Contact Us | Press Office | Barber Show Separates the Great from the Good
Press Release: 3 February 2004
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GREAT: Portrait of a Carmelite Prior (1616) - Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) GOOD: Head of a Young Woman - School of Rubens. Ascribed to Rubens by Sir Joshua Reynolds, but now dismissed - probably work of Johann Boeckhorst (1604-68) |
Barber
Show Separates
the Great from the Good
These are questions which have preoccupied gallery visitors, critics, journalists - not to mention curators - probably since caveman first put chalk to cave wall. Now these highly contentious issues are to be tackled in the latest exhibition at the Barber Institute of Fine Arts, with the opening of The Great and the Good: Judging Quality in Art this week (opens Friday, February 6).
Every year pundits and public line up to slate the Turner Prize shortlisted works as the cries of "that's not art" and "that's rubbish" go up. Even the Impressionists were condemned as amateur and inept daubers by many so-called experts back in the 1870s, although it seems incredible today.
Judging quality in art is a highly contentious issue and The Great and the Good is likely to be the most controversial exhibition at the Barber for many years. The show takes the unusual step of admitting that not all the paintings in its collection are of the highest calibre, and attempts to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Drawing on its own extensive collection of masterpieces that normally adorn the public gallery, together with works that are arguably not quite up to scratch and usually lurk in the reserve galleries, the exhibition looks at what qualities define a great work of art - and why some pictures may be classed as 'inferior'.
Rubens, Gainsborough, Delacroix and Monet are household names, and most experts agree their work reaches exemplary standards in composition, technical prowess and engagement with the viewer. But how many gallery visitors have heard of Hone, Bellangé or Calraet? What makes a 17th-century Cuyp hunting scene 'better' than a similar picture of another bucolic subject by his contemporary Culraet? Why are there questions of attribution over canvases purporting to be by Gauguin or Zurbarán? And how can we tell paintings such as Portrait of a Carmelite Priorare by Rubens, while those such as Head of a Young Woman are by the "school of Rubens" rather than the master himself?
The Barber's Director, Professor Richard Verdi, has just curated the critically-acclaimed blockbuster exhibition Saved! 100 Years of the National Art Collections Fund at London's Hayward Gallery, and now tackles the Barber's collection with equal verve.
Through pairing great landscapes or portraits with inferior, yet comparable ones, Prof Verdi believes gallery visitors will be able to notice the strengths which differentiate the former, and the shortcomings which characterise the latter.
It's not unheard of for public galleries to examine their entire holdings of the work of some artist - often Rembrandt, for example - and be left with a fraction of the number of authentic pictures by the master that they started with, explains Prof Verdi. The remainder of the pictures, meanwhile, are reattributed as the work of anonymous trainee artists from the master's studio collections - which the master would have the right to sign and pass of as his own.
The result can be painful for today's art collection - but, at the same time, the process can also unearth some incredible surprises - such as Raphael's Madonna of the Pinks, for many years an anonymous painting hidden in a dark corridor in Alnwick Castle, but now reattributed as a great Renaissance masterpiece and the subject of a huge appeal to keep it in the country.
"It's rare for a gallery to turn round and say certain works in its collection aren't up to scratch," says Prof Verdi. "But many museums wash their dirty linen in public by reattributing - after all, our knowledge about works of art increases all the time - and, acknowledging that, they are constantly upgrading or downgrading their works.
"Also, while there is a common consensus about many of the features one might expect of a great work of art, quality is a highly elusive concept, which involves a measure of personal taste, and I'm certainly not expecting everybody to agree with me. But The Great and the Good is certain to stimulate the eye and mind to put words around one's gut reactions to a work of art."
| For further information, please contact Andrew Davies, Barber Press and Marketing Officer, on 0121 414 2946 or andrewdavies@barber.org.uk |