Seeing And Knowing (Art Ebook)

pdf / English / 1968 / 89 pages / 12.8 MB

Berenson's eloquent essay of 1948 has remarkable pertinence for the artistic situation today. The author contends that representation is based on a compromise between what we see and what we know of the physical universe, expressed through the conventions of western art. But the abstract artist has done violence to these conventions or rejected them completely— anything, Berenson says, "to escape the sane-asylum which for thousands of years art has been trying to erect!'

Seeing and Knowing therefore includes a witty, outspoken attack on modern art, but the author's primary discussion concerns the nature of the classic conventions and the way in which the masters of the past have constantly renewed them.

For this new edition the editors have selected reproductions ranging from a prehistoric cave painting to a "minimal" sculpture of 1967, in order to illustrate not only the great traditional works the author cites, but also the kind of art
which he deplores. The reader may applaud or reject the author's forthright views, but he will certainly be stimulated by Berenson's argument and gain new insight into representational art.