Introduction and Prologue
Figure 1: Auguste Renoir, Le Moulin de la Galette, (1876) mixed a new subject- matter with the immediacy of Impressionist vision.
Introduction
There is a connection between Art and “materialism.” In times that elevate “things” to a realm of importance greater than “ideas,” art becomes a commodity. In such circumstances, “taste” is everything; “meaning” is coincidental. But we discover from history that “meaningless” art is to a culture what “economic Depression” is to a business cycle. Any society suffering from such a scourge must assume that the flame of its corporate life is burning very low indeed.
Perhaps that is why educators place the study of art in a college curriculum. Like literature, the visual arts are a barometer of the condition of the human soul. Unless we know how to “read” that barometer, we may miss important signals of malaise or of vigor.
Artists and poets frequently are prophets who anticipate movements of the pendulum of history. Just as woodsmen read “signs” in the wilderness, we can identify signposts civilization has painstakingly spread across time and space to convey lessons about survival. This work is about those signposts: how to recognize them, what influence they may have on your life, how to “read” them.
Art is ultimately “non-verbal language.” Like dance, music, even architecture, the visual arts communicate feelings, aspirations, anxieties, affirmations. Modern psychologists have discovered that an inarticulate patient wrestling with illness or grief can sometimes “picture” the problem better with color or line than with words. Once pictured, the problem can be addressed. Cultures “out-picture” aspirations in much the same fashion, but we are often unsure who is “carrier of the dream” until generations later. Impressionism, for example, encapsulated leisure-class values of the coming industrial revolution (Figure 1) with a growing interest in the “science of seeing,” but at the time its unique vision was seen as quackery by the “establishment.”
Framed in this context, art always reveals something about its culture, if no more than rising demand for entertainment or investment goods. Delight of the senses and the quest for prestige probably have accounted for much of the art production housed in our museums, and thus one must be cautious in limiting “meaning” to the “substantive” level alone, lest one fall into the trap of Soviet aestheticians who proscribed all but “Socialist” art during the Stalin era. Mankind finds “meaning” on many levels, and it is the focus of that meaning that instructs.
This study will attempt to identify those levels of meaning — in terms of the experience of the artist, the viewer, and not least important by any means, in terms of characteristics embedded in the object itself. Works of cultures both past and present remain a visible treatise on the consciousness that produced them.
Let it also be noted that we must recognize a complex spectrum of human responses to art. Coming to any form of artistic expression, people from a variety of backgrounds bring a commensurate variety of expectations. Possibly the most fundamental difference in expectations involves what ancient Greeks described as the conflict between Apollonian and Dionysian impulses — that is, between the quest for order, structure, control on one hand, and elements of expression, freedom and excitement on the other. Each of us seems to have his or her personal threshold for the dominance of excitement over order. We become impatient with too much structure, yet total unpredictability and lack of “ground rules” typically make us insecure. (Figure 2 & Figure 3)
Recently, physiologists studying the human brain have concluded that we utilize different parts of the cranial mass to perform fundamentally different functions: the left brain seems to handle “practical” aspects of our behavior, such as counting, naming things, measuring, etc., while the right brain fulfills a more “integrative” function, constantly attempting to see the “whole picture” rather than enumerate parts. In one sense at least, modern science is reinforcing the Greek notion that there are fundamental differences in how people react to the same experience. Orientals have long acknowledged the Yin/Yang principle (often equated with “male” and “female” aspects of life), with many of the characteristics Western scientists now ascribe to left brain and right brain dominance.
What this suggests for our purpose is the observation that taste is a very relative thing, particularly in democratic cultures such as ours, where one is conditioned to believe that “regardless of how much I know about art, I know what I like.” Perhaps it is ultimately more important to understand that we normally “like what we know.” Anything strange or exotic smacks of the Dionysian, because we don’t recognize the rules by which it was created. “Realism,” on the other hand, always has the seductive attribute of familiarity.
Ascribing labels of “good” or “bad” to art will not be high on the agenda of this enterprize. Instead, we will explore myriad expressions of the human spirit accessible today thanks to camera and video, with the objective of understanding more about ourselves. Learning the varied and universal language of art ought to be more challenging now than ever before in history. If not, the lessons of thousands of years of human creativity may have been wasted.
Fig. 2-8 . Mondrian moves from painterly style (The Red Tree, 1909-10) to a hard linear approach in his later Tableau I, (n.d., Fig. 2-9).
Figure 3: JohnMarin’s Region of Brooklyn Bridge Fantasy finds excitement in visual discontinuities of Brooklyn’s urban-scape.
Fig. 4: Romanesque figure of Eve by Giselbertus (circa 1140 AD) insinuated Classical figurative values into mainstream Medieval iconography.
A "later" carving by Donatello, Mary Magdalen (Fig. 6 & 6a, top, wood/1455) replaces tactile geometry of Lo Zuccone (Fig. 5 & 5a, stone/ 1435-36) with a more visually exciting surface possible in wood.
Fig. 7 : Vincent Van Gogh's Starry Night employs aggitated brushstrokes to heighten its vivid psychological impact.
Prologue
Looking at Art in new ways
How many ways can you look at something? Art, which is an expression of all the complexities of human experience, has many facets. The richness of this tapestry of meaning is what makes visual arts part of the universal language of mankind.
It seems appropriate to look at some of those realms of meaning as prologue to a more deliberate investigation of specific aspects of the artistic process. Without prioritization of their importance, the following are some of the many factors that enter into serious study of painting, drawing, sculpture, print-making, architecture, film and many other artistic forms of human expression:
Social Factors
Throughout most of recorded art history, patronage has been one of the critical elements in determining what artists choose to create. For countless centuries, it was a combination of religious and secular power that determined what artisan stone-carvers laboriously cut from blocks of stone. There was not much “self-expression” here. But, to our everlasting benefit, powerful innovators such as the Medieval master Giselbertus unashamedly stretched the social fabric of their times.
Later, when a rising middle-class contested aristocratic taste, it exercised as great a tyranny over artistic imagination as had pharoahs, kings and popes before it. Understanding social pres- sures responsible for artistic style is fully as im- portant as recognizing culture itself.
Aesthetic Factors
Art appeals to our senses – especially visual and tactile faculties (touch) – and knowing what “aesthetic” bias an artist or his clients have can explain aspects of a finished work which appear to be willful distortions of perceived reality. Generally, primitive societies and early phases of more developed cultures seem to incline toward tactile expression, while more “mature” stages of a society evolve toward visually exciting art forms.
To some extent, this same tension between tactile and visual realms is reenacted during the lifetime of a given artist. Masters of the Italian Renaissance such as Donatello and Michelangelo moved from youthful virility of tactile forms to increasingly “painterly” (visual) expressions in their later years. And more recently, masters as diverse as Manet and Mondrian, Winslow Homer and Andrew Wyeth have evolved toward increasing visual excitment in their later periods.
In sculpture, mass and surface give rise to radically different sense experience — comparable perhaps to French horn and flute in an orchestra’s voice. One learns to distinguish the language of touch and language of vision in the same fashion one differentiates percussion and vocal performance in music.
Psychological Factors
Almost all forms of human activity are effected by psychological conditioning, but art more than most. Psychotic artists or even those who might be judged neurotic typically produce quite different forms than the artist “integrated” with his/her social environment. Vincent Van Gogh has become a cultural hero in modern times due in part to visible mental anguish embedded in his painting technique.
Any “transaction” between artist and viewer is mediated by some “art object,” and that artifact, like positive and negative electrical charges, can either attract or alienate. A work which seeks to positively-reinforce the viewer’s state-of-mind is quite different from one designed to shake the viewer’s complacency or impose some external value. Any adroit creator is sensitive to these psychological polarities.
As a rule, art which is eminently “public” in character tends to be less psychologically coercive than art which is “private” in conception. Commissioned “subway-station art,” for example, rarely delves deeply into painful expressions of the human spirit, whereas the outcry of “graffiti” on passing trains often represents one individual’s defiant expression of dissent.
Evolutionary Factors
In plant growth, we call it “morphology,” the structure of change. It is no less deliberate in the movement of artistic consciousness from generation to generation, or from one phase of an artist’s career to the next.
Patterns of evolution appear to follow predictable channels, and understanding those natural changes is often helpful in grasping unique aspects of each phase. Occasionally, artists make a quantum leap in theirs or their culture’s capacity for creative expression, and at such times perception of “normal” rates of growth and change become useful in assessing “virtuousity.”
Sensitivity to changes in stylistic language is one of the essentials of art appreciation, since a grasp of past evolutionary changes fosters receptivity to new and often disquieting trends of the present. By accepting the inevitability of stylistic revolution, we eliminate dangers of an “academic” orthodoxy that has often stifled creativity in the past.
Geographic Factors
Climate may be one of the most elusive factors involved in determining artistic style, along with considerations of national origin. We discover, for example, that European tradition frequently must be differentiated into North and South (Germany in contrast to Italy, for example), as well as East and West (Byzantine versus Latin Christian forms), in order to fully savor the characteristics of each.
Grasp of a “regional bias” such as “Mediterranean” preoccupation with the human figure or Northern obsession with Nature can greatly enhance one’s realization of meaning in specific works of art. One “reads” etchings of a Master such as Albrecht Durer as quintessentially “Northern,” even though he was a serious student of classical “Mediterranean” values. His typical expression is linear, tense, conceptual and reflective of man’s fallibility before Nature. Apart from these typically Northern traits, one might also assert that Durer cultivated the “left- brain mode” of perception to its highest potential. He painstakingly “enumerated” everything from flora and fauna to human excess.
Early-Renaissance Italians, such as Signorelli, often mixed heroism and physical idealism in an emerging Humanistic portrayal of mankind, where Durer’s heavily-clad German peasants were redolent of a prevailing cynicism about human sinfulness, soon to be codified in Calvinist doctrine.
Motivational Factors
Artists, from simple tribal woodcarvers to today’s painters of Soho, typically dance to a recognizable “drumbeat.” Although different kinds of artistic impulse and unique cultures produce a wide variety of artistic statements, there nevertheless appear to be some common threads running through this creative tapestry. And it is helpful to understand what types of concerns traditionally motivate artists.
Certain painters, for example, focus their attention almost exclusively on visual organization of forms and colors (Fig. 10) – with less concern for “what the design is about.” This is what I call plastic motivation. Emphasis is purely on right-relationships of shape, color or line, with minimal interest in communicating “about something.” The plastic impulse tends to be wholistic, intuitive, centered in the right brain, and often most noticeable in art when it is absent. One thinks of the “pure plasticity” of Piet Mondrian’s almost classical abstractions in which “balance” is acheived by juxtaposition of geometric shapes of primary color on a field of white and black. All that is important is the “structure,” the arrangement, the “rightness” of the sum total of the visual experience.
The most common artistic motivation, however, is probably that of the subject-oriented artist — focusing on what is to be painted or carved, rather than the (plastic) mode of organization or (decorative) visual effects. (Fig.12) This fundamentally descriptive impulse is generally seen as a literary motivation, and probably accounts for much of the art produced before the 20th century. Paintings without significant literary content did not become a commonplace until Cubism opened the floodgates of abstract art about 1905. In the century since that major turning-point in the history of Western art, “merely decorative” or “starkly plastic” images have taken their place alongside “story-telling” art. The term “meaning” has expanded to include pure visual experience (line, color, light, form and their “organization”) as well as traditional descriptive material.
Of course, some artists combine all three of these motivational elements in fresh and un- predictable ways, and they are often artists we refer to as Masters. The artist who dwells almost exclusively on the literary — to the exclusion of plastic and decorative concerns — is generally de- scribed as an “illustrator.”
Stylistic Factors
Non-verbal communication has distinctive qualities just as surely as speech has “accent,” or writing has “style.” These reflect the uniqueness of each human spirit.
By conscious or unconscious variations of emphasis, a visual artist may create effects as distinctive as his or her fingerprints. (Fig. 13) Recognition of technical factors operative in producing special stylistic language enhances our capacity to understand and appreciate a particular artist’s work. For example, special emphasis on aspects such as light, distinctive color, or characteristic distortions of form may identify a specific artist’s style. Spontaneity may be as decisive in drawing or painting style as in dance or other more “performance-oriented” art forms.
Stylistic language also has alot to do with how the artist manipulates his or her medium -the “process” of creativity. It is difficult to put a distinctive artist in proper perspective unless one grasps not only that artist’s unique combination of process and subject-matter, but also those earlier forms which anticipated and inspired it.
Critical Factors
Tastes are as varied as works of art made to satisfy them. Since time immemorial, critics and patrons have used a variety of criteria to judge “success” of an artist’s work.
If indeed “beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” it is the job of a critic to know what creates that sensation for the viewing public of a particular era. Some periods have celebrated virtuousity, others harmony or “truth-to-Nature.” There are also critical viewpoints which hold formal values uppermost (canons of “rightness” in relationships of color, form, line, chiaroscuro, etc.). Times of social, political or religious strife, on the other hand, seem to favor “expression.”
Knowing the often-elusive “hiddenagenda” of a critical elite (be they priests, men of commerce, political revolutionaries, or museum curators, to name a few) can provide powerful insight into artistic productions which their influence helps define. Few artists have operated in a critical vacuum, and even the “rebellious” painter or sculptor is in some measure defined by tastes against which they choose to react.
Historically, “success” has often depended on the artist becoming a “carrier” of distinct social or religious values. Though it is sometimes difficult to “recreate” these critical forces operative during an artist’s lifetime, one cannot effectively separate the artist’s production from its critical milieu.
Functional Factors
To think of sculptured figures beside the doorway of a cathedral as “functional” (Fig. 14), may seem an unusual interpretation of that word. But history reveals that religious/political institutions have been among the most consistent “consumers”of symbolic artifacts. Some of this art may have been intended to educate, some to intimidate, and some to entertain or uplift. Often it is virtually impossible to comprehend significance of a work fully without background information on its intended function.
Great art was often created in ancient Egypt for edification of the dead rather than the living. Never seen in the market place, it was buried under shifting sands for the purpose of defeating time, a function which it has in many cases nobly achieved. Even innocuous art work such as the “society portrait” has an historical role of aggrandizing that sitter for posterity (a form of ancestor worship?) — and woe unto any painter who fails to grasp this dimension of the assignment.
Since the era of cave painters, art has served a wide range of human purposes: from primitive magic to state religion, from Neo-Platonic philosophy to egalitarianism, from mysticism to secular propaganda. Particularly where buildings and their sculptured or painted decoration are concerned, knowledge of a social or religious “function” is often key to savoring full import of the work.
Ethnic Factors
Perhaps the most obvious explanation of widely disparate sensibilities (in matters of form, color, etc.) is origin of these tastes in vastly different cultures. Eskimo art is palpably more spare and kinetic (Fig. 15) than the immobile funerary images of Egypt. Gothic sculpture attached to German cathedrals is clearly distinguishable from its French counterpart, despite similar scriptural sources.
As technologically-sophisticated means of reproduction make all art forms more accessible, unique “ethnic” qualities begin to vanish in an international melting-pot. Artifacts with bold ethnic quality become prized for their “difference.” In our own culture, the work of “Folk artists” has recently achieved high visibility, due in part to its freedom from the homogenizing influence of prestigeous art magazines and avant garde museum programs. Inevitably, artists with cosmopolitan or academic backgrounds seize on those same ingenuous traits which identify “naive” art, and the process of assimilation begins anew.
For those willing to “decode” often-complex ethnic sources, recognition of cultural values embedded in works of art becomes a major avenue of enjoyment. Greek art of the 6th century BC, for example, is a rich pastiche of Aegean and Mediterranean styles (Figs. 16 & 17). Deciphering those ethnic “connections” reveals much to the historical investigator, and ultimately permits one to perceive what is inherently Greek.
Technical Factors
Appreciation of certain art forms such as sculpture, painting or print-making often requires familiarity with basic creative processes involved. An exciting serigraph (silk-screen) is markedly different from dry-point etching (intaglio), just as carved sculpture has inherently different virtues than a piece “built-up” with plaster or clay and later cast in metal or polyesters.
Paintings done in studied academic fashion will probably offer other rewards than those done spontaneously or with minimum technical preparation. Some familiarity with processes involved in making art is essential to gauging the seriousness of the result. An otherwise important artistic effort can sometimes be rendered trivial by failure on a purely technical level.
An Insider’s Viewpoint
What follows then is an effort to effect an “insider’s view” of the creative process by looking at art from a multi-tiered vantage-point — one that permits consideration of social context, psychological implications, artist’s stylistic bias and a host of other pertinent variables relating to one complex productive act. (Fig. 18)
This exploration is designed to “initiate” those who have not had much exposure to art, and to intrigue those who have prior experience by looking at the creative process from a somewhat different perspective. At times, the focus of our interest will be the artist, at other times the viewer and frequently we will scrutinize the work itself in our effort to grasp the multi-faceted “transaction” between artist and observer.
The sequence of topics that follow is designed to move from general areas of interest to the more specific, and as a working vocabulary is developed, to enable the reader to approach any art, new or old, with confidence that there is much about it that is comprehensible to the “well-tempered eye.”
The author’s unapologetically perceptual approach to aesthetic experience and his attempt to “illustrate” significant “feelings and intuitions” about art with relevant examples, old and new, has necessitated that the “meaning” of each artistic work be conveyed experientially by the most effective visual or cognitive means available.
Some scholars of art history may understandably find this inquiry “lacking in scholarly precision,” but the writer has chosen to write for students of art like himself, who prefer to find a pathway through the vast mosaic of human artifice rather than simply comprehending academic theory about it.
I ask only that readers enter this “unmuseum” with an open mind — taking away what serves their capacity to enjoy human expression more fully — and forgiving the patent inadequacies of scholarship which abound.
Omission of important dates, dimensions and attributions of illustrated works may be chalked-up to rigors of a half-century of collecting visual materials, for limitations of which I beg the reader’s indulgence. There should, in every case, be sufficient data for more detailed exploration of provenance by students desirous of greater precision.
As you progress through this work, clearly not all aspects of the subject will prove equally vital to everyone, so if you “hit a dry spot,” just skip on to a section that “speaks to you.” The format is meant to encourage “episodic” enjoyment, which includes study of illustrative materials as well as text.
Fig. 8: German "pessimism" about human frailty (Durer: Peasants Dancing, 1514/ top) is compared with Italian bravado ( elli: Fig. 9, SignorFlagellation) of the same period.
Fig. 10: Charles Demuth, My Egypt ,1927, shows a marked plastic concern with the organization of geometric forms and limited color.
Fig. 11. Stuart Davis evidences a strong "decorative" impulse in his canvas, Report from Rockport (1940), along with marginal "literary" content.
Fig. 12. James Clonney, The Happy Moment (Amer.,1847) appealed to a strong narrative taste among 19th cen. American collectors.
Fig.13: ElGreco's St. Martin & the Beggar (Span., 1577) used a unique blend of light, color and distortion to achieve spiritual power in forms reflecting his Byzantine origins.
Fig.14. German Gothic images of Adam and Eve appear designed to inculcate specific cultural values. ( Bamberg Cathedral, 1220-1230 AD)
Fig.15. Eskimo images reflect rigors of a lifestyle based on hunting/fishing in a frozen climate. (Kaunak, Stalking Bear, 1963)
Fig. 16. 17. "Archaic" Greek figures with Dorian (left) and Ionian traits presage a synthesis which followed the Persian conflict of 497-479 B.C.
Fig. 18. Pieter Brueghel's Flemish vision of a Peasant Dance (1568) challanges the viewer to consider psychological and historical issues, as well as regional factors.