Books, Arts & Manners: With Friends Like These…

Painting as an Art, by Richard Wollheim (Princeton, 384 pp., $45)

Because Richard Wollheim’s thesis is a worthy one—that there are universals in art—I had hoped to like this book. The circumstances of its publication—that it consisted of the prestigious Mellon Lectures of 1984; that the Princeton University Press had surpassed itself in the beauty of the book’s production—promised an edifying experience in the realm of my favorite subject, old pictures. But after only a few pages, a sense of disappointment set in. For it was clear that the journey would be long and hard, and would only yield something one never really needed or wanted in the first place.

JG

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James Gardner

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Painting as an Art, by Richard Wollheim (Princeton, 384 pp., $45)

Because Richard Wollheim’s thesis is a worthy one—that there are universals in art—I had hoped to like this book. The circumstances of its publication—that it consisted of the prestigious Mellon Lectures of 1984; that the Princeton University Press had surpassed itself in the beauty of the book’s production—promised an edifying experience in the realm of my favorite subject, old pictures. But after only a few pages, a sense of disappointment set in. For it was clear that the journey would be long and hard, and would only yield something one never really needed or wanted in the first place.