Canons and Values in the Visual Arts: A Correspondence

Abstract

EDITORIAL NOTE.---In private conversation and through his Romanes Lecture, Sir Ernst Gombrich made us aware of the cultural importance of the existence of an accepted canon of the arts and of the critical questions raised by varying convictions about and attitudes toward such a canon. Those questions have major implications for criticism, history, and evaluation in all of the arts. To introduce these matters in our pages and to announce that they will in the future receive special attention in Critical Inquiry, we had initially planned to ask Quentin Bell and E. H. Gombrich to express their differing views in formalized essays to be published simultaneously. We quickly came to realize, however, that the informal correspondence between the two was far better for our purposes. For us critical exploration seems intensified by the dramatic form of an exchange of ideas, and the very tentativeness of the conclusions reached in the correspondence seemed a special virtue in dealing with problems so rich and complex. E. H. Gombrich has sent us the following summary of the argument which gave rise to this correspondence: