Art in England [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION Oddly enough, there is no easily accessible and up-to-date book on Art in this country for the general reader. There are historical accounts of art movements, studies of particular painters and sculptors, and various memoirs and studies by leading artists and art critics. These are all very well for the minority professionally interested in art, or for the trained amateur; but they do not meet the needs of that large and increasing section of the public which is becoming more and more interested in the visual arts and perhaps, at the same time, more and more puzzled about their present development. With one exception, the chapters of this book have been drawn from the pages of The Listener, and represent a distillation of the contributions on Art which have been a feature of that paper during the ten years of its existence.* Few of them were actually broadcast; for a purely auditory medium like broadcasting lends itself but indifferently to the treatment of visual themes. Naturally, a collection of ad hoc articles cannot hope to achieve the unity of purpose and treatment which one would like to see in a book treating of this subject. Allowing, however, for these limitations, it is surely worth while to try to fill the gap which I have referred to— the lack of a simple popular book on Art in England. These chapters represent essentially The Listener as an independent journal in its approach to Art—an attempt to combine catholicity of outlook with popularity of style. In them the readers will find some answers to certain questions which may seem elementary to professional art critics, but are really indispensable to an understanding of what is going on around us in the Art world. For instance, are we, or are we not, an inartistic nation ? And if so, why ? Mr. Herbert Read and the late Sir Charles Holmes * Under the able Art-Editorship successively of Miss Janet Adams Smith and Mr. J. R. Ackerley. 5