LEPIDOZ: Caravaggio's 'death of the virgin'

"In a longer perspective of art history, it is very rare for great artists not to be recognised. There are virtually no stories of significant artists in the early modern period whose ability was not promptly acknowledged by their contemporaries. In fact stories of the early manifestation and recognition of genius become a regular feature of Renaissance and baroque artist biographies. Even when Caravaggio had a couple of works rejected by commissioners, no one was in doubt of his outstanding talent, and his Death of the Virgin, for example, was instantly snapped up for a princely collection.

Things became more confused with the advent of modernist styles, from impressionism onwards; but at most the unfamiliarity of new ways of painting delayed commercial success by a few years. Claude Monet was poor in his youth, but wealthy in the second half of his life. Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse did not languish in obscurity; the American post-war abstractionists were eagerly embraced and promoted.

The reality across the past 100 years is that the art establishment and audiences for art rapidly came to identify novelty with quality and to follow fashions in art as slavishly as they followed fashions in hemlines. The perverse result of this passion for safety in numbers – Charles Baudelaire was prescient in seeing that “avantgarde” was the slogan of the follower, not the leader – was that they lost the ability to identify and recognise talent. Instead, like the people who run our big public galleries, they all collect from the same shopping list, based on stylistic and ideological fashions.

And so we have, after all, ended up with unrecognised or underappreciated artists over the past century and at the present day, but these are no longer, as in the persistent myth, brave avant-gardists cruelly ignored by a conservative establishment. There is no longer an avantgarde in the great Westfields of contemporary art, and the establishment lives in dread of missing the latest trend or being outdone in virtue signalling.

The artists who are ignored today, and those who are in fact truly countercultural in our present circumstances, are the men and women who ignore fashion and endeavour to master the techniques of their craft and to renew tradition.

The only hope these people have of being eventually recognised by the obtuse and timid functionaries of the art world is to outlive the cycles of fashion"

4 comments:

VikkyOctober 6, 2024 at 3:34 PM
After reading this article, the reason why artists of the past were easily recognized and appreciated, while modern artists struggle for recognition, can be attributed to several key factors, in my opinion:

1. Information Overload
Modern artists exist in an era of information explosion, with so many new creations emerging that even good works can quickly be buried. Often, these works face criticism rather than appreciation.
2. Market and Media Influence
In the past, artists’ works were discussed within religious contexts or sponsored by nobility. Today, many artists lack promotional backing, and it’s difficult for their works to gain attention purely based on artistic value.
3. Digital Media Era
People today are exposed to an overwhelming amount of content. Digital media gradually weakens people’s aesthetic sense, patience, and intuition. As a result, some previously valued art forms or styles may be forgotten, while new forms and trends gain more attention.
4. Challenges of Modern Art
Many art enthusiasts still prefer classic works, making it difficult for modern art to gain mainstream acceptance, leaving it as a niche.
5. Stagnation in Art
With the difficulty of surpassing classic works, modern artists may be overwhelmed by audiences and digital media, losing creativity. As a result, it’s hard for them to become timeless classics, and they often end up as fleeting trends.

In conclusion, the benefit is that people can recognize the importance of classic art and find their aesthetic sense. However, the sad story is that true artists remain in the past. Another fact is artists are ignored because of their meaninglessness, as people think they don’t need art, they don’t care about art, which is quite sad or helpless.
VikkyOctober 6, 2024 at 3:43 PM
By the way, I love classical art, such as Medieval art, Renaissance, Modern art, and Postmodern art... Salvador Dali is one of my favorite artists. And I also hope to find the real artist in the present.