Art Eyewitness Book Review: Great Art Explained by James Payne

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Great Art Explained

By James Payne

Thames & Hudson/320 pages/$39.95

Reviewed by Ed Voves

The first great work of art which I ever saw was likely the greatest I ever will see. 

The date was 1964 and the place was the New York World's Fair. The "great" work of art was The Pieta by Michelangelo. Loaned by the Vatican for the World's Fair and transported with elaborate safety measures, it was truly a moment in art history. Upon its safe return to Rome, The Pieta was declared too precious - and fragile - to ever travel again. 

Michelangelo's The Pieta at the New York World's Fair, 1964 

Viewing The Pieta today is an experience recalling the Resurrection when Christ declared to Mary Magdalene, "Noli me tangere" ("touch me not"). Following a horrifying act of vandalism in 1971, the restored Pieta is now protected by bullet-proof glass.

For those unable to travel to Rome, Michelangelo's portrayal of martyrdom and grief can only be appreciated at second hand, via the pages of a well-illustrated book or an art video. Increasingly, such "noli me tangere" moments apply to masterpieces closer to home, like Starry Night on a crowded day at MOMA.

Ed Voves, Photo (2019)

Gallery view of the Museum of Modern Art, NYC, with

 Vincent van Gogh's Starry Night,1889, in the background

For those craving a less harried look at The Pieta, Starry Night and other "icons" of art, there is also the option of Youtube, notably the popular programs hosted by James Payne.

Payne's YouTube series, Great Art Explained in 15 Minutes, is a fantastic success. It currently offers seventy-seven insightful presentations and is closing-in on two million subscribers. Now, Payne is pursuing the more traditional method of the written word to further his efforts to "demystify" masterpieces for art lovers around the world.

Great Art Explained: the Stories behind the World's Greatest Masterpieces is published by Thames & Hudson. This is significant for two reasons. T&H has been "demystifying" art for scholars and general readers for over seventy-five years. Moreover, the signature format of T&H books, especially the World of Art paperbacks, is the close integration of word and image, precisely what Payne is doing on YouTube.

Author and publisher are brilliantly matched in a book of exceptional merit. Great Art Explained will surely please Payne's Youtube audience, as well as readers who have yet to tune in to his series. Great Art Explained succeeds on every level of art scholarship and appreciation  - and shear enjoyment.

Payne begins explaining art by examining one of the greatest works of Asian art. This is the extraordinary handscroll, Along the River during the Qingming Festival, attributed to a Chinese artist named Zhang Zeduan. 

Measuring 17 ft x 10 in. (5 metres x 25.5 cm.), Along the River dates to China's Song dynasty. It was created sometime between 1085-1145, the high point of Song rule in Northern China. 

Detail from a copy, c. 18th century, after Zhang Zeduan's Along the River during the Qingming Festival, Song Dynasty, 1085-1145

Zeduan's painting, ink on silk and paper, is a tribute to prosperity and  political stability, real or imagined. The throng of tiny citizens may inhabit an idealized depiction of the city of Bianjing, but this is the ideal upon which civilizations are based.

Along the River during the Qingming Festival has been regarded as a national treasure of China almost since its completion. Numerous copies have been made over the centuries. One of these, a colorized version, is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Jan van Eyck, The Arnolfini Portrait, 1434

By contrast, there are only two protagonists - and two reflected figures - in Payne's next selection, The Arnolfini Portrait. Painted by Jan van Eyck in 1434, this is a work of startling immediacy. Rich fabrics, a brass chandelier, the ornate mirror, expensive oranges ripening on the window sill point to a comfortable, untroubled middle class life style. Or, after a second glance, maybe not.

Detail of the mirror in Jan van Eyck's The Arnolfini Portrait. The reflected figure, dressed in blue, is believed to be Van Eyck.

With The Arnolfini Portrait is one of the most mysterious works of art ever created. The symbolic meanings of its profusion of brilliantly articulated details have been endlessly debated. Nearly six hundred years after he painted it, Van Eyck is still keeping us guessing. 

Is this a marriage portrait, as was once widely believed? If so, is the lady in green gathering her robe to suggest - or conceal - that she is pregnant? Why is there a bed in the living room? What does the hand raised in benediction signify? One radical theory holds that this gesture reveals Giovanni Arnolfini was a member of a secret religious sect.

With a palette full of insights, Payne paints a different perspective. Instead of celebrating married life or esoteric rituals, The Arnolfini Portrait is a mournful tribute to the green-clad lady of the house. Costanza Trenta married Giovanni Arnolfini in 1426, dying in 1433 - one year before Van Eyck painted their dual portrait. 

Payne concludes that this enigmatic work is actually a memorial painting for Costanza. He then proceeds to discuss a wide range of details underscoring the sad fact of her demise. He notes, for instance, that the frisky dog in the painting likely references "the common practice of placing dogs at the feet of women on late medieval tomb effigies."

The clinching argument regarding this elegiac work of art is the touching gesture at the very center of the painting. 

Payne writes of the way that Arnolfini grasps the hand of his wife:

Yet perhaps the most compelling evidence is the tentative way in which he holds her hand, as if she is on the brink of slipping away from his grasp. Ultimately, the painting can be said to embody the essence of a love that transcends even death itself.

Payne's empathetic examination of The Arnolfini Portrait is indicative of the way he treats all thirty of the works of art "explained" in his book - and the artists who created these masterpieces.

From a Renaissance allegory like Botticelli's The Birth of Venus to Hilma af Klint's pioneering Abstract works, from Hokusai's ukiyo-e print, Under the Wave off Kanagawa to the polished marble of Rodin's The Kiss, Payne expertly guides us to better appreciate these familiar images. Along the way, he pinpoints visual details we never noticed before, influential trends and ideas of which we were only dimly aware.

       

Works of Art included in Great Art Explained.

 Clockwise, from top left,  Botticelli's The Birth of Venus, 1485; Hilma af Klint's Group X,No. 2. Altarpiece, 1915; Rodin's The Kiss, 1882; Hokusai's Under the Wave off Kanagawa, 1830-33.

Payne surveys these thirty masterpieces with a judicious blend of story-telling, technical analysis and social commentary. An amazing number of little known facts are added to the mix, which enable readers to see these works of art in a new light. 

Michelangelo's Pieta is a case in point. Today, The Pieta has become a defining image of the Italian Renaissance. However, the artistic motif of the dead body of the crucified Jesus being held by his mother, Mary, originated over a century before in Germany. This motif created problems for Italian artists, who found it awkward to pose the body of a grown man in the arms of his aged mother.

Disregarding precedent, Michelangelo solved the problem by reducing the stature of Christ's body to that of an adolescent youth. Mary's physique and her billowing robes were increased in order to support the body of her dead son. 

Michelangelo's The Pieta on view in St. Peter's Basilica, Rome

Most people, viewing The Pieta hardly notice these anatomical alterations. Michelangelo was able to transform this scene of suffering, making it appear graceful and poignant - and believable. How did the 24-year old sculptor achieve this incredible balance of attributes?

Michelangelo's technical mastery is obviously the prime determinant of success. But he was able to create an emotional bond between the sculpted-marble Mary and Jesus which exists in the living hearts and souls of all humankind. 

When we behold a tragic scene such as this, we do feel pity for the stricken mother and child. But we are moved to a very great degree by a sense of identification. Viewing their tragedy, we feel a tug on the emotional umbilical chord linking ourselves and the women who gave us life.

The Pieta succeeds by directly involving the viewer in the primal human drama of love and loss. So does a vastly different work of art which Payne brilliantly probes, though the principal emotion in this painting is lust.

We are referring, of course, to Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon.

Ed Voves, Photo (2019)

Gallery view of the Museum of Modern Art, NYC,

 showing Pablo Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, 1907

Payne's "you-are-there" analysis of Les Demoiselles deserves a brief quotation, in order to show the very high caliber of his insights and narrative skill. 

Payne notes that Picasso's original design of the "Bordel d'Avignon" included two male clients - which he discarded in the finished painting. 

Payne writes:

By eradicating the men and focusing exclusively on female figures, Picasso explores a more complex relationship between sex, power, desire, the male gaze and artistic representation. With the female figures' attention directed away from the clients and towards us, the viewer, we are implicitly cast in the role of a potential client, transforming our viewing experience into an uncomfortable encounter with the act of looking and consuming the female body.

If Picasso was unsparing in shoving viewers through the brothel door- where they may or may-not wish to go - Payne responds in kind. He judges the Spanish painter with uncharacteristic severity for his personal conduct, as the "artist's deplorable treatment of women left behind a trail of destruction."

In the case of all the other artists included in Great Art Explained, there is a palpable sense of empathy between author and subject. This is especially true for the eight women artists in the book. Not only is this a significant percentage of the total number of artists "explained" by Payne, but he has included Suzanne Valadon and Hilma af Klint, along with more familiar figures like Frida Kahlo.

Valadon and af Klint were two female painters of exceptional talent, who only a decade or so, ago, scarcely merited a mention in a survey of art for general readers like Great Art Explained. 

Suzanne Valadon, The Blue Room, 1923

I was privileged to be able to review one of the recent exhibitions which helped to bring Valadon's oeuvre to a wider audience. This was at the Barnes Foundation in 2021 where the painting selected by Payne for focused study, The Blue Room, was prominently displayed. Payne chose wisely including Valadon and The Blue Room in Great Art Explained.

However, it is a rare art book which can escape some measure of carping criticism for picking this or that artist over one who really "deserves" to be included. Why was Monet selected rather than Manet? Turner rather than Constable? Etc., etc.

For my part, I have to question why Payne chose four Renaissance works, separated by only a few short years. Even if they were created by Botticelli,  Hieronymus Bosch, Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, this seems a bit like stacking the deck. Couldn't he have found space for a painting or sculpture from the Mannerist era of the mid-1500's?

Agnolo Bronzino, Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time, 1545

After all, if ever a painting needs to be "explained", it is Agnolo Bronzino's Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time. I've been trying to figure-out that one for years - and I'm not even close.

***

Text: Copyright of Ed Voves, all rights reserved. Original photos by Anne Lloyd and Ed Voves, all rights reserved.

Introductory Image: Anne Lloyd, Photo (2017) Gallery view of Old Masters Now: Celebrating the Johnson Collection, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Nov. 2017-Feb. 2018.

Michelangelo's The Pieta at the New York World's Fair, 1964. Vatican Slide, D-1. http://www.worldsfairphotos.com/nywf64/vatican.htm

Ed Voves, Photo (2019) Gallery view of the Museum of Modern Art, NYC, with Vincent van Gogh's Starry Night, 1889, in the background.

Cover art of Great Art Explained by James Payne, 2025. Courtesy of Thames & Hudson

Copy after Zhang Zeduan's Along the River during the Qingming Festival, Song Dynasty, 1085-1145. Copy attributed to the 18th century. Handscroll; ink and color on silk: 11 3/4 in. x 33 ft. (29.8 x 1004.6 cm) Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Jan van Eyck (Flemish, c. 1390-1441) The Arnolfini Portrait, 1434. Oil on wood: 82.2 × 60 (32 3/8 × 23 5/8). © The National Gallery, London.

A Sampler of Art Works included in Great Art Explained: Sandro Botticelli's The Birth of Venus,1485. 172.5 × 278.5 (68 × 109 6/8) © Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence; Hilma af Klint's Group X, No, 2. Altarpiece,1915. Oil and metal leaf on canvas, 238 ×179 (93 3/4 × 70 1/2). © Hilma af Klint Foundation; Auguste Rodin's The Kiss (copy) displayed at the Rodin Museum, Philadelphia; Hokusai's     Under the Wave off Kanagawa, from Thirty-six views of Mount Fuji,  c. 1830-33.

• Woodblock print; ink and color on paper: 10 x 15 in. (25.4 x 38.1 cm) Metropolitan Museum of Art

Michelangelo (Italian, 1475-1564) The Pieta, 1499. St. Peter's Basilica, the Vatican. Marble sculpture: 174 cm × 195 cm (68.5 in × 76.8 in) Original photo by Stanislav Traykov, 2008, Creative Commons. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piet%C3%A0_(Michelangelo)

Ed Voves, Photo (2019) Gallery view of the Museum of Modern Art, NYC, showing Pablo Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, 1907. Oil on canvas: 8' x 7' 8" (243.9 x 233.7 cm) Museum of Modern Art.

Ed Voves, Photo (2021) Suzanne Valadon's The Blue Room, 1923. Centre Pompidou – Musée National d’Art Moderne/CCI, Paris, on deposit to the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Limoges. Photo taken at the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, 2021.

Agnolo Bronzino (Italian, 1503-1572) Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time,1545. Oil on wood: 146.1 x 116.2 cm.  © The National Gallery, London.