Lionel Trilling on the Plastic Arts (July 1957)

Speaking for myself, I find that although my relation with “dehumanized” painting is at best an ambiguous one, I am almost always made uncomfortable by modern representatives of “lived reality.” Whatever reservations I may have about, say, Jackson Pollock, I am on easier terms with him than with, say, Ben Shahn, and I think that my preference is pretty typical of the educated classes.
—Lionel Trilling reviewing Kenneth Clark’s The Nude. “The Nude Renewed,” in Arthur Krystal, ed., A Company of Readers: Uncollected Writings of W. H. Auden, Jacques Barzun, and Lionel Trilling from The Reader’s Subscription and Mid-Century Book Clubs (New York, The Free Press, 2001)