Art and the Power of Placement
In this brisk and lavishly illustrated study, our responses to works of visual art are shown to depend, much more than we realize, on the way they are presented. A classical Greek sculpture that once stood in for the god's presence becomes, when transported to imperial Rome, a symbol of conquest. Soft wall textures and muted tones in a museum temper the light and bring out the colors in Impressionist paintings, while hard surfaces dull and flatten them. In a fascinating chapter on Jackson Pollock, Newhouse demonstrates how the tendency of many museums to provide larger and larger wall spaces, in order to accommodate the increasing size of contemporary art works, has done Pollock and others a disservice. Pollock's greatest paintings, mounted on walls that are either too long or too high, can lose much of the explosive energy that made them famous.Copyright © 2005The New Yorker