Color Reproductions Will Dull the Barnes Collection

The dream of reason produced monsters.

--Francisco de Goya

The Los Angeles Times reported (Calendar, June 11) that the “Barnes Foundation’s recent decision to publish its acclaimed art collection for the first time in full color has been greeted as long overdue good news by the art world.”

By most of that world, certainly! I, though, worry that the allure of progress in the name of color reproduction for all will diminish rather than enhance our response to the collection.

Since the birth of the Age of Reason, we have found ourselves rejoicing in seemingly endless logical societal advances, only to find ourselves ultimately in worse messes than we were before. To solve auto congestion we built freeways and, as a result, our movement is more restricted than ever; to promote agricultural yield we developed chemical pesticides and witnessed the creation of new illnesses; to develop the land we cleared it too conscientiously and one of our rewards was the greenhouse effect; to heighten the impact of black-and-white movie classics we colorized them.

And so once again, there is general excitement with the decision to publish the Barnes Collection in color. Art that has been partially sequestered will finally become more available to the public and scholars.

But can we predict that there will be no cost, no loss, no downside to “ending” what The Times’ Stanley Meisler last fall called the Barnes’ “strange, frustrating ban on color reproduction”? I don’t think so.

Rather, I think we can expect the introduction of a new disease never before seen at the Barnes, one I call the “disappointment syndrome.” Its first symptom is an acutely let-down feeling when seeing an over-reproduced masterpiece for the first time. That first innocent color plate entered our lives via a textbook, then appeared on post cards, slides and posters, not to speak of dishes, towels and ashtrays.

We cannot help seeing the great original for the first time through a screen of kitsch. We are disappointed when the original does not have the mystical light and heightened colors of slides, when flaws become apparent as they never were in those photographs, and when it’s either too big or too small to match our prefabricated expectations.

Next, one suffers a dramatic drop of self-esteem: “It must be me. Only a Philistine would not respond ecstatically to this monument of civilization.” Then, terminal hypocrisy sets in and we find ourselves able to walk out of the museum talking about how much we love the art. This never happened at the Barnes since no one ever knew what to expect on a first visit. Photos of the collection were only available in black-and-white before now.

Many of my colleagues in the art world who will no doubt disagree with me need to be reminded of the experiences of the general museum-going public, those who do not live by slides and photographs and research. We will, of course, be the ones to gain the most by the easy availability of color reproductions. But the lay-people who go to museums will lose. They will lose one of the last places in the United States where it is still possible to see a Matisse or a Renoir or a Cezanne as if it had just been created! Furthermore, this step could just be the beginning of the rationalizing of the Barnes Foundation, now a marvel of eccentric display and collecting, into a standardized museum.

I will be reminded that the better-quality reproductions don’t distort, lie, hype or erase. They are so good that they convey the sense of the work of art itself. Even worse! Walter Benjamin knew long ago that the very existence of the photograph sets up the destruction of the spectators’ understanding of the uniqueness of a work of art, its “once-onliness,” its singularity, its authenticity. The better the color reproduction the more it undermines the imperative to see the original.

And, finally, I will be told that mine is an elitist argument. But let me stress that admission to the Barnes is free and that the institution is getting more accessible every day. Despite its vaunted restrictions on access, I walked in last year with neither appointment nor introduction and had one of the great art experiences of my life. The truly correct political action, I insist, would be to work toward greater and greater awareness of and access to the Barnes so that as many people as care to can experience its great art firsthand.

We in the art world should encourage seeing works of art face to face in our own communities and in the world at large. We should offer as many people as possible the opportunity to see a masterpiece for the first time: true of color, honest in scale, its once-onliness intact.

We should strive to get as many students of art and life to those special places, our museums and galleries, where they too can swoon over a work of art seen for the first time.