Art creates a portal into our very souls. It enables us to connect with a universal consciousness and in that process becomes part of our ongoing cultural evolution. That's why great art - just like Shakespeare's works - will continue to enrich and holistically impact on successive generations of people. Art asks probing questions of us and we in turn try to answer these. The answers we provide in turn lead to further questions and thus the process continues to reverberate eternally.
In Japan when you broke a clay pot you can send it to a special store where skillful restaurators gluing broken parts together with solid gold! After restauration you get back more beautiful and more valuable item then it ever be before. Technic is call Kintsugi)
It’s not just about paintings. He’s just using some paintings as an example. Rijks only really has paintings, pottery, armor and weaponry, furniture, and a few sculptures. Alain is making an argument about the didactic nature of art that encapsulates propagandistic properties. Certain paintings from this museum just happen to be apposite to reenforcing his position.
I think the real reason so many art museum professionals find his theories objectionable is because if we really tried to present art as therapy and connect to our lives in terms of hope, love, and all the rest, it would be glaringly obvious that film and television do that so much better and, thus, the final nail in the coffin of obsolete-ness.
