michael baxandall painting and experience

One of the greatest minds to have worked in the field of the history of art over the past century, he deserves to be ranked alongside classic masters of the discipline such as Erwin Panofsky. He was attentive to nuances of meaning in the language used in artistic theory and criticism, and this, combined with his creative insight into cultural practices shaping the making and viewing works of art, gave real substance to the term the ‘period eye’ that he coined.

He sought out interconnections between specialised ways of looking and visual discriminations operating in artistic culture and more widely shared habits of viewing and visual expertises which were part of everyday experience and ritual practice within a society. With the loss of both Michael Baxandall and Catherine Wearing, the world is a lesser place.MICHAEL BAXANDALL, who died aged seventy-four on 12th August, is best known for his radically new approach to analysing the social and cultural significance of works of visual art. If anything, she was even more passionate about art, music, politics than Steve. At the time he was going out with my great friend Catherine Wearing, who also died this year. I was first introduced to this wonderful little book by Steve Milner, a great enthusiast about hip-hop as much as renaissance art, who is now Professor of Italian at Manchester University. When I was in Italy last month, I went to see some Piero della Francesca frescos in Arezzo and Monterchi I thought about Baxandall for the first time in years. Before then I’d just thought it was a most beautiful shade of blue. I remember being struck by Baxandall’s explanation of the use of the colour ultramarine in renaissance painting to demonstrate a patron’s wealth. to include not just the learning of humanists, but also practical skills - and not just those of the elite, such as dancing and manners, but also those of the merchant and the artisan, such as the valuation of minerals and the gauging of barrels.” As the obituary says, the book “demonstrated that context should be taken much more widely. I was deeply affected by his Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy.

I have just read the obituary of Michael Baxandall in the Telegraph.

Michael baxandall painting and experience