Julian Bell – The Nightmare of History Painting

‘History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake’, James Joyce once wrote. History painting was a nightmare from which many modernist artists tried to awake. History painting was deadly boring and self-important. History painting had become neither good painting nor good history. The last decent history painting had come from... was it Goya, was it Poussin, was it Giotto? And so the art world made a bid to escape the genre and its ancient claims to preeminence. But how far has it ever been able to do so? Julian Bell analyses why history painting once mattered - and the reasons why it might, or might not, still continue to matter.