John Arnold: evaluation

Transcript context

…But one’s a lot in — a modernist home, most of all. [laughter] I think the collection Laura and I have built has really tried to look at the history of art and especially figuration over time. From the birth of art until maybe 1500, there was this trend of how do we, the art community, we artists, try to create representation of the figure more and more realistically. This probably peaked with Leonardo, who then masters even musculoskeletal components of the body. Once he’s mastered it, then there’s a big question about where do we go from here? Now you have to tell a different story. You have to bring emotion into art. You have to start doing abstraction or bring a new voice or style into the body. I love that arc of art history of trying to perfect the body and then trying to move forward. We’ve built this collection of objects that are largely around the figuration as you go from the perfection of it, and then to the abstraction of it. The 17th-century Baroque is, again, a moment in time that’s part of that arc that then helps tell the story of the collection. I think the great challenge we have is, we need pieces that talk to each other. You can very much end up with clutter by putting together pieces from different cultures, different time periods, different media that don’t speak to each other. How does African sculpture fit into this picture?…

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