Leonardo

330 Books All these movements reject metaphysical values and take art off its pedestal. But they forget the needs of the human imagination. "The desire to create a closed medium, however distorted from the real world, is the definition of the aesthetic mode. Twentieth century art and literature is full of elite and closed forms. The egalitarians are right that this is myth-making, but they only assault the aesthetic object because of their antagonism to the valorizing of the humanly created order." Experience transformed into art creates a higher order which ordinary life will never reach, and this is something levellers do not like. Art is about commitment to order and value which does not have to reflect any given social order and instead can subvert it. It fulfills the mind's desire for closure-the picture frame, proscenium arch, narrative structure, and our sense of ending, of fulfilling expectations, of realizing purposes immanent in the story-and for having form while being open to the formless world. "In the end ... it is the critic's power to lift that art object off the level and to reconstruct it at its full height, that sustains us as it sustains their culture and the uneven arts themselves." The dialogue between art and literary criticism has often been fruitful. It is well worth looking at this book in that light. The professor's worst enemies are not the anonymous horde of levellers but his own involuted style and confused thinking. It seems fairer to paraphrase Krieger's argument than to take issue with it. These lectures, printed on paper designed to last for at least 300 years, are riddled with unsubstantiated generalizations. Although the rationale for the book is other people's ideas, there are almost no references, names, or quotations. Krieger's basically interesting objectives, "to set forth the elitist aesthetic ... against which the anti-elitist programme of levelling has been directed" and "to see the consequences for the contemporary criticism ofthe arts" have to be taken largely on trust. Krieger's heart may well be in the right place, but can one accept these essays as a serious contribution to the continuing battle of Kant versus cant? Your reviewer, for one, can't. Arts in Cultural Diversity. A Selection of Papers presented at the 23rd World Congress of the International Society for Education through Art in conjunction with the 7th Biennial Assembly of the Australian Society for Education through the Arts, Adelaide, Australia, August 1978. Jack Condous, Janferie Howlett and John Skull, eds. Holt, Rinehart & Winston, London, 1980. 292 pp., illus. Paper. ISBN: 003-900234-9. Reviewed by Hans Brill* This congress of art educators assembled teachers from thirty-five countries, including "14 keynote speakers from countries which collectively represented variegated hues and tints in the Mansell colour tree that is the arts." (Could Dr Skull mean the Munsell colour solid which describes colour in hue, chroma, and value and does not deal with tints?) It was obviously a splendid jamboree, and we have here 50 of the 300 papers presented. This souvenir of a congress devoted to the arts in education with a strong bias towards the Commonwealth and the Anglo-Saxon world might be expected to attract few readers. That would be a pity, for this gathering of missionaries and enthusiasts in a large and important field, produced some excellent papers. Well-argued and commendably brief statements of position abound and the keynote speakers do not disappoint. This publication offers a conspectus of the current concerns of art educators. The papers display an emphasis on popular versus fine art, on cultural hegemony versus ethnic art, and, inevitably and rightly, on the role of art in the world today, the importance and influence ofwhich depends to a large extent on art educators. This book demonstrates how seriously they take their responsibilities. It would be invidious to pick out individual contributors, but a particular gem comes from Paul GreenArmitage , writing appropriately enough on colour: "What I have done, in effect, is the same thing as Newton but on a rather larger scale." The scale and enthusiasm of this gathering compels admiration. Space Light-A Holography and Laser Spectacular. Paul...