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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 July 2024
The Voices of Silence resembles a long monologue proceeding from affirmation to affirmation. With this work, André Malraux has finally concluded a meditation of twenty years. The proud assurance of his intelligence, reinforced by an extraordinary array of works left in his memory from travels and from reading, and by a brilliant mastery of his style, expects neither contradiction nor reply. Caught in the enchantment of his phrases, convinced by the choice and the scholarly relevance of the photographs, the reader has some difficulty in freeing himself from Malraux's reasoning. If anybody should nevertheless wish to answer, Bernard Berenson's last book offers the chance for a discussion. In a sort of impromptu conversation, in a tone at times lyric and at times peevish, Berenson challenges contemporary taste in those of its aspects which Malraux meant to justify: From a conviction formed by long familiarity with the works, he answers almost point by point Malraux's theses, which perhaps he does not know and which he does not mention.
1 Already in Voie Royale, one of Malraux's personages expressed the aesthetic preoccupations and the attitude towards art which were to remain those of the Voices of Silence.
2 It should be noted, on this point, that Goya, so much admired by Malraux, does not deny himself this effect of virtuosity: in the portrait of Don Bernardo Yriarte (Museum of Strasbourg and Metropolitan Museum) the elbow pointed towards the spectator comes right out of the canvas.
3 It is just these qualities which are often emphasised by artists who do not care so much about relief or movement: Gentile da Fabriano imitates cloth better than Giotto; the brocades of Grivelli are more realistic than the draperies of Mantegna; the Flemish painters of the fifteenth century are more sensitive to the particular quality of a metal than the Italians, to the point that this kind of imitation, in Antonello da Messina or Piero della Francesca, is a sign of Flemish influence.
4 Rubens made designs from the figures of the Sistine Chapel: but his nude limbs are more lumpy than their models, a more divided light strikes the more numerous juttings out.
5 This word covers all of the means which the artist uses to realise his work. It is the part of artistic creation which relates neither to the subject nor to the meaning. The painted or sculptured forms are the accomplishments of a technical operation which begins with the choice of the material, of the base or the pigments, but includes the various workings of the hand, chisel or brush-strokes, the procedures of imitation, and the composition itself.
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