The Story of Art

THIS book is intended for all who feel in need of some first orientation in a strange and fascinating field. It wants to show the newcomer the lie of the land without confusing him with details; it hopes to enable him to bring some intelligible order into the wealth of names, periods and styles which crowd the pages of more ambitious works, and so to equip him for consulting more specialized books. In planning and writing it I thought first and foremost of readers in their teens who had just discovered the world of art for themselves. But I have never believed that books for young people should differ from books for adults except for the fact that they must reckon with the most exacting class of critics, critics who are quick to detect and resent any trace of pretentious jargon or bogus sentiment. I know from experience that these are the vices which may render people suspicious of all writings on art for the rest of their lives. I have striven sincerely to avoid these pitfalls and to use plain language even at the risk of sounding casual or unprofessional. Difficulties of thought, on the other hand, I have not avoided, and so I hope that no reader will attribute my decision to get along with a minimum of the art historian's conventional terms to any desire on my part of 'talking down' to him. For is it not rather those who misuse 'scientific' language, not to enlighten but to impress the reader, who are 'talking down' to us—from the clouds ?

Apart from this decision to restrict the number of technical terms, I have tried, in writing this book, to follow a number of more specific self-imposed rules, all of which have made my own life as its author more difficult, but may make that of the reader a little easier. The first of these rules was that I would not write about works I could not show in the illustrations;