The lecturer traces the historical development of attitudes toward the arts over the past 150 years, suggesting that the present is a period of cultural liquidation, nothing less than the ending of the modern age that began with the Renaissance.
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Barzun Needs Burke and Keats's Letters to Make a Cogent Argument:
I first read "Barzun" while attending university in Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1970. UCLA was closed down for a few days while fatuous and noisy students and other hangers on disrupted courses and the university. Finally, and rather quickly, most courses returned to normal. My four professors all felt obliged to comment on the student strike and the disruption of the college. Their insights, whether they really believed them or not, varied widely. One history teacher gave everyone A's and preened like a... more info
How much Art to do we need?:
This is the text of set of talks in the series of A W Mellon memorial lectures at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D. C. This is number 22 in the series, delivered in 1973.
Barzun comes as a lover of art, and a lover of progressive, avant garde art moreover, on the evidence of his earlier book The Energies of Art. However he sees a need to challenge art, or Art, on account of the diverse and contradictory theories and interests that are promoted under the banner of Art.
Barzun's "Use and Abuse of Art" deserves to be at least as widely read as many of his other, more publicly-minded books. This set of essays, originally delivered as part of a series of lectures in the early Seventies, will probably infuriate as many people as it enlightens, often in the same breath. The problem is that this is less often due to any actual intellectual effort on Barzun's part than it is due to some extremely queer prejudices. Barzun, after all, defended capital punishment on the grounds that... more info
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