When he opened my second exhibition at Imperial College Prof. Sir Ernst Gombrich described me as “having prepared a great feast for art historians at which I invited them to eat their own words” I took it as a joke, knowing that the power of the evidence gave them no option but to rethink. (I have precised much of the evidence on this blog and on www.saveRembrandt.org.uk)
Now, thirty years later, I have to acknowledge that what still appears to me as irrefutable evidence can apparently be passed off as simply a personal opinion that can be ignored by the great Rembrandt establishment; and they have got away with it. Their colossal misjudgments, (Paraded in “The Rembrandt and his Workshop” series of exhibitions in Berlin, Amsterdam and London; and again most recently at the Getty) seem to provoke no descent . Why has there been no public outcry?
Has Art become such a specialist subject that no one presumes to question the “experts” even when the evidence is perfectly clear that they are mistaken? In the case of Rembrandt they have dragged him down in the last forty years from a position of the greatest eminence to one in which he is no longer trusted.
For my first exhibition I earned a number of accolades from art historians (as opposed to Rembrandt specialists) that led me to see myself as a rising star. Benedict Nicholson, editor of The Burlington Magazine wrote “ I find the evidence you have accumulated of the greatest possible interest as I am sure will Rembrandt scholars, who must now get down to revising the corpus of drawings!” Later Prof. Sir Lawrence Gowing of the Slade, himself an eminent painter, wrote, “Your view of the division between objective and imaginative seems to me artistically and psychologically much more comprehensible and satisfactory than anything before”. I have not met an artist who would disagree with that.
How many of our art experts have any experience of practical art? Very few I would imagine. I find their corporate published judgments appalling. Are people happy with the state of art in our time? Am I in a minority seeing the state of art as decadent beyond belief ?
How has it happened so very quickly? The power of the experts has increased exponentially as the technology of art publishing has blossomed. They now rule the world of art for the first time: They dispense government money, manage the prestige galleries, give the prizes, buy for the museums, advise the publishers, and rule the auction houses. It is a terrible situation that needs to be reversed, immediately. I’d like to curate a show demonstrating the folly of the expert’s that would include all the Rembrandts they have irresponsibly deattributed.
The specialists may refuse to rewrite their texts but there is still a great feast to be had in honour of the Greater Rembrandt: Rembrandt the Observer, once known as “the first heretic in art”. The experts have transformed him into the classic inventor, presumably because this is what they prefer. There is sparse evidence for this idea and plenty of evidence to the contrary. In the transformation we have lost more than half his works and more importantly we have lost sight of Rembrandt’s great message to the world: Take off your classical blinkers and see the wonders of the world as it is, through observation. (he was a part of the great scientific/philosophic revolution taking place at his time; mainly in Amsterdam). No artist said this more clearly and consistently than Rembrandt. “He was taught by nature and by no other law” (Houbraken).
All that is needed is a change at the top. The real Rembrandt is still discernible but we must act before we lose sight of him completely. Artists must seize back their lost initiative in art.