Art that makes us cry

The Angelus (1859) by Jean-Francois Millet.

In the 19th century, Millet's The Angelus moved people to tears. Now Rothko is thought to be the most wept-over artist. Philip Hook explores the etiquette of getting emotional in galleries

People weep at concerts when listening to transcendent music; people weep watching films or reading sad books; but fewer tears are shed in front of works of visual art. In the hierarchy of arts that provoke strong emotional reaction, painting and sculpture are some way down the list. There is something about the static nature of a work of plastic art that puts it at an emotional disadvantage by comparison with the greater dynamism and temporal flexibility offered by music, film or books. But are we beginning to change? Is it my imagination, or are more people weeping at art today?

In the past, if you came across someone shedding tears in an art gallery you would be more likely to assume that they'd had a bit of bad news than that the art had brought it on. Certainly that was the reaction of Impressionist painter Pissarro when visiting an exhibition of the works of Jean-Francois Millet in Paris in 1887. He bumped into an acquaintance who "greeted me with the announcement that he had just received a great shock, he was all in tears. I thought someone in his family had just died. Not at all, it was The Angelus, Millet's painting, which had provoked this emotion. This canvas, one of the painter's poorest, a canvas for which in these times 500,000 francs was refused, has just this moral effect on the vulgarians who crowd round it."

Pissarro was a little peeved because his own paintings weren't selling as well as Millet's. But he identifies two valid concerns: the unthinking mass appeal of a familiar image; and the genuineness of the emotion that viewing it produces. Was a lot of money offered for The Angelus because it made people so emotional? Or was the emotion triggered by the amount of money offered for it?

Mark Rothko, Untitled (Yellow, Orange, Yellow, Light Orange); Home From Sea (1862) by Arthur Hughes (right). Photo / AP, Supplied

Spectators of works by American abstract expressionist Mark Rothko are often moved to tears. There is something about the large expanses of colour which the artist deploys with such subtlety that puts the viewer in touch with the absolute. Awed by these visions of infinity, many break down and cry.

The Rothko Chapel in Texas is a popular destination for art lovers, its interior decorated with large abstract Rothkos. Besides security guards, there are also counsellors on duty to offer comfort to those visitors overcome with emotion.

These weepers are at the opposite pole from the spectators in the salesroom who break out into spontaneous applause when a Rothko sells for US$78 million. Or are they? Perhaps it is gratifying to find your emotion priced so high.

Art lovers of the 18th century were not afraid to shed tears. Indeed they rather gloried in them: Diderot, the French philosopher, exhorted painters to "move me, astonish me, unnerve me, make me tremble, weep, shudder, rage, then delight my eyes afterwards if you care to". And 50 years later, the notoriously susceptible writer Stendhal likens himself to the sounding board of a violin, echoing and responding to the emotional vibrations of the work of art.

In Florence he is overwhelmed by the Sibyls of Volterrano in the church of Santa Croce. "I got into a state of emotion where the celestial sensations of the fine arts encounter impassioned sentiments," he records. "When I left Santa Croce I had palpitations of the heart, felt beside myself and feared to fall down."

Experiencing psychosomatic dizziness and hallucinations when viewing art is now given a medical name - Stendhal Syndrome.

But back to Rothko. He wrote of his work: "I'm interested only in expressing basic human emotions, and the fact that lots of people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures shows that I communicate those basic human emotions. The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them."

Rothko's use of the word "religious" hints at the changing role of art in society, and people's emotional response to it. In the past a spectator might be moved to tears by a great work of Christian art - perhaps Michelangelo's Pieta - because of its religious content. Spectators are now moved to tears by art simply because it is art. That is because art has become the religion of the 21st century. Art meets a spiritual need in people. It has filled a vacuum in our society left by religion. The great art galleries of the land are its new cathedrals.

I have never actually shed tears in front of a painting myself. Paintings that move me strongly tend to be those which impress me as literature does, which arouse my sympathies like a novel. I have to have a handkerchief ready whenever I go into the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. A painting by the Pre-Raphaelite artist Arthur Hughes hangs there, called Home From Sea. It shows a young sailor boy lying in the grass weeping at the grave of his mother. She has died while he has been away on his first voyage The face of the boy as he buries his face in his hands, and the detail of the strands of hair matted by tears to the side of his cheek are almost unspeakably sad.

We live in an age in which people are much more prone to crying publicly. It is accepted on reality television shows, even encouraged by ratings-seeking programme planners. Celebrities do it so much on screen that it's become a fashion statement. We have lost our stiff upper lips. And art is no different. The same lack of boundaries which are a feature of contemporary art, in which just about anything goes, also applies to our emotional responses to it. We have loosened up. But still, there remain some standards. An etiquette prevails, even with Stendhal Syndrome. Which artists' work is it okay to be seen crying in front of? Rothko is consecrated by custom, as attested by his many admirers. And truly sublime works by the great masters may justifiably provoke tears. But some discrimination must be exercised: yes, cry in front of a self-portrait by Rembrandt in his old age, or Picasso's Guernica. But people may look at you oddly if they saw you shedding tears in front of Frans Hals' Laughing Cavalier.

- Independent

&Bull; Philip Hook is the author of Breakfast at Sotheby's: An A-Z of the Art World (Penguin $50, out now; the $30 paperback edition is released on January 2).