THIS MAGNIFICENT painting by Lord Frederick Leighton, titled Mother and Child and dated 1865, is probably unfamiliar to you. You have seen Monet’s water lilies, Picasso’s Guernica and Warhol’s soup can many times, but not this interesting scene, with its very human interaction, complex beauty and idealized femininity. (Please click on the image and see it in more detail.) The period from 1850 to 1910 saw one of the greatest outpourings of artistic masterpieces in Western history. But many of these masterpieces have been systematically relegated to obscurity, the artists charged with sentimentality and the cold embrace of technique over emotion.

We have been cheated of many great works by modernism’s revolutionary campaign.

The Art Renewal Center, an organization started by millionaire Fred Ross, is dedicated to restoring appreciation for traditional humanist art, especially the works of this neglected period. I highly recommend the center’s essay “The Great 20th Century Art Scam.” It states:

For over 90 years, there has been a concerted and relentless effort to disparage, denigrate and obliterate the reputations, names, and brilliance of the academic artistic masters of the late 19th Century. Fueled by a cooperative press, the ruling powers have held the global art establishment in an iron grip. Equally, there was a successful effort to remove from our institutions of higher learning all the methods, techniques and knowledge of how to train skilled artists. Five centuries of critical data was nearly thrown into the trash. It is incredible how close Modernist theory, backed by an enormous network of powerful and influential art dealers, came to acquiring complete control over thousands of museums, university art departments and journalistic art criticism. We at the Art Renewal Center have fully and fairly analyzed their theories and have found them wanting in every respect, devoid of substance and built on a labyrinth of easily disproved fallacies, suppositions and hypotheses.

The essay is worth reading in its entirety and there are many other excellent pieces at the Center’s site.

                                                           — Comments —

John writes:

The essays at the Art Renewal Center are quite good. But I have a problem with one of them which suggests that the great art of the nineteenth century was a product of the spirit of equality. More likely, it was great in spite of that spirit. Modern “art,” on the other hand, definitely derives from equality, i.e., no standards of quality, distinction, or excellence. A fool slapping paint is equal of Rembrandt.

Laura writes:

I noticed that too and I agree with you. That part of the Center’s argument doesn’t make sense. In the essay I linked, the point is made that nineteenth century art, with its reverence for femininity, was part of the same cultural movement as women’s rights. In fact, the two were in contradiction. The best of nineteenth century art honored what we would call inequality. The poor in their homes, for instance, were often portrayed as wealthy in dignity and character, contrary to the period’s burgeoning Marxist socialism.

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