Visitors to art museums are often overwhelmed by the number of works on display, and by what they take to be their cupable inability to concentrate on more than a few if these works. In fact such a reaction is reasonable. Art history has totally failed to come to terms with the problem of the relationship between the outstanding work and the average work of the European tradition. The notion of genius is not in itself an adequate answer. Consequently the confusion remains on the walls of the galleries. Third-rate works surround an outstanding work without any recognition - let alone explanation - of what fundamentally differentiates them.
J. Berger, Ways of seeing (1972), 88
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