Art History Today

Artistic Accomplishment in the Age of Wikipedia

Following on from my post about Charles Murray’s survey of historically outstanding figures, including artists, I note there’s a similar book for the Wiki and Google Age. Who’s Bigger:Where Historical Figures Really rank uses statistical data based on use of  the English version of Wikipedia. This is Murray’s page counting metrics transposed to the hyperlinking, wiki-building generation.

The brains behind the project,  Steven Skiena and Charles Ward said to the Independent. "We analyse the Wikipedia pages of over 800,000 people to measure quantities that should correspond to historical significance. We would expect that more significant people should have longer Wikipedia pages than less notable folk, because they have greater accomplishments to report.”

Hmm, what about the qualitative aspect of this. Is it really wise to base eminence, or human accomplishment to use Murray’s majestic term, on the habits of Wikipedians. Nothing against Wikipedia, but as a metric of outstanding historical players?

Jesus heads the field just below Napoleon! Interestingly, Murray didn’t include military or political figures like this, as he was keen to stress the humanistic achievement, and war and  deception hardly come into this category.

Unlike Murray, Skiena and Ward divide their artists into Pre-20th century and Modern Artists, thus we avoid the awkward placing of Picasso just below Michelangelo. Based on the Wiki count, Michelangelo doesn’t come top this time; he’s in second place (overall ranking 86th). Leonardo takes the top old master’s place with an overall rank of 29. Unsurprisingly, Van Gogh comes top in the modern list ( overall ranking 73) followed by Picasso whose overall grade is 173.

To be fair to these two data analysts, Murray wasn’t really their model. They took their cue from Michael H. Hart’s The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History, which pre-dates Murray’s tome of 2003.

Who’s Bigger has attracted its fair share of criticism, too Eurocentric, too geeky, too centred on Wikipedia. I’m not against number-crunching  or quantative analysis but the question of validation and experts is an important one. As a professional art teacher I don’t forbid my students to use Wikipedia but it must never be a substitute for the books and articles that are the substance of the discipline. I suppose computer scientists instead of art historians determining the ranking of artists is a symptom of our time. I’m not entirely comfortable with it……

 

Of Comets and Connoisseurs. Art History Meets Astrophysics.

Sherlock Holmes famously said to Dr Watson that he didn’t know the earth went round the sun. From time to time in the canon of stories, Holmes's ignorance of astronomy is refuted. There was a clever use of this in the BBC’s Sherlock where the outcome of a case, as well as somebody’s life, depended upon Holmes deciphering a  painting like a connoisseur. After scanning the signature, the facture and other parts of the canvas, it suddenly hit the detective that a series of paint splotches were arrayed in the shape of an astronomical cluster. The fraudster-artist having a penchant for astronomy, had painted a supernova or an exploding star in the sky; but the snag was it was only visible in 1858, over a hundred years after the work was supposedly executed. A stellar performance in more ways than one.

Now, this blend of astrophysics and art history is no longer in the realm of fiction. An astrophysicist and his team say that they can use their expertise to date Monet’s paintings to the exact minute. Read all about it in the Independent.

The link between painting and celestial bodies is fascinating. My favourite example is William Dyce’s Pegwell Bay, Kent, A Recollection of October 5th, 1858. If you look hard you will see the trail of a comet, Donati’s Comet, observed on June 2nd of the same year by an Italian astronomer. Maybe our astrophysicist friends can detect the exact minute Dyce painted this?

I wonder if the producers of Sherlock had Donati’s comet in mind when they dreamt up their version. Both comets, one fictitious of course, appeared in 1858.

Three Visitors to Florence on the Grand Tour: Stendhal, The Baron de Krudener and Lady Miller

As was shown last week, Florence didn’t appear in the visual record until later in the century when the city was mapped out for visitors. Eventually, a standard guide to Florence published by the city’s single printing house appeared. This guide divided the city up into quarters and documented every church and building of significance within each quadrant. The geographical knowledge of visitors would vary. Stendhal (shown here) says he knew the city well from studying maps beforehand, but on arrival he bought a “descriptive guide.” However, even armed with this he still had to stop twice to ask directions to Santa Croce. Stendhal dispensed with a cicerone, but it’s likely that Baron Krüdener had his own guide as part of his entourage. From reading Lady Miller’s letters, one gets the impression that she may have been more self-reliant than the German aristocrat. Though she and her husband sought advice from curators, she had her own method of recording art such as drawing antiquities in her notebook. They even measured the Venus de Medici!

Next instalment of Grand Tour here.

“Of Outstanding Aesthetic Importance and Significance for the Study of Poussin’s Art.”

This phrase occurs in a press statement from the Dept of Culture, Ministry and Sport about a temporary export ban on Poussin’s Young Moses Treading on Pharaoh's Crown which is owned by the Duke of Bedford.

“The painting by Nicolas Poussin depicting the moment the infant Moses trampled Pharaoh’s crown, will be exported overseas unless a matching offer of £14,000,000 is made. The Culture Minister issued the temporary export bar in the hope that a UK buyer can be found in the time allowed.

Ed Vaizey took the decision following a recommendation by the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest (RCEWA), administered by Arts Council England. The RCEWA made its recommendation on the grounds that the painting is of outstanding aesthetic importance and significance for the study of Poussin’s art.

Of the 30 or so paintings by Poussin in UK galleries and museums, none are quite so insistently severe in either their colouring or composition as this piece.

The decision on the export licence application for the painting will be deferred until 22 April 2014, although this may be extended until 22 October if a serious intention to raise funds to purchase the painting at the recommended price is made.”

Maybe a tall order in today’s financial climate- but I hope a museum is able to save it for the nation. It would look good hung next to Poussin’s Finding of Moses in the NG London. Or it could go in the Ashmoleon next to the Exposition of Moses, or nestle in amongst the Dulwich Poussins. I hope it doesn’t leave the country,but if did I would favour it hanging next to its variant in the Louvre. Both compositions look like they’ve been hewn out of rock with that block-like rectangular composition, though the French version is more opened out. They both are of extreme importance to Poussin’s development in the late 1640s. I’m really pleased with the wording of that press release, though depressed that the loss of yet another Poussin may be on the cards. Now we can only wait.

 

Human Accomplishment, Epochcentrism and and the Arts.

Over Christmas I read a book by Charles Murray called Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 BC to 1950. In this volume its author attempts to define eminence since 800 BC until 1950. By the use of statistics and the science of historimetry- the practice of measuring genius through historical trends or by data-, Murray draws up lists of the most outstanding individuals in the arts and sciences.

Tabulating the Lexicons of Art History.

The tables and written sections on artists will be of most interest to people reading this blog, though his explorations throw up some interesting questions about the trajectories of music, literature and the hard sciences too. By counting the frequency of inclusion, as well as coverage (pictures, index listings etc) in a series of encyclopaedias and art history survey texts, Murray was able to construct a statistical picture of the eminence of artists. Murray also analysed Chinese art with this method, but here’s the list of core texts that he used for Western Art.

• · E.H. Gombrich, The Story of Art, 1995
• · H, Honour and Hugh Fleming, The Visual Arts: A History, 1982.
• · Instituto Per la Collborazione Culturale, 1959, Enciclopedia Universale Dell’Arte (trans), 17 vols.
• · H.W. Janson and A. E. Janson, History of Art, 1997
• · J Marceau, Art: A World History, 1998.
• · S Sprocatti, A Guide to Art, 1991.
• · W. Stadler, Lexikon der Kunst, 1990, 12 vols.
• · M Stokstad, Art History, 1999, 2 vols.
• · J Vinson, International Dictionary of Art and Artists, 1990.

 

Though Murray’s method earned his censure when his book came out in 2003, especially for its page-counting approach, it is probably the nearest thing we’ve got to a statistical evaluation of distinction and genius in art history since the early renaissance. I won’t go into how his quantitative analysis works- there’s an explanation at the back of his book if you decide to read it, or just Google human accomplishment- but his number crunching resulted in a score being given to each “significant figure” ranging from 0 to 100. After identifying 479 artists, these were further whittled down to a super-elite of 20 based on their appearance in the likes of Gombrich, Janson and Fleming/Honour. You probably won’t be surprised to learn that Michelangelo comes top with 100, though you might find Picasso second (77) an unexpected runner-up. Below Picasso is Raphael with 73, Leonardo with 61 (Leonardo actually appears in four tables reflecting his “polymathic sweep”, to use Murray’s apt phrase), Titian with 60, and Dürer tying with Rembrandt with 56.

The Top 20.

In case you’re interested, Poussin is way behind at 27, but that figure doesn’t strike me as strange. Apart from the odd exhibition and appearance in the art market, Poussin’s status has been in steady decline due to the field losing momentum in the 1980s and coming to a full stop at the end of the last decade. We’re now two decades on and Poussin isn’t as eminent as he used to be, which probably merits a book or a long essay in itself. Don’t tempt me! Compared to Poussin’s white dwarf, Caravaggio is presently shining brightly in the art history firmament. He scores 43, comfortably into the top echelon. But note that Caravaggio scholarship is historically recent- dating from the early 20th century. Here are the top 20. If you go to Wikipedia you can see the results for the other disciplines too.

Michelangelo 100

Pablo Picasso 77

Raphael 73

Leonardo da Vinci 61

Titian 60

Albrecht Dürer 56

Rembrandt 56

Giotto 54

Gian Lorenzo Bernini 53

Paul Cézanne 50

Peter Paul Rubens 49

Caravaggio 43

Diego Velázquez 43

Donatello 42

Jan van Eyck 42

Francisco Goya 41

Claude Monet 41

Masaccio 41

Vincent van Gogh 40

Paul Gauguin 38

Apart from other numbers, 41 seems quite high for Masaccio, but surely Fra Angelico and Piero della Francesca would be higher? Most of all that top 7 jars with me, especially with Picasso way above Rembrandt. For me that isn’t an accurate reflection of the current status of Rembrandt which should be, at least equal to Titian’s status given the number of exhibitions, mentions in the press, and general coverage the Dutchman gets. Yet none of these are criteria used by Murray since he associates the encyclopaedia form with professional authority and validation by experts.

Picasso’s unexpected ascent elicits a defensive comment from Murray:

“The presence of Picasso in second place will surprise and perhaps outrage readers. The amount of space accorded to him reflects not just the high regard in which his art is held, but also his seminal role in several phases of the break with classicism that occurred in late 19^C and early 20thC.”

Metainventions or Black Swans.

The break with classicism is what Murray calls “meta-inventions” which might be understood as conceptual breakthroughs which result in seeing the world differently. Here are the 14 “meta-inventions” noted by Murray, both western art and other disciplines and intellectual fields.

· Artistic realism

· Linear perspective

· Artistic abstraction

· Polyphony

· Drama

· The novel

· Meditation

· Logic

· Ethics

· Arabic numerals

· The mathematical proof

· The calibration of uncertainty

· The secular observation of nature

· The scientific method.

In western art, one of the greatest “meta-inventions” would be the invention of linear perspective by Brunelleschi and its generalised use throughout the renaissance period. Picasso and the Cubist breakthrough certainly reoriented the world, but wether this justifies such a high placing is open to question.  Then, of course, there is the Black Swan factor. Does Michelangelo’s Sistine marvel fall into that category for example?

Strip away all the statistical paraphernalia and Human Accomplishment is a long essay on how we define achievement in the arts and sciences throughout history. As far as the sciences go, Murray doesn’t believe that the story is ended, though he believes that the rate of accomplishment in the sciences is declining steadily. We’re not getting another Galileo or Einstein any time soon. He’s much more pessimistic about the future of accomplishment in the arts which he regards as the victim of “greatness fatigue.” Is our capacity for absorbing great novels, great music, great art declining? Murray talks about the concept of “epochcentrism”, the notion that we place more importance on the recent past. You can see this effect in those lists of 100 best novels, increasingly containing more books from the last 50 years than the last 300 or more.

Epochalism and the Arts.

If like me you listen to Radio 3 (for non UK readers, the BBC classical music station) you will hear/see the impact of epochcentrism there too. It’s significant that over the last few years, more pop and 20^th century film music has appeared on that station. leading to accusations of dumbing down, one from our own Brian Sewell no less. I’m a great fan of pop, but R3 was originally earmarked for primarily classical music from roughly Bach and Mozart’s period up to the period of Shostakovich and Stravinsky. Early music (Monteverdi onwards) was only incorporated into R3’s schedules as the station developed, so perhaps it’s not surprising to see a fair chunk of that disappearing. There is still modern avant-garde music on R3, but it also seems an endangered species too as the corporate hierarchy tries to attract a different and more malleable audience by filling the airwaves with vacuous chatter and adverts. This cultural shift (IMHO) might be explained by the epochal factor, though there may be other aspects at work such as neoliberal economics influencing programming. Another way of considering this shift is to think of memory. Some memories aren’t easily retrieved and unless you devise strategies for improving the memory process, you’re in danger of forgetting a lot of things. Our historical memory seems feebler these days.

Concepts like “greatness fatigue” and “epochcentrism” are more difficult to apply to the visual arts, as Murray acknowledges. One of his theories is that “greatness fatigue” was not experienced by the public between 1900 and 1950, but by publishers, gallery owners, impresarios who rejected this art thus depriving the public of the chance to read, see, or assess this kind of art. It did get me pondering the lateness of the Tate Modern phenomenon in this country, the first real attempt to establish modern art in the public mind which occurred rather late in the 1980s. Museums in London back in the 1940s even relegated Turner to outside the toilets in the Tate because he was considered “too modern” for certain curator’s tastes. The less said about the disposable rubbish that passes for art in the Turner Prize the better, not much human accomplishment there. Should we therefore pin our hopes on some unknown modern genius trashed by the critics but likely to be resuscitated to challenge Picasso’s high position on the lists? It seems a remote possibility.

Though I didn’t agree with everything Murray said, his book got me pondering art history as a phenomenon in western history.  Though we still revere the classics like Michelangelo and Rembrandt, Bach and Beethoven, we see them through the filter of novelty and fashion which is surely a side effect of epochalism. I long ago gave up watching art history on T.V. and really find it difficult to appreciate art through the big neoliberal museums anymore. Epochalism certainly drives the art market which is based on modern forms of connoisseurship which I’ve commented on before. It would be interesting to consider the epochal factor in relation to this more…

I will return to this topic of human accomplishment via Michelangelo in another post. He wasn’t always so revered. None of his paintings were in the top 4 works in Rome on the Grand Tour in the 18th century which might surprise some. Murray’s survey doesn’t really take account of these anomalies and historical variations, but then how could such a statistical approach account for every historical variable….

The Hidden World of Museum Breakages

Shocking revelations from Artwatch about accidents with sculpture in leading museums. Like this terra cotta relief by Andrea della Robbia which fell off the wall at the Met in the middle of the night. No wonder the Met aren’t returning AW’s calls.

Next instalment of Grand Tour

Three weeks on Florence- starting with views of the city.

Article on Poussin’s Holy Family in New Mexico Mercury

Not from me, for a change. Last week I was sent an article by Bill Peterson. The end of the article will tell you all about Bill, but I’ll say that he has worked at the Getty and admires Poussin’s Holy Family with 11 Figures which is shared between that museum and the Norton Simon. It’s a long article but worth reading. This took me back to my doctorate as I wrote a lot on the Holy Family, the Flight into Egypt and similar subjects. And I fully agree with Bill that St Joseph in this- and a number of other Holy families- does resemble Poussin himself. Enjoy!

The above composite image is from Bill’s article in the New Mexico Mercury.

 

Lure of Italy: Art on the Grand Tour Course and Blog

“When I was a young man, I sometimes indulged in a daydream of being accompanied to Italy by an educated Englishman, well versed in general history and the history of art...Tischbien has long been devoted to me, and has always wanted to show me Rome, where he has lived for so long…Where could I have found a better guide?”

Goethe, Italian Journey, 1786.

Weekly Sessions.

Goethe (shown here in the Roman Campagna) was one of the many travellers who headed towards Italy in search of art, culture and the experience of the “Grand Tour” in the 18^th and early 19^th centuries. The aim of this course is to evoke the travels and artistic sights seen by many men and women who went to Italy to discover it for themselves. Visitors from Britain, France and Germany visited Italy for a multitude of reasons. Italian cities offered pleasure, education and cultural nourishment. Artists, sightseers and connoisseurs went to discover classical antiquity and the splendours of Baroque culture in Rome; renaissance architecture and art in Florence; the coastal views, Mount Vesuvius, and warm weather in Naples. The course concentrates on the art of these centres: Florence, Rome and Naples. After a short history of the Grand Tour, the course devotes three weeks to each city with each segment devoted to a different theme. These are (a) the place of each city on the itinerary, how it was represented through views by artists through landscape, inside buildings, and at street level; (b) the main artistic sights and works that frequently appear in paintings and in written accounts of art in each city, e.g. Venus de Medici, Titian’s Venus d’ Urbino in Florence; (c) artists, studios, and portraits of famous travellers like Mme de Stael, the Tribunal connoisseurs, Goethe, Edward Gibbon and William and Lady Hamilton by both female and male artists such as Joshua Reynolds, Johann Zoffany, Pompeo Batoni, Angelica Kaufmann, Elizabeth Vigée- Le Brun, Tischbein, the Neapolitan artist, Pietro Fabris and many more. Using slides of painting, sculpture, and city views, as well as the odd piece of travel writing and fiction such as Goethe’s Italian Journey, Stendhal’s, Rome, Naples et Florence, and Mme de Stael’s Corinne, we shall recreate the experience of the Grand Tour in Florence, Rome and Naples. Many artists to be enjoyed: Botticelli to Caravaggio; Raphael to Annibale Carracci; and lots of artists viewed by travellers during the period 1750 to 1820. Generally, the course has been designed as a Cicerone, an Italian word that means a guide who conducts visitors to museums, galleries and other sites of cultural interest, precisely the kind of guide that Goethe sought out when he entered Rome in 1786.

Syllabus

1) Introduction: A Short History of Art and the Grand Tour, 1690-1820.

2) Florence 1: The Attractions of Florence, the City of the Medici.

3) Florence 2: Art on the Beaten Track in Florence.

4) Florence 3: Viewing Zoffany’s Tribuna: Artists, Patrons and Studios.

5) Rome 1: Two Views of a City: Visiting Ancient and Modern Rome.

6) Rome 2: Cicerone to Guidebook: Art on the Beaten Track in Rome.

7) Rome 3: “Come to Rome, a true democracy of Art.” Artistic Brotherhood in the Eternal City.

8) Naples 1: “See Naples and Die!” A Hazardous City for Art Lovers.

9) Naples 2: The Sights of Naples: Churches, Palaces and Volcanoes.

10) Naples 3: Beauty, Danger and the Picturesque: Artistic Life in Naples, Caravaggio to Pietro Fabris.

Grand Tour blog can be found here.

Happy New Year!