“Joshua Reynolds: The Creation
of Celebrity” Tate Modern, London.
May 26-September 18, 2005
“Frida Kahlo”
Tate Modern, London.
June 9-October 9, 2005
Anyone interested in the sociology of taste could hardly do better than visit London at the moment, where what used to be known as the Tate Gallery is offering two exhibitions, the first of portraits by Sir Joshua Reynolds, and the second of works by Frida Kahlo. It will probably not come as any great surprise to readers to learn that the public for these two exhibitions is different, socially, demographically and, above all, culturally.
The public for the Joshua Reynolds is small, elderly, and conservative, or at least conservatively dressed. Although the exhibition has been given a title to ensnare the young—“The Creation of Celebrity,” with its suggestio falsithat there is nothing much to choose between Brad Pitt, Puff Daddy, and Elton John on the one hand, and Edward Gibbon, Edmund Burke, and Doctor Johnson on the other—they are not deceived. They may know nothing much about the past, except that it is dead and good riddance to it, but they know enough to know that Joshua Reynolds is not one of them: never mind that his most sympathetic and beautiful portraits of women are those of high-class courtesans, and that his portraits of literary figures are not mere likenesses, but delineations of their very souls, or characters if you prefer. But soul and character make us uneasy nowadays; it is personality