Posts Tagged ‘avant-garde’

Feb
03
2012

“Modernist Painting” by Clement Greenberg

THE MODERNISM OF MODERNIST PAINTING, 1960/1 

Clement Greenberg’s “Modernist Painting,” originally given as a radio broadcast in 1916 for the Voice of America’s “Forum Lectures,” was printed in 1961 in the Arts Yearbook 4 of the same year, reprinted in 1965, ’66, ‘74, ’78, and 1982.   The article achieved a canonical status and served as one of the definitive statements of formalism as a mode of visual analysis and of formalism as a critical stance, and possibly, of formalism as a mode of making art.   In his 1961 essay on “Modernist Painting,” Clement Greenberg (1909-1994) defined “Modernism” as the period (in art) roughly from the mid-1850s to his present that displayed a self-critical tendency in the arts.

Greenberg considered Immanuel  Kant the first Modernist.  The essence of Kant’s thesis was the employment of the characteristic “methods” of the discipline to “criticize the discipline itself.”  According to Greenberg, Kant used logic to establish “the limits of logic.”  The Modernist goal of self-criticism grows out of the critical spirit of the Enlightenment philosophical system which was based upon the belief in the power of rational thought and human reason. “Critique,” as a method, analyzes from the inside, from within the object being examined and does not judge from the outside, according to external criteria.

Painting must analyze itself to discover its inherent properties. Painting, according to Enlightenment methodology, must be interrogated according to its inherent purposes.  The key term here would be “inherent,” for analyzing an object according to its essential definition must preclude bringing forward any non-essential or external criteria. In other words, a painting telling a “good story” is not necessarily a good painting.   In this article, Greenberg carries on his attempt to “save” and to define “high art,” and “Modernist Painting” of 1960 can be compared to “Avant-Garde and Kitsch” of 1939.  Two decades had passed and Greenberg had progressed from being an up-and-coming art writer to being the arbiter of fine arts in New York, enjoying a truly hegemonic position.  His crusade was all the more urgent in 1961, as territory of the avant-garde was being invaded by popular culture and the forces of disrule, exemplified by Neo-Dada and Pop Art and Fluxus.  Greenberg had also shifted his political position, from being an intellectual Marxist, to being a Kantian formalist, a far safer situation which removes the critic and art from current cultural considerations.

Greenberg stated that art can “save” itself from being entertainment by demonstrating that the experience it provides is “unobtainable from any other source.” It is the task of art to demonstrate that which is “unique” and “irreducible”, particular or peculiar to art and that which determines the operation peculiar and exclusive to itself.  All effects borrowed from any other medium must be eliminated, rendering the art form pure.  “Purity” becomes a guarantee of “quality” and “independence” of avant-garde art.  All extrinsic effects should be eliminated from painting.

One could say that it is not the essential to the definition of a painting that it re-create the world realistically.  Today, that role can be fulfilled by photography or film.  Film and theater are defined by storytelling and narrative, enhanced by illusions of everyday reality.  Following Greenberg’s line of reasoning, realism and story telling and illusionism should be eliminated from painting.   For Greenberg, art was used to call attention to art.  Clement Greenberg logically worked out the limitations and peculiarities of painting, which are a flat surface, the shape of the support and the properties of the pigment. These physical and material limiting conditions became positive factors.

Once suppressed by artists through under-painting and glazing, these material aspects of painting were now acknowledged by Modernist painters.  Because he appeared to have considered and taken into account the limitations of painting as the application of paint upon a flat surface, or a stretched canvas, Édouard Manet is designated by Greenberg as the first Modernist artist.  Manet “declared the surface;” his follower, Paul Cézanne, fit the drawing and design into the rectangle of the painting.  In Modernist painting, the spectator is made aware of the flatness and sees the picture first, before noting the content.

Modernist painting abandoned the principle of representation of Renaissance illusionistic space inhabited by three-dimensional objects, giving the effect of looking through the canvas into a world beyond. Modernist painting resists the sculptural, which is suppressed or expelled.  The question is that of a purely optical experience.  With Greenberg, flatness alone is unique to painting.  For this critic, “art” carries within itself its own teleology.  As art seeks self-definition and determines its own uniqueness, it becomes more pure, more reductive in its means.  More is eliminated—subject matter, content, figuration, illusionism, narrative—and art becomes independent, detached, and non-objective, that is, abstract.  Content becomes completely dissolved into form.  Greenberg, in looking back selectively at the history of art, presented a map of progress and evolution of painting, away from representation and toward purity, abstraction, reductiveness; to flatness, to pure color, to simple forms that reflected the shape of the surface.

The essay noted that Modernism “resists sculpture” or three-dimensionality and reminded the reader that this “resistance” was by no mean recent. The critic pointed to Jacques-Louis David as an example of an artist whose work was flat and surface based.  Greenberg insisted that the scientific method justified the demand that painting (and art) limit itself to “what is given in visual experience.”   Greenberg equated the artist to the scientists, both of whom “test” and experiment.  The equation of art with science, replaces his earlier equation of the avant-garde with politics:  “…a superior culture is inherently a more critical culture.”  One can “only look” at a work of visual art, which is discernible only to the “eye.”  Poetry is “literary,” art is not and should not attempt to be, for as Greenberg reminded us, any translation of the literary into the visual “loses” the literary qualities.

Like Avant-garde and Kitsch, Modernist Painting, had a subtext, Enlightenment philosophy, especially that of Kant’s Critique of Judgment.  The 1939 article concerned itself with aesthetics but more with the “experience” of the aesthetic.  In Avant-garde and Kitsch, it is possible to believe that Greenberg was writing of the experience of the aesthetic in terms of the placement of art in the culture, in other words, it is not so much the “how” of the experience but of the “where” of the aesthetic.  In Modernist Painting, the experience of the aesthetic is located in the realm of the how one looks at a work of art.

The proper attitude of the spectator was important to Kant who recommended a posture of detachment from personal desire and indifference to artistic content in search of a universal means of judging the efficacy of art.  The Enlightenment philosophy cherished the idea of the universal or the absolute, for some kind of standard had to be erected to replace the all-knowing presence of the now-banished God.  Kant was not interested in defining what “art” was but in establishing the ground for the judgment of art.  Working in the new philosophical field, aesthetics, Kant attempted to establish the epistemology of art, based, not in individual works but in a method of knowledge.

Greenberg’s understanding of Kant led him to use the methodology of critique but the critic took “critique” in a rather different direction.  Writing two centuries after the German philosopher, Greenberg looked backwards in time and implied another favorite Enlightenment idea, that of progress.  Modernist art, if one understands the essay correctly, seems to “progress” and move forward in time, away from manifestations of extrinsic properties and towards a purity of means.  “Modernist art develops out of the past without gap or break, and wherever it ends up, it will never stop being intelligible in terms of the continuity of art.”

The ground has shifted away from a means of judgment (Kant) to a theory of the evolution of art along telelogical lines with a goal in mind: purity.  Even though as Greenberg pointed out, “The first mark made on the canvas destroys its virtual flatness,” purity seems to imply a historical rejection of representation and a validation of abstraction. The point of noting Greenberg’s development of Kantian theory and its application toward Modernist Painting is that, without the notion of progress, the critic’s theory of artistic development would have to include some of the masters of flatness, such as William Bourguereau and some of the masters of the surface such as Thomas Kincaide, both of whom Greenberg would have excluded from the family tree of modernism.

While Kant would at least judge these two artists (and perhaps find them wanting), Greenberg seems to imply a connection between Modernism and the avant-garde and establish ground for exclusion of the unworthy. The oppositions of the dialectic are implied: those who did not follow the path of Modernist reductionism were, like dinosaurs, left behind.  If one reads in a connection between Modernism and the avant-garde, even if only through the names of the canonical artists Greenberg mentioned and thought his previous articles, then the conflation between the continuity of art and the avant-garde, which supposedly breaks with the past, becomes rather awkward.     Indeed, Greenberg does not mention the avant-garde, he uses the term “authentic art,” instead.

“Nothing could be further from the authentic art of our time than the idea of a rupture of continuity.  Art is, among many other things, continuity.  Without the past of art, and without the need and compulsion to maintain past standards of excellence, such a thing as modernist art would be impossible,” Greenberg stated.

However, as pointed out in his earlier work, Greenberg refused to connect the avant-garde with a rejection of the past: “…the true and most important function of the avant-garde was not to ‘experiment’ but to find a path along which it would be possible to keep culture moving…” (Greenberg’s italics).  The underlying continuity of the two articles can be seen in the precursor remark in the 1939 writing on the role of the avant-garde artist: “’Art for art’s sake’ and ‘pure poetry’ appear, and subject matter or content becomes something to be avoided like the plague.” Given the openness of the construction of this essay and the plurality of texts mobilized by Greenberg, it is no wonder that “Modernist Painting” lent itself to so many causes, whether as a rallying point or as a bête noir.

If you have found this material useful, please give credit to

Dr. Jeanne S. M. Willette and Art History Unstuffed.   Thank you.

info@arthistoryunstuffed.com

 

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Mar
05
2010

Podcast 15 French Romanticism: Delacroix, Part Two

DELACROIX THE CONSERVATIVE

The art of Eugene Delacroix was uniquely suited to his time. In an era of imperialism and colonialism through conquest, his exciting art captured the violence of a turbulent age. Like all artists of the Romantic era, Delacroix was fascinated by the mystery of the Middle East. Although much of the art of his later career was government sponsored, Delacroix also acted as a reporter and visited the French possession of Algeria and captured, first hand, the allure of the Other.

 
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Jan
22
2010

The Definition of the Avant-Garde

The Definition of the Avant-Garde

In his book, The Theory of the Avant-Garde, Peter Burger stressed the historical basis of the avant-garde.  The rise of the avant-garde was directly linked to the rise of the middle class.  The main role of the avant-garde is the critique of the middle class by detaching it self from it.  Bourgeois totalizing institutions, such as the institutions that are the “art world” must also be critiqued and defied. The kind of critique Burger discussed was a Marxist style critique, which, because it was delivered from a detached perspective, was far more radical than conventional criticism. The Marxist approach was, of course Kantian in origin in its stance of disinterest, but Marxist in its focus on bourgeois practices.

The radicality of the avant-garde position rests upon its freedom from having to “take sides” or obligation to maintain a position.  The freedom to detach from an ideology is also the freedom to find an entirely unexpected stance.  The avant-garde critique of the capitalist mode of production and its impact upon cultural producers has many consequences.  First, the avant-garde artist is always alienated from the audience, outside the mainstream of traditional art and scornful of the middle class and its utilitarian preferences.  The bourgeois saw little use for pure art in the service of the intellect or beauty or aesthetics, and understood only that art could be useful to reinforce their own social and political power, a lesson learned from the once powerful church and state.  The middle class audience was unsympathetic with art, which lay outside what was familiar,   traditional and recognizable.  Thus, the artist, who felt constrained by bourgeois restrictions and by the low level of middle class taste, took on a defiant, rebellious stance, upholding the right of the artist to express him/herself artistically. Delighting in shocking the art public, the avant-garde artist is confrontational, refusing to meet the expectations of the middle class audience.

Instead of striving for acceptance, the avant-garde artist remains outside and alienated in order to critique middle class values, which placed money above love, status above mercy, work above play, and matter over mind.  Avant-garde art, in challenging middle class pragmatism, challenged middle class power.  Often this art directly or indirectly exposed middle class hypocrisy.  Sunny and beautiful on the surface, many Impressionist paintings actually depicted well-known meeting places of scandalous encounters between prostitutes and their clients.  Although today the meaning of these paintings may be lost on today’s viewers, the audience of the day was fully aware that the subjects of these artists were less than respectable. Starting with the proto-Romanticism of Jean-Antoine Gros and Théodore Géricault, the reality of current events were used to confront the public with the unpalatable truth, as shown by Gustave Courbet, or simply with ordinary every day life, as displayed by the Impressionists.  The public literally could not read the broken brushwork of the Impressionists and reacted with anger and derision.

The activity of critique places the avant-garde artist outside of conventional ways of thinking.  But this artist is also in front of the crowd and thus is making the future of art. The first separation within the art world can be seen during the Romantic period when certain artists began to represent current events.  This shift to reality was an important one.  Previously, the Neoclassical approach was an allegorical one, making statements about the present by using past events or using ancient examples to teach lessons for the present.  The split between the ancients and the moderns is not simply a stylistic one, from the linear to the painterly, but most significantly, from the past to the present.  The avant-garde artists refused to look back to a past that was increasingly irrelevant and insisted upon recording the present.  Eugene Delacroix’s painting Liberty Leading the People (1830) was perceived, not so much as a heroic rendering of a major event in recent French history, but as a political statement valorizing rebellious uprisings.  Compared to Neoclassicism, which displaced politics to the past, Romanticism and Realism, were political simply in presenting the present.  By the middle of the Nineteenth Century, the avant-garde had become political and dangerous to the established powers.

By the beginning of the 20th century, avant-garde artists were totally separated from the mainstream art world.  The art world in France and England had become splintered into factions: the very conservative, the conservative or official art, the conservative avant-garde, and the radical avant-garde.  For example, the Salon des Indépendants was conservative compared to the Salon d’automne. Avant-garde artists were completely isolated from mainstream art audiences and these artists followed the lead of the Impressionists and relied more and more upon sympathetic art dealers and understanding collectors for survival. The audience for the avant-garde artists was very small, often consisting of art critics who were crucial in writing the first accounts of indecipherable art.

This so-called “difficult” art was made by an artist, who was   outside of official art and beyond public approval. Avant-garde art tended to engender yet another generation of art, even more difficult. For example, Monet was succeeded by his colleague, Cézanne, who was, in turn, was studied by the Cubists, Picasso and Braque.  Picasso and Braque were typical of the avant-garde artists of the Twentieth Century. Working alone and unrecognized, supported by their dealer, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler.  Living in dire poverty, these two artists, like other avant-garde artists, were totally dedicated to their vision and to their belief in their art.  Art historians depicted these artists as “heroes,” struggling to maintain personal and artistic integrity in the face of a life without honor and success, understood only by those educated few.

The emergence of the avant-garde artists and the theory of “art-for-art’s sake” emerged at the same time in France.  Due to historical and economic forces, the avant-garde and aesthetics was dependent upon one another.  The public did not approve of either the style or the content of avant-garde art, and in order to defend and explain this new art, critics often put forward an appeal for a formalist reading.   When Emile Zola demanded that Edouard Manet’s work be understood in terms of its stylistic innovation, the writer was also insisting that the viewer look away from the subject matter and to the way in which the artist handled the formal elements.  Looking at art from a formal and/or disinterested perspective required a new kind of “eye.”  The purpose of avant-garde art was, by necessity an aesthetic one.  But as Bourdieu explained in The Rules of Art,

“Although it appears to itself like a gift of nature, the eye of the nineteenth-century art-lover is the product of history…the pure gaze capable of apprehending the work of art as it demands to be apprehended (in itself and for itself, as form and not as function) is inseparable from the appearance of producers motivated by a pure artistic intention, itself indissociable from the emergence of an autonomous artistic field capable of posing and imposing its own goals in the face of external demands  and it is also inseparable from the corresponding appearance of a population of ‘amateurs’ or ‘connoisseurs’ capable of applying to the works thus produced the ‘pure’ gaze which they call for.”

Although, as Bourdieu contends, the avant-garde was created as much by material forces as by aesthetic ideals, the avant-garde would have been impossible without the theory of “art-for-art’s sake.”  This timely idea, borrowed from the German philosopher, Emmanuel Kant, took half a century to come to fruition in France.

If you have found this material useful, please give credit to
Dr. Jeanne S. M. Willette and Art History Unstuffed.  Thank you.
info@arthistoryunstuffed.com

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Jan
15
2010

French Romanticism and the Avant-Garde

French Romanticism and the Avant-Garde

The term “avant-garde” is a military one, borrowed from the French phrase, denoting the advance body of the army.  This small group of soldiers goes out in advance of the main group to scout the territory beyond with the aim of reporting back as to the conditions awaiting the other soldiers.  In American parlance, these soldiers are called “F.O’s” or forward observers, and they account for the highest casualty rate, for they are always on the line and out in front. The artists that are historically considered the avant-garde were also “out in front of” the main body of more conservative artists and the recalcitrant public, putting their careers and their lives on the line in order to find new ways of making art.  As Renato Poggioli in The Theory of the Avant-Garde put it,

“…the avant-garde…functions as an independent and isolated military unit, completely and sharply detached from the public, quick to act, not only to explore but also to battle, conquer, and adventure on its own…”

The avant-garde as a conscious and deliberate artistic activity is mainly a mid to late Nineteenth Century phenomenon, probably pioneered by the Impressionists who intentionally refused to placate public taste and who deliberately exhibited work outside of the expected channels of the large and popular public Salon exhibitions.  According to Pierre Bourdieu in The Rules of Art, the avant-garde was a sociological affair, born of rising middle class aspirations and the inability of the culture to satisfy talented people.  The Academy controlled entrée to school art school training and had the power to grant access to the Salon.  Although the intention of the academically minded juries may have been to maintain the high level of quality in art, the effect was to restrict economic opportunity, forcing artists outside of the system.  As Bourdieu said,

“…bohemia…grows numerically and as its prestige (or mirages) attracts destitute young people, often of provincial and working-class origin, who around 1848 dominate the ‘second bohemia.’  In contrast to the romantic dandy of the ‘golden bohemia’ of the rue de Doyené, the bohemia of Murger, Chapmpfleury or Duranty constitutes a veritable intellectual reserve army, directly subject to the laws of the market and often obliged to live off a second skill…in order to live an art that cannot make a living.”

The avant-garde grew out of a group of creative people who gravitated to Paris and lived in low-income quarters, suffering from neglect and poverty.  Outside the mainstream and lacking the outlets that would have perhaps earned them a living, these artists and writers could only gather together and form an ideology of failure.  They had failed, they consoled themselves, because they were so “advanced” that the unenlightened public misunderstood them.   Simply put, their art was too good, too “avant.” Success was inverted in to an indictment of failure and failure was transformed into a badge of honor.   It is doubtful that these defiant members of the avant-garde were particularly talented or gifted, for there were member of La Boheme who were quite successful, such as George Sand and Eugène Delacroix. But the formula was high-minded and allowed those who never made a breakthrough an honorable cover for their failure.  The avant-garde artist, then, was a mythic creature who was not appreciated or understood by the masses, one who chose to live and work in obscurity and poverty, believing that one day his/her art would be recognized by an educated art audience either in the near present or in some unforeseeable future.  Savvy and strategic Bohemian artists fueled the myth of the avant-garde by shocking the a public that was very easy to shock.  The rallying cry of the avant-garde was, “Épater le bourgeoisie!” but the idea was to gain attention, not to repel collectors.  Avant-garde artists needed to make a living and used the unexpected as  a strategy to shock and awe the crowd.

Without the church and state and their once limitless funds, without the taste and sophistication of the aristocrats, the artists were faced with the middle class as their main audience. This was an audience that wanted to be entertained and were treated by the artists to large paintings that were precursors to modern day movies—-the grand machines or huge paintings that enthralled them with exciting stories. The new audience was composed of the masses, high and low, average people, undereducated, unsophisticated, but not uninterested in art.  The kind of art they wanted was that which was easily accessible, easy to understand, entertaining and attractive to look at; something like today’s television programs, that reflected themselves and their interests.  For many artists, this new middle class audience was no problem. For other artists, the bourgeoisie was an opportunity.   Although the art viewers were trained to admire the large history paintings, the serious minded displays of ancient virtues and obscure myths were not necessarily what the public actually wanted to see.

Academic art was based upon time honored Greek and Roman art which glorified the human being, divinely beautiful preferably nude, engaged in noble deeds.  Members of the Academy acted as jurors to the annual (or biannual) salons, restricting style and subject matter to that which reflected their teachings and the official preferences of the State. Preferred subject matter favored history and myth with an eye to teaching the unruly public morality, through the lessons of the past. While such allegorical approaches had been very effective in the early years of Neoclassicism, the moral and political fervor had quickened succumbed to the status-quo demands of the State, which wanted to entertain the public and distract it from the problems of the present. Until the end of the Second Empire, artists found success only by positioning themselves within the establishment, if only to fight against it, like Irgres and Delacroix. But as the century progressed, social and political issues became increasingly pressing, forcing the artistic gaze away from the present and towards eroticism and exoticism and the problems of contemporary times. For the avant-garde artist, the historical past was past.  “Il faut être de son temps,” (“It is necessary of be of one’s time.”) the artist Honoré Daumier exclaimed.  A growing number of artists sought new ways to make art, which would reflect the new modern way of life.

If you have found this material useful, please give credit to
Dr. Jeanne S. M. Willette and Art History Unstuffed.  Thank you.
info@arthistoryunstuffed.com

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Jan
08
2010

French Romanticism: Subject Matter and the Artist

French Romanticism:  Subject Matter and the Artist

The Romantic was Janus-faced, facing the present and commenting upon it while turning away for current events in order to yield to the lure of fantasy, legend, myth, and exoticism.  On one hand, Jean-Antoine Gros called attention to the human costs of Napoléon’s brutal wars in Napléon at Eylau in 1818, and, on the other hand, Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres retreated into Nordic myth in his Dream of Ossian of 1813 and his charming paintings of troubadour legends.  On one hand, Girodet produced a reverie of eroticism with his Sleep of Endymion in 1791 as the opening volley of Romanticism and Géricault explored the limits of Romanticism with his portraits of insane people and his renditions of severed limbs. One did not have to be an avant-garde artist to be “Romantic,” for the avant-garde was just beginning to form.  One did not have to challenge Academic standards to be Romantic, for the Academy could very well accommodate exciting contemporary narratives, as long as they were correctly painted or sculpted.  Although associated with bold color and visible brushstrokes, Romanticism is not a style, nor is it a particular content, nor is it a rebellion against authority.  The successful and celebrated Romantic artists wanted to be accepted by the academic powers and vied for position and honors within the Salons.  For many of these artists, their reputation as “romantic rebels” rests upon a few works of art.   Most of the Romantic artists were part of the establishment and did not live the life of an outside artist, unappreciated and scorned by the forces of the status quo.  The myth of the Romantic artist has been entangled anachronistically with that of the avant-garde, and the full-blown outsider movements of Realism and Impressionism were decades away.

The so-called rebelliousness of the Romantic artists is less political than entrepreneurial, linked more directly to the loss of traditional patrons: church, state, and aristocrats.  The Romantic artist acted as an opportunist or a performance artist who sought to both slide past the conservative jury of the Salon and also to shock the spectators with spectacular and entertaining art. The art audience had become more and more middle class, which attended the Salons in large numbers.  The bourgeoisie, the crowd, the mob must be addressed in some fashion.  Fueled by fashions, literature and restless aggressive politics, the public developed a taste for scenes of sex and violence unsanctioned by the Academy and swooned over the newly discovered beauties of Nature.  The public had little interest in erudite academic subject matter and gravitated towards the familiar and the market for genre painting and landscape painting began to develop, inspiring artists to concentrate their efforts in these areas that were not supported by the academic hierarchy and hence were open professional territories for ambitious artists.

Landscape painting began to free itself from its traditional role as a backdrop for a narrative in the foreground, and “pure” landscape, painted for pure pleasure and free of moralizing became more and more popular.  Like still lives, landscapes could fit into any home and was acceptable to any taste, and did not offend any political opinions.  The so-called lower genres were directed not so much towards the academy but to a public that was inclined to buy decorative art. The most important group of landscape painters was the Barbizon School, located in the village of Barbizon in the Forest of Fountainebleau.  Artists such as Theodore Rousseau and Narcisse Diaz sketched in situ but finished the paintings in their studios.  They shared, along with many Romantic painters, a new concern for direct observation of Nature at its most natural and most accurate.  The Barbizon artists followed the Claudian precepts of the beautiful but they were distinctly modern in their refusal to include narrative in the painting.  These artists, such as Constantin Troyon, produced “pure landscapes.”  At the other end of the spectrum from marketable landscapes, the public taste for the strange and the exotic was also linked to economics.  The “Orient”, the “East” became open territory to be subdued and conquered by the Western Europeans who were beginning another phase of unchecked imperialism.  The delight in the themes of sex and violence, imagined by the European to be part and parcel of the Middle East, was fueled as much by sexual desires as by imperial pride.  A large number of artists, called “Orientalists” imagined the mysterious East as a place of harems and beheadings, inhabited by an alien and violent people who could only benefit from benevolent French rule.

Although the aristocrats, old and new, were restored to power during Napoléon’s rule and after the Restoration of Louis XVIII, the new audience for art was largely middle class.  The Romantic artist was sundered from traditional conservative artistic styles, separated from traditional patronage, and stripped of the historical social role as servant to higher powers. From the fall of Napoléon on, the artist was forced to re-invent him/herself as a social being and was forced to re-create a new cultural place and new purpose for unsanctioned art.  The imported German idea of “art-for-art’s-sake” fulfilled multiple purposes, providing art and the artist with a new and exalted role in society.  The artist had to be a free and independent creator who was an innovator and pushed art to change.  As the new aesthetic theories gained a following, the art world began to splint between the avant-garde who rebelled and displeased the public and the academics who conformed and pleased the audience.  By 1835, the writer and art critic, Théophile Gautier attacked conventional critics for their adherence to ideas of decorum and good taste.  In the preface to Madamoiselle de Maupin, Gautier advocated for beauty and art for their own sakes.  For the artist to be free to express original and personal feelings, art should have no useful purpose. Although these ideas give new impetus to art and a new place in society to the artist, they also begin the separation between the artist and the public that will be accelerated by the Revolution of 1848 in France.

Seen in the literary and the visual arts, Romanticism was an international movement and a cultural rejection of the Enlightenment and its stress on objective reason and rational thinking.   Romanticism was subjective and the ultimate truth was individual emotions, feelings, and expression. This shift from the objective to the subjective, from object to subject, or the individual, as the source of truth was a radical transformation in Western thought, perhaps the logical consequence of Protestant emphasis on individuality and European hopes for a political democracy.  The artist became important to society in a new way: not as an explicator of moral ideals, but as a “genius,” a seer who brought, through art, new insights into life.  Although a new critical vocabulary was created as aesthetics moved to the center as artistic concern, the Romantic artists offered no coherent programme nor did they have a common goal.  Wrapped up in their sense of individuality, artists produced works of art that proclaimed individual personalities and the originality that was the prerogative of the genius. Romanticism, as a challenge to academicism, was associated with forces of disorder and anarchy and revolution.  As an extension, drawing and low key color, disciplined stylistics, and a smooth “licked” surface in painting and sculpture, characteristic of Neoclassicism, became politically tied to the state.  Color, rough painting or impastoed facture became politically tied to the emotions that might lead to unrestrained social behavior.  Politics aside, most so-called Romantic artists, such as Delacroix, were actually politically quiet conservative, as are most artists because social and political stability are necessary for art making to be possible.

If you have found this material useful, please give credit to
Dr. Jeanne S. M. Willette and Art History Unstuffed.  Thank you.
info@arthistoryunstuffed.com

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Nov
27
2009

Podcast 8 Formalism and Romanticism

ROMANTICISM AND FORMALIST METHODOLOGY

This podcast delineates the connections between the art historical methodology of Formalism, as developed by Heinrich Wolfflin, and the concept of Romanticism. Romanticism was  the movement in which the concepts of painting changed from “academic” to “modern.”   Until New Art History reintroduced the importance of context, the approach of “art history without names” reigned supreme.  How did the uneasy mix of history and methodology change the history of art? What recent corrections were made to retell the history of art history?

 

 

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Nov
13
2009

Podcast 7 The Academy and the Avant-Garde

THE ACADEMY AND THE AVANT-GARDE IN FRANCE

The artists of the French Academy and the artists of the French Avant-garde are often presented as being protagonists, but, in fact, each group defined itself in terms of the other.  The French Academy was the bastion of the establishment, of rules and regulations and of order.  The Avant-Garde bohemians were the original outsider artists, misfits without credentials, who were able to break the rules of art and change the course of art.  But the Academy absorbed and co-opted and softened the concepts and techniques of the avant-garde artists, making the “radical” changes acceptable to the general public.

 

 

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