Sampling 1961

Collages

The 1961 November (Left), July (Top), and September (Bottom) issue covers of Horizon: A Magazine of the Arts.

The first article in the July issue is titled “The Dream of Reason” and is introduced thusly:

Francis Bacon called scientists to the great task of creating Utopia. Their success has been so complete that it threatens disaster. One of their modern spokesmen now bids them consider the responsibility of Science to Man

That is not my reading of F. Bacon. And I question everything about the claim: Look at the key words: Utopia, success, complete, disaster. By definition, Utopia doesn’t admit of disaster.

The first article in the September issue is titled, “The Kennedy Look at the Arts” and is introduced:

Writers, painters, Rhodes Scholars, Cabinet-rank collectors, now orbit around the White House in a capital whose culture normally follows its politics. Will the new atmosphere translate itself into a style– perhaps even into a program?

Art in The People’s House, ca. 2015. Haha.

The first article in the November issue is titled “Picasso and His Public.”

I will put this volume on the kitchen table with the hope that Daughter C will pick it up and look at it and comment because I got nothing on Picasso other that to note that the editors of an Artsy Magazine read by cultured City Mice folks thought Picasso worth talking about in November 1961.