Customer Reviews

About Modern Art

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David Sylvester was one of the finest critics of modern art. He writes as insightfully as Roger Fry and Clement Greenberg, but with none of their dogmatism. Sylvester turned down Cambridge to go live a Bohemian life in Paris after WWII, where he befriended Giacometti among others. Although he is perhaps best known for his close relationships with and brilliant writing about postwar, "existentialist" artists like Giacometti and Francis Bacon, his range is considerable: this volume has essays on artists as different as Cezanne and Roy Lichtenstein, Brancusi and Cy Twombly. Although he never falls into the trap of art for art's sake, and always probes for the full experiential content of art, his taste resembles the high modernist canon propagated by the Museum of Modern Art. The only prewar Expressionist he admires is Chaim Soutine--in other words, German Expressionism is not to his liking. Nor is Surrealism. Nonetheless, this book is a beautifully written education in modern art, all the better for its biting opinion. What good is a rudderless eclecticism, which insults all art by refusing to realize that opposed qualities, opposed values even, are embedded in the work of different schools?

This is a beautifully written book that I would recommend to any art lover. It is a collection of texts published in various media (radio, TV, magazines, exhibition catalogues)and covering most of the great masters of the 20th century. Sylvester only writes about the artists he likes and does it in an elegant and profound way.

If you have ever felt puzzled standing face to face with a "Woman" painted by De Kooning, if you have never been moved by a Rothko abstraction, if you do not understand why some people think that Picasso changed the way we see our world, if you think that your 3-year-old son can paint a Twombly, read this book; it will open your eyes on one of the great pleasures of life: the understanding of high art.