Abstract

Although the number of articles on Sartre’s aesthetic is great, book-length treatments of the subject in any language are rare. In English, we have been practically limited to Eugene Kaelin’s important study of Sartre and Merleau-Ponty published ten years ago. This work by George Bauer provides a valuable complement to Kaelin’s theoretical analysis. The book consists of seven chapters and an appendix which treat of Sartre’s pronouncements on art and the artist as expressed in his novels and plays as well as in his art and literary criticism, genre by genre and artist by artist. Philosophically, the most interesting portion of the book is probably the introductory chapter presenting an eleven-page synopsis of the elements of Sartrean aesthetics: the separation of prose from poetry with its attendant problem of committed literature, the work of art as imaginary object, and the aesthetic significance of Sartre’s distinction between existence and being. It is this last element which Bauer exploits as he examines Sartre’s repeated strictures against artists who confuse the being of the art object with physical being or who flee the responsibility of human existence for some "project of being." If art is not "reality" for Sartre, neither is it a legitimate means of escape. Because his evaluations involve reference to content as well as form, Sartre’s criticism has assumed a sociopolitical posture from the very start. The overall impression left by Bauer’s work is that Sartre’s art criticism involves the often inconsistent application of relatively few criteria to quite select works of the artists in question in accord with a general theory of human freedom. Despite the occasional brilliance and unfailing intelligence of the judgments so produced, Sartre’s method leaves him vulnerable to the charge of unfairness and inadequacy. Readers desiring an extended analysis of Sartre’s general aesthetic theory will still find Kaelin’s book indispensable. Physically, this is a most attractive volume, featuring thirty-two prints as well as a Calder cartoon of Sartre on its cover.—T. R. F.