PUBLIC OPINION, THAT UNKNOWN
MUHLEN, NORBERT
Public Opinion, That Unknown Reviewed by NORBERT MUHLIN THE POLLSTERS. Public Opinion, Polities, find Detnocratic keadenWp. By Lindsay Rogers. /Yen; Yorfc; Alfred A. Knopf. 239 and xi pp....
...In the following months, the ambiguous attitude of modern man—almost a synonym of layman—toward contemporary science was demonstrated once again...
...710 pages...
...Red Wing, Minnesota: C. Biederman...
...Biederman points out that those artists who remained in the red Utopia were molded and shackled, just as artists in the Dark Ages were molded and shackled by the clergy and landowners...
...This contention is fascinatingly illustrated by the author in a clear and logical fashion...
...The New York attorney and his author-partner have collected the published expert opinion on the outcome of the contest which, according to general consensus, was to bring the certain victory of one candidate rather than a close race between two candidates...
...A 90-page illustrated booklet on the exhibition and the life and work of these two artists is available from the Museum...
...By Morris L. Ernst and David Loth...
...Jt tttis werej true, if the polls really opened the road from democracy to "the tyranny of jthe prevailing opinion," against which John Stuart Mill had warned a long time before the polls were invented, and before Professor Rogers blamed this tyranny on the polls, we would have to pronounce our indictment against the leaders rather than against the polls...
...The only alternative to the information gathered by the polls seems the deception produced by the pressure groups Which claim that their requests ace backed by The Majority Of ¦$&e People, or by AM True liberals, as by Ives...
...In their place, he substitutes the three-dimensional material of 20th century industry and technology, and utilizes modern fabricating as well as hand tools...
...but does this regrettable and rather rarely occurring fact really turn all our convertibles into criminal contraptions, without leaving them some good, useful, beautiful functions...
...Many "confessed" and were "purged...
...This is a book with a democratic philosophy, and a well-documented history of many of the arts, and their challenges in past and present eras...
...The Museum of Modern Art recently held a monumental exhibit highlighting Gabo-Pevsner creations...
...Furthermore, the answers given to a stranger do not necessarily reveal the people's innermost thoughts, Professor Rogers charges against the polls...
...Ernst's and Loth's collection of the key statements published by pollsters, columnists, commentators and editorialists erects a nice little monument to the fallacy of the experts which might be inscribed "Doctae Ignorantiae," translated in the slang of our day, "How wrong can you get...
...AFTER HIS CHARGE THAT THE polls cannot measure public opinion, Professor Rogers proclaims his "indictment of the destructive influence of the polls en newspapers, legislators, and the public itself...
...It combines painting and sculpture...
...There is no reason why the polls should or could do more than provide the legislators with reasonably accurate information on the beliefs, prejudices, conclusions and ignorance oftheir constituents...
...169 pp...
...Maholy-Nagy continued his Bauhaus work in Chicago...
...Debunking these modt-pubBe opiTWbn claims and supplying the legisMbrs with facts and figures en the real «stribution of opinions and attitudes among the people, the polls greatly contribute to the working of modern democracy the leadership of which needs, besides information on 'many other questions, exact information on what the people think, know, Hope...
...but they equally warn not to turn the chronic cynicism in our reaction to the samplers and spokesmen of public opinion, both attitudes being dangerous to democracy, and potentially pre-totalitarian...
...R. L. Cantor is professor of Bee Industrial arts at West Virginia Institute of TechaeJetr...
...This new art was born in Russia in 1913...
...Kinsey's figures on Sexual Behavior of American Males, it ended with even more considerable commotion about Dr...
...PROFESSOR ROGERS concentrates his attack against the pollsters on two main points: first, do the poll.: sters really measure public opinion...
...and this seems a very healthy conclusion...
...1*49 WAS THE YEAR of the Surveys...
...By Charles Biederman...
...I said," Mark Twain noted in his diary, "I was in the common habit, in private conversation with friends, of ' revealing every private opinion I possessed relating to religion, politics and men, but that I should never dream of printing one of them, because they are at war with almost everybody's public opinion, while at the same time they are in happy agreement wlyh almost everybody's private dpinion...
...Gabo continues his constructivist work today on his farm in Connecticut...
...While Professor Roger's book is allegedly about— and against —"The Pollsters," it is actually concerned only with a critique of some aspects of Dr...
...they "dutifully made art fit into the dictates of the status-quo masters, the politicosoldier mentality...
...Starting with considerable commotion about Dr...
...Unable to follow and comprehend the scientists' ways which to him seem like wizardry, the layman is inclined to believe blindly in their findings, if they produce impressive, palpable- findings...
...That such a conflict exists sometimes between private and public opinion as well as behavior, makes it the more worthwhile to investigate both, for what the people publicly say that they think on public issues, must be of very great interest and importance in a modern mass society of democratic structure...
...The same cleavage between "almost everybody's private opinion" and "almost everybody's public opinion" may still exist today,—the former being investigated by psychologists and the Kinsey Report, the latter being measured by the pollsters...
...THE PEOPLE KNOW BpST...
...IN CONTRAST TO THIS broadside, the short book by Morris L. Ernst and David Loth offers a well-balanced, fair, constructive contribution to the same questions, although it centers only around the pollsters' spectacular error of the last election, without going into the other achievements and problems of opinion polling...
...Dr...
...and Pevsner refused, and found their studios closed...
...Biederman's view is that all art is a series of statements about the nature of reality and that art has been one of the major means by which man has formulated his changing and developing conception of the world about him...
...The author takes advantage of the opportunity to acquaint the public with a number of examples of his own work...
...The author-artist complains that the academician's consciousness of and interest in art begins 2,000 years ago with the Classical Greeks and ends abruptly with the Impressionists...
...Professor Rogers could just as well have attacked modern motor cars as a destructive influence, because may can be used, and often are used, by gangsters...
...Constructivist art utilizes all the materials of our modern world...
...Lindsay Rogers, Professor of Public Law at Columbia University and a long-time hater of the opinion polls, is the author of the first broadside against the pollsters who, he admits, "have raised his passions...
...for he feels that the polls da feres the deoKXteetic •leaden to follow the majority With aft its ignorance and snap judgments, as the polls reveal it...
...The moderns, he contends, are particularly interested in art before Greek times and after the time of the Impressionists...
...Remember 1948...
...The "approved" group became the equivalent of what we today call commercial artists...
...They admonish the public to "cultivate a healthy sense of doubt...
...The Ballots vs...
...The authors warn the public not to submit its better judgment to the authority of these experts...
...2.50...
...Gallup's figures on Voting Behavior of American Males, Females and Other Citizens...
...Gallup's methods...
...They became the principal artists of Russia and executed commissions for the government, and were placed in charge of art instruction...
...but fortunately, we have no evidence to make such an indictment necessary...
...while Gallup's Institute leans heavily on Yes-No questions as centerpoint of his more extensive questionnaires, other pollsters, led by Elmo Roper, Rensis Lickert, Paul F. Lazarsfeld, use quite different approaches...
...The Polls...
...The former is interested in Greco-Roman and Renaissance until the birth of the camera, and the latter with the primitive...
...Messrs...
...Some had a conscience and suffered...
...With the Soviet revolution the constructivists flourished for a while...
...2.75...
...Patriotic American...
...This undoubtedly correct observation has been made before, for instance by Mark Twain when he was asked by a lady novelist to publish his verbal approval of her novel which glorified two unmarried lovers...
...On a point of fact, they have developed many such methods and are using them constantly...
...or Russian art workshops, like the later Bauhaus in Germany, were emasculated and fundamentally destroyed under their respective dictatorships...
...Muhlen is an author and lecturer on questions of social and political psychology...
...Biederman's encyclopedia has beautiful illustrations (315),excellent format, and unlimited references to hundreds of publications, and viewpoints of as many writers and thinkers...
...The constructivist puts back into painting the actual third-dimension by discarding emphasis on the primitive mechanical tools of paints and brushes, canvas and chisels...
...and ffcln...
...The overwhelming point of the book is that art, if it is to live, needs freedom...
...Its dreams, with their abundance of solace, cannot flourish in the arid atmosphere of duress...
...A MAJOR PART of the author's emphasis toward the end of the book is on "constructivist" art which he can speak about ex cathedra, as a practitioner and experimenter in this contemporary school of artistic expression...
...The former were willing' to place their art at the disposal of the Party, but Gabo...
...We still don't know whether Kinsey is correct within the usual four percentage points of error, but Election Day taught us that, at least in one instance, the error of Gallup and the other election pollsters was slightly, yet decisively larger,—a bad let-down for those who had trusted in, and perhaps gambled on, the prophetic powers of the Polls...
...Later the Nazis and fascists emulated the Communist approach and, of course, creative artists suffered their inescapable fate—comply or be destroyed...
...Shostakovich, Gieseking and others chose to comply...
...passionate indeed in its aversion against the pollsters, embellished with many quotes and anecdotes (from world history and The New Yorker, but without relation to the subject under discission), magnificently one-sided and superbly arrogant, the book contributes to the issue a new collection of all the old criticisms ever levelled against opinion measurement...
...In 1920, a great constructivist exhibit was held in Moscow, and a battle emerged: Tatlin and Rodchenko versus Nsum Gabo and Antoine Pevsner...
...IN SPITE OF political conformity, Gabo-Pevsner's Vchutemas...
...Biederman is critical of both, and analyzes their limitations, potentialities, and contributions...
...Art and Freedom Reviewed by R. LLOYD CANTOR ART AS THE EVOLUTION OF VISUAL KNOWLEDGE...
...CHARLES BIEDERMAN'S encyclopedia on art and freedom starts with a discussion of the semantics of our times and its relation to art, human rights, equality, democracy, etc...
...Washington, D.C.: Public Affairs Press...
...Gabo, Pevsner, and Kandinsky succeeded in fleeing from the USSR...
...But let something happen which casts doubts on their omniscience and infallibility (which no scientist ever claims for himself), and the layman's adoration of science will turn into contempt for swindlers...
...The question with its many implications has been raised often by the pollsters themselves who are well aware of the fact that, besides counting Yeses, Noes and Don't Knows, other complementary questions and gauges most be used to arrive at real measurements of public opinion...
...while the findings of the pollsters might actually have indicated the latter, correct- result, they were erroneously interpreted, and for reasons which are not yet wholly explored, the erroneous interpretation was, without doubt or scepticism, accepted by "almost everybody's public opinion," as Mark Twain had called it...
...other artists who believed in expressing their own honest convictions were not equally fortunate...
Vol. 32 • April 1949 • No. 14
