Culture at Crisis Point

“Giles Auty was one of only four outstanding art critics in Britain in the past forty years” -- Paul Johnson , The Spectator, February 17, 1996 When I switched course in mid-career from being a painter to a writer I certainly experienced a few nervous moments. Would I ever feel as confident about writing as I did with a paintbrush in my hands? Then purely by chance, after years of wondering, I met an Italian Professor of English at a cocktail party in Venice. “I can’t believe I’ve met you” he told me “because I am always holding your writing up as a model for my students.” How thrilled my late father, a noted English scholar himself, would have been to know that I was at least trying to maintain family standards. “G. K. Chesterton surely had essays such as these in mind when he wrote, ‘No criticism of Rembrandt is as good as Rembrandt; but it can be so written as to make a man go back and look at his pictures.’ Giles Auty, well-known as art critic and painter, is gifted with a writing style that shuns impenetrability. It challenges us to go back and take a fresh look, not just at Rembrandt, or Signorelli, but at political correctness, global warming, post-modernism, democracy, our education system, Catholicism, the media, and life itself. He does this in an entertaining way, and even dares to suggest answers.” -- Fr Paul Stenhouse, Editor of Annals Australia