ROMANTICISM’s rallying cry, “Art for art’s sake” — a reaction to the Industrial Revolution’s oppressive functionalism — has left us with the enduring sense that art’s main purpose is our removal from present reality. Art “succeeds” when it simulates us through the play of form, colour, and tonality to a peak of quiet contemplative ecstasy: what the modernist critic Roger Fry (1896-1934) termed “aesthetic experience”. Thus, contemplation of Monet’s Water Lilies provides a sort of “spiritual” release and experience of self-transcendence — a secular equivalent to the fruits of meditation on an icon or mandala.

Caroline Campbell’s book reminds us, that for much of history, however, a great deal of artistic production has been about something different: the exercise of power. In many parts of the world, it remains so into the present. In a series of case studies of 15 world cities, Campbell sets out to explore how rulers have synthesised paintings, statuary, and the built environment into “total” experiences that promote values and protect dynasties.

Campbell’s range is wide in both period and place. She is equally at home conducting readers around ancient Babylon and modern Brasilia, and takes us to places further beyond the “Western Canon”, including Kyoto and Benin. Some chapters fit better than others: those on Vienna and New York focus on rebellious artistic movements, in a detour from the advertised theme. Others, like the one on Rome, challenge simple notions of “place”, highlighting how the imperial metropole’s urban geography became replicated in provincial centres.

Perhaps the two most interesting chapters are, paradoxically, those focused on the contrasting environments of Jerusalem and Pyongyang. In both cases, “myth” shapes topography and decoration. Jerusalem is shown to be subject to endless reproduction in cities, especially Rome and Constantinople, which have claimed succession to it as spiritual centre of the Christian world.

Pyongyang, the capital of an atheistic Communist regime, has become festooned with images from the prodigious, quasi-miraculous infancy narratives of the Kim dynasty, which obliquely recall the New Testament Apocrypha. Voltaire’s dictum “If God did not exist we should have to invent him” appears vindicated.

The Revd Alexander Faludy is a freelance journalist based in Budapest.

The Power of Art: A world history in fifteen cities
Caroline Campbell
Little, Brown £30
(978-0-349-12848-1)
Church Times Bookshop £27