We all have some version of this story. That is, an experience of the gulf that can separate the prestige of the work from its power to touch one's soul. This happens because the canon is in many ways disconnected from our inner needs. There may be instances of overlap, but the disconnect is not really very surprising because the list of prestigious works and artists is not really intended to focus on what is going on in our lives. This becomes clear when we look at how - until now - works of art became canonical or prestigious. Ideas about what is 'good art' are not formed by themselves. They are the result of complex systems of patronage, ideology, money, and education, supported by university courses and museums, all of which guide our sense of what makes a work of art especially worthy of attention. In time, this becomes just common sense. In 1913, for example, Raphael was very popular and many people at the time would have thought him the greatest painter who had ever lived. In 2013, this may be far less likely. At either point, people would probably struggle to explain the reasons behind their convictions. This is why it's worth studying some of the principal reasons why art has historically been judged important.
It can be even more frightening to feel that one doesn 't get a famous work.
38. Caravjggio. Judith Beheading Hoiofernes, (.1599
Technical Reading
This method of evaluating art sees it as a succession of'discoveries' or inventions in the representation of reality, and privileges those artists who made the first move towards them. It is akin to a scientific way of reading history, in which we look out for inventors and explorers (Who discovered America? Who put together the first steam engine?). This method tells us that Leonardo da Vinci was crucial because he was an early adopter ofsfumato, an artistic technique for showing shapes without using outlines. Braque was important because he introduced, or was the first to extensively explore, the idea of depicting the same object from more than one point of view.
Cezanne's Mont Sainte-Victoire is sometimes described as one of the most important paintings in the world because it is one of the earliest works to radically emphasize the Flat surface of the canvas (39). In his image of the mountain as seen from Les Lauves, his property near Aix-en- Provence, Cezanne uses blocks of paint to evoke shrubs, but they are first and foremost coloured marks forming an abstract pattern. (This is most apparent if the top half of the painting is covered.)
Political Reading
How important is tl>e artist's technique to you f
39. Paul Gfzanne, Mont Sainte-Victwre, 1902-4
Part of the long history of man's search forjustice.
40. Thomas Gainsborough, Mr and Mrs Andrews, £.1750
According to a political reading of art, a work is seen as good to the extent that it makes important points about man's search for dignity, truth, justice, and the due allocation of financial rewards. According to these criteria, Gainsborough's Mr and Mrs Andrews is a very significant picture, for it can be understood as a thesis about land ownership (40). The couple stand in solitary possession of their acres. They don't have to till the soil or bring in the harvest, they simply enjoy the fruits of others' labour. Gainsborough has suggested, by the way he has painted their faces, that these are smug, mean-spirited people, so the picture can be seen as making a point against the moral corruption of the dominant land-owning class. From the political point of view, this is positive and progressive art, for it is on the side of the future.
Historical Reading
A work of art can be valued for what it tells us about the past. Carpaccio's painting is a rare visual record of a famous bridge before it was reconstructed, and has a lot to teach us about the architecture of Venice around 1500 (41). However, it is also highly instructive about the role of religion in civic life; the ceremonial processions; how patricians and gondoliers used to dress; what kinds of hairstyle people went in for; how the painter imagined the past (the ceremony had taken place over a hundred years before the picture was painted); the economics of art (the image is part of a series commissioned by a wealthy commercial fraternity); how business was linked to social and religious life. And - of course - very much more. In a less scholarly way, the richness with which a past era is made visually present allows us to imagine what it would be like to clatter across the wooden bridge, to be rocked along the canals in a covered gondola and to live in a society where belief in miracles was part of the state ideology.
Shock-value Reading
We are conscious that, individually and collectively, we may grow complacent. Art may therefore be highly valued for its capacity to disrupt and shock. We are particularly in danger of forgetting the artificiality of norms. It was once taken for granted that women should not be allowed to vote, and that the language of ancient Greek should dominate the curriculum of English schools. It is easy to see now that those arrangements were far from inevitable, and that they were open to change and improvement.
Chris Ofili has worked against received ideas about what art can be made of. After its first appearance in the 'Sensation' exhibition of 1997 in London, his painting The Holy Virgin Mary* caused controversy around the world, from raising the ire of New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani to being smeared with white paint by a gallery visitor as a protest (42). Through his use of dried and varnished elephant dung in place of a more traditional representation of the Virgin's breast, Ofili challenges our assumption that excrement, and all it symbolizes, is worthless. We are being shaken from our views of what is respectable and what is not, and nudged towards a more positive evaluation of a by-product of digestion. If we are shocked, the problem lies not with Ofili, but with
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An insight into what the Rialto Bridge in Venice looked like in the early fifteenth century [it collapsed about 30 years later).
41. Vitiore Carpaccio, The Healing of a Man Possessed by a Demon (TheMiracle of the Reliquary of the Holy Cross), с. 1496
the inflexibility of our own ideologies. We are being encouraged not to make the same mistake as those who, in previous eras, would have denied women the vote or insisted that ancient Greek was an indispensable part of the curriculum.
Therapeutic Reading
This book introduces a fifth criterion for judging art: that it can be deemed important in so far as it helps us in a therapeutic way. A work can be 'good' or 'bad1 depending on how well it caters to our inner needs, how well it can address one of the seven psychological frailties we have identified, from a poor memory to a failure to appreciate the more modest unnoticed details.
The power to shock sometimes seems like the most important quality in art.
42. Chris Ofili, Holy Virgin Mary, 1996
To adopt this fifth criterion will have a range of consequences for our understanding of the canon. This way of reading will outline what might be happening in our inner depths when we say that works of art are good or bad. We may well end up liking the same works judged worthy by other readings, but we would love them for different reasons: because they had helped our souls. Getting something out of art won't just mean learning about it - it will also mean investigating ourselves. We should be ready to look into ourselves in response to what we see. Art will be deemed not good or bad perse, but good or bad for us to the extent that it compensates for our Haws: our forgetful ness, our loss of hope, our search for dignity, our difficulties with self-knowledge and our longings for love. Before one reaches a work of art, it will therefore help to know one's own character, so that one knows what one might be seeking to soothe or redeem.