Hi Jo E

You write "Can you give us an angle on Malraux here, Derek. He sounds interesting but you are keeping him under wraps."

There are two reasons for this.

(1) Malraux's theory of art has often been the victim of critics who seem to have felt they could sum him up in a few snappy sentences. The result has been dreadful oversimplification and distortion. (For example, one often gets the impression from such critics that the only idea Malraux ever had was the 'musee imaginaire' (museum without walls); and even that idea is routinely oversimplified and trivialized.) I don't want to unwittingly contribute to this parlous situation by trying to describe his theory of art in a brief post on a discussion list. He is an extraordinarily profound and original thinker and one could never do him justice in that way.

(2) I also don't want to keep banging on about Malraux and give the impression that I have sort of Malraux monomania. I have a tremendous admiration for his work (gratitude would be a better word because he has helped me solve problems about art that I had frankly thought insoluble) but I am interested in many other thinkers as well. 

This is going to sound like a dodge, I know.

DA