For some reason the curators of this exhibit at the Tate Britain decided that rather than feature the Pre-Raphaelites individually, by name, they would show how modern these artists were (curator's regret or curator's envy hin oder her, that is: as it may be...), calling the show Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde and grouping pictures by different artists, as they might be displayed in so many museum collections, all together.
And en garde it is.
With an utterly respectable exhibit, the visitor is whelmed and again underwhelmed --- all until the last thought, the after-thought, "mythologies" as Allison Smith, Tim Barringer, Jason Rosenfeld designated the final set of paintings.
Then, like blue-black lightning, Perseids in an August sky, a selection from Sir Edward Burne-Jones' Perseus series, featuring some of its strongest paintings.
Sir Edward Burne-Jones, The Rock of Doom
Sir Edward Burne-Jones, The Doom Fulfilled
Sir Edward Burne-Jones, The Baleful Head
Worthwhile in this regard is Fabian Fröhlich's 2002 Heidelberg dissertation, now available as a book: Frauen im Spiegel (available to read online here with a 2009 addendum, and for a [partial] English version available in this catalogue here) as indeed Patrick Bade's 2004 guide Edward Burne-Jones -- but what makes Burne-Jones interesting, as evidenced by the current exhibit, is that Burne-Jones's art, and this is in striking contradistinction to the other Pre-Raphaelites, is not about mirroring women alone...
As if to prove this last point, the paintings ranged under the category of Beauty at the Tate Britain exhibit, features only women subjects.
Sir Edward Burne-Jones, Love Among the Ruins
Perhaps Burne-Jones's failing, as it would seem that we must blame the artist, is that he did and could do so very much, leaving the skills of art historians overburdened -- and as a result, and after show-casing Burne-Jones as they do to striking advantage in the exhibit, the same curators none the less seemingly did not know how to foreground the same paintings in their own order and constellation in print, meaning that only some of the paintings on display make Tim Barringer, et al.'s (perforce incomplete) catalogue for the exhibit, to the detriment of visitors to this special exhibit who might have wished a catalogue to permit them to consider the power of these paintings at their own leisure.
This last point is especially true in the case of this series, which includes paintings of such a size -- and blues of such vividness, and contrasts of such orchestral resonance -- that reproductions fail, and fail in manifold ways, such that they must be seen in person. To this extent, they prove that Malraux's Museum Without Walls is a handbook, an aide-memoire for those who know the original.
Barringer, who teaches at Yale, explains his insights here and, just perhaps, as suggested by William Holman Hunt's Isabella and the Pot of Basil, giving away his own concerns, concerns which also include an arts and crafts focus on labor (this doubtless explains both the strengths and the limits of his co-curated show) and a collection of categorical fixes (in his Reading the Pre-Raphaelites: Edward Burne-Jones, once again, brings up the rear in this earlier book).
May be it is merely a matter of distraction. In any case: the hand that giveth, taketh also away...
