Volume 29, Number 19 · December 2, 1982
The Art of Collecting Art
By Ernst Gombrich
The Rare Art Traditions: The History of Art Collecting and Its Linked Phenomena Wherever These Have Appeared
by Joseph Alsop
Princeton University Press/Bollingen and Harper and Row, 691 pp., $59.95
For this learned but lively tome, based on his Mellon Lectures of 1978, Mr. Joseph Alsop has devised a title page which is anything but self-explanatory. 'The Rare Art Traditions' are so named by him because they are the exception rather than the rule in man's attitude to the visual arts. 'The History of Art Collecting and Its Linked Phenomena Wherever These Have Appeared' refers to the author's conviction that this exceptional attitude, which regards artistic creation as an activity divorced from practical use, was first exemplified by art collectors who thus blazed the trail for our modern conception of art for art's sake. It is this conception that the author finds represented in only five distinct cultural traditions, that is, in the ancient world, in China with an offshoot in Japan, in the civilization of Islam, and, of course, in Western societies since the dawn of the Italian Renaissance.
Review, 5695 words
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