Feb
8
“Shows are a function of our innate need for approval. They have little to do with the daily joy of study and work. They can actually interfere with an artist’s individualism and creative progress, particularly for the sensitive and youthful. Long ago, Sir Joshua Reynolds noted, ‘The Royal Academy exhibitions have a mischievous tendency, by seducing the painter to an ambition of pleasing indiscriminately the mixed multitude of people who resort to them.’ For the same reason Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres thought shows should be abolished. Both failed to say that shows of some sort were then, are now, and will ever be, part of our game.”
Robert Genn
