The progressive formulas of modern art history

In reading art history, one often comes across an assertions of a certain type, the general form of which is this... "After X, nothing was the same".  In this formulation, the X can stand for any number of things... an artist, an artwork, an art movement, a new philosophy of art, a new way of painting, a new way of thinking about art, a new way of criticizing art, etc.  Let's call this formulation the progressive formula. Below are some examples of the progressive formula.

"After Van Gogh, no one looks at color the same way"

"After Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, painting took a new direction"

"After Kandinsky, the object lost it's hold on the mind of the artist"

"After Impressionism, the old ways of seeing were dead"

"After Pollock's drip paintings, the picture plane become flat"

These progressive formulations raise two questions. First, is it literally true that after some event, that the future was never the same. Secondly, how is it that an event might cause one to literally change their view of the future.

I. Was the future really affected as asserted by the progressive formulation?

There is a boldness to the above assertions that is exciting, and if art history is to be believed, these assertions seem very true. After all, each of the artists mentioned above did affect the art that came after them. And each of the artists mentioned above was at the forefront of avant garde art in their times, so their actions had the affect of steering the cutting edge of art in a new direction.

It is no accident that the examples above are from the history of modern art. Modern art is conceived of as a progression, as an evolution, and so there must be points of departure from one stage to the next. The artists who are considered to be the transition from one stage to the next are afforded the highest prestige in this kind of history. This is the official method of describing modern art...that of a historical progression from one breakthrough to the next.

But how it is that new ideas can destroy old ones, when they don't actually contradict the old idea. After all, in the formulation above, "After Van Gough, no one looks at color the same way", I have to wonder, "Why not?" Does Van Gogh's expressionistic use of color really contradict and destroy the previous views on color?  Or is it just something new and different?

It would be one thing if artistic discoveries revealed errors in previous artistic ideas or practices, but that doesn't happen very often. An example might me the Renaissance discover of linear perspective, which revealed the error in how perspective was understood by Gothic painters. But even at that, one could argue that the "incorrect" Gothic perspective functioned artistically within their creations. It seems difficult to criticize art practices as being in error, since even errors can be successfully integrated into the work. The only true errors seem to be those that would prevent successful construction of the artwork itself.

In art history, the meaning and value of artists are inevitably tied up in the way in which they have been woven into the historical narrative. To reevaluate a single artist may raise or lower their status, but to reevaluate the way in which the narrative of art history is conceived is to throw the whole system of artistic prestige out the window. A critical examination of the progressive formula is just such a reevaluation, which is unfortunate, because I have no bones to pick with the artists themselves.

What can be said about the progressive formula then? The first thing, I suppose, is that the formula relies on presumptions about the relevancy of what of what comes AFTER the watershed event. For instance, for the progressive formula "After Van Gogh, no one looks at color the same way", there is a built in presumption about who "no one" consists of.  Obviously, most people continued to look at color the exact same way. For the formula to remain true, those people are not allowed to count. Those who count are those fellow avant garde travelers who picked up on the new thing pioneered by Van Gogh.

What this points out is that art historians do not write a narrative of all the people, only some of the people. The history of modern art is the history of a small stream of avant garde artists and intellectuals, otherwise know as the art world. This group is made to be representative of the entire world through the sheer will of the artists and intellectuals who assert that the avant garde are the only group that matter. Judgments such as this require a morality, and the morality of modern art is clearly the morality of progress. From a post-modern perspective it would be called the mythology of progress.

The progressive formulations of the art world are not surprising. Those with power always write the history. The problem is that power-based histories are not only a selective retelling of events (which is the nature of history in general), but that the power that underlies the narrative crushes alternative narratives. The suppression of alternative points of view perpetuates a cycle of opposition, of continual cultural warfare, with new victors and new histories emerging over time.

If these were real wars, with real dead bodies, people might ask "When will the killing end?" As it is, we dutifully commit to memory the history of cultural warfare, with no concern for the trail of destruction. We call this, being educated. It's a start, at least.

The problem with Barnstone, History

I was wondering about how Barnstone supports his rigid view of geometry in design, etc. Aside from the usual thoughts on that (that Barnstone is dogmatic), I have some new insight into how one does arrive at such dogmatic views. And it goes like this...

When I was in New Orleans, I went into this used bookstore and picked up two cheap used books on art. One of them was this book called "The History and Philosophy of Art Education". The title turns out to be misleading, as it is primarily about the growth of art education in England. The book is actually quite boring, as it details one historical fact after another. The only thing that makes it possible keep reading, is that one can find in these details, a direct correspondence to the present day. The other thing that emerges is a cultural blueprint of the British mentality to art and life. This is the Barnstone connection.

The book beings by acknowledging that England was never really an art culture. English artists would go to France or Italy to receive training, though this represents an insignificant minority of British people, so there was really no professional art education in England prior to the late 1700s (when the Royal Academy was founded) There were also no museums open to the public, as it was considered below the commoners station in life to view works of fine art.

This seems odd, as I always think of the English as being a craft-centric people. But whatever level of craft the English do possess, they do not equate it with fine art. Craft is for the working man.. the artisan... the tradesman, etc. The fine arts are for the upper class. And the two do not intermix. This dichotomy between art and craft in England seems to stem not from a philosophical dispute over the nature of the two, but on the sociological connections of art and craft to the social strata which they inhabit.

In the late 18th century, the Royal Academy is founded in England, whose purpose is to advance art and design in England. That rather democratic mission statement doesn't come to anything, as the Royal Academy quickly becomes an exclusive organization dedicated to establishing and preserving the social and business interests of a select few British artists. Most British artists in the Royal Academy are trained in France or Italy, and they return home to become members of the Royal Academy... or "Royal Academicians"... to have the knightly "RA" placed after their names... and to thereafter have access to the members of the upper classes from which they will receive portrait commissions.

The school of the Royal Academy approach teaching by way of rigid copying "From the flat", and then "From the round" (casts)... and from architectural ornament... from sculpture, etc. This approach is NOT the approach that was used in France and Italy. In the academies of those countries, the students engage in life drawing fairly quickly, and work from life and from natural observation. The British do not. Though the Royal Academicians were trained this way, when they have the opportunity to set up their own schools, they do not teach that way. They fall back (I suppose) into a more deeply seeded mentality... a mentality of structure, order, and system.

Another influence on their approach to teaching, is the British obsession (especially at that time) of classical culture. The British are in love with Greek and Roman classical antiquity. Their higher education system is based around learning Greek and Latin. The consider Greek and Roman models (in all fields) to be indisputable, perfect examples of beauty, not to be deviated from. Rigid and obsessive copying from Classical models was considered to be direct contact with perfection.... such that any deviation from it was to fall into corruption.

In this view it is clear that working from life, or working from an individual perspective... is simply to discard the history of perfection, and to sink into barbarism. Joshua Reynolds, as president of the Royal Academy, is noted for asserting that the key to creativity is complete adherence to copying. Of course, copying as and educational method is not invalid, but it seems clear that in the hands of the British mentality, it goes from being a means... to being the end.

In the early 19th century, there arises in England a problem... the English merchants are importing (at great cost) the majority of their designs from France, as the designs from that country are known to be far superior to anything being produced in England. This fact is the catalyst for a crusade to establish art and design schools in England, in order to wean the country off their dependence on French design. This crusade is led by the noted history painter Benjamin Haydon (trained in France), who is also an opponent of the cultural death-grip that the Royal Academy has on art training in England. His crusade succeeds in eventually establishing an art school in London and Manchester. However, social politics raises its ugly head again, as the administration of the schools is given to Royal Academicians, who move quickly to establish very strict training regiments, whose purpose it is to make sure that fine art is not taught in these schools... but rather, only art as related to industrial design.

The artisans and tradesmen who attend classes after their work day, are not considered of a high enough class to partake in fine art. They are subject to rigid drawing instruction that is more akin to mechanical drawing and drafting, the idea being that industrial design is a mechanical and scientific pursuit. The students are required to sign a document, where they promise to only pursue a career in industry, and to not attempt to be fine artists (a station they are considered unfit for, at any rate).

These schools are come into existence in the 1830s, and over the next 30 years nothing but debate rages over how to train the students. In actual fact, the schools are failing, since they fail to produce designers who can compete with French design. As it turns out, French designers are trained as artists. They go through the same basic training as fine artists. In France, they awareness of art, and of art training goes much deeper into the social fabric. It is not connected to social class the way it is in England. The pervasiveness of aesthetic sensibility comes through in the manner of life of the French vs. the English. The English are stiff upper lipped administrators, who can run a global empire, but the virtues of administration cannot support the required state of mind required for the development of fine art.

Despite the continued failure of the government art schools, they continue to grow.... as their cause is taken up by one ambitious upper class opportunist after another. Of course, those who "run things" in England are from the upper classes, and thus from the same conservative mindset, and set out to cure the problems by ever more rigid means.

Throughout the mid 19th century there are produced many many "drawing method" books, officially sanctioned descriptions of how to teach drawing. They are circulated amongst the schools. They are programmed instruction, relying predominantly on copying from the flat... on copying outlines of greek columns, of architectural ornament, etc. They are also geared to the perceived needs of industry... of design. The schools attempt to model themselves on the German schools of the time (early for-runners to the Bauhaus idea of a unification of art and craft). However, the English taking up the German model is more about the English preferring a system that focuses on craft. The Germans were not trying to avoid fine art training... the English are obsessed with it.

One last observation… the English believed that the teaching of art could be reduced to a sequential series of steps, learned in the manner that one might learn science. The "method books" mentioned above are a product of this belief in the ability to record (in language) the abstract ideas of art. This helps explain (to me at least) the overwhelming analytical approach that exists in art books (from the 19th century, or early 20th century) that we read. For instance, "The Practice and Science of Drawing" by Harold Speed is in this vein. Though it isn't one of the "method books" referred to above, it stems from the British practice of conceptualizing and ordering things.

And so the history of all of this staggers forward through the 19th century. I haven't read the book all the way through, but several things stand out to me regarding Barnstone's attitude to teaching.

1) Barnstone went to art school in England. That fact means a lot. Barnstone's imperious, domineering, rigid attitude either came from that (or more likely) was reinforced by that. I'm sure he partnered with it very well.

2) Barnstone is obsessed with the idea of the golden section, which is a product of classical antiquity (a British obsession).

3) Barnstone see's art as something that can taught systematically by way of rigid assignments that allow of no deviation ( a British mentality outlined in the book)

4) Barnstone teaches drawing by using orthogonal perspective (vs linear perspective). This focus on orthogonal is an architectural focus... which is a designer focus (not fine art)…. and it is also a classical antiquity focus. But even at that architecture traces it's roots NOT so much to Greek humanism, as it does to systems of geometric measuring and abstraction going back to the Egyptians. You cannot build a temple or a pyramid without a plan, and the plan must be based on a geometric system. Architecture also requires 'a priori' planning. You must know what you are building ahead of time… so you must define everything up front. The building doesn't emerge from a process of building, but the from a plan.

5) Barnstone's (aforementioned) orthogonal drawing assignments begin with a bottle. A BOTTLE!!! Barnstone revels in manufactured items, and he often talks about the beauty of a the bottle. However, the beauty of the bottle is quite different than the beauty of a natural form. Since it is man made, it's conception must arise in the mind, and must reflect ordered thought...i.e., some geometric basis. The beauty of manufactured items is also an industrial design focus, a industrial focus... which is the focus forced on the art schools of the English by the establishment (as outlined in the book).

6) Barnstone's cap-stone drawing assignment in the first drawing class is to draw a plant. This echos the British love of botany, particularly in the Victorian era. Every description of drawing instruction that the book mentions has a large part of it reserved for drawing plants and architectural ornaments based on plants. Barnstone's approach to drawing the plant focuses on aligning all the natural tendencies of the plant (it's edges, clumps, stalky-bendings, etc) to some aspect of the geometric armature of the rectangle. Nature is contained and ordered by an 'a priori' system of enclosures and partitioning of space, as if the image plane is a plan view of a building.

7) Barnstone's color class proceeds from a system of color mixing. The system is exceedingly conceptual, and requires the artist set up and maintain a complex palette. The impracticality of this approach, and the dubiousness of "a priori" assumptions about palette (before you even begin painting) seem to me to be classic a classic British approach to art education. Heavy on theory, indifferent to the needs of the actual work of art. It strives for a conceptual control at the cost of application.

The perfect as the enemy of the good, finds expression in such a mindset.

The question of how Barnstone would defend his commitment to geometric design wasn't meant to invoke a history lesson like this, but rather to invoke an answer based on the truth or falsehood of some relevant facts. But the problem is that Barnstone's worldview is seems so deeply entrenched in the types of biases that I outline above, that there is no way for him to really have that fact based conversation. He might throw a few fact based ideas out there, but if pushed by a capable intellect, he would fall back to asserting cliches like.. "Without design there is no art". Such an utterance doesn't prove anything, but in Barnstone's mind it validates the analytic and conceptual worldview completely, and gives him carte blanche to assert design abstractions without being questioned. Of course, since he lectures to the the uncritical and (art historically) untrained in a school that he dominates, he lives completely insulated from critical reproach.

In reading this book, I was blown away by the correspondence between British educational theory and Barnstone's approaches. To see the effect of culture and ideas on how art is taught is a real lesson on how human knowledge can be so completely dominated by cultural attitudes, to the degree that a person is not even aware that they are operating under it's influence.

Greek and Roman Room at The Met

I was in the Greek and Roman room for a few hours, when an observation crept up on me. It occurred to me that Greek sculpture, in large part, does not reveal the figures doing much at all. They are typically sitting or standing, but they are not engaged in some great and terrible struggle that is written on their face or body. Sometimes they might be ready to throw a lightening bolt or a discus, but even at that they show no great conviction. At a deeper level, the figures seem disconnected from what little action they are engaged in. It's as if their action is only nominal, and is only present because you have to show figures doing something... anything. I suppose you could sculpt the figure as asleep, or in a coma... but generally they are awake and "nominally" doing something. In fact, a sculpture of a dead figure would be more physically engaged in it's dead-ness than classical figures are in their aliveness.

Now, before you think I am being flippant and sarcastic, I should say that I actually like this quality very much. I describe it above in a flippant way, but only to make the point clear. It is so subtle a quality that I had to just blurt it out like that. I know that classical sculpture is differentiated from later renaissance sculpture by the point in the action in which the figure is depicted, where the classical sculpture shows a moment of calm before the action. In part, my observation is a recognition of this.

I like this quality of disconnection, because I really don't care what the figures are doing. I can contrast this with the sculptures in the European sculpture room, where the figures are very much more involved in an obvious physical or emotional action. I'm thinking of Ugolino and His Sons, which is all gnashing teeth and twisting flesh. As a side note, I should say that I think this sculpture is tremendous. The last time I was at the Met, I spent some time circling this sculpture, soaking in it's in-the-round-ness complexity. Not only is it amazing to me that someone could sculpt such a complexity from marble, but that despite it's compositional complexity and monumental scale, the separate figures embody a lightness and aliveness.

But compared to the classical disconnection, Ugolino and His Sons is all connection to the narrative underlying the composition. It reminds me of the observation I was making about the N.C. Wyeth's oil paintings… that despite the skill of his draftsmanship and paint handling, that the paintings are all geared to focusing you on a single narrative element contained in them. This would seem to be the goal of an illustration. This focus gives meaning to everything in the painting. But the moment you become aware of the unifying focus of the illustration, the interest in the various parts dwindles away (to me at least). This is the weakness of illustration, that it is all means to and end. The formal elements are means to a narrative or didactic end. Also, it seems that the more illustrative an artwork is, the more the "end" is literally contained "in" the image, often..literally… to a single point of reference.

Again, I'm thinking of N.C. Wyeth's Treasure Island paintings, where entire paintings lead you to such things as… the menacing eye of Blackbeard the Pirate as he kicks a door in, or into similar daring visual moments in other paintings. The paintings reduce everything down to that one thing, and it's "in the painting", and it's exemplified by a single visual moment (the menacing eye).

Such effective illustrations seem to be evidence of excellent compositional skills. To lead the eye from one thing to the next such that one is led to the "menacing eye", and to have that single element be the top of a hierarchy of means to end… is no small feat. Perhaps it is the hallmark of a great illustrator. And some such ability is required in non-illustration art it seems, or else the eye will just wander in a meaningless way… or wander off the borders of the page… or just lose interest. But should an artwork… to avoid the all-inclusive-focus of illustration… engage in a lack of focus?

This all smacks of a false alternative. The end to which the formal elements are the means does not have to be contained in the work, and does not have to reduce to a single point of focus. If the goal of compositional study is to lead one to a simplified illustrators perspective, than the study of composition has to reconsidered. The purpose of art is not to beat one over the head with a hierarchy of visual references, and to be led thereby to some single conclusive resting place.

I don't mean to say that Ugolino and His Sons are beating me over the head with an illustrative point… but it is a more obvious work than the classical sculpture. The Brookgreen Garden variety of 19th century American sculpture is likewise more obvious in nature, as it seems the sculptors have themed their work around various idyllic nature themes; i.e., luxuriating nymphs, the innocence of childhood, or feminine sexual innocence, etc. These works all seem very mannered and stylized in a way that classical sculpture is not.

I could add too, that depictions of nudity in non Greek sculpture are subject to the force of Christian morality… to the naked vs. nude dichotomy, such that depictions of nudity must involve a stylization process in order to lift the body out from its christian status as naked and sinful… and elevate it to the artistic level of nude. The various means of doing this all enforce an 'a priori' focus on the subject… a kind of meta-composition. The sculpture is immediately one level removed simply by being made.

Perhaps it is unfair to insist that the various formal elements of an artwork exist for the sake of an overall unifying point of the artwork. Perhaps the formal elements should be considered out of context of the whole work, as ends in themselves. Considering that artists in the past worked on commissions where the subject matter and treatment were dictated to them, perhaps this is a truer way to view their art. This seems fair to the artist, but it is tough on the viewer, who wants have a unified view of things. I guess the truth is that to appreciate historical artwork, the viewer cannot insist on this unified quality, but might instead have to visually parse the object, and understand it that way.

So that is all well and good… and that is the way I try to deal with it, despite the critical tone I am using right now. The point here is not about saying this or that sculpture is good or bad, because frankly... I do not always trust my ability to discern sculptural qualities (beyond stating a preference). Rather, the point here is to express what I found unique and interesting about the classical sculpture I was looking at last Friday. Hopefully, all this critical prologue helps in that regard.

The classical work, as I said earlier… seems to be about nothing at all. The figures aren't really doing anything at all. Their so-called calm dissolves into disinterest and detachment. They do not embody a connection to any narrative action. This observation ties into another observation, which is the fact that the sculptural forms are so subtle. I am continually amazed at how the anatomical forms of the classical work… which don't even seem to be present at times… will suddenly reveal themselves with the slightest change of lighting, or if you move slowly around the work. They seem to emerge from out of a mist, to reveal themselves, and to disappear just as quickly.

I was walking slowly around a marble bust on Friday, and the forms of they eye socket and temple, which seemed to be missing at first glance… revealed themselves as I moved slightly to the side, and caught the light falling on them just-so. It literally took me back and made me catch my breath. This type of experience repeats itself all the time. Fragments of torsos look like hunks of smooth marble, until you consider them for a while, and their forms emerge if you are patient. All things are revealed if you give them a very long look. In fact, you are forced to take a long look… you are forced to slow down. Nothing is obvious.

I started thinking, "What is it that I looking at.. what is it that I am searching for… what are these sculptures about.. what are they revealing?" A simple answer I came to seems true enough… that these sculptures are simply depicting the human body. They are depicting it outside of an action, outside of a narrative, outside of any morality that forces a point of view on the viewer. I suppose that no art is literally transparent.. but if these classical sculptures must be said to embody some ideology… it is simply the ideology of idealizing the body, such that you don't need to drape it in anything but itself. In terms of art, that is as transparent a motive as one could have.

The utter simplicity and lack of pretense… lack of narrative… lack of overt morality… forces you to understand the figure NOT in terms of a literary or social context, but in terms of the body in itself. You are forced to understand the body QUA body. It is pure human body. We can say the sculptural forms are subtle, and have to be searched for and teased out by a discerning eye and revealing light. But the reason this seems strange is that later sculpture beats you over the head with body… with musculature. And the musculature of later sculpture is set in motion by figures engaged in actions that define them… or the narratives that define them. But the Greek sculpture defines the body in terms of itself. The figure is not mediated through external actions and events… it is… to repeat myself… the figure considered as such.

For a sculptural practice as sophisticated as Greeks had, to step out of its own way and let the art object so directly depict the abstract nature of it's subject, is quite a lesson to be learned. Elegance and simplicity are the hallmarks of nature and of clear thought, so I can hardly think art is exempted from considering that. When you go from viewing the classical sculptures to viewing other sculpture, the latter seem heavy handed and overly stylized at first. You have to readjust your perceptual consciousness to allow for the it.

So this realization of the figure-qua-figure came to me in an instant… and no doubt this instantaneous idea is really the unification of many observations and questions that have been floating around my mind. It was an entirely satisfying moment, and as the idea bloomed in my mind, I stood there and smiled and let out a chuckle… the kind of laugh you release spontaneously when you have a breakthrough thought that releases tension. The "AH HA" kind of laugh. If I could have spoken to the sculpture, I would have said… "You son of a bitch… I just figured you out".