| As for irony, ask any art historian with experience in middle ages or late antiquity art. She'll tell you that it has always been a popular device in the arts. The problem with "irony", where this common myth about its novelty comes from, is that Irony is invisible to generations separated by time and place. To see irony in a work of antiquity requires a significant amount of education in the circumstances of that work. Irony never lies of the surface of a work. If enough time passes, our appreciation of that irony will often be lost. How much irony is hidden there in the vase paintings of ancient Greece which we will never recognize, having not the context to see it? Irony, a Greek term, coined by Aristotle, passed on by the Romans, and more recently popularized in the 1500's by the French -- yet could we recognize Irony in any of their works without help? If the average art critic finds no instances of irony in the art of the past they could be excused for that, their job isn't art history. Those are separate professions. Where art critics do deserve blame however is when they've been shown countless examples of irony in the works of antiquity, and they act as if those instances are all unique anomalies. If they continue to bandy about the story of irony's novelty to defend the valuations of the works of their contemporaries, that's not fair play. That's Art Criticism made Marketing, and it's an ugly but extremely common thing. |