A pot of paint

by Linda Merrill

A Pot of Paint reconstructs the lost transcript and revisits the highly contested issues surrounding one of the most celebrated trials in the history of art. A libel suit brought in the London courts by American expatriate artist James McNeill Whistler against John Ruskin, England's most powerful art critic, the trial was essentially a debate of aesthetic theory conducted at a critical hour in the evolution of modern art. After viewing an 1877 exhibition that included some of Whistler's most abstract works, Ruskin declared in print that the artist had flung "a pot of paint in the public's...

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