I’ve been following with interest on TV the history of art in France presented by Andrew Graham-Dixon. In the past I have been a great admirer of his work …. especially his biography of Caravaggio. Having heard him lecture also I have appreciated his capacity to combine wide knowledge of his subject with the ability to condense it into an intelligible narrative. Sadly, this recent series fell apart at the end. The first two programmes, I thought, enabled me to understand and evaluate figures such as Ingres and David more than I had in the past. The third in the series, however, degenerated into a rather blurred gallop. I guess that it is appropriate that we were reduced to “impressions” in the place of clear insights as we sped through his survey of French modernism.
One thing has struck me, trying to reflect on the experience today. Whereas his treatment of the development of French painting during the Revolution and the Napoleonic period was anchored in a context of the changes in French society and politics, in this final episode of his survey we lost sight altogether of the transformation of the world in which art was being made. At one time I took quite an interest in the Dreyfus Affair and its importance as a barometer of the conflicts , ideological and social, that divided French society. I can’t help but ask whether the diversification of art in France at this time might have been looked in some way to the deep conflicts by which France was riven in other respects. In Graham-Dixon’s account, however, art floated free of its context.
Maybe need to think more about that one.