{"id":431,"date":"2008-05-17T15:16:22","date_gmt":"2008-05-17T22:16:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/2008\/05\/art-has-purpose-yet-exhibiting-it-does-not\/"},"modified":"2008-05-17T20:33:24","modified_gmt":"2008-05-18T03:33:24","slug":"art-has-purpose-yet-exhibiting-it-does-not","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2008\/05\/17\/art-has-purpose-yet-exhibiting-it-does-not\/","title":{"rendered":"Art Has Purpose, Yet Exhibiting It Does Not?"},"content":{"rendered":"

from The Spectator<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Exhibition Suspicion<\/h1>\n

MARTIN GAYFORD<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Martin Gayford questions the point of art shows. Should they educate or give pleasure \u2014 or both?<\/p>\n

Towards the end of June, 1814, Maria Bicknell, the wife-to-be of the painter John Constable, went to an exhibition at the British Institute on Pall Mall. It was the second retrospective exhibition ever held in London. The first, the previous year, was devoted to the work of Joshua Reynolds and had been so popular that special evening viewings by candlelight were announced. The same was done in 1814 for the follow-up, a joint show of work by Hogarth, Gainsborough and Richard Wilson.<\/p>\n

\"TimeMaria managed to get a ticket for one of the candlelit evening sessions, only to be disappointed. \u2018I prefer it infinitely by day,\u2019 she wrote to Constable; \u2018it was crowded to excess, certainly a very fine place to see, and be seen.\u2019 So only two years into the history of blockbusters, their main drawback had become apparent: too many other people want to see them; their success is as much social as artistic.<\/p>\n

What is the point of exhibitions? As a critic, one spends most of one\u2019s time reviewing them, and yet there is no real agreement as to what their function is. According to Nicholas Penny, the new director of the National Gallery, the point of exhibitions is to teach the public, and consequently, as he told Martin Bailey of the Art Newspaper, he does not much like the word \u2018blockbuster\u2019, \u2018which masks the distinction between entertainment and education\u2019. At the National Gallery, he went on, \u2018We are in the education business, and are concerned with quality.\u2019<\/p>\n

That, however, sounds a little puritanical. Art, after all, is enjoyable. It can cause pleasure, as well as awe, terror, contemplation, relaxation, horror, rage, pity, laughter and the more inexplicable varieties of visual delight. \u2018Education\u2019 and \u2018quality\u2019 are pallid words to describe all that. Nor is there any incompatibility between what we find entertaining and what we learn from. Nonetheless, Mr Penny has a point.<\/p>\n

<\/span>[ click to read full piece at The Spectator online<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from The Spectator Exhibition Suspicion MARTIN GAYFORD Martin Gayford questions the point of art shows. Should they educate or give pleasure \u2014 or both? Towards the end of June, 1814, Maria Bicknell, the wife-to-be of the painter John Constable, went to an exhibition at the British Institute on Pall Mall. It was the second retrospective […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-art"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}