishments with more than routine attention and respect. However much we may have disabused ourselves of the cant about the great artist being the least appreciated in his lifetime, no matter how distant we may feel from the old avant-garde pieties that once lent a certain credence to this cant, the suspicion persists that an artist whose name is always first on the lips of every dim-witted cultural entrepreneur and civic benefactor lusting after a monumental object to reflect a little glory on an otherwise dubious enterprise must, in one way or another, have sacrificed a measure of quality, integrity, or artistic conscience to merit such conspicuous and unsavory patronage.
Review, 2497 words
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