Word: berensons
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CONVERSATIONS WITH BERENSON, recalled by Count Umberto Morra, translated by Florence Hammond. The late Bernard Berenson, the American critic who trained his eye on Italian Renaissance art and his tongue in the art of conversation, was both wise and wise guy when discussing painting, disseminating gossip, or commenting on life. Count Morra, one of Berenson's frequent guests, fortunately took notes...
...Bernard Berenson speaking. The world remembers him as the century's most celebrated connoisseur of Italian painting; his friends have long insisted that he was also a master of the never-quite-lost art of conversation. He called it "the game of the spirit," and until his death in 1959, at the age of 94, he played the game in the grand manner with a happy few who were invited to I Tatti, his palatial villa in the hills above Florence...
Talk Thesaurus. One of Berenson's frequent guests, Count Umberto Morra, had bad manners and took notes; and these notes, recorded between 1931 and 1940, have now been assembled in a book that will not soon find its equal as a thesaurus of talk...
...discussions of art, Berenson was relentlessly dazzling: "Artistic creation, in relation to its creator, is like a hernia -it has the least possible zone of communication with his actual person." Furthermore: "We lack today, with our use of cement, any sense of resistance of material; and where the material does not resist there is no longer any art. Cement is like cardboard, giving way in any direction, and adaptable to every use. Art should break the bonds of material...
Wise Guy. Berenson's anecdotes were always redoubtable, included the familiar Wilde story: "Having very clearly failed to meet some commitment, Oscar telegraphed: T cannot come. Lie follows.' " His aphorisms were provocative. "The first in a flock is still a sheep...