THERE’S AND OLD JOKE in art circles about the painter who made the “best career move of his life”—he died. The painter’s body of work, or oeuvre, is now historical, worthy of elevation, at least if there is a writer or critic to magnify that legacy.
Gaining this stamp of literary fame has worked since writers noticed the work of artists, alive or postmortem. It goes back to what Greco-Roman scribblers said about their best artisans and sculptors. For example, the Roman writer Pliny the Elder praised the Greek sculptor Praxiteles, thus enshrining the Greek in art history.
The touchstone for this literary effect in the modern era, however, is best traced to the early Renaissance, when art and poetry experienced a unique revival.
The average person may have heard of Giotto the painter, and of Dante Alighieri, the writer, but may not be aware that they were “great friends” and co-conspirators. They talked about concepts such as the apocalypse, which Giotto then portrayed in fresco or tempera. In his Divine Comedy, indeed, Dante praises Giotto as a character in his exploration of the circles between earth and heaven.
A bit later, and a bit farther south from Florence, the Siena-based painter Simone Martini, a student and successor of Giotto, had a friend in the next literary luminary of the time, Petrarch. Martini gave a painting to Petrarch, and in return, the master of words wrote an enduring sonnet about the painter. As Giorgio Vasari, another chronicler of artists said, while paintings of old might have crumbled, “writings of such a great man [as Petrarch] will endure for all time.”
Vasari did his part as well. He defined the revival of realism in art in three stages, the last and highest stage culminating in Michelangelo—not surprisingly, a good friend of Vasari (they discussed architecture together). And Vasari designed Michelangelo’s tomb.
Not that Giotto, Martini, or Michelangelo needed public relations to be worthy of praise for their great art. But as time passed, it sure helped. Later art critics picked up on what was said in writings by famous contemporaries.
Another example of this came in a more modern era. The English art critic John Ruskin seized upon the work of J.M.W. Turner, making him the emblematic painter of the early Victorian era (and latter Georgian era). Ruskin also mercilessly criticized James Abbott McNeill Whistler’s “nocturne” paintings, leading to a great libel trial in London—and increased the fame of Whistler.
Over in Paris, meanwhile, the art critic Charles Pierre Baudelaire heaped praised on the painter Eugene Delacroix, raising his status in contemporary culture. As we might say today, these writers were the painter’s Boswell—James Boswell being the daily chronicler of Dr. Samuel Johnson, making his life larger than life for generations afterward.
Back in Paris, a bit later, the Cubists had similar boosters. First was Guillaume Apollinaire, a somewhat small-time art critic and poet. He was good friends with Picasso when both were still unknown quantities. In time, however, both rose, and both Picasso and Apollinaire’s one-time girlfriend (Marie Laurencin) gained their first taste of literary celebrity. Picasso’s art dealer, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, also helped this along with his literary output, especially his little book on Cubism, making Picasso its undisputed founder.
Examples abound thereafter, especially as print media and modern communications became more influential. This takes us to the 1950s and the rise of the Abstract Expressionists in New York. There, the art critic Clement Greenberg argued that, in Hegelian terms, these painters had achieved the pinnacle of painting. Greenberg favored a few of these artists, but elevated the New York School in general, saying it alone had achieved what painting was all about.
Today, the number of art critics has multiplied, though admittedly, it has also become a difficult profession to prosper in. Opinions on art are widespread and therefore cheap, a dime a dozen, so to speak. And no one literary source dominates. Plus, modern art has produced so many “styles,” that even if a writer becomes the chief chronicler, and booster, of that new style, it is not a big share of all the art that is being produced.
Nevertheless, a good review in the New York Times, New Yorker, or Art News can still propel an artist’s career in the moment. What may not happen, however, is what Vasari called having a written encomium of your work “endure for all time.” The old joke about career moves does retain its validity, though. Having passed from this world, an artist can at least claim to have been a moment in art history, and every painter can hope for that, even without their own Boswell.