The Sorry State of Visual Literacy?

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This small painting is among the items up for auction next month at a prominent West Coast auction house. The catalog description identifies the work as a “religious painting (18th/19th century)” depicting a “man with tail carrying child and globe with cross.”

Really? This is just some unknown guy? With a tail? Carrying some unknown child on his back? The scene is some unfathomable concoction by a quirky artist?

Make that, artists (plural).

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One Response to “The Sorry State of Visual Literacy?”

  1. […] Christian iconography than in the past. I previously posted an idle observation on this subject, here.  A new example came to my attention this week, in an auction catalog posted online by an auction […]

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