I am a regular reader of Apollo magazine. This might seem very strange, given the fact that its intended readership is people engaged in the art market. It reviews regularly exhibitions I have no chance whatsoever of seeing, and comments on aspects of the global market which may seem to be a million miles from anything that touches me. The October edition has a long article on the art of the Mughal Empire. You might be understandably puzzled by my preference, and I would not be surprised if you were to think that my choice is pretentious, to say the least. I do have my reasons.
I find nothing enables me better to think about the nature of art in a general sense, and more particularly the very specific understanding we have developed in our own age and culture. I was set to thinking about this earlier this evening, reading an article about a particular piece of sculpture from Papua New Guinea.* The conditions of creation and use of this item are a world away from those of the works of Lynn Chadwick, reviewed in another article in the same number. What did either of them think they were doing? More to the point, what do I think I’m doing?
An article by Emily Cox wonders “if we can still see what made Impressionism shocking to its first viewers.” It’s a good question: and one which is not remote from the question I was posing in my talk the other night, on my series based on the “Green Man”. Is it any all possible for us to grasp what Mediaeval stone-masons thought they were doing, and is there some common enterprise in which both I and they are engaged?
I never find myself stimulated to explore questions like this by the pages of The Artist.
*Now there’s a thought for as start. I wonder whether its creator thought of this as an item of “sculpture” in our sense.