ISSUE: Winter 1944
cients of the soil. Besides speech (many of the old languages survive intact and are the only ones known by millions of people), there is the dance, whose movements, at times, are exactly those seen in the early sculpture and painting, and there are a thousand traditions of weaving, building, carving, and so forth, which have come down through the centuries with a vitality scarcely, if at all, diminished. It was for this reason that, in quoting Sr. Jimenez Moreno’s remark, I preferred to speak of art rather than archaeology.
It is as art that Mr. Kelemen treats his subject throughout his volumes, and it is not too much to hope that they will be a factor in the development of art in his adopted country. Bringing to us memories of the culture of his native Hungary (in telling of Diirer’s enthusiasm for the first Mexican art works to reach Europe, our author does not fail to remind us of the Hungarian descent of the great German painter), the book also bespeaks an unmistakable breadth of study among the other arts of Europe. The fact gives added value to this new testimony to the power, the beauty, and the continuing life of the art of America.
