Full Description
Samuel Johnson is generally viewed as a man who disliked the arts, though few have asked whether this image is actually accurate, or compared it with Johnson's writings, or with his intellectual and philosophical convictions. The thesis of this book is that the anecdotal tradition has misrepresented Johnson's attitudes towards the arts, and eclipsed his important and interesting contribution to the century's conversation about the non-literary arts. The renaissance of taste in Johnson's period, seen in the establishment of the Royal Academy, the Handel Commemoration etc, was accompanied by a flourishing literary discussion about the arts in which writers like Johnson played a reticent role. Morris Brownell argues that Johnson exerted an influence on the century's attitude to the fine arts by playing the role of iconoclast at the very moment when English art was reviving, when taste in the arts was becoming 'de rigueur': he assumes the public posture of Socratic ignorance in response to the new orthodoxy.
Brownell believes that Johnson's disclaimers about the arts are interesting not because they reveal defects in himself, but because they challenged artists and their admirers to explain themselves philosophically. He believes that Johnson taught artists how to speak justly about their arts. The work may be of interest to students of 18th century thought and all those interested in the artistic and philosophical developments of the age. Morris Brownell is also author of "Alexander Pope and the Arts of Georgian England".
Contents
Part 1 Wholly deaf and insensible to music: "ignorant of the science of music"; Johnson's reading and incidental writing on music. Part 2 Blind to painting: "total ignorance in that department"; good offices for artists; Johnson and poor Mauritius Lowe; Johnson, James Barry and English history painting; portraits of Samuel Johnson; Johnson caricatured and illustrated. Part 3 Unskilled in architecture: Johnson and the building of Blackfriars Bridge; Johnson and John Gwynn; William Chambers in Johnson's circle. Part 4 Landscape - a universal blank: "belied by false compare" - Johnson's theory of natural description. Conclusion: the enemy of taste - Johnson's Socratic irony. Appendix: subject pictures of Johnson.
