Mr. Hansard is a font of barroom wisdom about art and life.
What seems not to have changed is the desire of the Royal Academy -- and its exhibitions secretary, Norman Rosenthal -- to cause a fresh sensation, although Mr. Rosenthal describes his intent as that of challenging received wisdom about art.
Mark Nelson, whom Long Wharf audiences saw most recently in "A Doll's House," is strong and virtuously stubborn as Ari Lev, the father, but he is even more enthralling as Jacob Kahn, a passionate artist who becomes Asher's mentor and passes along sacrilegious wisdom: that art itself is a religion.
Exhibition halls tend to be closely guarded by hawk-eyed babushki who can sometimes be fountains of wisdom about art and life, but are more often known for pouncing on visitors for minor transgressions such as standing too close to paintings.
He is founding editor of Proverbium: Yearbook of International Proverb Scholarship and has authored many books, including Proverbs Speak Louder Than Words: Folk Wisdom in Art, Culture, Folklore, History, Literature, and Mass Media (2008), Yes We Can: Barack Obamas Proverbial Rhetoric (2009), and International Bibliography of Paremiology and Phraseology, two volumes (2009).
When you see and feel at the deepest level that this passing back and forth of wisdom and art exists, it is hard to imagine anything more joyous and you can see that beautifully expressed in their paintings.
As a group, they refute the conventional wisdom that all arts organizations are in trouble, formal arts organizations are outmoded and that the arts world is doomed.
This show allows reassessment of the conventional wisdom that his art went into fairly steep decline after 1921, or even 1914.
To understand the situation, it helps to set aside, a bit, the conventional wisdom that the art bubble, like other kinds, must rely on a growing but finally not inexhaustible pool of incautious investors, some of whom are bound to end up with vaults full of fire-sale pictures.
For example, in his short Idea for a Catechism of Reason for Noble Ladies (published in the Athenaeum) he enjoins women, "Let yourself covet men's culture, art, wisdom, and honor".
