literary critic and former Warton Professor of Eng John Bayley
The effectiveness of What Is Art? lies not so much in its positive assertions as in its rejection of much that was taken for granted in the aesthetic theories of the time.”
translator Aylmer Maude
What Is Art? itself is a work of science, though many passages, and even some whole chapters, appeal to us as works of art and we feel the contagion of the author’s hope, his anxiety to serve the cause of truth and love, his indignation (sometimes rather sharply expressed) with whatever blocks the path of advance, and his contempt for much that the ‘cultured crowd,’ in our erudite, perverted society, have persuaded themselves, and would fain persuade others, is the highest art.”
New Criterion
Eccentric and lucid, cranky and brilliant, funny and fierce.”
New Essay on Tolstoy E. Lampert
Infuriating, irresistible, aesthetically unaesthetic.”
