Oil paintings were one of the first objects to enter the magical world of branding. We often forget that most oil painting done before the rise of Romanticism was done by journeymen who were told where to paint, how to paint, and especially what to paint. Then their works were often discarded or painted over because the canvas was often more valuable than the images. That's one reason why frescoes were so popular. They were cheap and easy to reuse. As the English critic/novelist John Berger argued first in his BBC television shows and the companion text Ways of Seeing, oil painting became so popular precisely because it was one of the few ways to tell stories about yourself (self-branding), and once you lost interest or were gone, the painting essentially lost value. Now, of course, just the opposite is true. The age of a painting often generates part of its perceived value. In fact, the patina itself is an augmenter of value as it testifies to weathered age.
No comments:
Post a Comment