Narrative

As any eavesdropper in a gallery knows, it's not pictures that tell stories but people: every picture evokes as many stories as it has spectators. Yet the stories we hear in front of pictures are not necessarily those the artists meant to tell. The stories and messages that the artists wished to convey became harder for viewers to understand when pictures began to be shown out of their original context, in galleries and museums; when viewers became less familiar with the literature and artistic conventions of the past; and when painters started to draw on more wide-ranging and obscure sources.