In the 19th Century, art styles, influenced by the rising merchant class and a growing number of art collectors, began to change, to rapidly go in and out of fashion. Collectors were intrigued by novelty. When a particular art style was in fashion, Seligman (1952) wrote, the “works of all artists directly or indirectly connected with it were almost equally sought…It was almost as if no critical sense existed (p. 4). “Even more surprising,” he continued, “is the sweeping manner in which all were discarded overnight’ (p. 4). “Taste,” he wrote, evolves “by a series of fanatical infatuations and complete rejections” (p. vii).
A few decades after David had painted The Crowning of Bonaparte and his Empress, Constable, viewing this painting, wrote: ”As a painting it does not possess anything of the Language of the art, much less of the oratory of Rubens or Paul Veronese; it is below notice as a work of execution” (December 6, 1822, cited in Goldwater & Treves,1945:268). Almost fifty years after Goya completed his Disastres de la Guerra (Disasters of War, 1810), Edouard Manet dismissed Goya’s work, calling it “inferior” (1865, cited in Goldwater & Treves,1945:303). Innes (1884), in a letter written to the editor of an unknown paper, referred to impressionism as a “humbug,” a mere “pancake of color” (Goldwater & Treves,1945:344).
Narrative paintings (that depicted a story and emphasized subject matter) and naturalistic representations (realism) began to be disparaged, partially as a reaction to the use of art to promote war and revolution. An emphasis now was placed on color, line, and form. Eugène Delacroix became famous primarily for “using a color palette capable of eliciting specific emotional reactions from his viewers” (Fleming 1974:316).
As art began to change, individuals were no longer certain what distinguished good art from bad. Individuals like John Ruskin and Edward Stieglitz would step in and use their influence to develop contemporary art and taste. In the 1850s, painters had doggedly painted according to Ruskin’s precepts. At the turn of the century, collectors bought art only from artists endorsed by Stieglitz (Maas 1984:14).
The unrelenting search for the new characterized this century, as it would characterize the next. Yet, as early as 1821, Ingres issued a cautionary note:
Let me hear no more of that absurd maxim: ‘We need the new, we need to follow our century, everything changes, everything is changed.’ Sophistry—all of that! Does nature change, do the light and air change, have the passions of the human heart changed since the time of Homer: ‘We must follow our century’: but suppose my century is wrong. (cited in Goldwater & Treves 1945:218)
In the 20th Century, Berenson (1948) wrote that visual art should “tune us like instruments--instruments for ecstasy” by stirring “all of our emotions” (p. 147). Ecstasy was aroused, not by the narrative, but by visual art’s “significant form” --the combination of lines, forms, and colors that characterized visual art (1914/1977:40). Recognizing that we did not know precisely why line, color, form could “make people happy, sad, excited, and so on” (Blocker 1979:101), Langer (1953) proposed that the emotional response actually was to the symbols. "Art,“ she argued, “is the creation of forms symbolic of human feeling" (p. 40).
The establishment of the new style of visual art, the avant-garde or modern art, which would come to characterize the early part of the century, was built on the destruction of the visual art that had been done earlier. Men like Edward Stiegliz, Clement Greenberg, and Herman Broch dismissed traditional art, even paintings that prior to that had been considered to be great works. The younger generations of 20th century artists, Seligman (1952) explained, rejected all the work of the prior generations (p. 57).
Artists in the 19th and 20th centuries entered enthusiastically, and with some competitive vigor, into a series of “isms”: Impressionism, Abstract expressionism, Neoprimitivism, Cubism, Fauvism, Futurism, Dadaism, Surrealism, Nonobjectivism. The influence guiding this series of “isms” was competition, wealthy collectors, the words of a few confident men, and disdain for the past (even yesterday’s past An anonymous writer (1918), outraged by artists he felt were compromising their sacred and exalted positions for financial gain, wrote in The Art World:
The field of art is no longer an innocent, Sacred Elysium in which each artist, critic, and aesthetician labors for the greater glory of God and the salvation of mankind…The vast increase in millionaires…[has] opened up to the unscrupulous so many avenues of gain that it has transformed a once sacred field of ideal and poetic aspiration [in]to a sordid mart of financial speculation. The money-changers have invaded and are desecrating the Temple!
Alfred Steiglitz, a leading advocate of modern art and photography, established the experimental art gallery “291” in New York City to create exhibit space for artists who were above commercial considerations (Rodgers 1992:54). Due to the efforts of Steiglitz, both in his gallery and his journal, there was major shift in the role of the artist who now was known more publicly as a seer, a prophet, whose life (if not art) was to be seen as “paradigmatic of the new order they sought for society” (p. 54). The Gallery 291 was “a church consecrated to them who had lost old gods and whose need was sore for new ones” (Steiglitz, 1917). This new “religion” was to lead America away from capitalism towards a utopia.
“The artist,” Seligman (1952) wrote, “far more than the layman is perceptive of his environment and this new potential has allowed to him a new vision of which contemporary art is a materialization” (p. 160). It was this unique knowledge and sensitive, that led artists to be viewed as prophets (Lippman 1929) who could lead us to a brave new world by producing visual art that, Bell explained, “might prove the world’s salvation” (1914/1977:47). What artists did was work to destroy the past. As Hoebel (1949) wrote, visual art…can serve to sustain them [social groups], as Renaissance art served medieval Christianity, or it can strive to destroy them, as does the anarchistic art of the Dadaists who hold modern civilization to be so false and meaningless that the honest artist can only lampoon and destroy it with senseless combinations of line and color. (p. 162)
Narrative paintings continued to be dismissed as lesser forms of art because they were seen as tools used by social and political groups to “rouse us to action” (Berenson 1948:68). From Plato’s day to the latest,” Berenson complained, “states, societies, synagogues, churches, and conventicles have deliberately tried to harness art for their particular advantage and, failing that, suppress it altogether” (p. 147). Berenson did not deny that visual art could influence behavior, he just did not want to see visual art used that way. Narrative paintings, he (1948) explained, “cannot help exercising influence, seeing how prone we are willynilly, to imitate what we see and be affected by what we hear” (p. 22).
While a number of new ideas were introduced during 20th century (e.g., art as expression; ideas of detachment, disinterestness, and psychical distance, and various permutations of postmodernism), artists continued to be seen as talented, sensitive, and as having a unique vision. Art has largely come to be seen as idiosyncratic, creative, costly, symbolic, and insightful, and likely to arouse an aesthetic emotion. Many would agree that artists have a special intelligence. Seligman (1952) wrote,
The ‘genius’ is a rara avis whose meteoric appearance revolutionizes the artistic world and, often unbeknownst to himself, adds a new and brilliant star to the aesthetic constellation. He has a message with which to astound the world and for which the technical means at his command may be too limited…Alone in his ivory tower of thoughts, alone with his torments, unconscious of the outer world’s appreciation or deprecation, he follows his divine mission. (p. 153)
The idea of the artist as a mad man, introduced by Veronese after the Council of Trent, was fine tuned around the time of Freud; mental illness, became linked with the creative process. Some felt that there was a causal connection between the psychic illness of the artist and his artistic power. Saul Rosenzweig (1943) refers to this madness as the “sacrificial roots” of art (cited in Trilling, 1971). Artistic power was gained through mental suffering (Trilling, 1971).
5 comments:
I'm stuck in the office with nothing happening, so I will pick at it a bit. Art styles in 17th century Holland were also driven by a rising (nay, a RISEN) merchant class and a comparatively huge (for Holland) number of art collectors....and I don't see where things went that rapidly into and out of fashion. There was an Evolution, Rembrandt was considered radical and was in style and then out again, but overall, was it a Revolution? No, I don't think so. And at a time like the 19th Century, maybe ANY time, it is TRUE that there is almost no critical sense. That is what teaching is for: to help create such a sense.
I do not remember whether Manet was dismissing Goya's work in general, or certain of his many wildly differing styles, or how much of Goya Manet had seen. But I would AGREE with Manet if he was referring to the enormous number of powder-puff and genre paintings that he turned out like a machine for, indeed, MONEY. Filthy lucre. So, if we are condemning Manet as a critic, I would say he was only half wrong. In the l850s, there were painters all over the world, or even in the West, who were NOT paying attention to Ruskin. This is just WRONG, that collectors bought only from Stieglitz-approved artists. If that were so, 291 would have been an enormous success, which it wasn't. (I better look that up...I THINK it wasn't) And even if it were, there were collectors all over who never heard of him Maybe Maas is only referring to NYC robber baron collectors? NO, even then, he would be wrong. Many a 20th century modern artist haunted museums, admired the masters, even if they rejected them as a basis for their own work (which is nearly impossible to do, actually). What I find most jarring in all this is when you say all that series of new isms was driven by ....a list which leaves out entirely the artists' own sense or drive or imagination or whatever... their CREATIVITY, dammit. If you are a westerner and are no longer painting for the glory of god, then that is the biggest thrill there is...the excitement when something goes RIGHT, when you know you have done something GOOD (even if it's not). THIS IS THE DRIVER. All the rest in your list have their part to play...for some more than others, or only some of the list and not the rest. The anonymous writer of 1918 had his firmly stuck in the sand if the thought the sacred field of art had only recently become influenced by the money changers; this happened most certainly by the Rennaissance, and was probably common at varying times earlier. And how Hoebel could have imagined that REN. art served MEDIEVAL Christianity is beyond me, so neither can I think why you would mention it unless to point out what an idiot he was.
There most certainly IS a strange connection between psychic illness and art, maybe even artistic power, as we see with so much of the true "outsider" art. The fact that we can so often identify the art of the truly ill (probably even confined) from simple folk art is one of the many very interesting things about it. But as for the ideas of Veronese through Rosenzweig, I would say it is mostly humbug.
OK, that is a bunch of disconnected thoughts as ever there was, but in the end, I don't really see where you are going. I mean, what's the point? Critics have been wrong? Can't deny that. They have also been right. I will continue to read them and then decide for myself. I would do the same when it comes to almost any other field. I cannot tell for myself which performance of a symphony might be best . So should I just buy ANY recording, or should I read a few lines from some recognized music critics and then buy one of the most highly recommended? I choose the latter course. I will not buy art that way, because I know far more about it, but I will go to see an exhibit or take a second look at a painting or maybe even buy an art book that way. You wouldn't?
So I have been reading more about 291. It was an enormous success in numbers of visitors (167,000 during the 4 year period he showed paintings, not just photos), but was little enough focused on commercialism that some of the same artists who showed at 291 went out in 1915 and founded a gallery for the sake of money. But I think the important thing to remember about 291 and Stieglitz, beyond his absolutely seminal basic importance to photography as art, is that he was a great teacher/critic, a great influence in the world of American art in general: ALL THOSE ARTISTS who were first seen at 291. The Armory show did NOT come first. Stieglitz did. He was one of those who was RIGHT.
I have tagged you, visit my main blog to see what you have to do.
I hate critics and you split an infinitive: to rapidly go. To go rapidly or rapidly to go. Zun would be horrified.
How nice to know that someone, somewhere in the world cares about split infinitives -- and knows what they are.
I hate to get started, as I know this is only an ordeal to give Christy an opportuntiy to vent and I am tired of venting. The university is a huge vaccuum devoid of intellectual curiousity, all of the thoughtfulness having blown out of here by the hot air required of faculty.
Where do I say that it was a revolution, Christy? It wasa period of time in which change in art styles was relatively rapid. I don't see how anyone could deny that.
I am not criticising Manet as a critic, I was merely making a point about how something that at point A was held up as fine art, was, a few years later, dismissed.
It does not really matter who was visiting or buying from 291, or what Steiglitz said, photography would have become a field in its own right, without Steiglitz and his mind numbing rhetoric. When I studied the history of photography, he was no more important than many other photographers -- certainly at that time he was not held up as our ONLY role model -- not that this matters, but he is not the god you make him out to be. It is not clear to me why you want some people to be so important. The world would have moved on with or without any of them and someone else would have created what they created only at another point in time.
In regard to Hoebel, we would have to admit that some R art did actually serve Christianity, the Christianity of the past. I think his point is that the R art that was religious painted basically the same themes as did earlier Christianity. They did not rewrite biblical text.
Post a Comment