I'm not one who would say that the Pre-Raphaelites were the equivalent of Damian Hirst simply because they had a high degree of fame as does Hirst. Artists are comparable for the quality and artistic importance of their work, not for their fame and wealth. But it is true that the P-R were among those who could be called the first modernists. They were preceded by the English Watercolorists (including Bonington, Girtin, Cotman) who also worked out-of-doors, developing a amateur tradition of travel sketching into a serious art activity. Modernism can't be traced back to a single year, artist, or subject but is found emerging from many sources and trends as early as the 1750s or, if one chooses, 1650, 0r even 1550, etc. There is, actually, no single beginning of anything cultural just as there is no ending. There are only different perspectives and choices for telling the stories about the past. I always liked the P-R artists because they really were quite eccentric. They had another precedent in the German painters known as as the Nazarenes. What these differing groups had in common was the notion that by turning back to earlier traditions they could break new ground and thus move ahead. (Does that make them the first postmoderns, too?)
Somewhere back in the 1960s the actor Vincent Price decided to become an art critic (because he collected art). He was a terrible critic because he was so ignorant of art history. In one column he wrote "I could never understand why the Pre-Raphaelites took that name for themselves when they lived four hundred years after Raphael". Of course Price totally missed the point that the P-R believed that art up to the earlier work of Raphael was good and afterward steeply declined. In choosing their name they proclaimed allegiance to art before the High Renaissance (and the Ren. 'cult of genius'). wc ----- Original Message ---- From: joseph berg <[email protected]> To: aesthetics-l <[email protected]> Sent: Thu, May 10, 2012 1:53:28 AM Subject: 'The whole history of modern art begins with this painting.' http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2131016/The-artists-equivalent-Damian-Hirst-today-Controversial-Pre-Raphelite-movement-subject-new-exhibition-Tate-Britain.html?ito=feeds-newsxml
