Sistine perfection or

pissed-up Manchester
street scene? Let's put
things in perspective
Forget its supposed compositional harmonies:
comparing a photo of some drunk revellers to the
masterpieces of the Renaissance is an insult to the
deeply skilled and difficult enterprise of painting
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The right place at the right time Joel Goodmans shot of New Years Eve on Well
Street in Manchester, which has been shared around the world. Photograph: Joel
Goodman/LNP

Jonathan Jones
Monday 4 January 2016 14.11 GMT
Last modified on Monday 4 January 2016 14.19 GMT

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Oh, come off it. I know you may have had a few. I know this
time of year can bring out a bit of sentimental hungover tosh.
But seriously why are so many people comparing a
photograph of New Years Eve in Manchester to the
masterpieces of Renaissance art?
It started when a BBC producer tweeted that a photograph of
revellers by Joel Goodman in the Manchester Evening News
was like a beautiful painting. Then people started turning it
into a painting, or analysing its supposed mathematical
harmonies, or comparing it with the Sistine chapel, the Last
Supper and more recent Renaissance-influenced masterpieces
such as Seurats Bathers at Asnires.
What a silly start to 2016 in art for the differences between
this photograph and a Renaissance painting are far larger than
any similarities. Taking a picture is so very different to making
one. All those Renaissance compositions werent quickly shot
on the street. There was nothing quick about them. Artists in
those days trained for years in drawing, painting and sculpting,
under exacting apprenticeship conditions, and when they did
start making art in their own right, it was a deeply skilled and
difficult enterprise. Works such as the Last Supper or the
Sistine ceiling are among the greatest miracles of human
achievement. Its an insult to the capabilities of human beings
at their most refined to casually compare this photograph with

these works.
1 Jan

Roland Hughes @hughesroland

So much going on this pic of New Year in Manchester by the Evening
News. Like a beautiful painting.
Follow

Roland Hughes @hughesroland

Thanks to for proving the golden ratio can be applied to this
pic:
1:51 PM - 1 Jan 2016

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1,246 1,246 Retweets1,293 1,293 likes

If you think I am being snobbish, consider a scientific analogy.

Would you praise this shot by comparing it with Einsteins
General Theory of Relativity? The great art of the Renaissance
is on a par with Einstein or Newton as a peak of human insight.
The man who took this picture has described his achievement
much more accurately and modestly. Goodman says he was in
the right place at the right time.
This is a classic definition of a great photograph that echoes
such masters of the craft as Henri Cartier-Bresson, who sought
out the decisive moment that amazing instant when life
becomes poetry. It cheapens photography to compare it with
Renaissance art, because it misses precisely what is good

about a photograph like this. For Goodman did not stage or

orchestrate this scene. He simply captured what was
happening before his lens. The artist here is life itself.
The eerie and moving thing about this photo is not that it is well
composed or like a Renaissance painting. Its the fact that it
shows a moment of reality that happens to be full of meaning. If
this moment seems to have the dramatic depth of Renaissance
art, that is because life itself has those qualities. We walk
among masterpieces the whole time. A good photo reveals
them.
There is an underlying reason why Renaissance echoes may
haunt this image: the Renaissance haunts all images. Those
geniuses 500 years ago came up with such definitive solutions
to pictorial composition that almost all artists, photographers
and people who look at a picture are subconsciously influenced
by the visual models they invented.
But if we cant see the difference between a timeless
masterpiece and a picture feted on Twitter that will lets face it
be forgotten by next week, then we are starting 2016 with
very bleary eyes.
Time to sober up.