James Tata reacts with surprise to the negative views of Raphael expressed by Peter Schjeldahl and Michael Kimmelman. As much as I agree with James, he shouldn’t be mystified; disdaining Raphael provides a pose of easy sophistication from which to write the review, after all. And the painter does present a problem. As I think both articles note, Raphael was the icon of the classical school, a painter without Michelangelo’s fierce mannerism or Leonardo’s unfinished works. But it’s been decades since complexity and contradiction came back into fashion and nothing entices more than a fragment. To assert a whole-hearted liking for Raphael appears tantamount to arguing for a "bland, large, balanced, Apollonian art" – and that would be a tremendous faux pas for critics in the position of Schjeldahl or Kimmelman.
I’d say that Franklin Einspruch got it right, by the way, when he some time ago denounced Kimmelman’s parting shot at Rembrandt as indicating “a real deficiency”, though in fairness I doubt the offending comment was meant seriously.
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