As I once mentioned before in an earlier blog article, I am not one of those people who thinks the term ‘modern art’ is an oxymoron. That said, I am somewhat in sympathy with the Stuckists and regard much (or even most) ‘installation art’ as not so much bad art as not art at all.
This picture of the late Queen Mother, whilst clearly a piece of classical portraiture, is also quite modern in its lightness and style. It does not attempt either soulless photographic hyper-realism or remote abstraction but instead captures the rather charming essence of the subject’s mixture of formality and accessibility.
It is a reminder that we do not have to look very far back to avoid “British art disappearing up its own arse” as Ivan Massow put it. I do not think art should just be formal portraits but I do think it must have meaning that rational observers can actually divine.
