{Romantic and Critic}[4th November 1990]

[Redbook8:86-87][19901104:1005]{Romantic and Critic}[4th November 1990]

.1005

‘The same two centuries* that witnessed “art’s” growth from from a specific term to a compendious one, saw the establishment of ideas of genius, originality, spontaneity and self-expression that do not serve the art of those centuries very well and can work against any proper understanding of the art of other periods. The ideas we associate with Romanticism have tended to dramatize art’s role in society from one of selective support and celebration to that of conflict. The artist has been relocated outside the community. We see him as a prophet or madman, as a guru or jester; we do not see him as a worker alongside other workers. We look at art for signs of revolution and for that insistent uniqueness which demonstrates conflict within the world of art itself; we value these in the art of the past even as they trouble us in the art of our own day. The writer wanting to hold our attention will need to stress the isolation of a Rembrandt or a Van Gogh and the misunderstanding such men met even within the supposedly informed inner world of art... and thus add weight to an aspect of their aspirations that is quite marginal** and actually makes it more difficult to see both the point and the true originality of what they did.*** Meanwhile the art historian is becoming more and more painstaking in tracing the origin and gradual emergence of new ideas and methods, finding originality not in leaps and wholesale demolitions and reconstructions but in inflections and combinations often of very subtle kinds. The result is that the art historian and the general reader are increasingly at odds, the one seeming to removed from his subject just those excitements that attract the other.’

– Norbert Lynton, Introduction, The Encyclopaedia of Visual Art (Encyclopaedia Britannica International Ltd, London, 1983)

*(ie 19^th & 20^th [centuries])

**[It is?]

***[It does?]

[PostedBlogger17082022]