Yesterday, I was so sick (and unable to take any useful medication, like Sudafed or ibuprofen) that I was able to do exactly three things: drink tea, type, and whine. Out of those three came this post for the Register: Even More Faces of Mary, in which I repeatedly misspell Steven Greydanus’ name, because it seemed really, really funny at the time.
Follow-up question for you smart people: Why is it, do you think, that people used to routinely depict the holy family wearing the styles of the artist’s day — but now if you do that, people freak out? When did this change, and why? Modernist self-loathing? Mistrust of contemporary art in general? Cultural illiteracy (Rembrandt and Fra Angelico’s saints look fine to us because they’re clearly wearing old-fashioned clothes, and that supplies the necessary sense of historical space, even though it’s still off by many centuries)? Or have people always freaked out when artists did this, and I just don’t realize it? Or what?
