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i22 Mr. Walker, in preparing yourself to become an art historian, did you rely on visual experience or was reading aiso important? The magazine articles on modern art that appeared when I was young certainly had an influence on me. But I am always urging people to look at works of art rather than read about them. I grew up in Pittsburgh, where the mu- seum, the Carnegie Institute, possessed a splendid collection of etchings by Rem- brandt, engravings by Diirer and prints by the great masters of the graphic arts. These I literally devoured with my eyes and I learned more from them than I did from any books I read. My enthusiasm for these prints made me decide several years before I got to college that I wanted to spend the rest of my life working in a museum. Which art historiens had the greatest influence on you? The ones who influenced me most were A. Kingsley Porter and Bernard Beren- son. Porter was a genius who had in- tuitions about the history of art which were often confirmed by documents dis- covered later. His dating of Romanesque churches in Spain startled people and it was discounted for a time. Later docu- “Y= ments proved that he was right. I stayed 2 with him one summer in Ireland. We went around looking at Irish crosses and we used to talk often. He was a poet and a playwright and he considered these creations far more important than his contribution to the history of art. How- ever, he was remembered as an art his: torian, not as a playwright. Porter conveyed one thing to me that had a strong influence in my life, that art history per se was not really as im- portant as the expression of certain ideas about the art of the past in a literary ues X ~. seg John Walker, Director of the National Gallery of Art, “interviewed by Milton Viorst Gombrich in England, André Malraux, lances. For example, the way William of course, Roger Fry of an earlier gen- Burroughs takes sentences out of context eration, and Alfred Barr when he does and weaves them together can be psral- write. Some books that come to mind are _leled in certain flat-pattern cubist paint- Clark’s The Nude: A Study in Ideal ings. The stream-of-consciousness toch- Form; Malraux’ Museum Without Walls nique that appeared first, 1 suppose, in and Gombrich’s Meditations ona Hobby James Joyce and also in Virginia Woolf, Horse. vide ty very closely paralleled the abstract ex- Do writers who comment on conter- Pressionists .of the New York school. rary works ri count as oar art Ble terature, I don’t know. The painters T think you ought to separate the art__ that I'know have never been great Tead- historian from the art critic. When a’ ers, but I’may not have found the right writer deals with contemporary art and “ones, . a puts it in a historical context as, for ex-- - In » beantifal series of volumes called ample, Alfred Barr has so often done in Pageant of Painting you and Bunting- his catalogues at the Museum of Modern tom Cairns have attempted to relate Art and his writings on Matisse and painting and literamre in = rather .- —-*—+ fashian. Will you tell about ‘Whether they were directly influenced by ~ came from a letter of Horace Walpole in which he speaks about antiquarians and how learned-thay eften are, but he also says that none of them know how to write. And, unfortunately, art historians in our day scem to have lost the desire to write beautifully. In a number of sections in our book we quoted Walter Pater, a pure stylist. Among the reviews of our book I was very amused to find that the one thing we were criticized for was men- tioning or using Pater at all. Conid art exist without arthisior“Y Oh, art could certainly exist wi. wut art historians. In great periods of art there have been no art historians. What little criticism the Greeks wrote about art, when they were most creative, was of a very naive nature. Even the Renais- sance had very unsophisticated critical standards, in today’s terms. 1930s, when American artists were in- terested in social problems, had a certain effect on contemporary society, We are often disdainful of the Soviet art that is 20 closely related to social problems bat during the 1930. our artists i the same things, with one signi = ception—Soviet artists adulated thx. 90- ciety, while American artists were social critics of theirs. I prefer the social critics. But to find any relevance to our society in Op art or Abstract Expressionist psint- ing is quite dificult. Popart, on the other hand, may have some social connection. It seems at present to be largely a satire of our society and I suppose that is social comment, too, Of course, the architect: ural writers have had a great deal to sa) about the importance of art in ow has had an impact on our social though! perhaps even on our practices, with bi - ¢ FL. Ceabe and Stane