Most of all departures from the photographic rendering of appearance in pre-20th century art are perfectly acceptable to us. We enjoy the skillful use of landscape to reinforce the meaning of a scene. The great masters’ handling of light and shade is so effective that it does not occur to us to object to its inaccuracy. We admire the perspective of Leonardo and Raphael. We accept El Greco’s elongated figures. Readers of comic strips and viewers of movie cartoons as we are, we certainly take in stride the exaggerations of caricature. Why, then, are we so often baffled by the distortions, the exaggerations of the art of our own times? Why is it so different from the art of the past?
One might answer with another question: Is it so different? Are not the artists of today doing what great artists have always done their ideas about the world through visual images? Is the difference between their works and those of the past partly due to the fact that ideas have changed and that the old images no longer have meaning? Perhaps the fault is with us; we have not moved along as fast as the artists; we are trying to see our new world in the old way instead of opening our minds and spirits to the impact of the new.
- Alice Elizabeth Chase
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