ABSTRACT
The ideals that excite humanity, even to the gravest and most universal, are victims of fashion. The virtues and vices must fight for their turn on the stage: Melancholy is the favourite pastime of one age, Honesty the entertainment of another, Patriotism the adored clown of a third. Beauty and Laughter may have to be tended by sects of grim fanatics while a tyrannical virtue or grimace is the fashion of the world, and the secret of the most ordinary affection must be guarded by hypocrisy lest it be forgotten. Deriving crude data for the changing balance between certain genres within annual exhibitions is useful, but is often not sufficiently coherent to permit meaningful generalization – beyond the familiar observation that conventional history painting was now old-fashioned. Deeply hidden and continuously present within the artist’s mind, there is a kind of memory bank composed of images of other works of art and past experiences.
