Tate Britain, London

Exhibits centered on a medium are wonderful things; I saw last year's Renaissance Drawings exhibit at the British Museum and loved it too. Watercolour is better. Not for content but curation. The rooms are arranged thematically, with the center room dedicated to the technical requisites of the paint itself (featuring Turner's paintbox and Queen Victoria's field satchel). 

But any time I see 18th and 19th Century paintings hung next to those of the 20th Century, my heart sinks. Not without exception, but in vast majority. I acknowledge the Art Historical importance of the 1950's, when society was repressed in so many other ways. I understand Rosalind Krauss' imperative to expand the field of sculpture, and Clemete Greenberg's love for Modernist painting. It was necessary for Kenneth Noland to demonstrate that oil paint is beautiful in and of itself, in color and composition alone, without figurative representation. I love Duchamp. But the movement has done what it needed to do. It is the job of contemporary artists to stop tearing down and begin building back up. 

Paintings of the Old Masters are so timeless in part because they don't need an artist statement. You'd never see them hiding a lack of skill behind a wall of deconstructionist Derridan jargon. They're also not mere craftsman. Walter Langley's 1882 watercolor halted me from across the room and after approach and careful study I saw the title (from a Charles Kingsley poem), 'But men must work and women must weep' and the work elevated even higher. When I look at Tracey Emin's small smudges of color on a blank page, trying to negotiate them with their title, Berlin The Last Week In April 1998, I just feel disappointed. And that's hardly the worst of her work. 

'But men must work and women must weep'
Walter Langley
1882