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Banshee, whole no. 7, March 1945
Page 6
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not only completely inadequate to the subject matter (a country fishing scene) but could have been eclipsed by any graduate student of an advanced art school. Bok's mediocrity in the field of living art is a tragic commentary upon any further progress he might strive to make In my judgement he is bound about by iron walls of his own casting that will never collapse like Jerico's to give him freedom. We can admit a certain grasp and mastery of techniques, even though their origins are rooted in other meadows. But no supremacy in any phase of art, not even in the narrow reaches of his own choosing. Bok's imagination is his one great point and that coughs away its feeble life after the first dozen of the brand. Just so many bug-eyed monsters, so many writhing tentacles, unbounded abysses, cosmic fires. There is his linit, within which strictures he flounders as helplessly as a mouse in a jar of glue. From the standpoint of true fantasy, not the weak variety which is his forte, but that which gains rich growth in boiling, bubbling satire and tragedy, he is a billion miles from the summit of his mountain. Can he approach the sky, gaunt jibes of Artzyasheff, touch Arthur szyk and his jungle magnificence? Has he ever produced an echo of the tragicomedy of Dali, probed in the human mind as deeply as Picasso, like Benton impaled the alpha and omega of emotion on the point of a single brush? Does Bok serve any purpose in art? Do any of his pictures make one laugh, cry, grow sad, gay, introspective, nostalgic, self-conscious, self-critical? No. In their empty sterility, his works cannot stir a single emotion, good or base. In their short-circuited sensuality thy fail to excite the faintest appetites. As hollow as a paper lantern, they burn with as little heat. He is cut off from the onward sweep of art, for today art and th the artist must serve the needs of the people -- or perish. An unbridgeable abyss separates Hannes Bok from the attainment of anything in art pertaining to reality and life. This gap he can never cross. His face is set toward the past, his brush providing a few dull gleams to prettify the realms of a receding horizon. There will be no place for Bok in the ranks of the great artists, or even of the mildly successful hacks, for he has no direction, no compass to carry him through the present and coming storms to a safe goal. There can be money, a hard-won but paltry fame among a group of people whose ranks have forever been as sparse as trees on a desert. But beyond that, nothing. ##### p6
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not only completely inadequate to the subject matter (a country fishing scene) but could have been eclipsed by any graduate student of an advanced art school. Bok's mediocrity in the field of living art is a tragic commentary upon any further progress he might strive to make In my judgement he is bound about by iron walls of his own casting that will never collapse like Jerico's to give him freedom. We can admit a certain grasp and mastery of techniques, even though their origins are rooted in other meadows. But no supremacy in any phase of art, not even in the narrow reaches of his own choosing. Bok's imagination is his one great point and that coughs away its feeble life after the first dozen of the brand. Just so many bug-eyed monsters, so many writhing tentacles, unbounded abysses, cosmic fires. There is his linit, within which strictures he flounders as helplessly as a mouse in a jar of glue. From the standpoint of true fantasy, not the weak variety which is his forte, but that which gains rich growth in boiling, bubbling satire and tragedy, he is a billion miles from the summit of his mountain. Can he approach the sky, gaunt jibes of Artzyasheff, touch Arthur szyk and his jungle magnificence? Has he ever produced an echo of the tragicomedy of Dali, probed in the human mind as deeply as Picasso, like Benton impaled the alpha and omega of emotion on the point of a single brush? Does Bok serve any purpose in art? Do any of his pictures make one laugh, cry, grow sad, gay, introspective, nostalgic, self-conscious, self-critical? No. In their empty sterility, his works cannot stir a single emotion, good or base. In their short-circuited sensuality thy fail to excite the faintest appetites. As hollow as a paper lantern, they burn with as little heat. He is cut off from the onward sweep of art, for today art and th the artist must serve the needs of the people -- or perish. An unbridgeable abyss separates Hannes Bok from the attainment of anything in art pertaining to reality and life. This gap he can never cross. His face is set toward the past, his brush providing a few dull gleams to prettify the realms of a receding horizon. There will be no place for Bok in the ranks of the great artists, or even of the mildly successful hacks, for he has no direction, no compass to carry him through the present and coming storms to a safe goal. There can be money, a hard-won but paltry fame among a group of people whose ranks have forever been as sparse as trees on a desert. But beyond that, nothing. ##### p6
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