Most thought-provoking, I thought, were the implications for how we think about images. Rosser and Garnett point out that many of these miraculous images have long been overlooked because it is perceived that they are unskilfully executed and of minimal aesthetic value. But is art just about forming aesthetic judgements? Or is it about thinking through the different ways in which the visual impacts on us? Rosser and Garnett show very clearly that the latter, the dynamic relationship between an image and its viewers, is really the more compelling approach. Images which are deemed kitsch, poorly executed, or cheaply produced can exert a powerful influence on their viewers.
When I was a teenager, I spent a lot of time wondering whether a painting shut away in a cupboard for noone to see, still counted as art. The idea that art is something which enters into a relationship with its viewers is wonderful. It doesn't just validate the paintings which have long been denigrated as being of low aesthetic value. It validates the viewers. This perspective suggests that viewers themselves must be active participants in the artistic process; that their reactions make something 'art'. This is wonderfully liberating, and wonderfully egalitarian in its implications. Art is not just produced by skilled artists, but by everyone who responds to it. And this notion is taken to an extreme with the most original miraculous images, those described in Byzantium as 'acheiropoieton' - these were the images deemed not to be created by human hands, but by miraculous divine intervention - images which became 'art' as humans responded to their miracles.
|Andres de Islas|
Mexico act. 1750s-1775
Our Lady of Guadalupe (Juan Diego Shows the Image to Bishop Zumarraga) , credit figgeartmuseum.org, also shown in Garnett and Rosser, p. 35.