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THE EUROPE OF THE CAPITALS 1600-1700 by Giulio Carlo Argan. 222 pages. Skira. $20. THE INVENTION OF LIBERTY 1700-1789 by Jean Starobinski. 222 pages. Skira. $20. The publisher's commendable ambition is to explore and explain Western civilization through its architecture and its art. These are volumes one and two in a series, simultaneously published in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish, that will ultimately number 14. The Europe of the Capitals, with text by a professor of art history at the University of Rome, traces the decline of feudal nobility in Europe and the emergence of a bourgeoisie whose greatest gift to posterity was the modern metropolis. In The Invention of Liberty, Dr. Starobinski, professor of history of ideas at the University of Geneva, examines how the art of the era expressed Western man's new sense of freedom and self-will. Each volume carries 120 reproductions, 60 in color. The texts are strictly for the serious-minded.
PRIMITIVE ARTISTS OF YUGOSLAVIA by Oto Bihalji-Merin. 200 pages. McGraw-Hill. $16.95. The impact of these native artists, most of them peasants, is almost unbearably and perhaps unwittingly sad. The skies glower. A hired man slumps by his ax, in utter fatigue or despair. In a village cafe, the dancers do not smile. An old woman nods by candlelight, her face pale as death. A gypsy wedding scene seethes with movement, but the movement is angry, and the arm of the old man in the foreground seems to be raised in menace, his mouth seems to bellow wrath. Although Bihalji-Merin, who is an art critic and historian, limits the accompanying text to purely artistic comment, the pictures themselves project an unforgettable image of a hard life in a stern and somber land.