Art History Today

Enterprising Research

  If you think that the present government's ambitions to change education in the U.K. stops at rising tuition fees, then think again. I’ve been hearing about their plans to hi-jack the Haldane Principle- essentially a rule that academics decide the direction of research, not politicians. The implications of this are very grave and far reaching because it would mean that intellectual production would be strictly controlled by the spreadsheet, not academic ambition. More seriously, it might mean that decisions about humanities research might rest on their relevance to enterprise culture and the so-called “Big Society.”

The art historian Iain Pears writes about how this ideological measure is manifesting itself in the government’s attempt to “direct” Funding for the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) into intellectual areas, some of which have no relation to the humanities at all.

“The Arts and Humanities Research Council, for example, has been instructed to direct a ‘significant’ part of its funding into six strategic research areas which have been defined for it. Some of these areas have little to do with either the arts or the humanities – ‘civic values and active citizenship’, for example. Other proposals have a political slant: of particular concern is the unelaborated instruction, in a document issued by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, that ‘AHRC will systematically address issues relating to … cultural renewal contributing to the “Big Society” initiative.’”

Pears goes on to comment on something I’d never heard of, although given the present state of things in the U.K., not entirely surprised to learn about. How about a “Humanities for Business Programme” consisting of modules like “Machiavelli and entrepreneurial success”, “Rousseau and Marketing”, and Shakespeare has to be in  it of course. What about a module on “Henry V and Inspirational Leadership.” These were proposed in a British Academy pamphlet last year. I glanced at this but the enterprise culture section of it must have escaped my attention. But why stop there? Why not a course on Raphael and advertising in the renaissance, or Giotto and banking, Titian and shopping in Venice anybody? Don’t laugh; there have been books on renaissance shopping published.

There have been some excellent studies of art and the market. The economist John Michael Montias created an important survey of the 17th century art market in the Netherlands, and others have been inspired by him. It’s important to point out though that Montias, and others working in that vein, were not in thrall to the rhetoric of marketing and were certainly not thinking of economic life in the same way the Coalition are- every aspect of social existence controlled by the balance sheet.

  I myself have dipped a foot in early modern art and the subject of economics, in articles on Rembrandt and Poussin; but always with some ambivalence, especially in the present ideological climate. I think the study of economics and painting is a very worthwhile subject to pursue, but I interpret economics in a much broader sense: painting, psychology, and the reception of the artwork. I’m not interested in turning the early modern or renaissance into some model of consumer society, or projecting our own neoliberal marketised nightmare onto earlier periods because of some prevailing ideological fad. I’m not interested in projects that are nothing more than itemizations of the financial value of furniture, fittings and props in renaissance paintings either. I recall a conversation in front of Holbein’s Ambassadors in which my interlocutor proceeded to tell me how much the carpet and other items in the picture cost.  I stood there speechless as I’d never heard anybody turn a renaissance painting into a commodity in such blatant terms. I much prefer books like Michael Baxandall’s Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy where he introduced the concept of the “period eye”, an idea that literally took account of how merchants and businessmen in renaissance Florence viewed the works they commissioned. This was a different kind of calculation and depended on knowledge of the artist’s skill in determining value in the painting, not simply the price of the objects in the picture. Baxandall has always been required reading on my renaissance courses, but in the last decade there’s been a drift away from him towards what is called the material renaissance. I can’t help thinking that the material renaissance approach unwittingly plays into the hands of the architects of Thatcherism and its inheritors? I increasingly wonder if such books and research projects monetize the field, and that academics are not taking this into account or choosing to ignore it. Is writing about the economic side of painting turning research into a kind of commodity?

There may be more opportunity to ponder that question in the future. Judging by the way things are going with funding bodies who may not control the Haldane Principle anymore, more marketing and money projects are going to appear in humanities research, but determined by the “impact” they have on society, or should we say the “Big Society” to use that ridiculous moniker; not generated because the subject of economics and the arts is academically stimulating and can throw light on how artists such as Rembrandt and Vermeer painted and interacted with their society, which is what Montias’s work achieved.

Subjecting research generation to an “enterprise culture” model can’t bode well for the humanities, especially art history, if that becomes the main criterion by which research projects are judged.

Art Themes and Memes of 2010

Connoisseurship and Science.

  The topic of how science can help us identify painters, styles, authorship etc, has figured highly on this blog over the past year. In a July post, I said that Martin Kemp’s and Pascal Cotte’s book on the troublesome La Bella Principessa drawing showed how the two approaches could function for the artistic good, without feeling the need to outdo each other. I’ve received e.mails and comments from top Leonardo scholars/connoisseurs who believe that this compromise augurs well for an age of increasing complexity in museum politics and practice. Yet, despite this attitude of rapprochement, why do some still harbour doubts and clamour for a “return to traditional connoisseurship.” Perhaps that’s valid; one word that didn’t feature much in the National Gallery’s Close Examination exhibition was connoisseurship.

Rediscoveries, Rediscoveries, Rediscoveries!

We ended last year with the rediscovery of a Velasquez at the Met in New York, and guess what? We’re concluding 2010 with another Velasquez (pictured) dredged from the vaults of the Met. I found last year’s attribution completely convincing, but have to agree with Culture Grrl about the lamentable quality of this year’s find, despite the attribution’s support by one of the leading experts on the painter. This seems to be a cumulative trend: curators making claims about the dusty old masters in their basements; claims subsequently endorsed by a leading authority. Some attributions hold water, but I can’t help feeling a little jaded and cynical at the rediscovery phenomenon, particularly with such headline attracting names like Rembrandt and Velasquez. And for every authenticated old master, there is one that simply doesn’t pass the test. I’m looking at that so-called “Caravaggio” St John in Amsterdam, which doesn’t convince me in the least.

Refurbishment, Refurbishment, Refurbishment!.

  If there was one word that caused my blood to boil it was the dreaded word refurbishment. It reminded me of Baudelaire’s complaint about Paris being full of road works and construction; or Ruskin’s rants about restoration and dropping cement on classical figures in Venice, all in the name of progress. In much the same curmudgeonly mode, I cry “Excuse me, but do we have to close whole museums, or deprive the public of their permanent collections for such as long time, purely so we can have a 21^st museum experience”? Particularly reprehensible is Tate Britain (pictured) which is about to embark on a 45m makeover, necessitating the storing of most of the pre 1900 collection. After writing this post, I got comments and messages from lots of readers who have seen this modern construction imposed on their own museums. And there’s another dimension to refurbishment:, it seems to have replaced loan exhibitions as a way of unintentionally hiding the permanent collection from the people.

Art History and Cyberspace.

What have Facebook, Twitter et al have to do with art history? On the face of it nothing, but look again and you might change your mind. I’ve used Facebook to discuss the iconography, style etc of old master paintings; the messaging system seems to be ideal for that. I’m not exactly a Twitterholic, but the software obviously has its attraction for art enthusiasts who have found my blog through it, and as a communication device, it’s awesome.  It’s not yet clear what social networking and the rise of cyberspace can do for art history, but we’d be fools to ignore its potential, especially as education is likely to become more open-source and accessible in the future. As I said here, I think it’s inevitable that web technology will be absorbed into our discipline, especially as the paradigms of publishing change, as they must, due to the mass amateurization of publishing caused by the rise in weblogs, wikis and other on-line resources. That can only mean that we’ll learn more about the benefits of sharing information and ideas on line.   

Art and the Age of Austerity.

If there is one word that needs to be re-defined to make it reflect a specific historical moment, it’s austerity and the programme of momentous and callous measures associated with it. From now on we won’t be able to hear that word without thinking of effigies of Nick Clegg burned by furious students, or David Cameron reassuring pensioners their winter fuel allowance was safe, whilst planning to take it away from them, as we learned over the festive season. The austerity programme glanced off the major museums- no admission charge, only a 15% cut, and financial reserves to be accessed, up to 50% in the NG’s case- but the axe hacked mercilessly away at the Arts Council and other arts organisations. Timber! Down they went, the funding for a broad swath of arts ventures, not to mention provincial museums, libraries, and other targets which are deemed too much of a luxury for the incoming Age of Austerity. If we took austerity to its logical conclusion, I would be sitting on the floor of my study with my net book powered by my own battery; and when that packed up, I’d be reading books by the light of the candle, desperately trying to block out the noise of the anti-culture police bulldozing the libraries and universities outside. Still, I guess we should give thanks to the ConDems for not imposing admission charges on the major museum, but can we really believe it’s going to last? Can you really trust a government on culture that is so mean that it gleefully deprives young children of the delight of discovering reading? And what chance has culture and the arts got in this country when it’s represented by people like this?

Art and Protest

Situationist fun or serious engagement with an administration that seems to have abandoned the young to their economic fate? I don’t know, but the outbreak of sit-ins, art school occupations and tactics (as reported on here) that fused the aesthetic and the political certainly caught the attention and imagination of those who had been, hitherto, politically quiescent, myself included. Who can forget the book block as a spirited response to kettling, a word that has huge resonance for the protest movement. I think it’s copyrighted, otherwise I would have shown you an image of a kettle cop laying into Derrida’s Spectres of Marx. Away from the physical fray, the most symbolic expression of young artist rage appeared at the Turner Prize, shaming the glitterati inside who should have opened the door for free education, but settled for business as usual instead. Forget about Susan Phillipsz, the students should have won, since 2010 protest could be the new modern art! Pictured are the Arts Against Cuts movement who briefly occupied the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern, whilst enroute to a demonstration.

AHT wishes all its readers a happy new year! I’ll be back in Jan with an overview of exhibitions to look out for in 2011.

Eating the Young

While watching the events that that led up to last and this week's decision to give the turbulent tuition fees bill an easy ride through Parliament, an image came to me: Goya's grotesque and unsettling Saturn Devouring His Son (1819-28), itself based on a harrowing precedent by Rubens.

Why? Because, despite all the ambiguity and difficulty of the image, it seems to me to symbolize the devouring of the young by an ideological monster that is completely out of touch with the real problems and trials faced by youth. Maybe it's not surprising that I should recall Goya's bleak canvas in these ideologically combustible times: Goya's art always had a political layer burning below its surface, which burst into splendid flame in some of his revolutionary paintings. This is hardly surprising as the artist lived through an era of seismic upheavals, something like those beginning to characterize our own times.

In his searching book on Goya, Robert Hughes says:

"What Goya painted is the combination of uncontrollable appetite and overwhelming shame that comes with addiction- Saturn goggle eyed and gaping, tormented by his lust for human meat, for an unthinkable incest. If he were merely hungry, he would not appall and move us so. And in what sort of society would the fathers eat the young? Surely, one in which the old perceive the new as a deadly threat: a society so reactionary that "tradition" imagined as the absolute reign of total authority, is worth murdering for."

In our society things haven't got that bad yet, although the fathers of this contemptible administration, this no-mandate Con-Dem coalition, are slaughtering the dreams of millions of innocents. But the category of young cannot be confined to age; it extends to older and middle-age people who feel young at heart, and have sympathy at the plight of the EMA- deprived school kids, the students and other disenfranchised groups being cut loose from society because of the government's reckless austerity plans. Even Daily Mail readers, God help us, support the students despite them breaking out last week.

It seems to me that the government see those who don't agree with them as infants- the word actually means without speech- so that they can be more easily controlled and reduced to silence. You've only got to listen to their language. Listen to Prime Minister David Cameron who came out of Downing St after the so-called Battle of Parliament Square to admonish the children with a stern rebuke; he resembled a cross between a father figure and a headmaster pronouncing condign punishment on the whole of the family or school. Listen to Home Secretary Theresa May describing the students' behavior as "disgraceful", like a schoolmarm wagging the finger at errant children. Then there's the police's method of kettling, which is surely a brutal form of detention. Concluding this family plot, there's the avuncular side of the family, the House of Lords, some of whom may want to intervene, but feel that by and large the headmaster paterfamilias is right, and they should just let him get on with punishing the children.

One of these oligarchs, Lord Browne, is the author of one of the most damaging documents ever devised for higher education in the U.K. It advocates nothing less than the wholesale commoditization of learning; every part of the educational process reduced to a transaction that can be measured on the balance sheet. Browne, a previous head of B.P. is a Gradgrind for our times; but what perturbs me most about the Browne Report is its attitude to the arts and humanities. The word "arts" only appears once in the entire document, and it's clear that it's a charter for philistinism.

But as James Vernon, in one of the best analyses of the Browne situation, points out, rather than playing the philistine card, we should make it absolutely clear to everybody how relevant arts, humanities and social sciences courses are to higher education. As Vernon notes, there were more studying in these subjects (1,073, 465) as opposed to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths) subjects (829,115) during 2008/9). That's a 28% increase since 2001/2 as opposed to a 20% increase for STEM. And another conclusion Vernon draws, is that arts, humanities and social science studies are "cross-subsidizing the more expensive STEM fields that have fewer students." Doesn't it therefore make sense economically to try to build educational institutions and programmes that incorporate a cross-disciplinary approach between the humanities and STEM instead of eliminating one at the expense of the other? Though strategies like Vernon's are worth praising, I sometimes feel like Martin McQuillan who laments that a government that doesn't see the value of the arts never will.

There's also the argument that the humanities improve the quality of society; that they make us more rounded citizens; that they are essential for democracy. That's the tenet of a book, Not for Profit: Why Democracy needs the Humanities, just published by the American philosopher Martha Nussbaum, who's also speaking at conferences on the humanities this week.

It is evident that at the heart of the students' protest towards the regime of austerity lies great ingenuity and inventiveness. The counter-austerity movement is powered by creativity, an urge to construct imaginatively, expand the horizons of debate, rather than destroy self-expression and reduce ambition, which is what this government's measures will result in. The Top Shop demonstrations have the look of performance art, and watch this video of the demonstration, teach-in inside Tate Britain from last week. It's just one of many examples of how youth is making its voice heard loud and clear, almost drowning out the drone of the self-satisfied media and artistic managerial elite, represented by the Turner Prize dinner guests and the modern art magnifici. I particularly liked the students' use of the dunce's cap because there's another Goya reference there- his paintings of victims of the inquisition forced to wear carozzas, which evolved into the dunce's cap. The juxtaposition of students wearing these and frowning police is purely accidental, but it's a nice update of Goya's repressive state apparatus and innocent victims in a carnivalesque setting.

Though the Con-Dems may attempt to silence this legitimate protest movement, to choke the spirit of youth before it has been allowed to express itself, I'm confident they won't succeed. Just look at the expression on the face of Saturn, the personification of this ideological, youth-destroying monster. Rubens settled for a cannibalistic ogre munching on the belly of his son, but Goya's version taps the psychological just as much as the visceral element. His Saturn displays fear because, going back to Hughes's fascinating commentary on this darkest of Goya's "dark paintings", the father is finding the young hard to literally stomach and he knows it, but must keep going because he is suffering from some kind of compulsion.

Looking around at the tireless resistance that is cemented by imagination, passion and an unflinching belief in its aims, I think the student movement, and its growing affiliations – composed of people of all ages-, are all set to give the Coalition the biggest upset stomach of its life.

There's more from me on the Browne report (and other topics) in an interview at Three Pipe Problem, and for another U.K. academic's view of it see this interview on the same site.

Art Kettles

I've just completed a really enjoyable course on the London National Gallery. I've taught its history from its inception in 1824 to its fortunes in the Comprehensive Spending Review of last month. However, had I finished the course this week, I would have had to include another event in its glorious history: its occupation by a group of students and artists; its precincts protected by riot police in Trafalgar Square.

That last image is something I never expected to see, but it recorded a real event; it also brings home the link between art history and what is happening on the streets of our cities these days, something I've tried to capture on this blog over the last few months using examples from the discipline. The NG occupation was the latest in a series of sit-ins, teach-ins that have seen art schools and museums like the Slade, Goldsmiths, and Tate Britain temporarily – some still going- taken over by arts, humanities and social studies students determined to highlight the importance of the arts to our culture and civic life in a peaceful and collaborative way. Controlling some of the other outbreaks of artistic resistance inevitably took the form of "kettling", a police containment tactic that is rightly attracting its fair share of criticism. I fear there are worse things than kettles to come in 2011 though.

It is telling how students are utilizing culture to battle kettling. The first T.V. pictures I saw on Thursday lunchtime were students shielding themselves with "book-blocks", each having the name of a famous title on its shield cover. So you had the bizarre spectacle of riot police laying into Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, Adorno's Negative Dialectics", or whatever. It was potent in its symbolic impact, though the message was undoubtedly transmitted at the risk of serious damage to the sender. It was resourceful and brave for students to borrow a counter-measure from Italian students who seemed to have invented it in response to kettling in their country.  

Literature is literature though, and I'm an art historian who mainly deals with images. I found myself wondering what the effect would have been if images of famous paintings had been on these blocks making the situation a true art kettle? Sadly, I can't take credit for this phrase; it was coined by a colleague in the States who is observing the events with interest. I don't know the history of the kettle, but imagine my surprise when I discovered a possible example of an art kettle, although the story is likely to be apocryphal. The story is that the Russian anarchist Bakunin was helping a rebellion in Dresden in May, 1849; he suggested that Raphael's Sistine Madonna , a canonical work at the Dresden Museum, be hung on the barricades because the Germans were "too cultured" to open fire on such a precious masterpiece.

"Well, brother, no! A German is a civilized person, but the Russian is a savage, he'll start shooting not only at Raphael, but at the very Mother of God herself, if the authorities so command. Against Russian soldiers with Cossacks it would be irresponsible to use such means - you wouldn't protect the people and you'd destroy Raphael!"

I was lucky to get this information from a journal article by Irene Pearson on the perception of Raphael by Russian writers. According to her, there's a comparison to be drawn with "the native Russian tradition of carrying holy icons in front of a procession bearing a petition to the authorities." She mentions the view that because the Sistine Madonna was painted on canvas- rare for Raphael- it may have been intended as a processional banner. Checking my books on Raphael, I don't see this theory being entertained. It's true that the Sistine Madonna was an expression of Piacenza ceding voluntarily to the papacy of Julius II who seems to have commissioned the painting. Check out John Pope- Hennessey's discussion of the work in his lectures on Raphael. Julius was a warrior pope, and he surely would have ridden into battle with the papal standard- but not the Sistine Madonna! The idea of it as a processional banner seems to have originated in Russian folklore and religion, but it's a very compelling image in the context of 19^th century civil disturbance in Europe and Asia.

So, would the celebrated Sistine Madonna have been used to taunt the forces of a German kettle? Probably not. As Pearson says, Bakunin was almost certainly joking. One look at the photograph of him suggests a kind of anarchist dandy, causing violence, then melting into the multitude.  

I'm teaching in the NG next Thursday. It'll be interesting to gauge the atmosphere in the museum after the metropolitan uproar of the last few weeks. Things will have calmed down, I'm sure, but I won't be able to get that image out of my head- the riot police standing outside the NG. I don't know if they were kettling the demonstrators inside or those in Trafalgar Square. Recalling the pictures on the BBC unfolding on Thursday, it's an odd juxtaposition: a few days before, culture guarded in Trafalgar Square; a few days after, culture attacked – albeit symbolically- in Parliament Square by the same riot squad who protected it. The irony was probably lost on the kettling kops.

Sources.

John Pope-Hennessy, Raphael, 1970.

Irene Pearson, "Raphael as Seen by Russian Writers from Zhukovsky to Turgenev," The Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 59, No 3 (Jul., 1981), 346-369.

National Gallery occupied 9/12/10

 

 

 

Nearly every museum and art school seems to be in occupation these days.  

This time it's the National Gallery's turn.  

 

The Tate Occupation, 6/12/2010.

Can't seem to get away from Tate Britain. Here's a couple of photos of the 200 or so Arts against Cuts protesters who occupied the museum last night. Pity they didn't protest about the refurbishment as well. 

 
 

 

 

And here's a video of the Turner Prize winner Susan Philipsz- she was happy to endorse the campaign directly. Sir Nic Serota and Penelope Curtis are in attendance here.

And a witty piece here. 

Slade School of Arts Occupied

Students have taken over the famous Slade School of Arts at UCL.

Their statement…

"We believe that the current proposed cuts to university funding threaten the existence of arts and humanities education in England and Wales. It is for this reason that we have made the decision to occupy the Slade School of Art building. We demand that the government provide the same protection for arts and humanities in universities as is provided for the sciences. We vehemently oppose the transformation of the university system into market based model; education should be a public debate, not a private economy.

Therefore we the students of the Slade are offering a space for the assembly of all art colleges in England in order to organise non-violent direct action against what we view as an attack by the government on the arts. This is not a virtual exchange, this is a physical assembly. We are demonstrating the value of physical space for art education through the continuation of our day-to-day activity, as well as by inviting other colleges to participate in open events, lectures and workshops. Our occupation is not designed to be disruptive, nor will it engender any damage to the building. Rather, we want to highlight the value of intellectual and cultural exchange within art courses. This is not a boycott, it is an act of support."

Amen to that.

Bloody good luck to them and all the other arts colleges! 

Don’t Stop the Carnival!

We're on the eve of a massive protest against the cuts. The students' resistance is taking the form of a carnival in London, as this colourful poster proclaims.

I will be in London this week, but not until Friday when I'm visiting the Treasures from Budapest exhibition at the Royal Academy. I'm bound to lose myself in the renaissance and baroque sections of this show.

Still, I'll send the carnival my best wishes and support. There's a "dark new philistinism" looming over the country, and the high spirits of this event will hopefully go some way towards dispelling it.

Meanwhile, to give you some idea of the anger brewing in U.K. universities, here's a letter pledging support to the students- it was sent to the Guardian yesterday and is signed by no less than 295 academics.

 

Here's my pictorial tribute to the COR: Pieter Bruegel the Younger's Battle between Carnival and Lent. Plenty v Austerity, I guess.

 

There'll be a longer, more conventional post up before the end of the week.  

The Art of Bad Government

I wrote this post last week before disappearing under an avalanche of teaching assignments!

It was a strange thing to happen, but while watching the ConDems posing awkwardly in front of a backdrop with the Great Wall of China, on T.V. last week, I suddenly saw another backdrop superimposed over this one- a fresco in renaissance Siena by Ambrogio Lorenzetti (1338-40). There is a slight Asian connection, since I do remember that the beautiful meadows in Lorenzetti's mural have been compared to Chinese book illustration; and I have thought myself that the large strip of forest behind the hawking party disappearing into the distance slightly echoes the Great Wall of China.

That's not the main reason I thought of Lorenzetti. He came to mind because his landscape appears in a fresco called An Allegory of Good and Bad Government.

As the title suggests, the three frescoes show what happens when good government, elected to protect the citizens, administer justice, and keep the peace, suddenly turns horribly bad. Around a personification of Good Government are allegorical figures representing Courage, Justice, Magnanimity, Peace, Prudence, and Temperance.

Under Good Government, everyone thrives, be they the most humble labourer or the most exalted prince; order is maintained and security established. So that we get the message, Lorenzetti paints a winged figure, Securitas, which hovers over the countryside.

Bad Government faces Good Government on the opposite wall as if to emphasize how one administration can just as easily turn into the other. The head of Bad Government is a demonic figure of Tyranny around which cluster a coalition of allegorical henchmen like Avarice, Cruelty and Pride.
Meanwhile poor old Justice is wrapped up in a shroud and tormented by menacing military types. Under the regime of Bad Government we have an occupying army, and countryside completely blasted and barren unlike the picturesque one of Good Government. Securitas is nowhere to be seen.

I came across a great blog by Dale S. Westervelt, Centering The Eagle: Concerning the Role of the Federal Government in the Life of Its Citizens which has a wonderful description of Lorenzetti's three-walled Allegory. You can read that here. Mr Westervelt quotes from a primer by David Millar on political philosophy that used Lorenzetti's painting.

"There is no better way to understand what political philosophy is and why we need it than by looking at Lorenzetti's magnificent mural."

I couldn't agree more. I don't need to read newspapers, watch TV, or look at books on politics to understand what's happening in the U.K. now. All I need is to contemplate Ambrogio's elegant and well composed allegory to comprehend what happens to the polity when the elected ones- or, in this case ones with no clear mandate- start to destroy the foundations upon which a well-governed society is built. I fear unless the tide turns we'll be living in something resembling Lorenzetti's occupied city, presided over by a bunch of ideologues blinded by their own dogma.

Mr Westervelt with the help of David Millar offers the following thoughts.

Good and Bad Government Profoundly Effect the Quality of Human Lives: Lorenzetti's frescos show how the rule of justice and other civic virtues allow "ordinary people to work, trade, hunt, dance, and generally do all of those things that enrich human existence…[and, alternatively] tyranny breeds poverty and death…[therefore] it really makes a difference in our lives whether we are governed well or badly." (ibid.)

Our Government's Form is Not Predetermined: The primer asks rhetorically why the mural was painted in the first place. The Sala dei Nove (Room of the Nine), in the Siena public square, was the meeting room of the rotating group of wealthy merchant governors. The mural served to remind these men—and many travelers and art historians over the centuries—of their civic responsibility to govern the people responsibly to preserve their lives, their liberty, and their happiness. The vivid portrayal of evil government was to be a sober reminder of the outcome of all manner of vice and the consequence of dereliction of their duties

We Can Know What Distinguishes Between Good Government and Bad: Unlike academic disciplines of math and science, which rely on methods and formulas to arrive at facts, we commonly think about politics as residing in the realm of opinions and preferences. Oxford's guide refers in this section to 'political knowledge.' "The frescos are meant to be instructive: they are meant to teach both rulers and their citizens how to achieve the kind of life they wanted."

Politics aside, I hope you enjoy Lorenzetti's beautiful murals. You can see the whole lot here.

Petition: Humanities and Social Sciences Matter.

"We urge the UK government to recognise the humanities and social sciences as a public good and to invest fully in their future rather than leaving them to the vagaries of the market."

Sign the petition here.

Image: Joshua Reynolds, Theory, R.A.