Art: Telling Voice

The most talked-of art critic alive today is France's frail, adventurous André Malraux. When his three-volume Psychology of Art was published in the U.S. in 1949-51, it was welcomed with raves—and a good deal of honest bewilderment. Wrote Critic Edmund Wilson: "It is hard to judge very brilliant books, which may dazzle, deafen and stun when they explode under our noses, but [this is] perhaps one of the really great books of our time." Malraux himself was not so pleased with the book; it suffered from poor organization and a turbulent, over-intricate style. He rewrote it as a one-volume work, The...

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