Indeed, the \u201cmodernity\u201d of a Pictorialist artwork is often only, and merely, derived from the fact that it\u2019s a photograph. Pictorialism was a movement of camera clubs and societies, but the archaic name of one of the most important, London\u2019s Brotherhood of the Linked Ring, does little to dispel this show\u2019s prevailing atmosphere of dustiness. Neither does a geeky display reproducing photography-salon stickers. What\u2019s more, the Pictorialists\u2019 concern with producing \u201cArt\u201d with a capital \u201cA\u201d surely accounts for their pretentious, pseudo-poetic titles (Spring Allegory; City of Ambition; The Days of Innocence). They smack of trying to instil ho-hum, conventional imagery with import.<\/p>\n
Another issue with the exhibition is, as it were, the width of its field of view. These days Tate is obsessed with a \u201ctransnational\u201d approach to art history (to rethink modernism\u2019s \u201cfoundations\u201d via \u201ca more inclusive perspective\u201d, as the institution\u2019s interim director, Karin Hindsbo, puts it in the catalogue). Here, the curators adhere to this in-house creed by assembling disparate work from far-flung places in rooms with bland titles such as \u201cCosmopolitan Networks\u201d and \u201cLocal Voices, Global Conversations\u201d. This may please Tate\u2019s managers, but I\u2019m not sure it elucidates much, since it makes it hard to get a handle on Pictorialism, except in the loosest sense. Pictorialists, we\u2019re told vaguely, were keen on effects of \u201cpoetry\u201d. Light and Magic could have been called \u201cSmoke and Mirrors\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Indeed, the \u201cmodernity\u201d of a Pictorialist artwork is often only, and merely, derived from the fact that it\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":800812,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[6225,6485,6486,5343,168438,1120,96,6487,263,42991,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-800811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-culture","tag-culture-editors-choice","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-photography","tag-review","tag-tate-modern","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=800811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800811\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/800812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=800811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=800811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=800811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}