Ananias or The False Artist

1928. Walter Pach, artist and author, begins Ananias: Question anyone, quite literally anyone, who takes an active pleasure in works of art, and you will find that he has a Dark Past. He formerly liked pictures-in magazines, exhibitions, and museums-that he now sees to be insipid or false. Go through any museum containing the art of the modern period, and you find that it has a Dark Past. On the walls are pictures that nobody believes to have the least value, and the cellars are crammed with the ones already discarded. I am not speaking of conditions in America alone, for the art-lovers and the modern museums of Europe bear out my statements quite as well. If the question were simply that of a Dark Past, if the simulacrum of art that fooled us thirty years ago had no successor today, this book would be superfluous, even objectionably superfluous, for there would be no reason to stir up unpleasant memories.Pach, Walter is the author of 'Ananias or The False Artist' with ISBN 9781417941186 and ISBN 1417941189.