Brooklyn Museum Quarterly (1916) (14589895610)

Identifier: brooklynmuseumqu46broouoft (find matches)
Title: Brooklyn Museum Quarterly
Year: 1916 (1910s)
Authors: Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences. Brooklyn museum quarterly
Subjects:
Publisher: Brooklyn
Contributing Library: Gerstein - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN



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tion of the obvious, but designed their work in a mannersuitable to their material and to the position the work wasto occupy. But how was such work regarded in later times ? Bothin Italy and France, in the nineteenth century, the nowvalued primitives were looked upon with disfavor. Theworks even of Botticelli were left in the dust of an atticin Florence till they were discovered and brought down tothe gallery they now honor. Precious works of the earlymasters were also long neglected in the Louvre as not be-ing considered worth the expense of carriage! The superbsculptures of the Parthenon, when they were first broughtto London, were spurned as inferior copies of Roman workand left in a wooden shed till, at last, they were permitted toenter the British Museum. In view of such startling facts, the idea of conven-tionalism as opposed to naturalism seems due to a preju-dice of our forefathers, and indicates a state of mind inwhich all that was characterized by the ornamental, decora- 139
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BdWWss¥ds?Hl¥sBXwdmTa?3 MEMORIAL SLAB OF MASTER HUGH LIBERGIERS* tive (luality of ancient art, was looked npon witli disfavor.In the second half of the nineteenth century the painter,Burne-Jones, was laughed at for making drapery as if cutout of tin. The fact that untold generations had workedon a decorative basis in a large part of the civilized world,was ignored. With supreme contempt for savagesheathens and the dark ages, it was assumed that prog-ress was identical with the form of naturalistic rendering. In such an atmosphere it came about naturally enoughthat conventional art meant inferior art. If such workwas necessary in order to restore churches of mediaevalcharacter with stained glass windows or carving, for instance,this could be done industrially. Decorative art wasconsidered sufficient for the artist who had failed in theFine Arts. Conventionalism was considered the dis-tinguishing mark of ancient art, so conventionalism w^asaimed at as an end. All this is the ine^ital)