II Euphrosyne

THE SOCIAL VALUE OF ART

Art is a provocation for many forms of social behavior, from the primitive to the sublime. I have witnessed the scene many times, the hunter holding his dinner guests spellbound (his wife less so) with his tale of trapping the elusive prey. Eventually it is sighted, then tracked for days or weeks on end. At the final moment all seems to be lost; but, no, skill and endurance win out, and the trophy painting is brought home to the acclaim of family, friends, and fellow hunters. As I smooth the snowy tablecloth, play with my dessert, and eye my watch, I imagine we are reenacting the archetypal social event. We might as well be naked in a cave chewing a mastodon's rump around a roaring bonfire as Fred Flintstone embellishes the tale of its capture.

Less primitive perhaps, and more congenial, but to First-World sensibilities in the twenty-first century possibly too egalitarian, was a social event of 1285 celebrated in 1855 by Frederic, Lord Leighton's sensational seventeen-foot-long canvas Cimabue's Madonna Carried in Procession (1853-55, fig. 22). This painting shows a cross-section of local citizenry joyfully accompanying what is now known as the Rucellai Madonna (itself fifteen by ten feet) in its journey from the artist's studio to the Church of Santa Maria Novella. It would be hard to imagine such a degree of public interest in the installation of any commissioned work of art today; besides, insurers would probably insist that it not be carried on the shoulders of local notables. Leighton died in 1896, just before the subject of his greatest work was reattributed to Duccio.

Fig. 22
FREDERIC LEIGHTON
Cimabue's Madonna Carried in Procession, 1853-55 Oil on canvas 911/4 × 205 in. (231.8 × 520.7 cm) The Royal Collection

FIRST ENCOUNTERS

If we were lucky enough to have had parents or teachers who managed to convey a genuine enthusiasm for art to us at an early age, it is possible that regardless of what we do for a living or whether we can afford to collect art for ourselves, we are unafraid to duck into any museum or gallery and find something to enjoy. It is also likely that we will be drawn to the company of people with that same easy kinship with works of art.

On the other hand, many grow up without having been exposed in any positive way to art. Fearing they don't have the knowledge or language to understand and discuss it, they consciously or unconsciously avoid approaching art and the company of people involved with it.

My interest was inspired by Anthony Kerr, a fairly traditional painter of English landscapes who taught at my boarding school. At the age of twelve he divided those with any gift for making art from the rest, which included me. He sent us, "the rest," to museums and galleries with the simple instruction to find objects that interested us and to come back and tell him and the class what they were and why we liked them. Needless to say, this was a social activity. Going to museums meant a day of freedom in London, and that was fun in itself. We chose whom we went with, so the company was friendly. We shared our interest in the classroom when we got back, another social experience. Kerr never quarreled with our choices-only the quality of our scrutiny. Little did I know at the time that these pleasant experiences punctuating my "real" education initiated an interest that not only provided me with a career but a life filled with fascinating people.

There are many whose introduction to art is not so fortunate. Collectors have told me that they hated art in college and were completely baffled by it, particularly modern and contemporary art. What made them change their minds? How come one day they got it? The answer often involves social contact such as, "This cute boy asked me for a date and took me to a museum."

In the very early 1960s the art-book publisher and well-known collector Harry Abrams had a friend in the publishing business, John Powers, who ran Prentice-Hall. Harry loved contemporary art almost as much he loved proselytizing. He became determined to share his passion with John, who was at first nonplussed by modern art. Exasperated, Harry sent a group of large, colorful paintings by Alfred Jensen to John's office as a long-term loan (fig. 23).

Fig. 23
ALFRED JENSEN
The Integer Rules the Universe, Per II, The Positive Sure Draws the Negative, 1960 Oil on canvas 75 × 49 in. (190.5 × 124.5 cm) Private Collection

Some time later, visiting Prentice-Hall, Harry saw the paintings, still wrapped, in a corridor. "I don't know where to put them," said John, but actually he had plenty of space; he just didn't particularly understand them.

Harry grabbed the paintings, found the company cafeteria, and hung them himself. "The result was amazing and immediate," John told me many years later. "Everyone in the company had an opinion; some liked them, some loathed them, some were puzzled, and some were delighted. But everyone spoke up, and the effect on morale was great. Overnight I became a convert to the power that art has to move people and to bring them together." John Powers, with his wife, Kimiko, became one of the great early collectors of work by Johns, Rauschenberg, Warhol, Rosenquist, Oldenburg, and many others. Just as important, he in turn became an untiring apostle for contemporary art, particularly in the business community. He even tried to convert his own mother with me as the instrument. I barely had two feet in the business myself, but John persuaded me to devote every other Wednesday morning to taking his mother and her two elderly friends to museums and galleries. We had great fun and talked about everything under the sun, sometimes even what we were supposed to be seeing. This was before the invention of the single greatest deterrent to the understanding and enjoyment of art, the recorded lecture. Instead of friends and strangers enjoying works in museums, turning to each other in agreement or disagreement, making up their own minds and expressing their own ideas and opinions, I now see tribes of zombies clutching audio guides. They shuffle from one "selected for audio" painting to another, diligently soaking in the words ghostwritten for the museum's director (or better still, a well-known actor) to record. I was visiting an exhibition and talking to a curator in the galleries when he was aggressively shushed by a visitor trying to listen to the man's own taped tour. Served him right. As I was navigating from finish to start (often the best way to see a crowded exhibition) the exhibition Picasso: The Early Years, 1892-1906 at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, I saw an elderly lady swirling around and shouting above the sound of her audio guide to her friend, "I've no idea what I'm supposed to look at, but it sounds good."

In February 2011 the Metropolitan Museum of Art announced it was venturing into the field of "visitor engagement," which apparently means wiring itself for Wi-Fi "so that patrons will eventually be able to read and watch videos about art museumwide on their phones and tablet computers."36 So very much more entertaining than looking at motionless and silent paintings on the walls.

Nothing beats the real thing, and those of us fortunate enough to have been dragged or sent to museums when we were children at least had the opportunity to see art in the flesh, as opposed to printed illustrations, slides or, even worse, online pixelated images. Stipulating that he did not want works from his collection ever reproduced in color, the eccentric Philadelphia collector Dr. Albert Barnes sought to prevent people from confusing printed with painted color. No matter how skillfully engineered, the true color, texture, and scale of a work of art can never be faithfully reproduced on paper or computer screen. Learning about art without experiencing the object itself is as futile as trying to learn to play baseball from watching television and never touching a bat, ball, or glove. You can get the general idea and some of the principles, but you will never have any idea of how it feels to play. When I stand or sit with a painting, sculpture, drawing, or print, or particularly if I wander through a museum's permanent collection or curated exhibition, I am a first-hand witness. The thoughts and feelings that come to me are more powerful and complex than if I am sitting at home with a book or at my computer staring at a simulacrum.

Ideally interest in art starts with a social experience. The very privileged few might, as youngsters, have engaged in conversation around the dinner table about the family's latest acquisition. More than likely you were taken to a museum as a class outing in either primary or middle school. If you had a particularly engaging and talented teacher, a spark might have been lit then and perhaps smoldered for many years before your interest ignited in later life. Teachers themselves uninterested in art or lacking faith in the ability of students to think for themselves can make art into something baffling or boring for the rest of the student's life.

The interaction between a teacher and a group of students is essentially social, as is the interaction among the students themselves. For the properly managed class clustered around a painting or sculpture in a museum, the art can come to life. Reduced to a recitation of facts and other people's opinions, it can die.

Visiting the permanent collection...