Art centres of the World - London [antikvár]

London is one of the greatest art centres of the world in the most democratic way. Its museums, its public galleries were mostly designed as such. Parliament has sanctioned them, though in somé cases merely to exercise public control over bequests and gifts. Its royal patrons have been relatively few - certainly since the Stuarts. Charles I was the finest. Aristocrats and commoners have given to the State priceless paintings, manuscripts and books for the public good, and all without exception are available for inspection free. In recent years the Government has increased the grants to museums for maintenance, extension and the increase of their collections. In the sale rooms, works of art and furniture, ceramics, jewellery, metalware, are sold in quantities that totál millions of pounds each year. Visitors from abroad, dealers, collectors, writers on art, are finding London almost irresistible in planning their itineraries. Priváté galleries and artists' societies each month present exhibitions of new and old paintings, sculpture and prints. There is an increasing activity in the art schools and young artists are working hard to produce enough material for an exhibition. Though the national press takes its usual sensational attitűdé towards art - 'Man makes paintings with wheels' is a typical headline - there is a growing awareness of the intention of the modern artist and a relaxing of the previous pompier contempt for any form of art that did not resemble the reflection of a mirror rather than the responses of a sensitive creative talent in the syntax of his médium. London's two great museums, the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert, are repositories of the cultural genius of the world in varied forms - the archaeological finds in the British Museum alone are of a staggering richness: Ur of the Chaldees is present through jewels and ornaments of its royal courts, the animals with the heads of men from Nineveh, the funerary objects from the tombs of the Pharaohs, Cycladic carved figures and the variety and style of the painted Attic pottery vessels preserve for us the plastic genius that does not survive in any painting.