Collectable Very Good - Does not have a cover, little wear and discolour to the spine.
GIOVANNI BATTISTA TIEPOLO
TWENTY-FIVE
CARICATURES
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
OSBERT LANCASTER
THE DE LA MORE PRESS
ARCADE GALLERY LTD., LONDON
INTRODUCTION
AN AUSTERE but popular theory of art history would have us
believe that no civilisation which exists solely for pleasure and on
the proceeds of its exploitation can produce art of
any permanent
value. At first sight such an interpretation of the doctrine of
“Kraft durch Angst” in aesthetic terms may appear reasonable.
Certainly the world of the Ritz Bar, the Eden Rock and Le Touquet
compares unfavourably in this respect with Periclean Athens; nor
does it seem probable that the Californian paradise will bring forth
works the equal of those which distinguished the twelfth century
in France. Nevertheless, it remains a gross overstatement, for while
it is conceivable that such civilisations do not, and cannot, produce
the very highest types of art, the atmosphere which they generate
is occasionally not unfavourable to the development of satisfying and
singularly complete forms of culture. In support of this contention
no better example could be advanced than eighteenth-century Venice.
It is incontestable that the Venice the daily life of which is
chronicled in the pages of President des Brosses, Casanova, Goldoni
and Beckford, in which Senators employed themselves as croupiers
and wherein every other house seems to have been a bagnio, was
wholly given over to pleasure, both spontaneous and commercialised....