Quote image editor
“Works of art in earlier tradition celebrated wealth. But wealth was then a symbol of a fixed social or divine order. Oil painting celebrated a new kind of wealth - which was dynamic and which found its only sanction in the supreme buying power of money. Thus painting itself had to be able to demonstrate the desirability of what can be bought lies in its intangibility, in how it will reward touch, the hand, of the owner.” — John Berger
Works of art in earlier tradition celebrated wealth. But wealth was then a symbol of a fixed social or divine order. Oil painting celebrated a new kind of wealth - which was dynamic and which found its only sanction in the supreme buying power of money. Thus painting itself had to be able to demonstrate the desirability of what can be bought lies in its intangibility, in how it will reward touch, the hand, of the owner.