This speech, presented by Fred Ross, was the keynote address at the Oil Painters of America Meeting, May 5, 2006. In Part 1, Mr. Ross dispels criticism of artists of the Victorian Age.
I would like to thank the officials and trustees of the OPA for inviting me to speak here today.
Let me start by very loosely paraphrasing from the writing of Jean-Jacques Rousseau when he said, “Artists are born free, but everywhere they are in chains.”
Whether we are talking about the chains of the conceptual or the dungeons of deconstruction, the leg irons of irony or the shackles of shock, all "have been forged link by link and yard by yard," paying lip service to composition and design while long ago having abandoned all of the parameters of fine art where paramount was the need to harmonize great subjects and themes with drawing, modeling, perspective, color, and tone, and expert manipulation of the paint— subjects and themes that more often than not are a form of, dare I say the word out loud—storytelling.
Storytelling has become somehow a dirty word in the world of fine art. Storytelling is demeaned as mere "illustration," and "illustration" itself is relegated to the "commercial arts." Go sign up to study in the fine arts department of any college or university in America and tell the officials who run the place that you want to paint great anecdotal scenes, either as histories or allegorical paintings, that symbolize, capture, and express the most powerful of human themes.
What do you think will happen?
After looking down their noses at you while trying to figure out how to say what they want without insulting you, they will politely tell you, “Well dear, you really need to go and see the department of commercial arts.”
They will tell you that storytelling is not what they do. It doesn't interest them. It's not a fitting purpose for fine art. What is fitting? Form for its own sake, color for its own sake, line or mass for their own sake are far more worthy of accolades of merit than recreating scenes from the real world or from our fantasies, myths, or legends about our hopes, our dreams, and the most powerful moments in life.
Empty canvases, empty rooms, or piles of rocks are more important and far more "relevant" subject matter than the moments in life that describe and define our shared humanity. Squares of color are superior to subjects about people of color. Layers of textured paper trump showing the layered textures of life. Dribbles of paint are more compelling than a child learning how to dribble a ball while being mocked in a schoolyard.
These are the precepts of the prefects who hold our museums and colleges in a 100-year-long grip of banal irrelevancies, boring our inner souls and our youth alike in a system where the skilled are ridiculed, the talented are ignored and disillusioned, and the masters were dying off without a trained generation to protect, preserve, and perpetuate that which had been preserved and perpetuated for so many centuries before.
I am incredibly fortunate to be speaking to you on the cusp of one of the most important moments in all of art history. It is very rare indeed for people to have the opportunity of living through major cultural shifts of the underlying tectonic plates of the art establishment, which are bringing about a world-wide shift in the perception and definition of what constitutes great art and the institutions, which themselves must change or perish if they are going to survive.
… [It’s been] more than a century of blind alleys, nightmarish detours, and mind-numbing “artspeak” to boost up what should have been rejected long ago as lacking the "relevance" that the modernists insist is missing from the "real" artist of today and the real artists of the 19th century—those who chose not to lead the way to Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, or Andy Warhol.
It seems that for most of the past century, there has been what is best described as a conspiracy, both tacit and willful, to malign and degrade the reputations and artwork produced during the Victorian era and its counterparts in Europe and America. This struggle for the re-appreciation of traditional Realism continues to the present day.
There is now an overwhelming preponderance of evidence that has come to light that makes the modernist arguments and the descriptions of this era appear to be exactly what they are—pathetic lies and distortions fabricated in order to denigrate some of history's finest art and artists in order to elevate the unskilled works by untrained hands that have been lionized by the tenets of modernism that came directly after them.
The suppressed truth about this period, however, is that during the 19th century, there was an explosion of artistic activity unrivaled in all prior history. Thousands of properly trained artists developed a myriad of new techniques and explored countless new subjects and perspectives that had never been dealt with before. They covered nearly every aspect of human activity.
The artists and writers of the day identified, codified, protected, and perpetuated the great humanist values and momentous Age of Reason discoveries of the day. The writers, for their part, were praised and celebrated to the heavens, while the artists were ridiculed and slandered.
But working together, they helped to free the slaves, protect the environment, stop child labor, eradicate unsafe working conditions, insure women the vote and equal rights, break up monopolies, and assure minority rights.
And for this, their payback has been to dismiss their work, denigrate their methods, lie about the meaning of their subjects, and berate their achievements. Why? Because they didn't lead the way to splattered paint, blank canvases, or industrial-size Campbell's soup cans and, therefore, were called "irrelevant"?
And therein lies the main topic for tonight. For the purpose of this talk, I will focus especially on the concept of relevance, which one hears bandied about in discussions about artists and art movements.
These artists are not considered relevant by modernism. Only works and techniques that shed all the former definitions and parameters of fine art were to be considered relevant. Only those artists frankly that led the way to abstract expressionism were worthy to be called relevant.
Nothing could have been further from the truth!
Relevance must be understood on many levels, and perhaps the most important of all is the historical context and how that relates to today's world. Ladies and gentlemen, what was happening in history at that time was nothing short of momentous.
I am speaking about some of the most significant events in all of human history.
In order to understand the relevance of William Bouguereau and other masters of the 19th century, it is essential to place them historically and correctly in their own time. Then we can see how truly relevant they were and also understand why they have not been given their due respect by the reigning ideology.
Fred Ross is chairman and founder of the Art Renewal Center (ARC). He holds a master’s degree in Art Education from Columbia, is an art educator, lecturer, collector, writer, artist, and published art historian of the 19th century.
