Bernard Shaw on the London Art Scene, 1885–1950

Unlike G.B.S's music and drama criticism and he was the best critic of his time in both categories his art criticism, aside from two or three pieces, is mostly unsigned, never reprinted, and largely unknown. Of the 181 pieces on art collected in this volume, three appear here (from the original manuscripts) for the first time, and 170 have never before been reprinted after their first, often anonymous, publication. Even some of these appear for the first time in accurate form, as newspaper publication sometimes resulted in erratic texts that Shaw, in his scrapbooks of clippings (when he remembered to, he saved copies of his work), hand-corrected.Words, Shaw would point out, were not always adequate to convey the impact of the senses - not even when allied to the composer's art. "The words spoil the music. Michael Angelo wrote reams of sonnets; but what are they besides the speechless prophets and sibyls in the Sistine Chapel? Is there any written or writable description," he argued, "that makes you see the Venus of Milo or the Hermes of Praxiteles? Do the gardeners' catalogues with which Milton padded Paradise Lost do for you what Turner and Monet did with a few dabs of paint?"