Hi Christina

Many thanks for your thoughts.

I’m not sure I follow your argument completely so please feel free to correct me if I misinterpret you.

I can’t recall if I used the term “great” – I probably did – but I would not wish to place too much weight on it. When I use it, it's simply my shorthand for works that are widely recognized as outstanding. And I'm not attempting to isolate particular “formal qualities” that might make a work great. (I know attempts are sometimes made to do that, but I think they are essentially a waste of time, and in any case are not relevant to my present arguments.)

I think you are right to draw attention to the “emergence of the so-called primitive art”. This is a classic case of “metamorphosis” – no different in essence from the metamorphosis that has taken place in the case of medieval art (see my reply to Marek) or, say, Egyptian art, or Pre-Columbian art. (Sacred works becoming (for us) “works of art”).

You say at the end “What turns certain works -and not others - into recognizable objects carrying a set of qualities that we value as worthy is tightly connected with the values that predominate in a certain historical period and their revivals and so we might wish to consider the matter of time in close relation with that of history.”

To a point, I agree. This is one reason why the traditional explanation of the temporal nature of art – that it is “timeless” – has failed. The notion of timelessness – which has been immensely influential in European thought, and still lingers on today – requires us to consider a (great) work exempt from the passing of time – immune from history, as it were. But when we look at the history of art, and especially the eclipses that certain works and styles have suffered, this explanation is plainly untenable. So we need an explanation of the capacity of art to endure that accepts the effects of history. Which is one of the reasons I favour Malraux’s theory of metamorphosis.

It’s worth adding, though, that we can’t explain art’s capacity to endure by invoking history alone. History explains why art is affected by time (changing social contexts etc); it does not explain why it transcends it.

DA