APOLLO MAGAZINE
By Raphael Cormack
‘There are two figures in society whose words are less important than their deeds: the politician and the artist. An Arab painter who sits holding forth about art instead of actually painting is much like the Arab politician who stands on a podium lecturing us about our future history as we lie in our beds.’ It is a truism to say that if artists could express their meaning fully in words they would not need to make art, but it seems impossible to stop them trying or to stop people wanting them to do so. This, the eighth volume in MoMA’s series of ‘primary documents’ on modern art (which also includes books on China, Japan and Eastern Europe), is a vast repository of translated writing and new essays by artists and also academics, accompanied by 49 colour illustrations. It spans the period from 1882 to 1987 and countries from Morocco to Sudan, Yemen to Iraq. [
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