PRE-RAPHAELITES: Seminal Reactionaries, 1848

"The more important question is whether The Love Song is the nostalgic, wistful kind of painting that only a kitsch-lover, hopeless romantic, or deep reactionary could really love."

The Pre-Raphaelites, Symbolism, and Art Nouveau were taught to me in art history class  as a reaction to modern industrial capitalism.  I missed the designated bromide: create art from the seminal early Italian Renaissance before Raphael, viewed as the purest high artistic and moral achievement. 

Now, I'm a Raphael fan; I think he's neglected because he died too young and his synthesis of Renaissance values has a balance that escapes modern viewers.  Much easier to find Da Vinci's scope and Michelangelo's power than consider Raphael's summative celebration of Italian humanism (the Raphael Stanze). 

When I went to the Sistine Chapel I waded through crowds being warned to hold silence (hopeless) and moved into Pope Julius II's magnificent library.  No one there.  All to the good for me, as I spent hours reading and looking. 

Morgan Meis writes in his blog about the Met's exhibit, "the Pre-Raphaelite Rebellion and It's Legacy", and discusses the artistic rebellion against stultified academic art values at its core.

I'm interested in this because I'm still hopeful that someone will let me live guiltlessly in what's seen as escapist genre kitsch.

It's valuable to have the accomplishment of the pre-Raphs describe so fully.  But I just can't drink the kool-aid. I have to put them into my category of attempted recovery art.  They're like a space capsule that is returned from the sky with the people intact, but missing the propellant rocket that took them there.  You get the nugget, not the chicken.

It's heroic to stand against the magnitude of historical atrocity. But all those brave positions remind me of the futility. German Expressionism and Kathë Kollwitz summon better.  

I'm done here; I'm going to declare genres to be my eternal fadeless summer.