Article Summary from School

When I was taking an Art History course I was asked to summarize an article written by an Art Historian whose lecture I had missed, specifically Alex Nagel. Initially, I wasn't really sure how to do this given that I was about to graduate, I did not give a fuck about school, and this paper was more or less required to be about something I had no real interest in. After the first paragraph I just started writing whatever came to mind. It may or may not have become an informal explanation to the teacher for why I never did the reading for the course and why I did not give a fuck as long as I passed.

Summary of “Recent literature on Lorenzo Lotto” by Alex Nagel

In this article on a then recent exhibition of works by Lorenzo Lotto, Nagel touches upon the works of the artist and contemporary reactions to them. Nagel juggles many different issues and questions different assertions that have been made. Citing the history of the artist, his works, contemporary interpretations, and the new movement to propel Lotto to ‘rediscovered master’ status, Nagel adeptly integrates so many different points of interest that the reader is left with a very good sense of the larger picture surrounding Lotto.

But what stands out to me is the lens that the paper creates. Although it is in one sense quite comprehensive, it is still warped. And what makes this more obvious to me, and perhaps in a way that is intentionally ironic, is the fact that Nagel takes much of the article to offer insight into the viewpoint of other scholars’ writings. This inspires me to envision the reader straining to see the past, through a painting of something else, while looking through a lens of an author, who is then being seen through another lens of an author, and so on.

What I remember at this point are the remarks recorded from Leonardo da Vinci which, to summarize, state that experience is king and summary is to be avoided.

What am I, a young scholar in the making, supposed to think of these things? Perhaps the best strategy is to ask, ‘What is the point of art?’ I have pondered the question. To the best of my knowledge, it is a question that is by nature multilayered, situational, and subjective. Everything reflects everything else, and what any one individual sees in a painting is a different reflection of their own experience and the experience of others. The meaning that is assigned to that is up to them.