Coming Upon The Clouds Of Heaven
Aug. 25th, 2022 11:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphiloAll Hallows, Tillington has a spire which might just possibly have been designed by Turner and a window that was definitely designed by Burne-Jones...
Two British artists: one securely fixed in the pantheon, the other less certainly so.
The pre-Raphaelites have never quite achieved critical respectability but have always been hugely popular. Burne-Jones is the greatest of them- and his work instantly recognizable. I walked into Tillington church, looked around, thought, there's nothing particularly interesting in here, but, oh- wait a minute- that's a Burne-Jones..."
According to the critics 19th century art history belongs to the French. There's a narrative that goes- Delacroix, Courbet, the Impressionists, Cezanne and the Post Impressionists. It's about fidelity to nature and the modern world + painterly values (by which I mean splashing paint around in a bravura manner). A few outsiders get to muscle their way in because they can be shoe-horned into the narrative: Goya because he anticipates Post-Impressionism, Turner because he anticipates almost everything that came afterwards right up to abstraction, Van Gogh because he did most of his significant work in France- but not the pre-Raphaelites because there's no way they can be made to fit.
It's not that difficult to exclude them because none of them- taken as individuals- is all that remarkable. Apart from Burne-Jones, that is. Burne-Jones rises above the pack. He is original and monumental. The only way to get rid of him is to insult him. "Escapist" is one of the rotten cabbages that gets flung at his head but is it such a wrong thing to turn your back on the world of appearances and trade in archetypes? If so, all of the art of the middle ages and much of the art of the renaissance and the baroque is wrong as well.
I'm enough of a child of my time to leave the question open. I'm not even sure I like Burne-Jones all that much- or do I? Bah, I don't know. What I can say is that once you've seen his work you have it as a permanent possession. It nags at you if you resist it and it guides your imagination if you don't.
Anyway, here's the Tillington window. It's called the Day of the Lord- and I shows the Son of Man coming upon the clouds of Heaven. It dates from 1906- and is therefore a posthumous work...
Two British artists: one securely fixed in the pantheon, the other less certainly so.
The pre-Raphaelites have never quite achieved critical respectability but have always been hugely popular. Burne-Jones is the greatest of them- and his work instantly recognizable. I walked into Tillington church, looked around, thought, there's nothing particularly interesting in here, but, oh- wait a minute- that's a Burne-Jones..."
According to the critics 19th century art history belongs to the French. There's a narrative that goes- Delacroix, Courbet, the Impressionists, Cezanne and the Post Impressionists. It's about fidelity to nature and the modern world + painterly values (by which I mean splashing paint around in a bravura manner). A few outsiders get to muscle their way in because they can be shoe-horned into the narrative: Goya because he anticipates Post-Impressionism, Turner because he anticipates almost everything that came afterwards right up to abstraction, Van Gogh because he did most of his significant work in France- but not the pre-Raphaelites because there's no way they can be made to fit.
It's not that difficult to exclude them because none of them- taken as individuals- is all that remarkable. Apart from Burne-Jones, that is. Burne-Jones rises above the pack. He is original and monumental. The only way to get rid of him is to insult him. "Escapist" is one of the rotten cabbages that gets flung at his head but is it such a wrong thing to turn your back on the world of appearances and trade in archetypes? If so, all of the art of the middle ages and much of the art of the renaissance and the baroque is wrong as well.
I'm enough of a child of my time to leave the question open. I'm not even sure I like Burne-Jones all that much- or do I? Bah, I don't know. What I can say is that once you've seen his work you have it as a permanent possession. It nags at you if you resist it and it guides your imagination if you don't.
Anyway, here's the Tillington window. It's called the Day of the Lord- and I shows the Son of Man coming upon the clouds of Heaven. It dates from 1906- and is therefore a posthumous work...
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Date: 2022-08-26 09:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-08-26 09:34 am (UTC)