Summary
WHEN Raphael was painting, any chance of seeing his work up close was confined to those who had (at least) the rank of monsignor of the Catholic Church. The point is that art throughout its history has always been elitist in one form or another. More recently, art has been made to assuage the bourgeois concepts of taste, a late- nineteenth-century concept which, converted through Impressionism, continues into the present, whereby we all should die of drink in a garret, or at the very least cut our ear off while stuffing ourselves maniacally with lead white.
Open galleries where all can go along and look are a relatively recent phenomenon, but art still remains elitist. It is so, not because (as in Raphael's day) it is being made for an educated and power-broking aristocracy (temporal or spiritual), but because it takes study and time to absorb. It is not entertainment, as Peter Howson, in his attempts to throw conceptualism into some pit of Dante's Inferno, seems to think it should be.See the full content of this document
Extract
Art Is Not Instant Understanding
Art is not instant understanding. This is why it is possible to see certain art works time and time again and each time get something completely new out of them. Vettriano and Howson are wron...
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