Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

From the celebrated cultural historian and bestselling author, a provocative history of the evolution of our ideas about art since the early nineteenth century

In this witty, provocative, and learned book, acclaimed cultural historian and writer Jacques Barzun traces our changing attitudes to the arts over the past 150 years, suggesting that we are living in a period of cultural liquidation, nothing less than the ending of the modern age that began with the Renaissance. He challenges our conceptions and misconceptions about art "in order to reach a conclusion about its value and its drawbacks for life at the present time."

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Kirkus Book Review

These six lectures, delivered at the National Gallery in Washington last year, explore the conventionally accepted functions of Art: religious, redemptive, destructive, revolutionary, and the validity of that great enigma, Art for Art's sake. While the author is most comfortable drawing his examples from the world of painting, his arguments and theories are applied to all forms of Art, his conclusions are pertinent to all media. As critic, Barzun is not afraid to state his opinions, and while his prose borders on the pedantic, seldom does he lose sight of the distinction between opinion and interpretation. While one might not always agree with his premises, the arguments are logically constructed and seldom is the reader asked to take a point on faith. Barzun's conclusions about Art, that it is not a separate entity, that the artist is not sacred, and that Art that scorns or hates its public is of little value, are reassuring points of view in our emperor's new clothes age of art criticism. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Jacques Barzun was born in Créteil, France on November 30, 1907. He came to the United States in 1920 and graduated magna cum laude from Columbia University in 1927. Following graduation, he joined Columbia's faculty as an instructor while continuing his studies in graduate school there, receiving a master's degree in 1928 and a doctorate in French history in 1932. He became a full professor in 1945, was dean of graduate faculties from 1955 to 1958, and dean of faculties from 1958 to 1967. He retired from Columbia University in 1975.

He was a historian and cultural critic. The core of his work was the importance of studying history to understand the present and a fundamental respect for intellect. Although he wrote on subjects as diverse as detective fiction and baseball, he was especially known for his many books on music, nineteenth-century romanticism and education. His works include Darwin, Marx and Wagner: Critique of a Heritage; Romanticism and the Modern Ego; The House of Intellect; Race: A Study in Superstition; Simple and Direct: A Rhetoric for Writers; A Stroll with William James; The Culture We Deserve; and From Dawn to Decadence. He died on October 25, 2012 at the age of 104.

(Bowker Author Biography)