'It's a speaking likeness.' For centuries these words carried nothing but praise, but today, if used by the sophisticated, would suggest that some artistic quality was lacking. It is 'so true and so alive', wrote Aretino in 1527, in commendation of a nude Venus by Sansovino, 'that it will fill the thoughts of all who look at it with lust.' This would now be considered crude and philistine, not only as a reaction to a modern painting or sculpture, but to a Venus by Sansovino. Has high art, in our time, cut itself off from one of its immemorial attractions, leaving to publicity, to the glossy portraits of stars and to centrefold nudes, the task of encouraging the suspension of disbelief and stimulating the fiction that the image responds to us, and hears our proposals and prayers? Or is it that our art-loving ancestors could only convey their enthusiasm for art by making this sort of claim for it?

LRB 2 December 1982 | PDF Download