This Section does not deal with individual Schools or groupings (See Section 8) or with the Movements cum periods into which painting can be divided (See Section 9). Here for convenience is a list of topics & themes in this Section &, where italicised, in boxes in other Sections throughout the document. In some cases, Topics & Themes are difficult to separate from Genres & Subjects (Section 3). Hence an introductory list has been provided both for the latter Section & for this one. To assist the reader all items, regardless of where they occur, have been hyperlinked.
Abstraction
Aesthetics, Beauty & Ugliness
The Age of Despair
Alternative Titles for Magical Realism See Section 9 at Magic Realism
The American Communist Party. See Section 8 at Social Realism, American in the 1930s
Anti-Art
Anti-Capitalism, 1885-1910 under Modernism See Modernism in Context in this Section.
Arcadia
Art & Artists, Status of Art For Art’s Sake. See Section 9 at The Aesthetic Movement
Art and Evolution
Art Critics & Criticisms: A Critique Art for Art’s Sake. See Section 9 at The Aesthetic Movement
Art History / Historiography
Artists’ Colonies
Artists, Motivations of
Artists, Perception by
Augustine On Original Sin. See Section 3 at Virgin Mary/Madonna
Avant-Garde / Bohemianism
Baroque Contrasted with High Renaissance. See Section Section 9 at Baroque Contrasting with High Renaissance. See Section 9 at Baroque Painting
La Belle Dame Sans Merci under Femme Fatale. See this Section Blake & Palmer. See Section 1 at Palmer
Brainwaves & Art The Carracci Family. See Section 1 at Agostino Carracci Catarina Cornaro. See Section 3 at Arcadia
The Catholic Revival
Charity and Benevolence in Britain 1714-1948
Classic & Classical
Colour & Light & Dark
Colourism & Shapism
Constructivism, International & Russian
Costume Painting in Britain, 1575-1625. See Section 9 at British & Irish Painting
Crisis in Chrisendom, 1100- 1500
Decadence
Degas’ Men & Women. See Section 1 at Degas
The Dehumanisation of Art
Demoiselles d’Avignon. See Section 1 at Picasso
Disegno & Colorito / The Quarelle du Coloris between the Poussinists & Rubenists
Do Gainsborough’s Sitters Look Amiable? See Section 1 at Gainsborough
Drapery & Posture Painters
Enhanced Realism & Speaking Likeness
Exhibitions, Key
Exhibitions of Modern Realist Paintings. See Section 9 at Magic Realism
Fakes & Forgeries, Copies & Pastiche
Femme Fatale
Fete Champetre, Fete Galante & Garden of Love. See Section 3 at Couples Dancing, Kissing, Embracing, Marrying & Companionate
Flatness
The Gaze / Male Gaze
Genius
The Grand Manner. See Section Section 9 at British Golden Age & Grand Manner
The Growth of Scepticism. See Section 9 at The Aesthetic Movement
Guide to the Uffizi See Section 6
Gainsborough & Reynolds Compared. See Section 1 at Gainsborough
Hitler & Art See Section 9 at National Socialist Painting
How Galleries Treated a Non-Modernist Painting. See Section 1 at Knights
The Humanisation of Painting (p2192)
Iconography
Ideal Landscape See section 3 at Landscape for box entitled Ideal -Classical Landscape
Impressionism: A General Comment
Intimisme
Kitch
Is Lucian Freud Repulsive? See Section 1 at Freud
Location of Zucchi’s Decorations. See Section 2 at antonio zucchi
Looking at Paintings. See Section 3
The Lutzow Free Corps. See Section 8 at National Romanticism, 19th Century
Marxism & Art
Models
Modernism in Context
Palace of Westminster Murals. See Section 6
Modernism in Context
Modernism: Some Crucial Features
National Romanticism, 19th Century. See Section 8
Movement to Art Concreta
Munich Realists/Realism, 1865-75
Munich School
Nature and Pantheism
Nazarenes. See Section 9
Orientalism Palace of Westminster Murals. See Section 6
Painting in Practice |
Painting on the Wall: Was Vermeer the greatest of them all? See Vermeer, Section 1
Patronage & Collecting
Picasso’s Partners & Lovers. See Picasso Section 1 at Picasso
Pollock’s Relationship with Lee Krasner. See Section 1 at Pollock
Poesie. See Section 1 under Titan
The Politics of Art & Crafts. See Modernism in Context in this Section. Pollock’s Relationship with Lee Krasner. See Section 1 at Pollock
Portraits Classified by Size & Coverage. See Section 3 at Portraits & Portraiture
Postmodernism
Post-Painterly Abstraction
Poussinists & Rubenists
Primitivism. See Section 8
Progress in Art? Prostitution in London & Paris
Realism
The Re-interpretation of Winslow Homer. See Section 1 at Homer, Winslow
The Renaissance
Romanticism 19th Century
Sensibility & Sentiment
The 1730s as a Turning Point. See Section 9
Sight
Slavery & Imperialism
Social History of Art Since 1970
Textual Material in Support of Non-flattering References to Cubism. See Section 8
The SPEAKING LIKENESS & REALISM ENHANCED
Sturm und Drang or Storm & Stress
Suicide, Insanity & Homosexuality Among Painters
Symbolic & Visionary Painting
Textual Material in Support of Non-flattering References to Cubism. See Section 8
Super Realism & Speaking Likeness
Thompsonism. See Section 9 at British Golden Age & Grand Manner
Was Courbet Really a Realist? See Section 1 at Courbet
Why Was British Art So Unlike Dutch Golden Age Painting? See Section 10 at British & Irish Painting
Totalitarian Art
The Turning Point around 1740. See Section 9 at British Golden Age & Grand Manner
Utilitarianism
Underrated Artists
Virgin Mary/MadonnaVarieties of Realism. See Section 8 at Realism
Were the Barbizon Painters Innovatory? See Section 8 at Barbizon School
Why Whistler & Burne-Jones Go Together. See Section 1 at Whistler
Where Does Wilson Belong? See Section 1 at Wilson
Women Painters
Women: Early & Mid-Victorian / The Angel in the House
Women: Late Victorian & Edwardian
The Zambaco Affair. See Section 1 at Burne-Jones
See also Modernism, Post-Cubism, & Post-Impressionism, Cubism & Futurirsm.
A major difficulty in trying to understand & classify styles of painting is how to handle abstract painting. This may be defined negatively as any work that does not depict recognisable scenes or objects OxDicMod. This is, of course, a narrower concept than Modernism, which also embraces depictions that are recognisable but which do not pretend to be realistic. The object or scene may, for instance, be straightforward but the colouring may be deliberately non-representational, as in many Fauvist pictures.
Although the distinction between modernism in general and abstraction in particular does not seem to present any great difficulty, what does create a problem for those who wish to classify and understand modern art is where there are recognisable elements but these are subject to extreme distortion or dismemberment. Another possibility is that they only constitute a small part and perhaps not a particularly important part of the painting. Such semi-abstract or transitional works are to be found in Cubism and were painted by Kandinsky and Delauney. They have in this study been included in Post-Impressionism, Cubism & Futurism & Abstraction: Lyrical , Expressive & Painterly See Section 9. This is no doubt a less than perfect solution but the world of art is not a tidy place.
Even if these simplifications are made, there remains the difficulty that abstract art is too big and baggy a monster to be a useful or intelligible category and that it is necessary to separate out the different forms of abstraction. One way of understanding abstraction, & dividing it into comprehensible sections, would be a classification according to the formal characteristics of what has been painted. Such a system might comprise the following six forms of abstraction:
(i) Geometrical abstracts which are non-painterly & linear. These consist of straight, circular or other unidirectional lines filled with non-textured, uniform surfaces, eg as in Malevich & Mondrian.
(ii) Swirling compositions which are lyrical & painterly. Here there are irregular areas of broken, textured & non-harsh colour which are wholly or largely non-representational, e.g. Delaunay.
(iii) Doodling which consists of non- representational shapes or more usually of lines on a uniform, or almost uniform, background colour. Such work is linear & displays no great interest in texture, eg. Kandinsky.
(iv) Scribbling where the work consists of densely packed non-directional & interlaced lines, usually including nodes, over all or a large part of the surface, e.g. Pollock.
(v) Colour Field painting where there are large areas of uniform or nearly uniform colour e.g. Rothco, Klein.
(vi) Blotching with large irregular areas of uniform paint on a ground, eg Motherwell.
Although in some ways this appears to be a useful way of looking at abstract painting, it suffers from the weakness that formal considerations are not necessarily crucial. Moreover these formal categories do not correspond to the usual groupings in which it has been found convenient to place painters. The approach that has been adopted is to distinguish between abstraction of a geometrical type & abstraction that is expressive, lyrical & to use Wolfflin’s terminology painterly See Abstraction: Lyrical, Expressive & Painterly & Abstraction: Geometric, Linear & Objective in Section 9
According to Sir Herbert Read there is a tendency for art to divide into ideals of clarity, formality, precision &, also the reverse which leads to expressiveness, vitality & flux Read1959 p190. Moreover , art can, as Kandinsky argued, be emancipated from external necessity, eg the copying of nature, & can be based on internal necessity. Here a precise symbolic language is employed, eg fluctuating lines represent movement, purpose, growth, & colours express emotional reactions, eg yellow is brash & upsetting, & blue suggests heavenliness, purity, infinity & peacefulness. The artist with his inner needs selects appropriate visual symbols. However, Kandinsky knew that the procedure could be reversed with the artist beginning with colour & form, where these are not used to express an internal need. They are employed to escape it & create a pure, impersonal, universal art. Hence abstract art divides into subjective and objective groups, with Kandinsky representing subjectivity & Mondrian objectivity Read1959 pp 193-6
Another dual view of Abstraction, which was debated within the American avant-garde, was between those who observed the natural world & then abstracted from their perceptions, & those who believed true abstract art must derive exclusively from invention; what have been termed, respectively, abstraction from nature & non-objective abstraction. These groups have been seen as corresponding roughly to the Cubist & geometric schools Lane&L p11.
This, however, is too much of an over-simplification because, although it is certainly true that the Cubists abstracted from nature, they were not the only group to do so. During the post-war period there were numerous painters whose work appears abstract but was inspired by nature. Consequently this group has been separately distinguished See Abstraction General from 1945 in Section 9
World War II was in fact a crucial dividing line in the history of abstraction. It has been [rightly] observed that after its traumas many artists found geometric abstraction was too limited & did not reflect their psychological experiences. They turned to looser & often more gestural forms of abstract expression which has been known variously as Art Informel, Tachism, etc. The American counterpart to this European movement was Abstract Expressionism, which began slightly earlier TurnerEtoPM pp9-10
ALTERNATIVE TITLES FOR MAGICAL REALISM
| Alternative Titles for Magic Realism: [A bewildering array of other labels have been attached to Magic Realism when this is broadly defined.] They include Neoclassicism, New Classicism, Classical Revival, Return (or Call) to Order, Modernist Realism, Neue Sachlickeit, & New Objectivity, which became a synonym for Magic Realism OxDicMod p502, Ateneum pp 11, 14, 54. Sometimes these terms are used interchangeably & at other times they are, as with Neo-Classicism, applied to other quite different movements OxDicMod. It is indeed time for a return to order!!! |
| Exhibitions of Modern Realist Paintings: There have recently been a number of important exhibitions featuring Magic Realist paintings. These include America’s Cool Modernism O’Keefe to Hopper (Ashmolean Museum & Terra, 2018); America After the Fall Painting in the 1930s (Art Institute, Musee d’Orangerie, RA, 2016-7); Fantastico! Italian Art from the 1920s & 1930s (Ateneum, Helsinki, 2018); & True to Life British Realist Painting in the 1920s & 1930s (National Galleries of Scotland, 2017). |
THE AMERICAN COMMUNIST PARTY. See Section 8 at Social Realism, American in the 1930s
Term: It came into use in the 1950s for works or activities that reject & debunk the accepted values & purposes of art & was supposedly coined by Duchamp in 1914. Dada was the first such movement & it was with reference to this, & to Duchamp’s ready-mades, that the label became popular. It is a loose term which has been extended to Conceptual & Perfromance art [& must embrace Funk Art] L&L, OxDicMod. OxDicTerms
ANTI-CAPITALISM, 1885-1910 under Modernism
Concept: Arcadia was a pastoral paradise ruled by Pan, the Greek god of woods, fields, flocks & herds, who during the Renaissance personified Lust. It was inhabited by shepherds & shepherdeses, satyrs, nymphs, maenads & bacchantes; & also by Bacchus. He was the god of wine, although originally it was fertility HallDic pp 30, 37 , 197, 232.
| Satyrs were spirits of the woods & mountains who were the attendants of Bacchus, from whom they derived their goat-like features, which included hairy legs, hooves & horns. They were lazy & spent their time drinking & chasing nymphs. In medieval & Renaissance times they personified lust & evil HallDic p273. Nymphs were young & beautiful female spirits with different types inhabiting differing classes of objects, eg niads were fresh water nymphs. Sometimes satyrs & nymphs sported together & this was a theme popular with Baroque painters HallDic pp 227, 273. Maenads & bacchantes were female followers of Bacchus who took part in his orgiastic rites (Bacchanalia) & copulated with Pan HallDic pp 197, 232. Andrians inhabited the Aegean island Andros which was visited annually by Bacchus. They partied when a fountain turned into a wine river of wine HallDic p16. |
History: In the third century BC the Greek poet Theocritus depicted a Sicilian Arcadia in his Idylls; & the poet Virgil pictured an Italian Arcadia in his Eclogues HallDic p30. Arcadia was an earthly paradise. According to Ovid’s Metamorphoses this Golden Age was followed by Silver, Bronze & Iron Ages, although the concept of differing & deteriorating ages goes back to the early Greek poet Hesiod. Each succeeding age brought increasing trouble & misery HallDic p9, Panofsky p40 The Golden Age was an era of harmony & innocence in which man’s simple needs were supplied by nature. In the Silver Age cultivation has begun, dwellings have to be constructed & there is knowledge of right & wrong. The Iron Age is one of greed, malice & warfare HallDic pp 9-10.
A Caveat: Arcadia followed by regression was not the only view of human evolution that was held in the ancient world. The alternative story of a bestial state followed by technical & intellectual progress was also to be found. Moreover the two visions frequently co-existed, particularly in later classical writing, as in Ovid Panofsky p40. [There was also inter-penetration in painting] where Arcadian creatures & humans live together in the primative world, as pictured by Piero di Cosimo Panofsky pp 53, 55. Moreover Piero is believed to have been non-Arcadian position painted the elagiac Death of Procris where a faun or satyr grieves over her dead body Panofsky p67, Grove24 p770.
There was also inter-penetration in painting] where Arcadian creatures & humans live together in the primitive world, as pictured by Piero di Cosimo in his elagiac Death of Procris where a faun or satyr grieves over her dead body. However Piero did not have a sentimental view of an Arcadian past. His animals with human faces are a supposedly realist depiction of the distant past Grove24 p770, Panofsky p67.
Arcadian Poetry: Pastoral poetry & drama flowered in 16th century Italy HallDic p37. There was an Arcadian spirit in Italy as early as Boccaccio (1313-75) & there were poets in an Arcadian movement at Catarina Cornaro’s court at Asolo (near to Castletle franco). Arcadia was
| Catarina CORNARO, 1454-1510, was the daughter of a Venetian nobleman who in 1472 married the king of Cyprus where she reigned after his death. In 1489 she was forced to abdicate, Cyprus was annexed by Venice but she was granted the sovereignty of Asolo, a charming citadel on the foothills of the Dolomites. Here & in Venice she presided over a court in exile Grove7 p862. See Bembo. |
popularised by Sannazaro’s eponymous work in the 1490s Clarke1949 pp 114-5. It was not printed until 1502 in a Venetian pirated edition, but had previously circulated in manuscript. It is a prose & verse narrative in which a melancholic court poet escapes from urban life to idyllic countryside in ancient Greece. Here, shepherds, nymphs & satyrs live in an atmosphere of perpetual romance, although the poet’s love for the nymph Phyllis is frustrated Hale p739. As Clark pointed out Sannazaro’s description of landscape & its coloures & inhabitants foreshadowed the works that Giorgione & Titian were shortly to paint Clark1949 pp114-5.
During the 16th century Guarini’s Il Pastor Fido, which was set in Arcadia, also became a fruitful pictorial source in Italy. Pieter Hooft’s play Granida (1605), played a similar role in the Here princess Granida falls in love with the shepherd Daifilo, they flee to woods to live pastoral life but are arrested etc HallDic pp 30-1, 141, 232
Arcadian & Pastoral: These are more or less interchangeable terms with shepherds present from Theocritus OxCompEng
Depiction: Satyrs were sometimes rapists. There is, for instance, an engraving after Primaticcio of a Woman Being Carried to a Libidinous Satyr (1547) & an engraving by Fantuzzi of A Satyr Assaulting a Woman Defended by Three Cupids (c1543) Lucie-S1991 pp 190-1. [But rape appears to be unusual.] All (18) of the nymph & satyr pictures from the Bridgemen Art Library show them as amiable & loving with nothing worse than voyeurism, & these were mostly in North European works.
Legacy: [The Arcadian vision lay behind & developed into] the Fete Champetre, populated as it is with romantic figures in idealized outdoor setting. [Another development was the work of Claude & Poussin] which established the pastoral conventions in painting that prevailed throughout the 18th century Barrell pp 7-8. [See HallDic for the subjects Guarini inspired]
Painters: (a) Italian [Who??] (b) Dutch Van Haarlem, Moreelse, Van Everdingen, Van Uyttenbroeck (2) Wilenski Pls 12, 13, 15; Haak Pl 547, 715, 716
Preface: [One of the most fascinating features of art history has been the struggle by painters to enhance the status of their activity.]
Development
(a) c600-13th Centuries: The early Church placed little value on art believing that it was no more than a pale reflection of absolute beauty. From the time of Gregory the Great around 600 to the 13th century its only justification was regarded as the instruction of the uneducated. Painting & sculpture were not included in the liberal arts, or even the artes mechanicae which were based on practice & skill. They were simply regarded as artisanship Antal1948 pp 274-6. The prejudice against manual work dated back to Aristotle & was reinforced by Christianity which set thinking & contemplation above action & performing. In the Bible Mary was superior to Martha Martindale p8. The viewing of objects in the matter of a collector was frowned on by John Scotus as almost certainly involving cupidity Martindale p9.
(b) Renaissance: High claims for artists now began. Around 1400 the humanist Fillippo Villani included artists among the famous 14th century Florentine citizens & said that Giotto, who was educated & learned, had brought art back to the study of nature which was the fundamental principle of antiquity Antal1948 pp 375-6. “Who can doubt that painting is the master art” Alberti asked. Beauty was “born of painting”, even Nature seemed to ape painting. The Greeks & Romans who regarded most artists as craftsmen thought painters were superior because they need to know the liberal arts, especially geometry. Artists could usefully associate with poets & orators Alberti pp 64-7, 90.
Nevertheless the status of painters was seldom high. Giotto’s affluence was quite exceptional. Fees were generally low & inactivity was common. Very few painters ever managed to buy houses. At first major works were all commissioned although in the 14th century small works were produced for sale & export Antal1948 p282. The contracts of Ghiberti & Donatello’s specified that works were to be executed exactly as patrons desired with payment at their discretion Antal1948 p374. Even after 1420 Italian artists were usually tightly bound. Contracts sometimes specified the exact sequence of subjects & they laid down that figures etc should be painted just as patrons wanted, or what was more common they described what the painting should look like. Sometimes it was demanded that a work had to be of the customary & traditional type or similar to another painting. More frequently artists had to follow their own or, occasionally, their patrons’, sketches. Cramping restrictions were placed on such greats artists as Leonardo, Ghirlandaio, Sarto, Raphael, Perugino, although Michelangelo appears to have had exceptional freedom. In cases of dispute the artist might well have to give way BurkeP pp 89-92.
However the balance of power seems to have shifted towards the artist & Leonardo & Vasari sometimes obtained a free hand BurkeP pp 93-5. In the 15th century work on spec probably became more common & middlemen who dealt in assorted art works made their appearance & arranged commissions. In Florence & Venice a market in paintings began to develop in the first half of the 16th century. Gian Battista della Palla became a notable Florentine dealer. Paintings were now occasionally exhibited in shops & portraits started to be bought because of the artist not the sitter. BurkeP pp 105-8.
(c) 17th century: As a rule the status of the artist was not high. In the Netherlands although the art market flourished the price of paintings remained low & many poor, & not so poor, painters were willing to enhance their incomes through art dealing, brewing, innkeeping etc. Only a very small minority of wealthy painters, under Italian & French influence, now claimed the status of being an artist Price pp 120-1, 135-6. Nevertheless the staus of artist was rising. A major development was the widespread foundation Academies. They already existed in Florence & Rome, & during the 17th & 18th centuries were established in numerous cities See Academy in Section 6. The founding of the French Academy in 1648 was particularly notable because of its prestige & official status. That painters were worthy of respect was increasingly recognised by kings & the Pope. Philip IV of Spain had a very close private relationship with Velasquez; Charles I & Henrietta Maria took a close personal interest in Van Dyck, as shown by the way in which they helped arrange his marriage; & Pope Paul V regarded Reni as a gentleman & not an artisan. When visitng Reni to watch him work, he told him to wear a hat & Reni decided that this was the only proper dress for a painter Stevenson p7, Blake p327, Spear p23
(d) 18th century: [In England the struggle to raise artists’ social standing really only began during the 18th century with Richardson’s theories & Hogarth’s ambitions.] Engraving now offered artists a new independence & provided Hogarth with fame and financial security Vaughan1999 p9. Because of its highly-developed middle-class the self-assurance of English artists was stronger than anywhere else Antal 1962 pp 142-3.
(e) 19th century: The status of the artist was greatly enhanced over the course of the century. Painters came to be seen as romantic & bohemian figures who all too often sacrificed material rewards in order to produce work that was unappreciated, while at the same time enjoying unconventional sexual relationships See Avant-Garde/Bohemianism in this Section. The artisan task of preparing paints, already in decline, virtually ceased when paint manufacture moved to the factory with the development of aluminium paint tubes Grove23 p378. William Blake was almost certainly the first artist to protest against painting as an activity. He referred to the sordid drudgery of representation which distracted him from mental activity Yorke pp 73, 111.
(f) 20th century: [The desire by artists to stress the importance of painting has been natural & understandable. Those who view it as a vital human activity will, of course, welcome the resulting enhancement of its status. However, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the claims that artists make have all too often been self-serving & counter-productive.
Historical development has been seen by dissident Marxists, not as the overthrow of the capitalist class, but as its replacement by the intelligencia. This is not the place to explore this line of argument in detail, suffice it to say that it was long ago put forward by the Polish intellectual Jan Waclaw Machajski, 1866-1926. The anarchist Michael Bakunin had referred to the danger of a new privileged intellectual class assuming power after the death of capitalism. This idea was developed by Machajski in his Intellectual Worker, 1898. He argued that the interests of the intellectual class diverged from those of uneducated rank & file workers. This theory was taken up by Max Nomad [& American writers], who had become disillusioned with Communism in the 1930s & 40s Nomad pp 10, 203-4, 318-9; etc.
[During the 20th century the cultural avant-garde, who were the artistic counterpart of the new social & political intelligencia, greatly enhanced their status. This they achieved by a progressive escape from the external world & an increasing disinclination to embody their concepts in objects. It began with the attack on the Impressionists & their attempt to capture the effects of light, continued with Fauvism in which the colour of objects became a matter of choice, moved through Cubism where objects were broken up & simultaneously viewed from different angles, progressed to the dream world of Surrealism, went through a stage where artists no longer looked beyond the art world but borrowed from others or used second hand materials, & ended with Conceptual art & the abandonment of paint & the object. As a result the artist has been spared the need for manual skill & dedicated work. He or she has emerged as a pure intellectual almost exclusively engaged on thought. It is the apotheosis & final elevation of the former hard working painter]. This can be viewed as what Lucy Lippard has called “The dematerialisation of the art object”, & what the Conceptualist Robert Morris has referred to as, “The detachment of art’s energy from the craft of tedious object production” OxDicMod p148.
[It should be stressed that the progressive conversion of artists from workers into thinkers is not meant to imply that notable works were not produced on the way].
ART CRITICS & CRITICISMS: A Critique Art For Art’s Sake. See Section 9 at The Aesthetic Movement
See also Connoisseurship, Iconography, Formalism; Marxism; Social History
Landmarks: The first writings on history of sculpture & painting towards end of 4th century BC after Aristotle’s theory of artistic growth & decay & the apparent attainment of perfect mimesis by the sculptor Lysippus (sculptor) & the painter Apelles Gomb2002 p17. Art history originated as an academic discipline in Germany where the first chair was established in Berlin in 1844. Art history in the UK began at Edinburgh in 1879 but the first English chair was not established until 1932, at the Courtauld Institute of Art. The subject has been taught at American universities since the early 20th century OxCompArt.
Types of Art History:
(a) Connoisseurship: This aims at visual knowledge gained by careful inspection of works of art & is reliant on keen visual memory & ability to sympathise with the process of artistic creativity OxDicTerms; it aims to evaluate the quality of a work & its date & place of execution/authorship Grove7 pp 713-4. Connoisseurs, like Berenson, privilege the intelligent eye over the intelligent document & by comparing art works search for atist’s distinguishing features S&S pp 8, 32.
(b) Iconography: study of pictures’ imagery, not style or technique, for the purpose of identification, classification & interpretation L&L, OxDicArt; iconographers, like Male, engage in systematic textual research to throw light on a picture’s narrative or spiritual meaning S&S pp 7, 8, 22.
(c) Stylistic Analysis: Here scholars try to discover through the comparison of art works how the pictures of one period (or area) differ from those of another; the aim being the identification of different stylistic eras & developments (or national features). Emphasis is placed on a picture’s formal characteristics (use of perspective, linearity, etc) rather than on what it depicts. Little attention is paid to the process of evolution. It is taken for granted that developments take place because artists innovate & rebel against convention, or because of a change in the Spirit of the Age & the Zeitgeist (Wolfflin implicitly, Pinder explicitly) Friedlaender1925 pp 41, 43, S&S pp 10, 71.
(d) Formalism: Here the constitution of a picture as revealed by its structure, line, colour, etc is regarded as self-sufficient for its appreciation. What is represented is either a distraction or a secondary concern; & the social context in which pictures are painted is of no interest to Formalists except insofar as commercial pressures lead to the production of vulgar work (Fry) OxDicMod; Bell pp 16-20; Fry1920 p41, 1931 pp 965-66.
[(e) Contextualists stress the explanatory interplay between painting & the social, political & intellectual situation in which it is produced, but without being strongly wedded to a specific ideology. Contextualism is more or less the same as] iconology, where this means the total system of symbols or social myths enshrined in the visual imagery of a given culture, though perhaps hidden or unconscious L&L, OxDicArt
(f) Marxism & Social History: Marxists view art as the product of societies with sharp social class divisions, & where class interests largely determine the nature of what is painted. Social Historians believe more generally that painting reflects power relationships including not only social exploitation by a capitalist ruling class but also the domination of women under patriarchy, & the oppression of non-White people & nations. They focus on what pictures indicate about underlying social relationships & art is seldom seen as having any value over & above its contribution, often negative, to social progress. Artists are praised if they appear subversive or condemned as hegemonic Lublin1994 p159, Solkin2015 p1.
(g) Eclecticism/Pluralism: This draws on all the foregoing approaches & includes art historians who do not completely reject the artistic value judement of the past Nochlin1989 pp xiv-xv. The group overlaps with the social historians (vide Nochlin) but does not have their political commitment, enthusiasm & frequent stridency Nochlin1999 pp 10-11, 16-31, S&S p165. The current emphasis on way in which painters employ different styles & techniques for different audiences & patrons is the latest manifestation of eclecticism (although such thinking dates back to Abbey Warburg & his followers) Hall1999 pp 8, 39, 59-61, 64
General Comment: [In general the development of these differing ways of viewing the task of the art historian has been enriching. There is, however, a real danger that art historians will almost cease to pay attention to paintings as objects in their own right. They will, in other words, cease to read them or read them with any degree of impartiality. This risk has already become an actuality for some Social Historians but the danger that art history will become all context & no content is more general. One author in the acclaimed Oxford History of Art indicates that her purpose is the provision of contextual information & suggests that careful observation of works of art is a matter for the viewer Welch p3. Concentration on context to the exclusion of all else must ultimately be sterile because if there is no content there can be no context.]
Representative Art Historians:
(a) Berenson; Max Friedlander; Longi, John Pope Hennessy S&S p8, Grove7 p715;
(b) Male, Panofsky S&S pp 7-8
(c) Wolfflin, Walter Friedlaender S&S pp 7;
(d) Bell, Fry, Greenberg OxDicMod;
(e) [Warren Roberts, Haskell];
(f) Antal, Berger, Nochlin (post conversion), Lubin, Solkin;
(g) [Clark, Waterhouse, Vaughan,] Rosenblum, [Hughes] Nochlin 1989 p xiv
Ways of Viewing History of Art:
(a) Life-cycle: Following Aristotle’s semi-biological viewpoint painting & other arts were seen, in the ancient world (& during the Italian Renaissance & after), as a progression to a state of near perfection but as then decaying Gomb2002 pp 15-7, 22-5, See Progress In Art? The Life-cycle view overlapps with (b) where painting is seen as invention & skill driven, with achievements credited to individual artists, as in Pliny (who said that Pythagoras was the first artist to depict veins etc) & Vasari (Masaccio painted drapery realistically with natural folds etc).
The puzzle here is why painters were previously unable to look Gomb1960 pp 9-10. One answer is that there are different modes of seeing, as explained by James Barry in an RA lecture over the puzzle of the defects in Cimabue’s early Madonna Rucellai. Barry concluded that simple viewing was insufficient & that we have to know what we are looking for. Constable said that seeing nature was an acquired art & Ruskin in Modern Painters saw art history as the progress towards visual truth through the overcoming of traditional prejudices & the recovery of the innocent eye. The Impressionists then claimed to be reproducing the retinal image Gomb1960 pp 10-12. Riegel argued that the history of art should however be seen in terms of progress & decline but as changing modes of perception that were to be viewed in a purely objective manner Gomb1960 pp 14-5
ART HISTORY/HISTORIOGRAPHY
ART COLONIES
ART MOTIVATIONS OF
Augustine on Original Sin: He attributed this to concupiscence (sexual desire) which was necessary for copulation & could not be quelled by the will. Augustine thought that Original Sin was either transmitted to the body through the genitals during intercourse or the sin of passion stained the child while copulation was in progress Warner pp 53-4. However, Mary was without Original Sin because she was “conceived as a virgin, gave birth as a virgin & stayed virgin forever” Wikip. The celebration of virginity by the Christian fathers was not confined to Augustine & distrust of the flesh was a feature both of St Paul & of the philosophical systems abroad in the turmoil of Rome’s decline Warner pp 55-8. Gregory was clear that although the sexual act is innocent, desire is evil. (He dealt with the seeming contradiction between a wicked impulse leading to an innocent act by saying that a righteous rebuke delivered in anger is itself morally wrong.) Such views were modified during the later Middle Ages when scholastics conceded that innocent sexuality was possible. However, while carnal desire & pleasure became more or less acceptable, passion (& even love) remained evil because for St Thomas Aquinas they involve the suspension of intellectual activity LewisCS pp 13-8.
| Byzantine images (Panagia Nikopoia) divide into the more severe version (Theotokos Nicopoia), which was important in the struggle against the Arian heresy, & a less formal type (Theotokos Hodeteria) in which the Virgin points to the child. Other versions include the Theotokos Elousa (compassionate) where the gesture between the mother & son is tender & affectionate; & the Glycopilousa (loving) where the child embraces her. The Elousa was popular from the 8th century onwards & the more human type became the most common image of the Virgin in the East, & also in the West where they are found from around 600. |
Baroque Contrasted with High Renaissance
Though indebted to Blake, Palmer is often carelessly regarded as his disciple. His intense perception of natural phenomena is profoundly different. The earlier work of Palmer stands comparison with that of the older German Romantic masters & his new interpretations of divinity in landscape parallel those of Friedrich & Runge, e.g., in genre scenes of communal piety (Palmer’s Coming from Evening Church & Friedrich’s monastic burials). Here traditional subject matter has been replaced by spectator Christianity (sic). Moreover Palmer & Friedrich both suggest religious ritual without depicting specific Christian rites, e.g., by depicting figures staring into the distance with their backs turned (Palmer’s Moonlit Landscape). Often the heavenly orb at which they are looking has a light so intense that it is difficult to tell whether it is the moon or the sun, sometimes the orb has an overwhelming luminosity & size, & the moon a halo usurping that in medieval art. Where heavenly references are absent paintings may celebrate the miracle of fertility, as in Palmer’s Pastoral with Horse chestnut & the sunflower in Runge’s Hulsenbeck Children. Like Runge & other Romantics, Palmer may depict a polarity between near & far: the finite & the infinite Rosenblum1975 pp 53, 56-7, 59-62
Baroque Contrasted with High Renaissance. See Section Section 9 at Baroque Painting
Term: Avant-garde was used to describe radical activity, both artistic & social, by Saint-Simon in the 1820s. He saw artists as rapidly disseminating new ideas & thereby exercising power over society, “a true priestly function” Nochlin1989a p2. Avant-gardism was a commitment & not identical to Bohemianism, which was a lifestyle that might be temporary or combined with traditional painting Aronson p44
Ideology: This stressed newness, & confrontation. The artist was in conflict with the system & would promote social renewal through cultural challenge Hughes1980; pp 366, 373. There was also an emphasis on self-expression, although Constable & Friedrich were self-expressionists but not anti-establishment Craske pp 36-9
Pre-History: The idea of a cultural avant-grade was unimaginable before 1800 Hughes1980 p372. However, the belief that there was an artistic temperament dates back to Vasari. In the 17th century it was widely accepted & during the 18th century was an article of belief. An official of the King of Savoy (Negri) said in 1676 that a painter (Perugini) would be no good without an element of madness. Rosa created the image of the artist as a man apart, independent & inspired Haskell pp 21-2.
Background: In about 1830 there was a mood of despair among young intelligent French idealists due to Napoleon’s defeat, the restoration of the monarchy, & a dull bourgeoisie society which had no use for art. Defiance & romantic outlawry were an antidote to despair. By 1845 this mood had been replaced by the comparative happiness of irresponsibility & a devotion to Art Gaunt1945 pp 7-10. However, the Parnassians & the first French Realists (Goncourt, Flaubert) continued to have limitless scorn for the bourgeoisie Plekhanov p175.
With fewer working on farms & remaining in villages, young adults needed time to gain skills & decide their identities Aronson pp 31-2
Development: According to Robert Hughes, Courbet was the first fully avant-garde artist Hughes1980 pp 372-3. However, Courbet (unlike Manet) lacked the avant-garde characteristic of alienation, i.e. of being in conflict with himself & his true social situation. Courbet proudly exaggerated his provincial petty bourgeois background Nochlin1989a pp 13-4.
In 1851 Henry Murger’s Scenes of Bohemian Life described Bohemia with its starving young artists in garrets, their loyal partners, & passionate love affairs Aronson p31. This story (which had a lasting impact on Whistler) was about four men (a painter, a painter-musician, a writer & a philosopher) who convinced of their talents, regarded themselves as elite above convention & normal morality. They dressed as they pleased, associated with pretty girls, despised discipline, advocated a courageous, charming & terrible life to be fought in the strong armour of indifference & resignation. Murger regarded Bohemian behaviour as evidence of artistic ability Spalding1979 p7.
Around 1870 the poet Rimbaud moved beyond Bohemianism. He set out to derange his senses, & successfully invited another & married poet, Verlaine, to embark on a homosexual relationship. It lasted two years, during which he wrote some of his best poetry, but he gave up at the age of 20, went to Africa, became a business man who even sold guns to slavers, & died aged 37. Bohemianism had turned into an avant-garde embrace of insanity Aronson pp 45-6.
Impressionism, by transforming nature into a private & uniformalised field for sensitive & shifting vision, made painting a freedom area. This attracted many who were unhappy with middle class jobs & morality. However its stress on personal sensitivity failed to satisfy those who had staked & sacrificed so much, & they turned to vehement expression or a dream world of exotic & idyllic freedom. In practice this meant quasi-religious beliefs, or the revival of some primitive & ordered traditional society. This explains their taste for medieval & primitive art, their conversions to Catholicism, & the colonies of artists Schapiro pp 192-3. Cezanne became the Symbolists’ hero partly because he was reclusive. He was praised in La Revue Blanche & other small magazines for his incomprehensibility. Gauguin prided himself on his unintelligibility Lindey p34.
Prevalence: [By 1890] there was an avant-garde in every major European city except London. Here there was an underworld but not a Bohemia or Latin Quarter Dunlop pp 124-5. [It was not until the Post-Impressionist exhibitions of 1910-2, & the artistic polarisation which they caused, that avant-garde attitudes & behaviour became prevalent.] However, by 1914 the concept of the artist as misunderstood genius, persecuted & ignored, had become widespread Searle pp 577-8.
Political Attitudes: [The artists that belonged to the avant-garde did not all have strong political beliefs of a progressive & radical type. Some did but others, such as Monet & Matisse, were apolitical. In general avant-garde artists were on the left but even here there were notable exceptions, like Degas.
One important development was an increase in the number of avant-garde painters who were Socialists, especially of the Anarchist variety.
The Anarchists included Courbet, Cross, Pissaro, Vallotton, Vlaminck, Signac, & probably the young Picasso. Socialist theorists, such as Proudhon & Kropotkin, urged artists to depict the ugliness of capitalist society. An alternative approach favoured by Anarchist painters was art of an individualistic & elitist type. They believed that bourgeois society would be subverted if they abandoned realism & made revolutionary developments in colour, style & content.]
Authoritarianism: Totalitarian repression of art during 1930s led to the legend that the 1920s were a period of liberated creative thought Golomstock p2. But it was the artistic avant-garde of the 1910s & 20s that first elaborated a totalitarian ideology of culture. It was totalitarian because of its claim to be both uniquely true & universally obligatory.
In 1914 the Italian Futurists demanded laws to protect individual creativity from shams, in default of which Futurist fists would have to be used. In Russia avant-gardists of varied creeds called for or accepted the use of state power to impose their ideas. This began with a leading article in the main Futurist journal & included Osip Brik (a leading avant-garde theoretician), Rodshenko, Mayakovski & Filonov (an outsider who was later denounced for Formalism). It is evident that the first calls for state control originated with the avant-garde, not from the Communist Party Golomstock pp 2, 21-3, Bown1991 p119.
[Golomstock does not discuss whether the wider Modernist & avant-garde movement had totalitarian proclivities (but see Golomstock p28). However it is evident, at least in field of architecture, that it did.] Twentieth century modernism was driven by the belief that rational design would lead to rational people. Mies van der Rohe equated his vision of architecture with Truth. There was no room here for individual choice. According to van der Rohe, “the individual is losing significance, his destiny is no longer what interests us”. Although he was not concerned with town planning, unlike his German & French colleagues of the 1920s, Corbusier and others wanted tower block cities, the demolition of old, untidy streets, and in consequence inhabitants who would now live rationally organised lives Hughes1991 pp 164-5, 180-91. [Far from being a framework in which individualism could flourish, architects would determine & reform behavior]; vide the celebrated ultra-modern Lawn Road flats, Hampstead. These were just large enough for a single occupant or couple, all the fittings & furnishings were supplied and there were no odd ledges for knick-knacks Harris p38.
Personal Relations: [A feature of the Avant-garde was what appears to have been a high incidence of uncaring behaviour to members of the opposite sex & to children].
End: The triumph of media-derived art during the 1960s saw the final victory of the avant-garde. In the 1970s there was no longer any mainstream: pluralism now reigned, & Modernism had become the official culture in America & Europe Hughes1980 pp 365-6.
A Caveat: [What has been said about the avant-garde is far from flattering. However, there has been not been discussion of the contribution which the avant-garde has made to development of painting. This is a deliberate omission since what has been said is merely intended to provide background material on the nature of the avant-garde. The nature of what it has produced is discussed elsewhere.]
BAROQUE CONTRASTED WITH HIGH RENAISSANCE
See Section Section 9 at Baroque Contrasting with High Renaissance. See Section 9 at Baroque Painting. The Batteau Lavoir. See Section at Cubism
LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI under Femme Fatale. See this Section Blake & Palmer. See Section 1 at Palmer
Researchers at Breada & Tilburg Universities, & the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics in Frankfurt measured brainwaves from aesthetically appealing experiences. Using electroencephalography (EEG), which records electrical activity in the brain via electrodes fixed to the scalp, participants viewed images of artworks & rated how much each moved them. It was found that brain activity was greater for appealing works & that the impact of the art was not instantaneous. It has also separately been found that information about an artwork has no effect on the aesthetic experience of museum visitors Science Daily 28 /3/2022 web report, etc
Neuro-scientific research shows that the pleasure pathways in the endogenous option system make music moreish along with food, drugs & sex. The production of dopamine, a feelgood neuro-chemical, is also stimulated by music as well as dance & sex. Listening to music reduces the stress hormone cortisol Suzi Godson Times 14/8/21.
The Carracci Family:
The context for their work was the coarse subject matter & bold naturalism that were popular around Bologna, e.g., the genre paintings of Bartolomeo Passerotti H&P p73, Posner1971 pp 4-5. Another contextual aspect was the prevailing Second/High Maniera in Bologna. According to Malvasia, all three main Carracci’s were from the first outspoken opponents who decided to challenge the established masters without timidity. They regarded it as idealised, remote from reality, hastily conceived, with washed out colouring & poor drawing. It was they believed equally remote from a true antique style or from naturalism. The Counter-Reformation was yet another part of the background to the Carracci reforms. Artists were now thought to have a duty not to embroider their paintings with inventions & ornament. They were enjoined to tell the truth & to convince the spectator, & this became the aim of the Carracci H&P pp 72-3, NGArt1986 p240, 244.
In 1582 they established an art academy in Ludovico’s rooms as a workshop & teaching institution for their new ideas. It was dedicated from study from the model, which had become rare in central Italy. Its membership included many who had already trained & apparent belief in education as an ongoing & exploratory process. The Carracci now received a commission to decorate the Palazzo Fava & this was followed by further collaboration at the Palazzo Magnani & the Palazzo Sampieri Hall1999 p281, NGArt1986 pp 239-40, L&L.
The work Carracci’s had many features in common. Lodovico & Annibale tended to concentrate their figures in the foreground which heightens the impact of their work Kitson1966 p61. Lodovico was much more Baroque. Annibale’s work is more compact, more powerful & has refined chiaroscuro. It is increasingly classical & has heavier & fuller colours Friedlaender1925 pp 59-61. During the later 1580s & early 1590s both Lodovico & Annibale were under Venetian influence, but Annibale’s pictures have a clear, rational ordering of figures & light effects, whereas Ludovico compressed space, piled up figures & displayed intense spirituality & emotional ecstasy using heaving draperies, spot lit colours & even anatomical distortion. However, their earlier & pictures are closer NGArt1986pp 249-250. Ludovico’ s work is more animated & dynamic, whereas that of Annibale & Agostino’s tends to be controlled & restrained. Annibale’s work had a far greater imaginative & innovative force than Agostino’s & he had a clearer sense of purpose than Ludovico H&P p75, NG Art p263.
Catarina CORNARO, 1454-1510, was the daughter of a Venetian nobleman who in 1472 married the king of Cyprus where she reigned after his death. In 1489 she was forced to abdicate, Cyprus was annexed by Venice but she was granted the sovereignty of Asolo, a charming citadel on the foothills of the Dolomites. Here & in Venice she presided over a court in exile Grove7 p862. See Bembo.
Development: During the later 19th century there was a Catholic Revival almost as intense as the Counter-Reformation. In 1870 there was a Vatican Council & the declaration of Papal infallibility. The revival took place in most European countries but was especially intense in France which had been humiliated in the Franco-Prussian War & embittered by the massacre of priests during the Commune. New cults proliferated, including Bernadette of Lourdes, the Sacred Heart, Theresa of Lisieux, & Joan of Arc.
In 1848 there were only about 3000 French monks but by 1901 there were 37,000. The monastic orders were better educated than parish priests & monasteries became cultural centres. The outstanding place in the visual arts was Beuron in Germany, where in the 1890s the monks, rejecting perspective, evolved a unique hieratic art. Jan Verkade, the former follower of Gauguin, joined Denvir pp 110-2. Conversion to Catholicism was often of a revelatory type as with the artists Verkade, Ballin, Bernard & Tissot, together with the critic Huysmans Denvir p118, M&W p16.
Impact: Catholicism of an enthusiastic type was an important influence on some members of the Nabis group (Denis, Verkade). After his conversion Bernard’s work became somewhat shallow & more decorative Denvir p119.
CHARITY AND BENEVOLENCE IN BRITAIN 1714 – 1948
Term: It was originally applied to literature but not to the visual arts before the 17th century. Classic may mean:
(a) The best & most representative of its kind in any period, eg Delacroix as the classic Romantic artist OxCompArt;
(b) Having the supposed features of Greek art from the fifth century BC. These are rationality, the clear articulation of separate parts, an emphasis on stable vertical or horizontal axes, & idealisation based on nature but enhanced by the omission of the transitory, inconsequential, & imperfect L&L, OxCompArt
Classic & Classical may be used descriptively or, following Wincklemann, normatively. He said that the only way to greatness was to follow the ancient models OxCompArt.
Versus Romanticism: Classicism is often regarded as the antithesis of Romanticism [but this usage is perhaps best avoided because]
(i) Romanticism has over time had so many meanings OxCompArt;
(ii) Classical & Romanticism relate to different levels of aesthetic experience. Romanticism is a mood or sentiment while the Classical is an ideal form deriving from the antique Friedlaender1930 p v
History: [The classical impulse is an enduring & recurrent feature in the history of painting.] Reynolds thought that a disposition to abstraction, generalisation & classification was the greatest glory of the human mind White p89. [Indeed Abstract Art of the geometric variety must be seen as yet another flowering of Classicism.]
CONSTRUCTIVISM, INTERNATIONAL & RUSSIAN
COSTUME PAINTING IN BRITAIN, 1575-1625. See Section 9 at British & Irish Painting
Category: Costume portraits were identified by Ellis Waterhouse as the most typical form of portraiture from about 1690-1625, although they originated around 1675 Waterhouse1953 pp 36, 41
Background: Holbein & Eworth developed non-plastic & flat styles with figures in elaborate clothing & having aloof & inscrutable features Waterhouse1953 pp 19-21. The Elizabethan nation state which was under external threat was insular with a new ruling class headed by great intermarried dynasties (Cecils, Russells, Cavendishes). Patronage was all-important in literature & music which flourished. However there was a post-Reformation “fear of the visual image”. Italian perspective was known about but not utilised. Imaging became primarily verbal & where images were visual in painting, sculpture & architecture they were abstract & diagrammatic. They were composed of patterns & symbols that required reading, as the extraordinary portraits of Elizabeth indicate. Due to court patronage (though not from Elizabeth) art served the State (with authors working for the Cecil or Dudley cliques). It was an aggressive nouveau culture with the trappings of bygone & chivalric eras Strong2000 pp 173-190
Links: Oliver was Hilliard’s pupil Waterhouse1953 p33. There were closely associated workshops of painters of Flemish origin connected by marriage the main families being the de Critz & Gheeraerts, to whom Peake & Oliver were connected Waterhouse1953 p41
Characteristics: Paintings were often full length, which had been out of favour since early 1550s, though there were also miniatures. The paintings were initially of great persons either alone or in family groups. Works had an enamelled effect & were non-representational, flat, stiff & decorative with a painstaking rendering of fabrics, lace & embroidered patterns. Faces were aloof & inscrutable. However Oliver made greater use of light & shade, & modelled in the round Waterhouse1953 pp 19-21, 38, 41-5.
Painters: John de Critz; Cornelis Ketel; Marcus Gheeraerts; Hilliard; Oliver; Robert Peake; together with portraits of Elizabeth by unknown hands Waterhouse1953
CRISIS IN CHRISENDOM, 1100- 1500
Preface: The purpose here is to provide background material for the religious subjects dealt with in Section 3 Genres & Subjects & some of Movement in Section 9
Background I: It is remarkable how many distinguished & diverse historians agree that the 12th century was a turning point in European history & that, [with the partial exception of early Renaissance Italy], there was then a period of prolonged anguish Lecky1869 pp 47-51, Huizinga especially Ch2, HallJ p189, Pirenne1939 pp 379-87. Norman Davis in his history of Europe entitles a Chapter “Christendom in Crisis”. This does not only refer to normal feudal conflict but to something more profound.
[These historians are referring to various complex & diverse developments. However, they may be grouped together into four general themes.]
First, there were spectacular heretical movements, as represented by (a) the Albigensian & the crusade against them (1209-71), which was then followed up by a campaign against the heresy (1318-25); (b) by the Lollards in England (actively persecuted from 1382 until they ceased to be an organised threat around 1430); & (c) by the Hussites in Bohemia Davis pp 361-2, 403-4, 410, 428-9, Feiling p261, Myers pp 148-50, P-O2 p966 Yet another crusade was launched & Hussite Bohemia fought the twelve Years’ War against invading armies from 1419 to 1431. Ultimately Rome was forced to make a compromise peace (1436) Fisher pp 357-9. During the 13th century the burning of heretics became an accepted practice & the Inquisition was established &, under the virtual control of the Dominicans & Franciscans, it sought to root out heresy P-O pp 662, 678-80. The persecution of heresy led to huge slaughter with the suppression of the Albigensian alone leading to around 200,000 deaths & the Spanish Inquisition to something like 350,000 Pinker pp 169-70.
Second, there was a greatly intensified fear of death, hell, the devil & witches. Such fears were an inevitable consequence of human mortality & the belief in magic which the Church had taken over from paganism. However, the Church, together with a myriad of superstitious practices, were believed to afford protection from the devil & all his works ThomasK Ch2. This led to a degree of insouciance which is reflected in the gargoyles carved by medieval masons & the grotesque figures which appear in the margins of sacred texts. According to Male they were the product of gaiety & simple faith Male1913 pp 59-62. However, towards the end of the Middle Ages melancholy & gloom became widespread. No other epoch has laid so much stress on the thought of death. Tombs were adorned with [skeletons] & with hideous images of naked corpses in the process of decomposition Hizinga pp 31, 138, 140. During the late Middle Ages, it became common to make special provision for the continued performance of masses after death for the avoidance of subsequent punishment. To this end chantries were founded either in a special chapel or a parish church. Those unable to afford the expense joined religious guilds [or confraternities] Myers pp 159-60. [But perhaps the best evidence of malaise] is the intensified fear of witchcraft & the way in which the Church, hitherto a restraining influence, now led the drive to hunt out & burn them See Witches & Witchcraft. Not until the late Middle Ages did it come to be believed that the witch owed her powers to having made a pact with the devil Thomas p521
[Third, there was recurrent religious hysteria. This took many forms apart from its contribution to the popular hounding of witches as minions of the devil. Another notable form was self-flagellation.] This seems to have been unknown in Europe until it was adopted in monastic communities in the 11th century. The first organised flagellant processions appeared in Italy in 1260 but the movement soon ended. However, it had spread to Germany where it long flourished. It was sometimes underground because of suppression but was in the open during 1296 & the great outbreak of 1348-49, which was precipitated by the Black Death. The flagellant processions moved from town to town & were welcomed by their inhabitants. Hence the amount of religious hysteria was greater than the (not inconsiderable) number of flagellants may suggest. In 1349 the Pope issued a Bull against the flagellants & they were repressed. However, there were occa at Virgin Mary/Madonnasional outbreaks & flagellants were still being burnt in the 1480s Cohn ChVI. [Flagellation was not the only form of religious or other hysteria.] There were also episodes of wild dancing until exhaustion or death & pogroms against the Jews. [More & sources]
Finally, there was increasing social tension. Suffice it to say that this was the result of a prolonged crisis in agriculture, due to the breakdown of the feudal manorial system, & the advent of class warfare in the newly emergent towns CEHE p660 etc & see The Peasantry & The Towns. Antagonism between the rich & the poor had always existed but what was new was the fierce class hatred directed against both the new urban patricians & the old nobility. During the early 14th century, a series of revolts took place in Picardy, the Low Countries & the lower Rhine area. Peasants, urban craftsmen & the lumpen proletariat took part, & terrible acts of vengeance & retribution occurred. Later in the century there were further revolts which lasted until 1382 Cohn pp 87-98, Pirenne1936 pp 198-9.
Background II: [The crisis in the late medieval & early modern world was occasioned by a number of developments that would require a book to explore & can only be briefly outlined.] The most obvious was the Black Death of 1347-50, which killed something like a third of the population, [& was followed further outbreaks of plague] DaviesN pp 411-2. [Less obvious but more fundamental were the pervasive faults of the medieval Church such as worldliness, pluralism, simony, nepotism & the sexual misconduct of those supposedly celibate. These weaknesses, which were well-known, gave rise to reform movements but they probably exacerbated the situation. Two orders of itinerant & mendicant friars were established, the Dominicans in 1216 & the Franciscans in 1223. The Franciscans in particular were great preachers & they fanned religious enthusiasm which often remined unsatisfied & sometimes turned into hysteria. The Papacy itself was in decline.] After Innocent III (1198-1216) it lost power &, after one brief resurgence, the Papacy became political dependent. Between 1309 & 1377 the popes were in exile at Avignon & under the control of the French king DaviesN pp 360, 401, 403, Fisher p279. This was followed (until 1417) by the Great Schism, during which there were rival popes DaviesN p417. Although the period of papal weakness did not have a doctrinal cause it gave rise to fierce popular passions & brought the Church into grave disrepute Huizinga pp 22-3. [These developments took place at a time when the population, & in particular the swelling number in the urban artisan & bourgeoise classes, were thirsting for spiritual nourishment. Less credulous & easily satisfied than the peasantry, they were seeking a less formal & more emotionally satisfying form or religion.]
Background III: [The Bible says very little about some figures that were to have significant roles in medieval Christendom & it lacks detail, especially of a human-interest type.] However, there were a number of important sources, which appeared between about 1270 & 1370, on which from late medieval times artists could draw. These comprise the Legenda Sanctorum or Golden Legend by Jacobus Voragine; the Meditationes Vitae Christi wrongly attributed to St Bonaventura; the Speculum Humane Salvationis (c1324); the Revelations of St Bridget of Sweden; & the Vitae Christi by Ludolf of Saxony Murrays1996 pp 70, 220-1, 306-7, 347-8, 546, HallDic p53. Two] of these works were written by Franciscans or Dominicans & another was little more than a version of one of the Francican texts Murrays1996 pp 220, 307, 347. These works popularise & amplify the Bible stories often adding whole new episodes. Although they may have simplicity & charm, they stress the tortures & sorrows that were endured. They are replete with graphic details such as the removal of the nails securing Christ’s hands during the Deposition Murrays1996 pp 220, 348, HallJ p214
Development:
The Franciscans, established in 1223, had a profound influence on art through the Meditations on the Life of Jesus c1300, mistakenly attributed to St Bonaventura, with its appeal to the heart & emotions instead of the intellect Male1949 pp 101-2, Sekules p98. Images of the Crucifixion became more gruesome & harrowing, & images of the Virgin Mary less icon-like.
In Italy the plague led to a noticeably more supernatural treatment of religious themes & a less forgiving image of Christ. In paintings of the Last Judgement his arm of is now upraised towards the damned & in 15th century works he hurls arrows, traditional symbols of disease HallJ p215. During the 14th & 15th centuries paintings of St Sebastian, St Roch/Rock & the martyrs Comos & Damien became popular because they were believed to be protectors against the plague HallDic pp 76, 266, 276. Paintings of hermits, with their lives linked to death & the plague, also became popular HallJ p215-6. Sometimes Sebastian, Roch, Cosmo & Damian appear together, & in the company of the Virgin HallDic pp 76, 266, 276-7
Degas’ Men & Women; From the early 1870s there is a consistent contrast between Degas’ depiction of men & women: men are presented as individuals’ women, apart from a few portraits, as types engaged in representative activities. The contract is most striking in the earlier 1870s where there are men & women in the same picture. However, there are a few pictures around 1867-73 which admit the possibility of individual female experience K&P pp 80-1, 91. To begin with women’s faces were particularised & suggestive but from the mid-80s attention to physiognomy became less common K&P pp 190-1, 193-4. Moreover, signs of identity, background, context & narrative were deleted leaving only the expressive structure of the composition & the generalised brute facts of the human body. There appears to have been a wilful pursuit of obscurity. Preparatory drawings would be clear but K&P p194
See also the Humanisation of Art
The Dehumanisation of Art was the title of an essay by Ortega y Gasset published in 1925. y Gasset argued that modern art was unpopular not because it was new but because it was addressed to an elite which wanted to assert itself against the masses y Gasset pp 4-7. The leading feature of this art was its dehumanisation. This was not merely because of the absence of living things but more fundamentally because of the attempt to paint people or objects so that they resemble themselves as little as possible: a task for which much cunning was necessary & from which the artist derived the aesthetic pleasure of triumphing over matter y Gasset pp 22-3.
Previously art was the conveyance of aesthetic enjoyment by a process of contagion by which personal feelings were passed from the artist to the listener (or viewer). However, such contagion came to be regarded as illegitimate because it is an unconscious process & in art full intellectual clarity is desirable. “Tears & laughter are, aesthetically, frauds” y Gasset pp 26-7.
Another feature is that art was seen as either nothing else or, to a greater or lesser extent, as ironical play of no great consequence. Although the artist did not make light of his work, it was no longer concerned -as it was in the 19th century in which there was a downfall of religion- with the profoundest problems of humanity, & as a human pursuit from which the species derived its justification & dignity. The trend towards pure art betrays not arrogance, as is often thought, but modesty y Gasset pp 14, 47, 49-50. 52. In Expressionism & Cubism the painter has shut his eyes & is concentrating upon his own subjective images.
During the Renaissance the artist delighted in rendering the exuberant forms of men, animals & plants. Today art displays a real loathing of living things & the desire to replace them with geometric patterns y Gasset pp 38-41
Denigration: [In his essay y Gasset addressed himself exclusively to painting of a geometric type. He did not mention art of another type that might have been regarded as dehumanising. This was the extreme caricature & ridicule to be found in during the 1920s in paintings & drawings by left wing artists in Germany & Mexico. These were to be followed during the 1930s by further paintings of this type in the United States & Britain See Political Art/Tendenzkunst.]
Types of Dehumanisation: [There have during the period from around 1900 been various in which human beings & the human form have been ridiculed or degraded. They include the following:
(a) The depiction of faces without features (eg by Cezanne & Malevich);
(b) The dismemberment of the body (eg by the Cubists);
(c) The conversion of the body to angular or impossible shapes, eg by Picasso, Bomberg & Bacon;
(d) The bestialisation of the human form (by Dix & Grosz);
(e) The mocking of those who are crippled or old (by Dix, Grosz);
(f) The gross distortion of breasts (by Grosz & Dix); &
(g) the portrayal of prostitutes as sub-human (by Picasso, Roualt & Dix)] Karchner pp 49, 60, 65, 67, 76, 80, 105, 123, 125, 133, 134, 149, Lewis104, 130, 131, 134, 137, 138, 139, 144-6, 165, Venturi p55.
There had in the past been an abundance of paintings where inhuman actions are portrayed. Nevertheless the perpetrators remained all too human.]
A Caveat: [It should be stressed that my principal purpose here is to draw attention to what is being shown. There is no doubt that some works are brilliant attacks on capitalists & military men. (Although the unwelcome question arises of what is to be said about the attacks which right wing & Nazi artists made on Jewish capitalists. Were some of these equally brilliant?) By no means all of the dehumanisation was politically or religiously motivated. Much of it, especially in the case of Picasso’s distorted nudes, cannot be justified in this way.] It has been argued that Picasso’s distorted nudes are ingenious, graceful & humorous. [However in notable cases this is untrue or the works have sinister features] Penrose p268, Hilton Pl 103, pp 149, 166-8, 182, Pl 131.
Art Historians: [One interesting point is the way in which the questions that dehumanised pictures provoke have been largely ignored. Art historians seem reluctant to leave their comfort zone of writing about the usual suspects & begin a subversive examination of some celebrated Modernists].
DISEGNO & COLORITO / THE QURELLE DU COLORIS BETWEEN THE POUSSINISTS & RUBENISTS:
Disegno & Colorito: The purpose here is to explain & explore the long controversy between those who have accorded priority to drawing & design, & those who have emphasised colour. The key words here are Italian: Disegno & Colorito as used from the Renaissance onwards. Their literal meanings are design or drawing, & colour, but when used in artistic discourse they implied far more. Disegno embraced concetto, or concept: the idea which the artist had in his mind & wished to embody in his work. It could never be fully realised because, according to Plato, the physical world is a poor reflection of the idea or ideal form. It followed that the artist should not try to copy nature, though following Aristotle he could approximate the ideal by selecting & combining the most perfect examples of what he wanted to paint L&L, Lucie-S2003 pp 62, 74; See Aesthetics & Beauty in this Section for Plato & ideal forms.
The Italian Renaissance: In 1354-60 Petrarch’s Remedies against Fortune said that graphis, the Latin word for disegno, is the common source of sculpture & painting L&L. Alberti maintained that before beginning painters should make prior drawings, ask friends for advice, think out every element using grid lines, & warned against even using a pencil without careful thought. Only lazy artists experimented on the canvas Alberti pp 95-6.
Florence Versus Venice: From around 1550 a debate developed between Florence & Venice as to the rival merits of design & colour. In his Dialogo di Pittura, 1548, the Venetian artist Paolo Pino said that painting was comprised of disegno, colore, & invenzione which Alberti had not mentioned. He praised colour with passion & rejected Alberti’s over-strict design procedure in favour of daring foreshorting, grace & ease. The perfect painter would combine Michelangelo’s drawing & Titian’s colour Grove 24 pp 827-8. In 1555 Ludovico Dolce, a Venetian literary figure, produced his Dialogo della Pittura, which was inspired by Arentino, the friend of Titian. He championed the educated layman & celebrated Titian as the incomparable master of colour, although he also praised Raphael Grove9 pp 74-5.
After this the debate became less balanced. Vasari, had in the first edition of his Lives of the Painters (1550) shown some enthusiasm for Titian & Venetian painting. However in his second edition of 1658 he censured Titian & Tintoretto for lack of disegno, which he associated with intellect. The intellectual content of desegno was stressed by late the Mannerist artists Lomazzo & Federico Zuccaro. The latter, in accord with Neo-Platatonic theory, considered disegno to be a God-given idea Grove9 p7. See Aesthetics & Beauty for Neo-Platonism.
Venetian Colour: What as a practical matter did Venetian colour signify? Florentine works seem if be brighter & more dazzling than those from Venice, though it is difficult to know how they appeared at the time. Venetian paintwork has suffered more greatly with the passage of time. The favourite Venetian green tends to turn brown or even black. Moreover, as represented by Titian, the range of colour in Venetian painting was more restricted than in Florence. In Venice a scheme of bright contrasting colours was replaced by overall harmonies that were were both more simple & sophisticated. Venetian painting was the product of a new mode of perception in which colour was the primary element in visual experience & not forms as delineated by Albertian outlines. To express the point another way Venetian art was more painterly & less sculptural than that of Florence. This development is to be observed in the work of Giovanni Bellini from the 1490s & with greater boldness in Titian’s early paintings. In Jacopo Pesaro Presented to St Peter the picture is built up without outline in patches of colour RAVenice p41, Steer p7.
The new emphasis on colour was accompanied by a transformation in composition. The Transfiguration by Raphael & Titian’s Assumption of the Virgin were both painted during 1516-20 & have common features. In the Raphael the scene falls into two halves each observed from a different viewpoint, whereas in the Titian there is a common lowish viewpoint. Hence Raphael avoids the foreshortening which provides the Virgin in Titian’s painting with a dramatic upward thrust. The figures in the Raphael are distinct wereas in the Titian they are inter-dependent. In the Raphael light clarifies forms that seem to already exist. Titian uses light to create forms. [By such means] Titian initiated what amounted to a new mode of vision, one seen by contemporaries as a sense of living reality not previously achieved Steer pp 7-8, RA1984 p41.
The debate over colour & design continued during the 17th century with Marco Boschini arguing passionately for Venetian colour in his Le Ricche Miniere della Pittura Veneziana, 1674. Although art was based on design, painting without colour was a body without a soul. On the other hand, the Florentine Filippo Baldinucci in Vocabolario Toscano del Disegno, 1680 stressed design. [The most important & vigorous debate took place in France] in the Quarelle du Coloris between the Poussinists & Rubenists. In 1671 Philippe de Champaigne, during a lecture at the Academy, adopted the anti-colour stance of Nicolas Poussin & criticised Titian. Gabriel Blanchard vehemently defended him. Lebrun ruled in favour of the Academy’s customary position. However in 1673 de Piles published his pamphlet Dialogue sur le Coloris which supported Blanchard. Although he said that drawing & colour were both essential, he claimed that it was colour that gave perfection & life to painting Grove 9 pp 7-8. The debate remained unresolved. However in 1690 Mignard replacesd Lebrun as Painter to King & he favoured Rubenism. During the 17th century there was freedom of debate & an absence of reprisals Turner RtoI pp 321-2.
During the 19th century the quarrel over the primacy of drawing & colour was resumed with Ingres & Delacroix as the respective protagonists Grove9 pp 8-9. Not until the early 20th century did the belief in colour become a passion See Colourism & Shapism in Section 7.
Significance: [One important consequence of the belief that disegno was essential was the production by many artists of marvellous drawings. Another was the way in which disegno led to to the enhancement of the status of the artist.] The emphasis on drawing & perspective provided painting with an intellectual dimension & helped artists to claim that instead of being mere artisans they they belonged to a liberal profession See Grove9 p8 & Art & Artists, Status of in Section 7. [Alternatively, through the artistic use of colour the artist could claim to be creating a beauty that was almost divine.]
In the days of the apprenticeship system masters maintained workshops where they employed assistants, & the emergence of specialist drapery painters was due to the breakdown of the system. They appear to have appeared in Holland around 1660 but in France some large workshops with drapery assistants are known to have continued, eg that of Hyacinthe Rigaud. In England van Dyke & Kneller employed assistants, & Lely had a long association with John Gaspars (recorded 1641-92). Gaspars also worked for John Riley & Lely also employed Joseph Buckshorn Waterhouse1953 p98, Grove9 p211.
During the 18th century the employment of independent drapery painters was widespread in Britain. The most notable was Joseph Van Aken whose clientele included Dandridge, Highmore, Hudson, Knapton, Ramsay; & also lesser painters such as Dandridge & Winstanley. By 1743 drapery painting had become so extensive that Virtue said it was difficult to distinguish between British painters. After Van Aken’s death in 1749 he was succeeded by his younger brother & by Peter Toms (c1728-77) who worked for many important painters. They included Reynolds (c1755-6) Francis Cotes & Benjamin West Waterhouse 1953 p167 & 1941 p13, Grove9 p211 & 31 p139. Reynolds also used Giuseppe Marchi whom he brought back from Rome. However, Marchi who lived with Gainsborough for much of his life was an assistant & manservant rather than an independent drapery painter. Gainsborough was almost alone in always painting his own drapery Hallet p74, Waterhouse1941 pp 9,13. The role of the drapery painter declined after 1800 because of the emphasis that was now placed on individual handling & the fall off except for Lawrence, in the importance of fashionable portraiture Grove9 p212.
The employment of drapery painters was inevitable if the leading portraitists were to satisfy demand. Their use did not necessarily mean that the paintings were of an inferior standard. Vertue attributed Ramsey’s rapid success to his use of Van Aken & it is difficult to distinguish his draperies from those painted by Ramsay & Hudson. [Nevertheless the extent to which portrait painters were prepared to rely on drapery painters does provoke the question of authenticity.] Van Aken made numerous drawings, once attributed to Ramsay, that are mostly studies after Van Dyck, Kneller, Maratta etc showing typical poses from which patrons would presumably be asked to select Smart pp 40-2. [Moreover, the pressure to produce, as shown by the use of drapery painters, helps explain why the work of many leading 18th century portrait painters is so uneven.]
Drapery was not the only work that was farmed out. Lely, Riley & Kneller used John Baptiste Gaspars to paint postures. The most systematic use was by Lely whose standard body poses were numbered one to eight. So that the head would fit on the body he had standard positions for the head using an oblique view Waterhouse1953 p98, S-T p13.
ENHANCED REALISM & SPEAKING LIKENESS:
The term Speaking Likeness was used by the art historian Alastair Smart in his study of the Scottish painter Alan Ramsay to indicate a lack of surprise if, when Ramsay’s work is being viewed, the picture was to start speaking. Smart referred to the Speaking Likeness as a new development in 18th century British portraiture for which Ramsay & Hogarth were responsible Smart p55. [However, it was also part of a much more extensive category, first alluded to by Pliny the Elder where in a painting competition between artists Zeuxis deceived birds into mistaking grapes, he had painted for the real thing OxDicTerms pp 244-5. [To qualify as Enhanced Realism a figurative work must make a striking, obvious & virtually undeniable impact. This may arise, as in a Crucifixion because it has a direct emotional appeal, or it must somehow create a visual impression more vivid, real, arresting & hypnotic than the one that would be obtained by actually looking at what is being depicted. (It would perhaps have been preferable to have to have called this type of painting Magic Realism, Superrealism or Hyperrealism but all these terms have been used for other very different types of painting)
Enhanced Realism, to cite a few leading artists, was what Raphael, Vermeer, Alan Ramsey, Rossetti, George Clausen, Sargent & Christian Schad achieved in their best work. It was a feature of the earlier phase of Pre-Raphaelite painting with Rossetti’s [as in] 1866 portrait of Alexa Wilding, Monna Vanna (Tate Gallery) being a particularly good example. During the 1920s Speaking Portraits of a magical type were painted by the German Neue Sachlichkeit artists. Here Christian Schad’s Self-Portrait, 1927 (Tate Gallery) is outstanding. Enhanced Realist works continue to be painted, viz [the as in] Paula Rego’s Girdle, 1995 (Paula Rego & Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, Porto). The way in which these & other artists enhanced their paintings was not uniform but they variously include a direct gaze, clarity of form, striking colour, paintwork of a bravura nature & eroticism See L&P pp 40, 145, 157, 159, Hayes1991 p141, Fairbrother p73, etc. In some way or other all such paintings create a striking visual impact &, once alerted to paintings they are not too difficult to spot.
Enhanced Realism does not qualify for inclusion as a Grouping or Movement for inclusion in Sections 8. The painters involved are far too disparate. Nevertheless, this entry is necessary to counter the claim prevalent among Modernists that Realism is a low form of artistic life because it is simply mimesis where artists are merely trying to passively reproduce what they see. It can on the contrary Enhanced Realism has a magical quality because it is super-real: more real than reality.]
EXHIBITIONS, KEY
EXHIBITIONS OF MODERN REALIST PAINTINGS: See Section 9 at Magic Realism
FAKES & FORGERIES, COPIES & PASTICHE:
Fete Champetre, Fete Galante & Garden of Love. See Section 3 at Couples Dancing, Kissing, Embracing, Marrying & Companionate
Meaning: [A femme fatale is an adult woman whose sexual & seductive appeal, whether deliberate or unintended, may lead a man into danger or destruction.]
Background:
(a) Antiquity & After: [The Femme Fatale has a long ancestry. In the Bible] there is Eve, other Old Testament women such as Delilah, Judith, & Potiphar’s Wife; & in the New Testament Salome Murrays1996. [The Femme Fatale also] figures in the Greek myths, witness the story of Diana & Actaeon, the Sirens & the Medusa, though her beauty was questionable Bulfinch pp 63, 65, 133, 274. During the Middle Ages the dangerous women of the classical world were transmuted into the Femme Fatales of northern mythology, such as Vivien (Morgan Le Fay) who appears in the Arthurian Legends OxCompEng pp 641-2, 669.
(b) In Literature. In the Romantic era the Femme Fatale made a decisive reappearance with] Matilda in Lewis’ novel The Monk, 1796; & the temptresses in Keats poems La Belle Dame Sans Merci & Lamia, 1819. These female figures were not contemporary women [but it was not very long before they appeared.
| La Belle Dame sans Merci: Here a knight is fatally enthralled by an elfin woman & in Lamia a sorceress is transformed into a beautiful woman who loves & is loved by Lycius. He orders a bridal feast at which she is exposed & withers away. He dies grief stricken. In The Monk a fiend-inspired woman enters the monastery of Ambrosius disguised as a boy. Ambrosius, now depraved, falls in love with a female penitent whom he pursues & finally kills. After torture by the Inquisition & temporary rescue by the Devil, he goes to hell OxCompEng |
Femme fatales were a notable feature of mid-Victorian melodrama, as shown by the novels by Mary Elizabeth Braddon (Lady Audley’s Secret, 1862); by Wilkie Collins (Margaret Sherwin in Basil, 1862, & even more clearly Miss Gwilt in Armadale, 1866); & by the female vampire in Sheridan Le Fanu’s Camilla, 1871. Originally the vampire was male but in 1828 Heinrich Maschner in an enormously popular opera had supposed that when virgins were victimised, they too became vampires H&N p207. Poetry also contributed to the cult of the femme fatale. In Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, 1859, Vivien seduces Merlin & imprisons him in an oak OxCompEng p642.
The 1880s & 90s saw the burgeoning of novels about New Women. Unlike Feminists, who were women with a particular cause, the new woman wanted a much wider measure of social & sexual liberation. Olive Schreiner’s The Story of an African Farm, 1883, was the first new-woman novel. Here a young woman leaves her fiancé for a romantic stranger, becomes pregnant but, even when dying, refuses to marry. She still feels that she cannot be bound & lose her freedom Himmelfarb pp 188-192.
(c) On Stage: Here we have Bizet’s Carmen, 1875; A Doll’s House by Ibsen, 1879; Wagner’s Parcifal (Kundry), 1882; Salome & Elektra by Hofmannsthal & Strauss with its female blood-lust; Kokoschka’s play Murderer, Hope of Women, which was published in 1910 with his illustrations; & Alban Berg’s opera Lulu H&N pp 209, 211, etc
(d) Paris: In the 1870s there was a growing concern that unregistered prostitutes (insoumise) were invading its cafes where they sat waiting to be hired. Before this prostitution in central Paris had not been too obvious due to the long-standing system of official brothels, where the women were subject to medical inspection. However, there was a steep decline in their number. Their place was taken by prostitutes, some part-time, at cafes & other places who used but did not reside at maisons de rendezvous or at hotels K&P pp 69-71, Zeldin1 pp 307-10, ClarkTJ1984 p106. The arrival of these women led to a male panic that the dividing line between marriage & illicit relationships was breaking down, & that the balance of power was shifting in favour of the female sex. It was even believed that deviant women were intensifying male desire & catering for a greater demand for intimacy & the illusion of being seduced K&P p70, ClarkTJ p107.
(e) Gibson Girls: In America from the mid-1890s Charles Dana Gibson made popular illustrations of young & attractive women who were domineering, manipulative & powerful yet vulnerable to their own passions & sexuality H&N p191.
Paintings:
There are numerous subjects in painting in which the Femme Fatal reveals herself. Some of these have already been mentioned & they & others (mermaids) are discussed in Section 3. Suffice it to say that the peak period for depictions of the Femme Fatale was the latter part of the 19th century & the early years of the 20th. One art historian has, for instance, observed that around 1900 Vienna, “was reeling under a plague of femmes fatales” H&N p207. Moreover, during this period, they have common characteristics. The woman’s posture is frontal, upright & frequently taut. Heads are thrown back, eyelids are lowered, the jaw is sometimes slack, hair is loosened & arms are raised. The upright posture reveals power & control over self or others, but other features represent abandon, acquiescence & a loss of control during a triumphal moment. However, the meaning is frequently ambiguous. Actresses were often depicted as Femme Fatales H&N p183
FETE CHAMPETRE, FETE GALANTE & GARDEN OF LOVE: See Section 3 at Couples Dancing, Kissing, Embracing, Marrying & Companionate
[From the Renaissance onwards it was taken for granted that artists should paint what they saw & that this involved creating a sense of depth by means of perspective & modelling. However during the latter part of the 19th century mimesis came under attack.] In 1878 Whistler described imitation as poor art & no better than photography, & in 1890 Maurice Denis made his celebrated announcement that a picture was essentially a flat surface covered with colours. This was not intended as an attack on representational art [but this was how it was seen Whistler p52, OxDicMod. It crystallised the new development that had occurred in painting: the picture which lacked depth.
The key work was The Talisman by Serusier, painted in 1888.] This was not the first attempt to create flatness. Manet had in 1874 done this in The Balcony in which the background figures lack plasticity. Here Manet was showing how in the full light of day round forms sometimes look flat. He was not interested in flatness for its own sake as shown by boldly coloured balcony railing behind which the rest of the picture recedes Gomb1950 pp 408-9.
The Talisman with its large areas of almost unmodulated colour was painted under the direction of Gauguin & was the culmination of a rapid shift towards the marked diminution of depth in his paintings & those of other artists in, or associated with, the Nabis group. Many of these were painted at Pouldu where Gauguin, Serusier & other artists (Bernard, Charles Filiger) painted together in 1888 Chase p44, CRTB pp 8,9.
The elimination of a sense of depth was, prior to abstraction, a somewhat difficult task. One way was to echo a shape that appeared in the foreground by another in the background a technique that was used by Cezanne, Braque & Picasso Antliff/Leighton p53. Other methods were to cut off every form by the edge of the canvas, to repeat forms such as branches arbitrarily over the surface, & to leave areas virtually blank so as to weaken the idea that a real landscape is being depicted. Colour was also used. As cool colours (green, blue, purple) give an impression of recession they were placed in the foreground whereas the warm colours (red, orange, yellow) were placed in the background Antliff/Leighton p55.
[The urge to flatten paintings was no doubt partly motivated by a spirit of revolt & hostility to both academic & Impressionist painters whose works had depth. There were however more substantial reasons such as] the inspiring example of Japanese prints & watercolours. It is known, for instance, that Gauguin had them very much in mind when he was painting at Pont-Aven in 1888 & advising Serusier, who then went on to paint The Talisman ThomsonB pp 60-1. [Another motivation for flattening was concern that, due to photography realism was out-of-date.
However, the main reason was that it was considered dishonest to create an illusion of depth.] Critics & artists were, as never before, stressing the need for honesty & truth in painting, & it was though that these were the virtues of realist painting. But Realism was now seen as dishonest because its practitioners created the illusion of depth on what was a flat surface. What was now demanded was a true & honest attitude towards the nature of the material, the flat surface, & a frank recognition that painting must reflect the painter’s inner, subjective feelings & not some external reality Nochlin1971 pp 36, 236, 238.
The belief that depth is dishonest was a driving force that continued to motivate those in the Modern Movement. “We are for flat forms because they destroy illusion & reveal truth”. So said Adolph Gottlieb & Mark Rothco in an important letter to the New York Times in 1943 Ashton1962 p26. And just as the Movement was coming to an end, Linda Nochlin in her searing critique of Gerome said that he had uniquely denied us any clue that an art work is a flat surface Nochlin1989 p37
Concept: early: In 1972 the Marxist John Berger in Ways of Seeing said active & potentially powerful men view women who are reduced to passive objects, watching themselves being looked at Berger1972 pp 45-7. In support of his argument he reproduces paintings of Susanna & the Elders, the Judgement of Paris, & courtesans & other women whose nakedness is on display. However he observed that Manet’s Olympia is somewhat defiant Berger1972 pp 45, 50-2, 54-7, 63.
Linda Nochlin, who was a New Wave Feminist, endorsed Berger’s arguments in Woman as Sex Object Hess&North p14 etc. Michel Foucault argued in Discipline & Punish (1975) that the army, school & prison coerce through observation & surveillance. Foucault-like arguments were applied by feminists to male domination through observation, eg compulsory examination of prostitutes for VD during the 19th century.
Laura Mulvey in her 1975 critique of films popularised the idea that passive females were objectified in works that were mainly written, directed & filmed by men. In 1982 Mary Ann Doane, following Mulvey, argued that because men monopolise the desiring gaze women renounce desire in masochism, objectivise themselves becoming narcissistic, or they masquerade as men engaging in transvestism Kern pp 11, 246. Nochlin, turning from films to art, concluded in 1988 that women can either adopt the male viewpoint or accept the male-created view of women as seductively passive Nochlin1989b p30
Concept: later: By the late 1980s some Feminists were starting to modify & qualify their position. Mulvey & Nochlin said they had somewhat over-simplified. Nochlin recognised that in an ideal world of unconscious equality, where women could be painted without any suggestion of submission, the female nude would present no problem Nochlin1989b pp 30-6. Germaine Greer said (2003) that Feminism increased the difficulty of acknowledging that young males sometimes had supernatural beauty & she wrote The Boy partly to reclaim women’s right to take visual pleasure in viewing the young male Greer2003 pp 7, 11, back cover
Comment: Irrelevant comments apart, those who believe in the Male Gaze have curiously disregarded:
(a) Arcadian paintings which portray unsubmissive female nudes & appear to depict Nochlin’s ideal world of unconscious equality Haak Pl 694 etc;
(b) Fete champetres, especially during the Rococo era which feature active lovers of both sexes;
(c) Classical pictures in which women, often depicted as a goddess, make sexual & seductive advances to men, or try to prevent them leaving. Paintings of Venus & Mars, & Venus & Adonis, provide numerous examples HallDic pp319-20.
(d) Lasciviae which show co-operative copulation Frantz Fig 1-2, 8, 14-20;
(e) The difficulty of seeing how erotic pictures of women can have been responsible for female passivity when such paintings were frequently hidden from view. The Spanish king had a very private room full of nudes in the Alcazar in Madrid Jacobs1979 p49, NGVelazquez p64;
(f) The way in which women who are painted naked or partly clothed often have active & aggressive roles (Judith, Salome, Delilah, Potiphar’s Wife etc) See WAR OF THE SEXES.
| Berger does not discuss the way in which paintings in these categories cast doubt on his argument that women are typically shown as passive. He does mentions pictures of couples making love but says that their owners would have seen themselves replacing or identifying with the man Berger1972 p56. Possibly, but this does mean that they saw the woman as passive or were not stimulated into satisfying their sexual needs. |
Done’s suggestion that men monopolise the desiring gaze appears to assume that sexual desire is in limited supply & that women are prevented from looking longingly at men because men look longingly at them.
I have no intention of denying that in the past women were denied equality or that before the advent of genre paintings their roles were restricted, or largely confined to mythological scenes. However it is highly questionable whether the Male Gaze was an important form of oppression &, even if it was, to question whether paintings were themselves a form of oppression.
Female passivity should be reflected in portraiture with women being pictured looking down or way from the viewer & artist. However this does not appear to be case at least since the move away from profile portraits in late 15th century Italy.
Notable examples of direct female gaze:
Raphael Portrait of Maddalena Doni, c1506 (Pitti); La Donna Velata, c1515 (Pitti); La Fornarina, 1518-9 (Galleria Natzionale d’ Arte Antica)
Titian A Blonde Woman (NG); La Schiavona, c1511 (NG); Lavinia, c1555 (Gemaldegalerie, Dresden); Isabella d’Este, very late (Vienna)
del Piombo Portrait of a Lady (NG)
Moroni Portrait of Isotta Brembati, c1553 (Fondazione Museum & Palace Moroni, Bergamo); Portrait of Lucia Albani Avogadro, c1557 (NG); Portrait of Pace Rivola Spini, c1574 (Academia Carrara, Bergamo); Portrait of a Younger Lady with a Fan, c1575 (Rijksmuseum); Portrait of a Young Lady, c1575 (Private)
Romano Isabella d’Este, 1524 (Hampton Court)
Bronzino Eleanora of Toledo, 1546 (Uffizi)
Holbein, the Younger The Duchess of Milan (NG); Queen Anne of Cleves, c1539 (Private)
Lotto Lucina Bretimba, c1523 (Bergamo)
Other Possibilities. The Bergerite notion that the male gaze is a control devise is, of course, by no means the only explanation for preoccupation with sexual body parts. Freud thought that it was a male defence against castration anxiety. The female lack of a penis aroused the fear of castration & this gave rise to a diversionary gaze at breasts or the bra which covers them Lubin p258
The Grand Manner. See Section Section 9 at British Golden Age & Grand Manner
The Growth of Scepticism. See Section 9 at The Aesthetic Movement
Guide to the Uffizi. See Section 6
Gainsborough & Reynolds Compared. See Section 1 at Gainsborough
Hitler & Art. See Section 9 at National Socialist Painting
How Galleries Treated a Non-Moderist Painting. See Section 1 at Knights
The word really derives from the Latin ingenium meaning natural disposition, or innate ability Robinson p2. During the Middle Ages art was not regarded as intellectual property. The artist was merely the medium through which the Divine was made visible & the desire for originality was lacking. Paintings were not regarded as the intellectual property of the artists [as the absences of signed works demonstrates] Hauser2 p62. The concept of genius originated during the Enlightenment which had led artists to question received ideas, to place greater emphasis on their own originality & on innate qualities that could not be taught Lindey p99. Genius was already widely used by 1711 when Joseph Adison published an eponymous article in The Spectator Robinson p2. During most of the 18th century novelty was generally frowned upon & associated with meretricious work associated with fickle public demand. However, from the 1760s novelty became legitimate if it was an original & inventive reinterpretation of hallowed precepts Craske pp 34-5. Blake was a strong believer in inherited genius Vaughan1978 pp67-8, 73.
Suffering was idealised in the cult of genius by Nietzsche & Schopenhauer et. Around 1900 the belief in the artist as martyr reached its apogee. Tuberculosis was associated with superior sensibility & spiritual refinement. The Pre-Raphaelites, Toorop, Hodler & Klimpt all painted aenemic figures Schroder pp 56-7
THE GRAND MANNER: See Section Section 9 at British Golden Age & Grand Manner
THE GROWTH OF SCEPTICISM: See Section 9 at The Aesthetic Movement
GUIDE TO THE UFFIZI See Section 6
GAINSBOROUGH & REYNOLDS COMPARED See Section 1 at Gainsborough
HITLER & ART See Section 9 at National Socialist Painting
HOW GALLERIES TREATED A NON-MODERNIST PAINTING See Section 1 at Knights
THE HUMANISATION OF PAINTING (p2192)
ICONOGRAPHY:
IDEAL LANDSCAPE: See section 3 at Landscape for box entitled Ideal -Classical Landscape
Ideal/Classical Landscape: The term Ideal Landscape goes back at least to 1927 & relates to works in which landscape is no longer a mere background element but a key feature, albeit often with the presence of figures. Such paintings were created during at the beginning of the 17th century by Annibale Carracci Hussey pp 7-9, See Landscape in Section 3. By this time a number of developments which contributed to Ideal Landscape had already taken place & others were about to occur.
Historic Landscape: This was created during the 15th century by Patinir etc in Flanders & then in Italy by about 1500. Here objects such as ruined temples were depicted in order to remind viewers of the historic past but there was little attempt to imitate nature Hussey pp 7-8, See Landscape in Section 3.
Arcadia: Classical landscape was inspired by Virgil’s mythology of a Golden Age. Here man lived on earth’s fruits, peacefully, piously & simply. Hussey pp 7-9, Clark1949 pp 109, 113
Enveloping & Poetic Light: This was the legacy of Giovanni Bellini whose landscapes were the supreme instance of facts transfigured through love, & it was to be continued by Giorgione who contributed what has been described as park scenery with its elusive grace & refinement. Enveloping & poetic light was continued by Titian, Paul Bril, & Adam Elsheimer who contributed dawn & twilight effects Clark1949 pp 49-53, 113, 118; Blunt1954 pp 196-7.
Late Mannerist Landscape: This was developed by Paul Bril & Elsheimer during the late 16th century. Here landscape has an artificial dark-brown foreground, a lighter-green middle distance & blue horizon hills, each stage being marked by wings as in a theatre starting from a dark foreground tree Blunt1954 p196, etc.
Drawing in the Campagna: Inspired by the love of nature artists, & in particular Claude, began drawing in the Campagna, the countryside around Rome Hussey pp 7-10, Kitson1966 p74 & 1969 Pl 19, Martin p61
By the mid-17th century & the advent of Ideal Landscape men had certainly loved nature for its own sake & this love was embodied in the work of Poussin, Claude, Dughet & Rosa. Its background was Aristotle’s conception of nature as a force working in the refractory medium of matter to produce a central & generalized form. Artists’ task was to produce the perfect forms to which nature was striving. Claude sought calm & idyllic forms whereas Rosa concentrated on nature’s wild, fierce aspect. Hussey pp 7-8, Kitson1966 p74.
In their studios their calm & idyllic scenes their Ideal, Classical landscapes were painted according to a set of conventions. There is a flattish foreground, often featuring a stream, & trees generally occupy a whole side. They are partly in shadow and silhouetted against the sky. Further back & on or towards the other side there are more & smaller trees, often near a classical building on rising ground. In the distance there is flat ground possibly with a winding river, & on the horizon hills or a view to the sea. There are classical & biblical figures Kitson1966 p74.
The final & heroic stage of Ideal Landscape took place in the early 19th century when Joseph Koch heightened its grandeur, structural clarity & linearity. Koch’s landscape was the culmination of classical landscape Grove18 pp 182-3, Novotny p68.
Confusion & Contradiction
[Ideal/Classical landscape is something of a hotchpotch since it is said to cover both the work of Claude, Gaspard, Poussin , & that of Rosa. However, if it is wild & fierce, like that of Rosa it would appear to be Romantic or, because Rosa lived prior to the Romantic era, proto-romantic. Because Ideal Landscape bundles disparate elements it is not much use when trying to identify coherent artistic Movements.]
IMPRESSIONISM-GENERAL-COMMENT:
[The term impressionism is fatally ambiguous, except where it merely refers to the group of French painters who worked from around 1860. The word impression has different meanings & these are naturally called to mind when the word Impressionism is used. An impression can mean an image gained by looking or it may mean a vague resemblance. Hence when an artist is simply described as an impressionist there is an inherent ambiguity: is the image clear because it is the result of careful looking or is it a vague resemblance? The notion that the great French Impressionists produced the latter is unfounded.
They frequently painted on the spot & dedicated themselves to capturing how scenes looked in a particular type of light.] Monet painted the same haystack & Waterloo Bridge in differing light & atmospheric conditions to capture an exact image Grove21 p865.
[It may seem unnecessary to say all this. However art historians sometimes create confusion by, for instance, referring to the “flashing perceptivity” of the Impressionist artist OxDicMod. There is moreover the difficulty that paintings which lack finish, & therefore seem impressionistic, are nevertheless the result of careful observation .]
Term: It was first used in the 1890s & denotes Impressionistic paintings that feature intimate domestic scenes. Colour is often exaggerated & distorted to express mood & convey the warmth & comfort of bourgeois domestic life. There is an emphasis on decoration & patterning of a flat type. The classic Intimists were Bonnard & Vuillard. However paintings of this type go back to Vermeer & Chardin, [& there were numerous painters during the 20th century who are candidates for inclusion] OxDicMod, TurnerRtoI p173, Lucie-S2003, ShearerW1996. They include, for instance, Vanessa Bell & Duncan Grant M&D pp115, 122, 127, 132, 137, Tate site
Is Lucian Freud Repulsive? See Section 1 at Freud
Location of Zucchi’s Decorations. See Section 2 at antonio zucchi
Looking at Paintings. See Section 3
The Lutzow Free Corps. See Section 8 at National Romanticism, 19th Century
Term: [Here Modernism means the broad artistic movement that began in the latter part of the 19th century & soon after the first World War came to fruition in works that were fully abstract. Modernist painters belonged to the avant-garde & were hostile to the academic establishment. They included such artists as Whistler, Gauguin, Cezanne, Kandinsky & Picasso. Modernism was, of course, only at an early stage during the early 1920s but its development & the forms it took are dealt with elsewhere, & so are the various meanings that have been attached to the term. See Abstraction: Geometric, Linear & Objective, & Abstraction, Lyrical & Painterly in Section 9, & Modernism in Section 5.
Background to Birth:
(a) Individualism: [During the latter part of the 19th century there was a marked growth in individualism, by which is meant in this context a preoccupation by an individual with his own ego & a selfish disregard for the welfare of others. Individualists in this sense priorities their own rights & emotions. The key figures here are Ibsen & Nietzsche with their seminal works A Doll’s House, 1879, & Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 1883-5.] However it was not until 1896 that Nietzsche aroused any general interest in England JacksonH p115. Ibsen’s play was first seen in London, on Broadway in 1889, & in Paris in 1894 Ibsen pvii, Wikip. [The play is a piece of highly crafted drama but the build up to the final scene has surprisingly little bearing on its concluding message], which is that life should be a journey of self-realisation (termed education) & the only vital duty is to oneself, not to one’s husband or even children (described as dolls) Ibsen pp 70-4.]
Nietzsche’s outlook can be described as aristocratic anarchism. He was concerned about an elite group & he had no concern for the welfare of the rest of the population. This elite of higher men is hostile to order but disciplined & not self-indulgent. It is courageous & prepared to take any action to defeat the mediocre masses when they try to gain power. He prophesied with some glee an era of great wars. However, he did not worship the state & was not a nationalist or racist for he was a passionate individualist & believer in a new international elite of artist-tyrants RussellJ pp 728-31.
[There is no doubt that painters in the modernist era read & were excited by Ibsen & Nietzsche] eg John pp 78, 92, 117, Holroyd1 p92, Hodin pp 33, 38, 81, 107, 137, Penrose p30.
(b) Collectivism: [Paradoxically, the growth in rampant individualism of was accompanied by the rise of collectivism among (i) those who were not individualists because they were striving for the welfare of the large group or social class to which they belonged, (ii) were happy to advocate state action so long as there was little prospect that it would impair their own welfare, or (iii) were genuine humanitarians.
(c) [Collectivism was fuelled by increasing hostility to what was regarded as a competitive, materialistic, capitalist society & its bitter fruits: waste, poverty, gross inequality & the infliction of social costs. It is impossible here to do more than indicate in summary fashion some of the leading thinkers & movements that were involved the See the box
| Anti-Capitalism, 1885-1910: That capitalism had not succeeded in eliminating the problem of poverty was shown by Charles Booth & the estimate that in 1888 30.7% of the population of London were in this condition Ensor p301. In Chicago Booth’s investigations were followed up at Hull House & here again the extent of inner city deprivation was revealed Glennerster p85. The statistical message was intensified by Upton Sinclair in his novel The Jungle,1906, which was an expose of the stock yards in Chicago, the condition employment, & the low standards of hygiene Morison p819. Graphic depictions of conditions in London had been penned in the mid-1890s by Arthur Morrison (Tales of Mean Streets & A Child of the Jago) & drawn by Herkomer, Fildes & Holl for The Graphic Gillett p101. Meanwhile the rich wasted their incomes on conspicuous consumption as Veblen argued in The Theory of the Leisure Class, 1899, & as William Morris had earlier thundered Morris p121. Competition led to the waste of national resources in what Sidney & Beatrice Webb termed the Parasitic Trades, by which they meant such industries as garment making & dock labour. Here inadequate wages resulted in deteriorating physique, intelligence & character SBW pp 749-66. The root cause of the problem, as seen by those on the left, was the profit motive & competition, which Morris called “War”. About this all -& they ranged from the Fabian Society to Marx- were agreed, though they disagreed about all else Morris p160, Wells1934 pp 248-51. A notable result of unbridled competition was the housing problem. It was not only the slums but also urban sprawl & the despoliation of the countryside which aroused concern. H. G. Wells in the The New Machiavelli wrote a moving account of the destruction of a small market town & the beautiful river landscape in which it was situated. This was fiction but it was based on fact Wells1911 pp 33-42, 429. [In America during the Progressive era a conservation movement came into existence] & steps were taken to prevent the wholesale felling of virgin forest & the waste of natural resources, as well as to create further national parks Morison pp 819-20. What was required in place of competition, waste, muddle & ugliness –or so the town planners, advocates of garden cities, & utopians of all types believed- was a rational & ordered society Hughes1991 Ch 4, Wells 1911 p41, Morris pp 131-2, 141. [This was yet another aspect of the pursuit of purity: the underlying aim of the Modern Movement.] |
(d) It may be questioned whether artists were aware of the criticisms of competitive capitalism that were being made during the latter 19th & early 20th centuries. It is doubtful whether they would have diligently read the books that have been cited. However, a not inconsiderable proportion of were Anarchists & Kandinsky said that the bulk of painters were Socialists Kandinsky pp 10-11, Woodcock p286. Moreover there was a clear nexus between hostility to the current capitalist system & the world of art. This is illustrated by the Arts & Crafts Movement & in particular the Guild & School of Handicraft in Great Britain. There was also an important
| The Guild & School of Handicraft was founded in 1888 by Charles Ashbee & was the outcome of his Socialism, which was a common faith among many Arts & Crafts members. He wanted to rescue East London craftsmen from the economic hazards & tyranny of commercial practice, & the Guild was intended to be a self-governing co-operative workshop venture in which profits were shared. In 1902, inspired by concern over degeneracy in cities, the workshop moved into the country, but it failed in 1907 because, when trade declined, workers were not laid off Farr pp 137, 179-80, Grove12 pp 594-5 |
movement in America & here too its members were concerned with the effects of industrialisation & urbanization, & tended to have a progressive ideology Bjelajac p230. The British example inspired an Art & Crafts movement in Belgium where, inspired by Ruskin & Morris, Henry Van de Velde, who was a Socialist, & his friend the architect & designer Serrurier-Bovy were leading figures Grove2 p570, & 28 p482.
[However, the most telling evidence of the connection between hostility to capitalist society & the emergence of the modern movement is Kandinsky’s book] Concerning the Spiritual in Art. This commenced with an attack on what he described as “the nightmare of materialism” which had turned life into an evil & useless game. Artists motivated by the hope for material reward, do their best to satisfy vanity & greed. Instead of co-operating they engage in vicious competition and those that succeed resort to any stratagem to entrench themselves Kandinsky pp 2-4, 8.
The few who believed in art for art’s sake failed to use their talents to the full because of their preoccupation with external, not internal, [spiritual] beauty. Kandinsky distinguished various groups more or less contemporary groups who sought an inner [spirituality] by way of an outer: Burne-Jones & other followers of Rossetti, Bocklin & his school, & also Segantini. Moreover Cezanne was able to divine within an object that which was internal & alive within. Matisse only required an object as a starting point in his search for the divine through form & colour; & Picasso had in his Cubist works subverted the object, though he retained the appearance of matter. Purely abstract forms were beyond the reach of the artist at that time Kandinsky pp 17-18, 30. [These, however, were clearly what inspired Kandinsky for materialism & material objects were the enemy.] See Colour, Its Use & Development in Section 8 under Colour & Emotion for further discussion of Kandinsky’s beliefs.
(d) A class analysis: According to Meyer Schapiro (1936) the concept of art as purely aesthetic & individual, arises where culture is divorced from practical & collective interests & support. It flourishes where, as in Paris, there is a large rentier & leisure class. This is without direct connection with work, machinery & competition. It does not recognise any higher authority, & lacks older & stable forms of family life & sexual morality. The world becomes a spectacle, a source of novel & pleasurable sensation, & a field for individual realisation. This social context influences the tastes of an artistic minority of painters, decorators, collectors, dealers, writers etc. They, together with some active business men & professionals, come to value art as a higher activity. Artists’ early poverty & insecurity often result in Bohemian attitudes but this does not antagonise his patrons who share his contempt for public & practical social life. The ingenuity & joy in transforming & fantasising the familiar is essentially passive & destructive of the visual experience necessary for action ShapiroD pp 123-5. Modernism is the completion of an escape from reality by a few & for a rich few. It is a move into the arid deserts of pure form & neo-mysticism (as foretold by William Morris) Klingender1943 pp 11-2.
(e) The Death of God: “God is dead…And we have killed him…How shall we comfort ourselves… What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent. Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it” Wikip. So said Nietzsche in 1882. The biblical God had been killed by the geologists who showed that the world was not created at a stroke, by Darwin who eliminated Adam & Eve, by German scholars who exposed the contradictions & weaknesses of the Bible story Bury pp 177-80, 191-95. When the Christian God had been removed his place was taken by Spiritualists, who thought they had factual evidence of an afterlife, by Theosophy & other esoteric religions, by art [& by Socialism] Bury p212, etc.
| [Although a full examination of Socialism as a secular religion would be out of place, some illustrations can be given.] Marx & Engels, having spent their lives arguing that capitalism must precede Communism, announced in 1882 that Russia was in the vanguard of the revolution & that it might be possible to avoid the capitalist stage & pass directly from a semi-medieval agricultural system to the higher form of communist common ownership M&E1953 pp13-4. [Another indication that Socialism was essentially a religion faith was] the illuminated portrait of Lenin which was the Beatrice Webb’s shrine which was after her self-proclaimed love affair with Soviet Communism Muggeridge p150, Cole pp 173, 179. [The Webb’s faith in the Soviet Union was endorsed by many who, like the Coles, saw themselves as democratic socialists.] Margaret Cole was impressed by the way in which its population was during the 1930s enthusiastically enjoying the way in which they were constructing a new civilisation Cole pp 167-8, 176-7. |
There was a close connection between Modernism & Theosophy because some prominent abstractionists were believers (Kandinsky, Mondrian), & because an intimate connection was seen between the visual & the spiritual. A number of well illustrated books were published after 1900 on the manifestation of spirituality, in particular Thought Forms by the leading Theosophists Annie Besant & Charles Leadbeater, which was published by the Society in 1905. These books were of great interest to early abstract artists in search of a rationale Gage2006 p217, Grove30 p710, Wikip.
(f) Museums & Universities: Museums switched from brakes on Modernism into its promoters, beginning with MoMA’s creation in 1929, & its line that modernism was an inevitable development from earlier art Hughes1980 pp 366-7. The first exhibition devoted solely to Abstract art took place in 1930 at Circle et Carre at Gallery 23 in Paris OxDicMod. By the mid-60s American museums became the habitat of vanguard art. Sometimes this was necessarily the case because, for instance, Andre’s Equivalent VIII, which was a pile of bricks would be seen as just that anywhere elsewhere Hughes1980 pp 367-9. Modernism was diffused by the American education system. There was an easily teachable line on modernism as a progressive movement Hughes1980 pp 371-2. During the 1970s Modernism became the official culture of America & Europe with greater institutional backing than any living art has had from its society, with the possible exceptions of Rome in the 17th century & Pharonic Egypt Hughes1980 pp 365-6.
Background to the Death of Modernism
During the 1980s the myth of the Avant-Garde died & the belief in a progressive modernist movement was replaced by vague notions of important, cutting edge art. The money sloshing around in the American art market had to go somewhere. Importance came to mean size, pretention & inscrutability with its post-modern recycling of past styles & motifs (Julian Schnabel, David Salle) Hughes1997 pp 597-600, See Avant-Garde.
MODERNISM SOME CRUCIAL FEATURES:
(a) Modernists believed that realist art is dishonest because of its eradication of any clue that the picture is a painted flat surface See Flatness.
(b) Art was less a way of representation than a mode of seeing. This idea was not confined to modernism but was a crucial element. Cezanne wanted to paint like somebody who had never seen a painting, & Picasso tried to unlearn so that he could draw like a child. Kandinsky & Klee found child drawings liberating Brettell p83.
(c) [There was a preoccupation with purity not in a general & overall sense, like beauty, but of a restricted & particular type. This characterised avant-garde painters of the early 20th century (though Whistler pioneered the idea) viz
(i) The Fauves wanted to achieve the most intense & undiluted colour.] Matisse said they “rejected imitative colour & … with pure colour we obtained stronger reactions”. Vlaminck declared that “by using colour of maximum purity” he was aiming to throw an Anarchist bomb Whitfield pp 33, 62.
[(ii) Mondrian aimed at a pure abstraction with] all lines perfectly vertical or horizontal; all shapes square or rectangular; & the primaries, black & white as the only colours Hughes1959 p203.
(iii) Malevich in his Suprematist phase became obsessed, even intoxicated, with the square, the circle & other elementary geometric shapes. These were painted in uniform colour, especially black & red S&K pp 46-53. He asserted (1915) that with Suprematism art had become “new, non-objective, pure” Tate2014 p11
(d) [Those who pioneered Modernism were elitist. They were cultural snobs. Clive Bell said that the mass of mankind would never be capable of making delicate aesthetic judgments. This was partly because it was a peculiar gift but social class was also involved. Bell was particularly contemptuous of the lower middle class with their preference for paintings that no intelligent or cultivated person would call art BellC pp 178-9, 261. Social snobbery was not confined to the Bloomsbury Group. Walter Crane, who was a Socialist, insisted that a son break off his engagement with Dorothy Dene, Leighton’s cockney model WoodC1999 p174. The contempt for those considered uncultured embraced those who did not inherit their wealth, Bell’s imaginary St Georgius Midas who purchased the work of established artists BellC pp 179-80.
[That the Bloomsbury group were cultural snobs who loathed what they regarded as the middlebrow is well known. However, such elitism was a general feature of the modernist movement.] In Germany the Munich Secession of 1892 took place in protest against the decision within the Munchner Kunstlergenoosenshaft that henceforth juries were not to favour particular types of art but were to maintain diversity Turner EtoPM p344.
[Cultural snobbery did not diminish over time.] During 1934-5 Ben Nicholson conducted a purge in the 7+5 Society to remove all those who were not committed to abstraction, Clement Greenberg favoured an exclusive form of art which would have no appeal to a wide public. This also was the aim of Abstract Expressionists. Adolph Gottlieb & Mark Rothko denounced pictures for the home, mantelpiece paintings, social & American scene works Ashton1962 p26.
[Elitism was not an incidental feature of Modernism: it was integral.] Prior to the Post-Impressionist exhibition of 1910-11 Fry said that it would be a great affair & that he was preparing for a huge campaign of outraged British Philistinism. Modernism was a way of limiting the audience for art at a time when it was starting to appeal to a wider public. In this way painting would remain the preserve of the avant-garde Dunlop p135, Nochlin p241.
(e) [When human beings are depicted in modernist works they frequently lack the characteristics which make them human or even animal. At its most extreme this took the form faces that were without features but more often they were distorted or highly stylised. Even more striking was the way in which bodies were cut about & limbs displaced See Dehumanisation of Art.
(f) One of the most obvious features of Modernism has been the frenzied search for what can be regarded as new & innovatory.] This has given rise to a bewildering number of short-lived groupings & a proliferation of “isms” & “neos” Lucie-S1975 pp10-11. [One of the paradoxes of the innovatory, urge & the new groupings to which it has given rise, is that] although there has been an enormous amount of resifting, re-evaluation & re-cycling the Modern Movement has relied on the apparent discoveries of its founding fathers Lucie-S pp10-11. Alan Bowness, the Director of the Tate Gallery, concluded in 1972 that, “the number of original contributions to art made since 1925 is probably very small” when compared to the innovations during the century’s first quarter Bowness p172
National Romanticism, 19th Century. See Section 8
NATIONAL ROMANTICISM, 19th CENTURY See section 8
MUNICH REALISTS/REALISM, 1865-75:
During most of the 18th century, Nature meant (a) all visible phenomena that were not humanly made, or (b) for art it frequently meant the Ideal Form of any species in conformity with Aristotle Hussey p52.
Bellori, who used both meanings, said Nature always “intends consummate beauty” but imperfection arises, particularly due to ageing. Hence the painter should try to imitate God & see beyond “common nature” Hussey pp 52-3. This is an intellectual matter & hence painters’ ability could be gauged by intellect. There is no one Ideal Form but variation according to artists’ purpose. However, according to John Dennis, 1706, arts should repair the disorder & decay of human nature at the Fall & “cure the Disorder of our Passions”.
Shaftesbury in his Characteristics & Plastics identified beauty with reason & virtue as perceived by the intellect through contemplation. Hence he mistrusted pictures with an instant sensuous, visual & non-contemplative appeal. Aesthetic appreciation meant seeing nature’s genuineorder; but he thought man had spoiled it & said (The Moralists, a Rhapsody) he now appreciated rude rocks, mossy caverns & waterfalls & “the horrid Graces of the Wilderness” Hussey pp 53-4
Nazarenes. See Section 9
Palace of Westminster Murals. See Section 6
Painting on the Wall: Was Vermeer the greatest of them all? See Vermeer, Section 1
Was Vermeer so outstanding? See Vermeer, Section 1
Pollock’s Relationship with Lee Krasner. See Section 1 at Pollock
Portraits Classified by Size & Coverage. See Section 3 at Portraits & Portraiture
PICASSO’S PARTNERS & LOVERS: See section 1 at Picasso
POESIE: See Section 1 under Titan
THE POLITICS OF ARTS & CRAFTS: See Modernism in Context in the Section. Pollock Portraits Classified by Size & Coverage. See Section 3 at Portraits & Portraiture
POLLOCK’S RELATIONSHIP WITH LEE KRASNER: See Section 1 at Pollock
NB This entry only covers the theory & “ism” aspect of Postmodernism. For Postmodernist painting see Postmodernist Painting in Section 9
Politics: Postmodernist artists & intellectuals generally regard themselves as progressive & left-wing. They tend to view art & everything else as being political undertakings because they see the world as conditioned by late capitalism & the prolific media communication to which it has given rise Butler pp 2-3
Shadows: Typology after Leonardo: cast, where an object obstructs light; attached, found when something faces away from light; shading, where something appears darker because, though in the light, it receives less due to its being more acutely angled; NB a cast shadow need not be thrown onto a separate surface Baxandall pp 2-4
Landmarks: Coppo di Marcovaldo uses shadows in his San Gimignano Crucifix to produce an atmosphere of suffering, probably in the late 1240s Eimerl p68; 1425 Masaccio paints a cast shadow in S. Peter’s Shadow Healing Gomb1995 pp 21-2; Caravaggio’s Supper at Emmaus lifted the taboo on harsh cast shadow Gomb1995 pp 24, 41
Phases: Giotto generally ignored cast shadows Wolfflin1899 p5. During the High Renaissance & after there was frequent avoidance & dislike of cast shadows, which were thought to impair clarity Gomb1995 pp 19-20, 24, 60. The Nazarenes ignored cast shadows Vaughan1980 p183
Leonardo on: avoid cast shadows by using cloudy/misty light Gomb1995 pp 19, 20
Prostitution in London & Paris.
The Re-interpretation of Winslow Homer. See Section 1 at Homer, Winslow
Term: An early use which concerned painting was by Gustave Planche in a review of the1836 Salon. It was cautiously supportive but concluded that realism was not by itself art. In 1840s and into the 1850s the term was used pejoratively; but in 1855 Courbet published his Realist manifesto, Le Realism TurnerRtoI p269
Meaning: [Realism is yet another ambiguous term. However, the following categories can be usefully] distinguished:
(a) The depiction of the ordinary, everyday events & people as opposed to scenes privileged people & moments, or what has been termed “domestic realism”;
(b) Paintings in a style that creates the illusion that they were not being paintings, “deceptive realism”;
(c) The distortion of outward reality in order to better express what is within, e.g., in a portrait, “psychological realism” BurkeP p25
Features: [A conspectus definition of Realism of the domestic variety would comprise:]
(a) The attempt to provide an objective & accurate depiction of a scene, as opposed to its idealisation or the choice of conventionally beautiful objects;
(b) Except for pure landscape & still-life, there is a concentration on the modern life activities of common or lower class people, ie genre painting;
(c) The impartial treatment, either real or apparent, of what is depicted &, in particular, the absence of an overt political or social message OxDicArt; OxCompArt; L&L; Nochlin1971 p13.
| Varieties of Realism. This as previously defined, is to be distinguished from the following:
(a) The medieval philosophic usage which means the representation of universals rather than particulars L&L; (b) Illusionism which is the convincing imaginative depiction of that which cannot have been seen by the eye, e.g., supernatural events & angels Kitson1966 p15; (c) Chiaroscuro so extreme that it does not naturally occur, hence Caravaggesque paintings cannot (pace Kitson) properly be termed Realism Kitson1966 p9; (d) Naturalism [which is an extreme form of realism characterised by exact matching, and harmony of, tones, etc]; (e) Photographic representation because, for instance, of the need to exaggerate in order to convey an impression, e.g., looming trees; the way in which photos often make perspective appear unrealistic; the way photos can give a misleading & untypical impression of faces; the need to darken & lighten areas in order to achieve sufficient tonal contrast; (f) The Uncanny (unheimlich in Germany). Where artists deliberately make otherwise realistic paintings look strange & disturbing by compositional means it is highly questionable whether they should be described as realistic. However, where a picture is disturbing due to its subject matter, as in a painting of a pit continuing dead bodies at a Nazi extermination camp, it can legitimately be termed Realism. What is being referred to here is a sense of uncanniness, induced by unusual structural features, e.g., perspectival tricks, looming shadows, etc] Prendiville pp 55-6, See also Neue Sacklichkeit. |
Problems: [The previous conspectus definition although helpful is not problem free Nochlin1971 p13.
(i) Perhaps the most obvious difficulty is what is meant by “modern life”. Dutch 17th century painting appears to be realist & is frequently so described e.g., Kitson1966 p103. However, it obviously deals with scenes that were contemporaneous but do not relate to the modern era. Furthermore many of them are not impartial because of the way in which they poke fun &/or contain a moral message Fuchs Ch2.
(ii) This raises the question of what is meant by “impartial”. The great Realist painters of the 19th century did not regard themselves as being impartial in the sense of being politically or morally uncommitted. They were anything but disinterested. Courbet was an avowed Socialist &, although Millet [denied being one], he certainly knew whose side he was on: that of the rural poor L&L, Bouret pp 217-8. What these & other 19th century Realists meant by the term was honest & sincere depiction, certainly in the case of those who were not upper class, together with an attempt not to idealise or elevate. They thought unvarnished facts were themselves a convincing message Nochlin1971 pp 34-6.
(iii) The inclusion, even within realism of the strictest type, of paintings which depict events that are not of any everyday type & involve members of the privileged classes Nochlin1971 pp 30-1
The realist art that began around the mid-19th century had an important distinguishing feature: the depiction of an instant in time & without any indication of what had happened & would happen See Realism, French from around 1850.
A Caveat
[Although Realists aim at objective portrayal & try not to idealise, this does not necessarily mean that the greatest realist pictures do not possess a force which is above and beyond reality. Freedberg, referring to Titian’s Gypsy Madonna, says that “the optical illusion of existence is so powerfully intense that it transcends the existence it describes, & assumes the status of idea – of sheerly pictorial, aesthetic fact, more than it is the counterfeit of a fact of nature” Freedberg p94. Perhaps this picture should not be described as Realist, but Freedberg’s comment applies to other paintings that certainly qualify, for instance Sargent’s Portrait of Madame X.]
Development: The early Flemish painters are often thought to have pioneered realism & Van Eyck has even been described as extremely naturalistic Nash pp 35-6, Birren p232. The differentiation of separate realistic genres began in Italy, although they were only regarded as elements within History Painting. However in early 17th century Netherlands, where the pressures of art history were smaller, landscape, genre & still-life gained independence, but there was no serious theoretical discussion, & the paining of still-life was disparaged Fuchs pp 36, 104.
In France Jeaurat [anticipated 19th century realism] with the stark paintings of the seamier side of Parisian life that he produced from the late 1740s Wakefield p132. Almost a century later realism during the mid-1830s the realist movement was heralded by Philippe Jeanron’s Peasants from the Limousin, as well as by Planche’ use of the term. However, Jeanron’s work & that of other realists was tinged with romanticism RtoI pp 269-70, Weisberg1982 p19.
[It was in Britain that 19th century Realism was launched] with Wilkie’s Distraining for Rent, 1815. [Its British origin may seem surprising but it must be remembered that] in France the Academy was a conservative force Weisberg1982 p15.
THE RE-INTERPRETATION OF WINSLOW HOMER: See Section 1 at Homer, Winslow
The 1730s as a Turning Point. See Section 9
In the 17th & 18th centuries it was assumed that visual perception was stable & undisturbed by subjectivity. However, in the 19th century it was found that the eye was simply an instrument for receiving light & for registering stimuli. These were then transmitted to the brain where perception & understanding actually occurred. That the eye could be an unreliable window was shown by afterimages & optical illusions. By the late 19th century it was widely accepted by scientists & the educated public that the mind could interpret, augment & transcend the inadequate & distorted evidence of the senses Burns pp 129-30. In 1867 von Helmholtz identified unconscious inference by which he meant the involuntary & reflex-like mechanism which forms part of the formation of visual impressions Wikip. In the new psychology of William James & John Dewey the mind was seen as actively engaged with the environment & not merely as a passive receptor Burns p132
SOCIAL HISTORY OF ART SINCE 1970
The SPEAKING LIKENESS & REALISM ENHANCED
The term Speaking Likeness was used by the art historian Alastair Smart in his study of the Scottish painter Alan Ramsay to indicate a lack of surprise if, when Ramsay’s work is being viewed, the picture was to start speaking. Smart referred to the Speaking Likeness as a new development in 18th century British portraiture for which Ramsay & Hogarth were responsible Smart p55. [However, it was also part of a much more extensive category, first alluded to by Pliney the Elder. To qualify as Enhanced Realism a figurative work must make a striking, obvious & virtually undeniable impact. This may arise, as in a Crucifixion because it has a direct emotional appeal, or it must somehow create a visual impression more vivid, real, arresting & hypnotic than the one that would be obtained by actually looking at what is being depicted. (It would perhaps have been preferable to have to have called this type of painting Magic Realism, Superrealism or Hyperrealism but all these terms have been used for other very different types of painting See Magic Realism, & also Superrealism & Hyperrealism in Section 8.) Enhanced Realism, to cite a few leading artists, was what Raphael, Vermeer, Alan Ramsey, Rossetti, George Clausen, Sargent & Christian Schad achieved in their best work. It was a feature of the earlier phase of Pre-Raphaelite painting with Rossetti’s [as in] 1866 portrait of Alexa Wilding, Monna Vanna (Tate Gallery) being a particularly good example. During the 1920s Speaking Portraits of a magical type were painted by the German Neue Schlockiest artists. Here Christian Schad’s Self-Portrait, 1927 (Tate Gallery) is outstanding. Enhanced Realist works continue to be painted, viz [the as in] Paula Rego’s Girdle, 1995 (Paula Rego & Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, Porto). The way in which these & other artists enhanced their paintings was not uniform but they variously include a direct gaze, clarity of form, striking colour, paintwork of a bravura nature & eroticism See L&P pp 40, 145, 157, 159, Hayes1991 p141, Fairbrother p73, etc. In some way or other they all such paintings create a striking visual impact &, once alerted to paintings of this type, one that is not too difficult to spot.
STURM UND DRANG OR STORM & STRESS:
This is the name, taken from an absurd Romantic drama, given to a period of German literary ferment at the end of the 18th century. Inspired by Rousseau’s idealism, it was a revolt against literary conventions, particularly the unities, & featured the cult of genius & a return to nature. Leading figures were the young Goethe, Herder & Schiller OxCompEng.
Although the Sturm und Drang writers were contemptuous of French art, particularly its drama, this did not reflect a nationalistic spirit. They merely emphasised the criticisms of middle-class French writers such as Diderot & Mercier. Their hostility was directed against the Frenchified culture of the German aristocracy whom they painted as corrupt, arrogant & privileged They saw the rising middle class from which they came as unhappy but virtuous, albeit somewhat narrow & servile due to unfavourable social conditions. Although they were class-conscious & may sound revolutionary they never criticised the princely rulers. They always blamed his advisers & there is never any incitement to political revolt Bruford pp 315-9.
Sturm und Drang was a literary movement & the only artist who belonged to the movement was Friedrich Muller Antal1962 p162. However, it had an enormous influence on painting, Sturm und Drang brought a new emotionalism to European art with its sometimes extremely subjective & volcanic eruptions Antal1956 pp 67, 192. In Goethe’s novel The Sorrows of the Young Werther, 1774, the young artist, melancholy & ill at ease with society, is hopelessly in love with an engaged woman. He ends by committing suicide. It caused a sensation throughout Europe & young men wore blue coats & yellow breeches in imitation of Werther OxCompEng pp 398, 1056. Fuseli was closely associated with the partisans of Sturm & Drang & has been treated as an extreme representative of the movement Antal1962 pp 12-3, 22.
The Turning Point around 1740. See Section 9 at British Golden Age & Grand Manner
SUICIDE, INSANITY & HOMOSEXUALITY AMONG PAINTERS:
General: Artists are prone to suicide: working alone & consequent self-doubt. Hazlitt thought they broke up at c40 due to disappointed hopes & then starvation or drink HookP pp 87-8. The psychologist Andrew Steptoe analysed the biographical details of 83 Renaissance painters, & 40 sculptors & architects, who appeared in Vasari. He found that depressive tendencies & eccentricities were relatively uncommon. The most common traits were studiousness & courtesy. Among those artists whom Vasari judged to be truly great the initial pattern was even more pronounced. However, a survey of 36 British & Irish poets born between 1705 & 1805 found that there was a strikingly high rate of mood disorders, suicide & institutionalisation. Less than a quarter were symptom free Robinson pp 58-61. [Although there appears to be no corresponding study of painters, there were many notable cases of extreme behaviour during the Romantic era & 19th century.] They included Carstens, Gros, Hayden, Gericault, Landseer, Wilkie, Rethel, Dadd, Rossetti, Simeon Solomon, Van Gogh & Whistler L&L
(a) Suicide: Abbot; da Volpedo; Dora Carrington; John Currie; Faruffini; Vivian Forbes; Gerstl; Gertler; Godward; Gros; Carl Ludwig Hackert; Haydon; Jongkind; Kitaj; Lightfoot; Alfred Maurer; Constance Mayer; Bernard Meninsky; Minton; Louis Robert; Sage; Sir Charles Sage; Ernst Stohr; Cornelis Van Cleve, Van Gogh; Testa; Henry Tilson; Keith Vaughan; Christopher Wood; Woodville. Suicide attempts were made by Kubin & Rossetti Here & following See Section 1 above, also W&M p180, Baron p91, Grove14 p16, Imperial WM
(b) Insanity/Mental Illness: Blechen; John Robert Cozens; Ciurlionis; Dadd; de Hooch; Fedotov; Gericault; Kirchner; Landseer; Marilhat; Meyron; Rethel; Van Gogh; Jacob Solomonsz Van Ruydael; Vrubel HookP p55 etc
(c) Seriously Mentally Disturbed , including Depression: Ernst; George Hunter, Josephson; Masson; Pollock; Schuch; Wright of Derby
(d) Breakdowns: Hilda Carline; Kuhn (died in an asylum); Nevinson; Wilkie, E. M. Ward who may have committed suicide
(d) Homosexuality: Bacon; Rosa Bonheur; Jessica Dismoor; Rainer Fetting; Vivian Forbes; Gluck; Duncan Grant; Michelangelo; Minton; Reni; Glyn Philpot; Salome; Sodema; Simeon Solomon; Vaughan
(e) Siphilis: Toulouse-Lautrec
(f) Illegitimate children: Lucian Freud; & Klimt with 14 or more
SYMBOLIC & VISIONARY PAINTING: Textual Material in Support of Non-flattering References to Cubism. See Section 9
THOMPSONISM. See Section 9 at British Golden Age & Grand Manner
Was Courbet Really a Realist? See Section 1 at Courbet
Why Was British Art So Unlike Dutch Golden Age Painting? See Section 10 at British & Irish Painting
The Turning Point around 1740. See Section 9 at British Golden Age & Grand Manner
[Include material from Warner in the Background sub-section. There is a serious overlap with the Early Italian Renaissance]
General: The Virgin is the foremost subject of Christian art DaviesN p301. Depictions are of two general types. First, there are narrative paintings which show her taking part in scenes from the Bible or Apocryphal Gospels. Second, there are paintings where almost nothing is happening & the Virgin is presented as an object of worship, reverence or devotion. Here she appears in her role as the Madonna or, as known in Eastern Orthodoxy, Theotokos Murrays1996 p340.
Background: Mother & Child images had long existed in pagan religions, notably Isis holding Horus in her lap HallDic p323. Initially the Marian cult had to overcome some opposition due to the the church’s hostility to women & the blame that was placed on Eve for her role in the expulsion from Eden & the consequent Fall HallDic p323, Warner pp 54-6.. There was even debate as to whether Mary could properly be called Mother of God, but in 431 this view, as held by Nestorius, was condemned at the first Council of Ephesus HallDic p323. However Mary was seemingly tainted the Fall & Original Sin. This was denied by St Augustine in his City of God (413-26) in which he attacked Pelagius who had attributed the Fall to God’s gift of free will. Augustine believed in Original Sin but exempted Mary because of her virginity.
| Augustine on Original Sin: He attributed this to concupiscence (sexual desire) which was necessary for copulation & could not be quelled by the will. Augustine thought that Original Sin was either transmitted to the body through the genitals during intercourse or the sin of passion stained the child while copulation was in progress Warner pp 53-4. However, Mary was without Original Sin because she was “conceived as a virgin, gave birth as a virgin & stayed virgin forever” Wikip. The celebration of virginity by the Christian fathers was not confined to Augustine & distrust of the flesh was a feature both of St Paul & of the philosophical systems abroad in the turmoil of Rome’s decline Warner pp 55-8. Gregory was clear that although the sexual act is innocent, desire is evil. (He dealt with the seeming contradiction between a wicked impulse leading to an innocent act by saying that a righteous rebuke delivered in anger is itself morally wrong.) Such views were modified during the later Middle Ages when scholastics conseeded that innocent sexuality was possible. However, while carnal desire & pleasure became more or less acceptable, passion (& even love) remained evil because for St Thomas Aquinas they involve the suspension of intellectual activity LewisCS pp 13-8. |
Development: Majestic images of Mary became widespread in the West during the 7th century & by the 13th century Maryiolatry had developed, this being a post-Crusade era of religious ardour. Medieval theologians who inspired this were Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-53) & St Bernard, a source for much of the Virgin’s imagery. [For a long period the Virgin was, even in the West, simply an icon, a window to the transcendental, or she was a remote Queen of Heaven. However she was gradually brought down to earth & humanised. The Virgin was now shown as a grieving mother in the pietas which began appearing in the West from the end of the 13th century; as a mother attending to her child rather than simply holding or displaying it; as a mother suckling her child; & above all as part of what looked like a normal family with an earthly father],as in Raphael’s Holy Families BuckH Pls 37, 38. [She was even ocassionally shown as pregnant.] After c1450 Madonna & Child groups lost their icon-like quality, & the Renaissance saw the development of less formal images including the Madonna of Humility. with the Virgin seated on the ground Murrays1996, HallDic pp 323-4.
Images of Veneration, included:
(a) Icon-type paintings whether small or large in which the Virgin is sometimes alone, as in images of her standing with her arms raised as if praying (Virgin Orans or Theotokos Blachernistissa), a pose which first appeared in Rome in the 3rd century. However, the Christ Child is usually present. In the Platytera he is enclosed in a roundish space (Clipeus) on her chest alluding to his birth but stressing his divine nature. However, usually she has the child in her arms or on her lap. She is often enthroned, wears a large viel (maphorion) & looks sad (this not being an image of tender motherhood). In the North was the viel rare, being replaced by a crown etc Murrays1996 pp 313, 331-2, 340, 342. Images of Mary as an icon were prevalent in Byzantium where adherence to an established iconic type was of prime importance & religious leaders who visited Italy were highly critical of the innovations which they encountered Murrays1996 p311.
| Byzantine images (Panagia Nikopoia) divide into the more severe version (Theotokos Nicopoia), which was important in the struggle against the Arian heresy, & a less formal type (Theotokos Hodeteria) in which the Virgin points to the child. Other versions include the Theotokos Elousa (compassionate) where the gesture between the mother & son is tender & affectionate; & the Glycopilousa (loving) where the child embraces her. The Elousa was popular from the 8th century onwards & the more human type became the most common image of the Virgin in the East, & also in the West where they are found from around 600. |
Their frequency & tenderness increased under Franciscan influence, with the severe type becoming rare after the 13thcentury. Guido da Siena, Cimabue, Giotto & Ducio all painted images of this type Murrays1996 pp 312-3, 315. [This snippet which followed on from the boxed section needs to be fitted in.]
(b) In large works known as Maestas (Italian for majesty) the Virgin & Child are closely surrounded by saints & angels; & when very large are known as Regina Coeli or the Queen of Heaven HallDic p329; Murrays1959 p315. Queen of Heaven pictures date back to the Ravenna mosaics & were later painted by Giotto, Simone Martini & Lorenzetti HallDic p329, Murrays p315. In late medieval & early Renaissance times Saints & donors were typically placed in separate compartments or panels. During the 14th & 15th centuries the representation became unified in the Sacra Conversazione HallDic p331 [This overlapps with the separate section on the Maesta]
Depiction: [Wanted a passage saying how unbeautiful the Virgin looks in icons with her long narrow straight (or gently convex) nose over a thin mouth set in a face without cheek bones eg Rice pp 376-7. See also Burchardt1894 p42] The Renaissance tradition was to show Mary as the current model of feminine beauty. For Raphael she was the ideal of grace, beauty & elegance, sensuous but not erotic. However, Parmigiianino depicted her (Madonna of the Rose) in a see through dress with visible nipples Hall1999 p118
See also The Assumtion
The Hagiastorissa (Holy Sorrow) or Maria Deomene
The Holy Family
The Immaculate Conception
Madonna Dolorosa
The Madonna Expectans
The Madonna Lactans, Madonna del Latte, or Theotokos Galktotrophousa
Pietra
The Virgin of the Rosary
WOMEN: EARLY & MID-VICTORIAN / ANGEL IN THE HOUSE:
Term: Angel in the House is the title of Coventry Patmore’s sequential poems & prose (1854-61) celebrating married love. Here Felix courts & weds Honoria, a dean’s daughter. Then his former rival Frederick marries Jane, learning to love her before her early death. The work combines high-flown sentiment & banal middle-class life. The poems were immensely popular, though mocked by Swinburne & others OxDicEng p28. Angel in the House epitomises the conventional view of women during the early & mid-Victorian period, & which continued thereafter.
Background: In previous eras there had been a fusion of the domestic & business worlds. Women were often responsible for business accounts, the purchase of raw materials, & the dairy or poultry yards. During the 18th century there was a tendency for wives to withdraw when the household was sufficiently affluent, & the pace quickened during first half of the 19th century. Separation of home & work was driven less by the factory system (the first generation of manufacturers often lived on the spot to oversee their businesses) than by the growth of towns. Central areas became less attractive as living places & improvements in transport (railways & by the 1850s horse-driven omnibuses) facilitated commuting. Even on farms, there was a growing prejudice against women being involved in business activities Tosh pp 14-18.
Accelerating economic development increased the demand for capital & idle, dressy wives demonstrated that husbands were credit-worthy Dijkstra p7. Homes became havens & wives the guardian angels for husbands who were battling in the predatory market place. The Women of England: Their Social Duties & Domestic Habits, 1839, by Sarah Ellis is an example of handbooks for women. Ellis explicitly argued that wives should, despite the limitations of their sex, provide spiritual havens for husbands engaged in the destroying world of trade & manufacture. Ruskin in Sesame & Lilies, 1865, said that women, unsuited for invention & creation, should turn homes into temples of the hearth Dijkstra pp 8-9, 11, 13. It is even argued by Dijkstra that husbands, driven by ever-increasing competitive pressure & deprived of energy, readily believed that women were sexually inert Dijkstra p68.
Sexuality: The belief that female sexuality was weak was reinforced by the discovery in the 1840s that female orgasm was unnecessary for conception. The absence of passion was already seen as an attribute of respectable females in bourgeois circles when, in 1857, Dr William Acton declared that most women were not much troubled by sexual feelings & only submitted to their husbands in order to please them. Sexual feelings were largely confined to whores & mistresses. This view did not pass unchallenged. It was not endorsed by James Paget (consulting surgeon to Queen Victoria) or by Elizabeth Blackwell (England’s first woman doctor), who believed that female sexuality was as strong as that of men. Nevertheless Acton’s books went through many editions & were frequently cited Tosh p44, Himmelfarb pp 73-5.
Invalidism: Authors of widely differing types observed that ill-health, real or imagined, had increased among middle class women. A cult of female invalidism developed. It was promoted by writers (Patmore & Michelet), observed by novelists (Elizabeth Gaskell), & deplored by female critics: Lynn Lynton in Britain & Abba Woolston in the United States. The latter entitled a Chapter in her book Woman in American Society (1873) “Invalidism as a Pursuit”. It became increasingly frequent for even normal health & physical vigour to be considered unnatural & unfeminine. It was believed that every year women were taking less physical exercise & it was certainly the case that, until the late Victorian era, women’s dress increasingly inhibited physical activity Dijkstra pp 25-31
Depictions: Paintings that were, in one way or another, seemingly inspired by an ‘Angel in the House’ view of women took a wide variety of forms. Pride of place must be accorded to Home Sweet Home pictures (by Frith, Martineau etc) which were the commonest form of Victorian narrative paintings WoodC1976 pp 59-62. Women were pictured as angels or nuns (Collins) & as Madonna figures (Thayer, Gotch, Watts) Dijkstra pp 12-13, 17-21. They were shown up to their necks in flowers (Reid) Dijkstra pp 14-15. Female illness & invalidism was a frequent subject (Dicksee, Larson, Roll) Dijkstra pp 30-34. There was the related subject of female madness caused by inability to sacrifice oneself like Tennyson’s Lady of Shalott & Elaine (Hunt, Waterhouse) or of Ophelias mad through devotion (Hughes, Millais, Redgrave, Henrietta Rae, Louise Jopling, Hebert, Jules-Elie Delaunay, Dagnan-Bouveret) Dijkstra pp 37-46. Other examples of female insanity both literary & without pretext were also prevalent (Hunt, John White Alexander, Frederick Sandys) Dijkstra pp 46-9. Some women had a passive erotic appeal & were dead (Paton) or they were in deep death-like sleep: passively sensual, unthreatening, & pleasurably appealing (various minor artists) Dijkstra pp 58-63.
For the late Victorian period & after see Femme Fatale
WOMEN: LATE VICTORIAN & EDWARDIAN:
The Zambaco Affair. See Section 1 at Burne-Jones