Editorial: The Chagall fiasco can be reframed

Many art patrons remember the gasps that greeted the National Gallery of Canada’s 1989 purchase of Barnett Newman’s Voice of Fire. Yes, for a cool $1.8 million, the gallery had just acquired a 5.4-metre canvas composed of three vertical stripes.
Indignation! Shock! Why, a five-year-old could have painted that, blared more than a few dismayed taxpayers. Art cognoscenti sniffed back about metaphysics and colour palettes and the like. The war or words went on for months.
Yet the co