Simply the Best (Known)

 I've now returned from Paris, but whilst there I got into a very interesting and lively discussion with Mr and Miss Walker.  It was after an exhausting trip to the Louvre - a wonderful museum with a terrible map and appalling signage - and we had collapsed in the Opéra Café to eat fine French food.  

Our trip to the Louvre had two objectives:

(1) Miss Walker wanted to see some Ancient Egyptian sculpture and grave goods

(2) Mr Walker wanted to see the Venus de Milo

Two very simple requests, I think you'll agree.  Personally, I just wanted to visit my old friend, the tomb of Philippe Pot…

 

Tomb of Philippe Pot (c.1480)

I absolutely love it, especially taking pictures up their cowls which I find very creepy. I always wonder what I’m going to see! Turns out, it’s this:

Excuse me, just being nosy...

Anyway, I digress.  We found the Egyptian grave goods easily enough but tracking down Venus from inside the sculpture galleries proved a bit of a trek – if we had gone to find her first we would have been fine because there are signposts to her from the entrance, but once in, it becomes a little tricky.  Anyway, I knew when we had finally found her because of the crowd…

As you can see of my picture of the tomb of Pip Pot and his hooded chums, there were a few people, but they were just passing through the gallery.  The picture above was taken by Mr Walker as Lily and I had gone to sit down, unable to cope with the massive crowd around the armless, gorgeous lady. We didn’t even bother to attempt to see the Mona Lisa, which I had squinted at from afar in a previous visit, but the crowds were there obviously because Venus is A MASTERPIECE. So, our lunchtime discussion became who decides what is a masterpiece, is this manipulated in any way and does this ever change?

I know, I know, this is a can of worms, but it links in to my last post and also to the experience of anyone who loved the Pre-Raphaelites before the twenty-first century. It’s all very well now, the Pre-Raphaelites are the Macbeth of exhibitions (the one you put on if you need to cause a stir as people really love them) but thirty years ago, you got a funny look if you said you liked them.  You were meant to like eighteenth century art, and not the fun stuff either, the really grey pictures of sad fish.  If that’s your thing, good luck to you, but not for me. Not only that, but when I first started doing art history, I bought books with names like ‘World’s Best Art’ and ‘100 Greatest Works of Art’ which invariably had the same pictures in them.  So, what is the best work of art in the world then?

Las Meninas (but with cats)

Luckily, your friend and mine Jonathan Jones joylessly listed them in 2014 solving this mystery for all time. He gets extra points for including the Chauvet cave paintings, marvellously pretentious, but his list is 90% European (da Vinci cartoon, Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Velázquez, Picasso, Michelangelo, Cezanne plus the cave paintings and the Parthenon sculptures) and Jackson Pollock. Whilst that list has the appropriate level of JoJo dullness (sorry Mr Jones, I think you need a some cake and a giggle) he does touch on some big hitters (although he picks da Vinci’s cartoon rather than the Mona Lisa) and reflects the fact that the vast majority of Good Art ™ comes from European white men.  Apparently.

The Birth of Venus. Sort of.

Also helpfully, in 1980 the BBC broadcast 100 Great Paintings which is more than I have time for now (and seems to have actually involved 220 paintings which is cheating).  Overwhelmingly, in their opinion, the best pictures in the world ever came from the twentieth century, outnumbering every other century by a mile.  The nineteenth century did quite well but you will be massively unsurprised to hear that the best pictures of that century were not English, with only two Pre-Raphaelites present (I was surprised they did that well).  The sole representation of the Pre-Raphs were Millais's Ophelia and Holman Hunt’s The Hireling Shepherd, which I have to admit was a bit of a shock.  No Rossetti, let alone Burne-Jones. You will also be wholly unshocked to hear that only six Great Artists were women, with only Mary Cassatt and Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun representing pre-twentieth century female artists.

Rubber Duck with a Pearl Earring

One thing I noticed when searching for the ‘best art works ever’ is that some of the results interpreted that as being ‘most famous’ which I think might be the point of many of these lists. If you take ‘most famous’ for being synonymous with ‘best’ (I know it isn’t but bear with me) then the list is fairly consistent; we get the Mona Lisa, Girl with Pearl Earrings, Van Gogh (Starry Night if you are edgy, Sunflowers if you are basic, apparently), Picasso’s various unfortunate looking ladies, Renaissance Venuses and maybe a bit of Andy Warhol/The Scream/Northern Renaissance peasants.  Las Meninas consistently scores well, even Johnny Jones likes it, and I think it can be labelled the most edgy of all famous paintings, but the question has to be asked whether Vermeer would chart if the book and film hadn’t raised the consciousness?  Add to that list Klimt's Woman in Gold which has started to outshine The Kiss since the movie about the former.  I think there is definitely a case to be made for relabelling ‘best’ for ‘best known’ but that is only half the story.

Detail of Millais' Ophelia

Where are the Pre-Raphaelites? You cannot tell me that Ophelia is not worth a mention for the face alone. In Time Out’s 2025 list, they even included estimated financial values (rude) which adds a another dimension to a painting’s ‘worth’. I find it interesting that on an awful lot of lists, Whistler’s Mum is included as one of the world’s best but no Millais/Rossetti/Hunt etc. So come on, does no-one (beyond the BBC2 exhaustive list) think the Pre-Raphaelites are among the greatest and the good?

Hokusai's The Wave (Nom Nom Nom)

Hang on, I’ve just had a phone call from Hokusai. I’ll rephrase my question – does no-one think the Pre-Raphaelites are among the best Western paintings? Apologies to all artists in the East because if you didn’t paint that wave (or that dodgy one with the woman and the octopus) you don’t get a look-in.

Won't somebody please think of poor John Singer Sargent!

Turns out, this site includes a few Pre-Raphaelites including Hunt, Millais, one of Rossetti’s Prosepines and even a Burne-Jones.  To be fair, they listed loads of pictures so it would have been a bit rude had they not shoved in a couple – everyone gets a look in, including John Singer Sargent who I had not noticed was neglected in other lists. Why had I not noticed that Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose was not on the lists when it is a brilliant painting? The Victorians, especially those working in England, have been alarmingly ignored, So possibly, due to their familiarity, the Pre-Raphs will now appear among the establishment in the lists of the best-known art works, but still that’s not ‘best’ is it? Which leads me to this conclusion…

Fair Rosamund, not on any lists, which is rude

In my last post I spoke about how Rossetti didn’t like his portrait being painted, and I wondered if that affected how we view him. I think that Rossetti’s peers desperately wanted to honour him and felt that he was a Great Artist™ (his poetry being somewhat more controversial) but his avoidance of that, for whatever reason, means that his value is lost to his future critics.  If other artists were able to express that they felt Rossetti was great maybe it would never have been a question. Likewise, I feel that because of the controversies surrounding Millais and Rossetti and their complicated love lives, all the Pre-Raphaelites have become tarred with the Reality Telly brush and the stories about who slept with who overshadows the brilliance of their art. 

I think the answer is a slightly impossible one - we should stop attempting to produce 'Best Art' books because they are flawed and massively influenced by what is known and societal norms. I'm happy for journalists to ask people what their favourite works of art are, but no-one has the right to make you feel stupid just because you don't think cave paintings in France mean more to you than dogs playing snooker. Then again, if you like those cave-horses because they strike you as amazing and heart warming, then that's awesome too. See all the art and love what resonates with you, famous or not.

Let me know your favourite works of art, and here is one of mine...

The Temptation of Sir Percival (c.1894) Arthur Hacker

Everytime I see it, it makes me giggle because it is so beautifully painted and utterly, gloriously silly. What more can you ask for in life?