HUMANITIES 2
BYSTANDER
HUMN100_Wk2_Overview_of_Visual_Arts_History_narration_transcription_2015WEEK2.pptxHistorical Overview of Ideas Guiding the Visual Arts in the Western World: from Plato to the Present Day
HUMN100
University of Maryland University College
Professor Heidi Nasstrom Evans
For narration click on the audio icon in the lower right hand corner of each page.
Hello, I’m professor Heidi Nasstrom Evans and
This Power Point presentation is an historical overview of ideas guiding the visual arts in the Western world from Ancient Greece to the present day
It is meant to be an entry into the Humanities 100 session on the visual arts.
It is not encyclopedic
& it does not start at the beginning
But it gives students an idea of the different ways people have been thinking about the visual arts for a very long time.
It shows the breadth of visual arts including architecture, fine arts, decorative arts and design
I think you’ll be surprised at the ways ideas from the Ancient past still resonate in the arts of today.
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Art Theories Covered in This Presentation
Plato, Ancient Greece
Abbot Suger, Middle Ages, France
Leon Battista Alberti, Renaissance, Italy
Empiricist Ideas, Enlightenment Era, England
John Ruskin, Romantic/Victorian Era, England
Piet Mondrian, Modernist Period, Netherlands
Bill McDonough, Beyond Modernism into The Present Day, US & Ground the Globe
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Plato The Republic (360 BCE)
“Surely then to him who has an eye to see, there can be no fairer spectacle than that of a man who combines the possession of moral beauty in his soul with outward beauty of form, corresponding and harmonizing with the former, because the same great pattern enters into both.”
QUOTE ON THE SCREEN
Plato’s thinking expressed a commonly held view in ancient Greece:
that inward conditions could be expressed through outward appearances and
that moral and ethical matters were intrinsically related to art.
The Greeks communicated these views through proportional relationships.
Mathematically harmonious proportions reflected the order of the cosmos and, in their reflection, they were considered perfect and beautiful.
The Greeks sought harmonious proportions in their visual world.
Additionally, as relayed in the Platonic quote, the Greeks sought to extend this philosophy to everything: art, the built environment, music, society, all aspects of the lived experience.
BALANCE was sought in the visual world and in the lives of Greek people.
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The Parthenon, Athens, 448-432 BCE
The Parthenon in Athens is available under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
Greek temples, such as the Parthenon, advertised & reinforced commonly held cultural values shared by Greek citizens:
Beauty was the outcome of harmonious proportions and balance in the world.
Therefore, beauty as a concept was much more encompassing than the mostly visual way we consider it today.
Beauty was with a capital “B” and it was important to have it because it indicated that all was right with the world.
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Abbot Suger, The Book of Suger, Abbot of Saint-Denis (c. 1144): "The dull mind rises to truth through that which is material” St. Denis, Abbey Church, 1137-40, outside Paris, France
Saint-Denis (Seine-Saint-Denis) - Basilique is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, 2.5 Generic, 2.0 Generic and 1.0 Generic license.
Over 1000 years later, we see the Christians in the Middle Ages taking architecture in a new direction –Up.
Christian architecture pointed up to the heavens and the kingdom of God
On the screen is the Abbey Church of St. Denis in Northern France (now a part of Paris), dating from 1137-40.
It is considered the first Gothic cathedral.
Abbot Suger [PRONOUNCED: SUGET] was a childhood friend of King Louis VII
He rebuilt the old royal monastery of St. Denis into the impressive vertical building you see here.
His goal was to outdo the most beautiful churches in order to bring attention to France and build the power of the king and the church.
His adage, "The dull mind rises to truth through that which is material“ speaks worlds about the purpose of Gothic architecture.
The church tells its message to its visitors.
The place and space is made to direct people to believe certain ideas.
Architecture and the visual arts can be used to influence beliefs, behavior, and outcomes.
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Lux Nova or New Light from St. Denis of “lux nova,” Suger said he felt as though he was dwelling "in some strange region of the universe which neither exists entirely in the slime of the earth nor entirely in the purity of Heaven," and that it "called [him] away from external cares."
St. Denis Transept is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
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Impressive as Gothic cathedrals are from the outside.
The real experience is inside.
Suger’s [pronounced SUGET’S] interest in the mystical and metaphysical qualities of light, especially colored light, which he believed was a medium for the visual manifestation of spiritual images, led him to place beautiful stained glass windows into the walls of the church.
Abbot Suger called this jeweled light “lux nova,” which translates as "new light."
Of his experience in the space and with the addition of “lux nova,” Suger said he felt as though he was dwelling "in some strange region of the universe which neither exists entirely in the slime of the earth nor entirely in the purity of Heaven," and that it "called [him] away from external cares.”
Here visual arts have the power to aid in transcendence.
Leonardo da Vinci, Vitruvian Man, c. 1485
Vitruvian Man comprises public domain material in the United States.
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The Renaissance emerged some 300 years later.
It literally means “rebirth” referencing the rebirth of classical ideas and ideals:
An important facet of the Renaissance, was the introduction of humanism:
a celebration of human accomplishments and abilities
Humanism suggests a secular rather than religious approach to life.
It celebrated rationality and individuality and mankind’s ability to make and act on empirical (or measurable) observations in the physical world.
Leonardo da Vinci’s famous Vitruvian Man was one of many studies during this time that sought to prove that human proportions reflected divine ratios.
Here man is set within the circle and square—the ideal geometric forms of the Renaissance.
Inspired by the writings of the Ancient Roman author Vitruvius, who was inspired by the Greek philosopher Plato and the Greek mathematician Pythagoras, Leonardo and Renaissance architects developed spatial ratios they believed were perfect because they were inherently harmonious in the musical sense of the word.
These perfect proportions were believed to reflect God’s cosmic order, and to relate to the measurements of the human body.—connecting the perfection of God and man & made visible in the visual arts
Leon Battista Alberti (1404-72) from On the Art of Building, Book 9 (1443-52): “Beauty is a form of sympathy and consonance of the parts within a body, according to a definite number, outline, and position, as dictated by concinnitas (symmetry), the absolute and fundamental rule in Nature. This is the main object of the art of building, and the source of her dignity, charm, authority, and worth.”
Leon Battista Alberti is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
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While Ancient Greek & Roman architecture and design allowed for the use of judgment in order to achieve Beauty and balance
Renaissance architects like Leon Battista Alberti believed that absolute beauty was codifiable, meaning it was not open to subjective judgment
Alberti defined absolute beauty as “a form of sympathy and consonance of the parts within a body, according to a definite number, outline, and position, as dictated by symmetry/concinnitas, the absolute and fundamental rule in Nature. This is the main object of the art of building, and the source of her dignity, charm, authority, and worth.”
Alberti’s definition remained very influential into the 18th century.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau & John Locke
Allan Ramsay 003 comprises public domain material in the United States.
John Locke comprises public domain material in the United States.
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Following the Renaissance, we see the development of humanistic thinking give rise to the Enlightenment in the late 17th century
In France, Enlightenment thought inspired by Voltaire & Jean-Jacques Rousseau, was based on a rationalist premise that human beings were born with innate knowledge.
British Enlightenment thought, on the other hand, was associated with figures like John Locke, & David Hume whose theories were based on Empiricism—the idea that we are born free of knowledge--a clear slate or tabula rasa--& that knowledge develops from observation & experience.
These ideas affected both human thought about the self and society as well as the visual arts.
David Hume
David Hume comprises public domain material in the United States.
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In David Hume’s development of aesthetic theory, for example, he took on the idea of beauty and challenged the concept of standards in beauty.
Hume believed beauty was a subjective experience, and that the application of aesthetic rules or standards didn’t guarantee a beautiful outcome.
While Hume believed laws cannot govern beauty, he conceded that centuries of consensus about beauty did exist.
This consensus he believed emerged from a universality shared in the mind of humans--from emotion rather than rules/standards.
Emotion is a romantic concept.
From Romantic impulses in thought, visual arts move in new directions.
Anthony Ashley Cooper, the 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, from “The Moralists” (1709)
“I shall no longer resist the passion growing in me for things of a natural kind, where neither art nor the conceit or caprice of man has spoiled their genuine order by breaking upon the primitive state. Even the rude rocks, the mossy caverns, the irregular unwrought grottos and broken falls of waters, with all the horrid graces of the wilderness itself, as representing Nature more, will be the more engaging, and appear with a magnificence beyond the formal mockery of princely gardens. . . . But tell me, I entreat you, how comes it that, excepting a few philosophers of your sort, the only people who are enamoured in this way, and seek the woods, the rivers, or seashores, are your poor vulgar lovers?”
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QUOTE.
This is an important moment for England.
Before this time first Italy and then France emerged as leaders in art and architecture, reviving Classical architecture in new and innovative ways.
Now, it was England’s turn to come forward as an innovator, steering the aesthetic ship, so to speak, away from Classicism in the opposite direction: moving away from symmetry and geometry to asymmetry and naturalism.
In the 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury’s Platonic dialogue “The Moralists” he described his love of wild, untamed nature—untouched by the straight rule of the human hand.
It is not an accident that England developed a love of nature at this time.
England was the first country to industrialize.
Nature became cherished just when it began to look like it might disappear.
John Ruskin & William Morris
Millais Ruskin comprises public domain material in the United States.
George Frederic Watts portrait of William Morris 1870 comprises public domain material in the United States.
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John Ruskin was an amazingly influential social critic with a belief in Christian socialism and the power of art’s moralizing agency to transform society.
William Morris was a student of Ruskin’s, founded the Arts and Crafts Movement on his mentor’s philosophy.
Ruskin and Morris were 19th-century Romantics.
They were nostalgic, looking back to the old ways before industrialization turned the world upside down.
L: Hubert von Herkomer, Hard Times, 1885 R: Phillip de Loutherbourg, Coalbrookdale by Night, 1801
Hubert von Herkomer - Hard Times comprises public domain material in the United States.
Philipp Jakob Loutherbourg d. J. 002 comprises public domain material in the United States..
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Ruskin and Morris developed their nostalgic position in response to particular social and ecological conditions.
Hubert von Herkomer’s Hard Times shows the effects of agricultural depression on the rural laboring class as it chronicles the negative effects of industrialization.
These people lost their agrarian lifeways. Some moved to the city in search of work, many seeking jobs there ended up destitute.
These economically disadvantaged men, women and children ran the machinery of the industrial age—working in unregulated factories such as the Coalbrookdale Iron Foundry shown on the right.
Ruskin and Morris and others sharing their views were part of a Romantic response to the dehumanizing effects and ecological devastation caused by industrialization in England.
They wished to return to simpler times and reunite people with the land and old ways.
John Ruskin, Ducal Palace in Venice, pictured in The Stones of Venice (1851-53)
The Ducal Palace Ruskin comprises public domain material in the United States.
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John Ruskin translated social theories into Arts and Crafts aesthetics.
Ruskin’s essay “On the Nature of Gothic”was published in the 1850s within The Stones of Venice.
In this publication Ruskin established a pedigree for Gothic aesthetics, making them morally and culturally superior to Classical aesthetics.
He then linked Gothic aesthetics to a right approach to labor.
And, lastly, he established an aesthetic standard for imperfection that governed the Arts and Crafts Movement in the years to come.
John Ruskin, True and False Griffins, The Stones of Venice (1851-53)
True and False Griffins: Mediaeval and Classical. Drawn by John Ruskin. Lithograph by R. P. Cuff. 1856. Source: Modern Painters III, Works volume V is available by permission of George P. Landow, Victorian Web.
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To establish the cultural superiority of Gothic aesthetics, Ruskin creates dichotomies that privilege the Gothic over the Classical: North/South; Past/Present; Imperfect/Perfect; Noble/Fallen.
In the case of North versus South. He identifies a Northern style characterized by “rudeness” and “wildness” [good things in Ruskin’s mind]
he aligned these concepts with the British past and contrasted it with Roman classicism—a comparison which is made in this illustration of True and false griffins.
Neoclassicism, he said, is appropriate to another culture—that of the South. And, while it has been elevated to stand as the model for civilized Europe, it is not representative of the North’s cultural heritage which is best symbolized by the rude and wild Gothic style.
John Ruskin, “On the Nature of Gothic,” The Stones of Venice (1851-53)
“. . . let us not condemn, but rejoice in the expression by man of his own rest in the statutes of the lands that gave him birth. Let us watch him with reverence as he sets side by side the burning gems, and smooths with soft sculpture the jasper pillars, that are to reflect the ceaseless sunshine, and rise into a cloudless sky: but not with less reverence let us stand by him, when, with rough strength and hurried stroke, he smites an uncouth animation out of the rocks which he has torn from among the moss of the moorland, and heaves into the darkened air the pile of iron buttress and rugged wall, instinct with work of an imagination as wild and wayward as the northern sea; creatures of ungainly shape and rigid limb, but full of wolfish life; fierce as the wind that beat, and changeful as the clouds that shade them.”
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John Ruskin, manuscript page, The Stones of Venice, c. 1851, Morgan Library, NYC. “You must either make a tool of the creature or a man of him. You cannot make both. Men were not intended to work with the accuracy of tools.”
Stones of Venice : autograph leaf from manuscript, 1851-53, by John Ruskin is available from the Pierpont Morgan Library and Museum, Department of Literary and Historical Manuscripts, MA 398-400.
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From Gothic aesthetics, Ruskin idealized the working conditions of the past over those of the present and proposed a Christian Socialist alternative to the industrialized World of International economic competition driven by laissez faire capitalism.
He said of England, “we manufacture everything . . . except men; we blanch cotton and strengthen steel and refine sugar and shape pottery; but to brighten, to strengthen, to refine, or to form a single living spirit never enters into our estimate of advantages.”
Ruskin wanted to a return to an idealized, simpler, insular Medievalized past.
He thought in the past, people regardless of wealth or position worked towards a common good and that even workmen were allowed to exercise independent thought (in their making of the Gothic cathedrals).
(and I quote) “You must either make a tool of the creature or a man of him. You cannot make both. Men were not intended to work with the accuracy of tools. . . . The workman ought to be thinking, and the thinker often to be working, and both should be gentlemen, in the best sense.” (end quote)
Ruskin directed us to look at the old cathedral front, where the fantastic griffins and monsters carved in stone are the “signs of the life and liberty of every workman who struck the stone.”
Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co., Backgammon Cabinet, by Morris, Philip Webb, Edward Burne-Jones, c. 1861, Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC
The Backgammon Players, courtesy of http://www.metmuseum.org, comprises public domain material in the United States.
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Ruskin’s aesthetic preference for imperfection is tied to his labor argument.
If all men are laboring toward a common good and exercising independence in their thoughts there will naturally be discrepancies in the quality of what is being made.
To Ruskin, imperfection as the outcome of good working conditions is noble in its beauty.
Ruskin’s idealization of imperfection inspired William Morris, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood of painters with whom Morris worked, and Arts and Crafts aesthetics which self-consciously highlighted hand-worked qualities, signs of handcraftsmanship, and imperfections.
The cabinet shown here, known as the Backgammon Cabinet was designed by Philip Webb, painted by Edward Burne-Jones, and produced by William Morris’s firm, Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Co.
Here, Ruskin’s ideas about art, architecture, and artifacts from the past are being translated into contemporary forms.
It is the beginning of an aesthetic evolution that starts in medievalized forms such as this cabinet and transforms into something that does not look like anything from the past, something Modern, representative of the age
Piet Mondrian, Composition in Red, Yellow, Blue, and Black, 1926, oil on canvas, Gemeente Museum, The Hague
Piet Mondriaan , 1926 - Composition en rouge, jaune , bleu et noir (Composition in red, yellow, blue, and black) comprises public domain material in the United States.
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By the early 20th-century, Ruskin and Morris’s social commitment evolved into a variety of Modernist theories.
Modernism in the visual arts is the expression of the belief in science and technology to create a better future.
One Modernist expression of this view was held by the painter Piet Mondrian and his circle in the Netherlands.
His paintings were based on a philosophy which stressed the mathematical order of the universe.
Gerrit Rietveld, Schröder House, 1924, Utrecht, Netherlands
Rietveld Schröder House - Foto 19 is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Netherlands license.
Rietveld chair1 is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
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Especially interesting is the next step taken by Mondrian and his circle.
Working with a group of designers called the De Stijl group, Mondrian sought to expand the realm of art into life itself.
They wanted to live in the art, and to make life into art.
From the 2-dimensional canvas of the painter, they moved their mathematical ordering of the universe into 3 dimensions—architecture and design, which they renamed “spatial construction.”
Their ultimate, unrealized goal was to go beyond the 3rd dimension to integrate Einstein’s theory of the 4th dimension. That being Space Time.
While they never achieved 4-D in the scientific sense, they symbolized it with intersecting geometric planes which were meant to create transparency between the interior and exterior and give the building an overall hovering effect.
W. McDonough & M. Braungart, The Upcycle: Beyond Sustainability—Designing for Abundance (2013)
“Human beings don’t have a pollution problem they have a design problem. If humans were to devise products, tools, furniture, homes, factories, and cities more intelligently from the start, they wouldn’t even need to think in terms of waste, contamination, or scarcity. Good design would allow for abundance, endless reuse, and pleasure.”
The Upcycle (2013) is copyright MacMillan Publishing.
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& while the early 20th century Modernists took the visual arts in amazing new directions, they got stuck in the development of formal aesthetics and forgot to keep in mind their ultimate goal was to use modern science and technology to rethink and perfect life itself.
Today, we have designers carrying on those seemingly utopian goals.
People like William McDonough who published a book titled The Upcycle in 2013
In The Upcycle McDonough and his chemist partner Michael Braungart state “Human beings don’t have a pollution problem they have a design problem. If humans were to devise products, tools, furniture, homes, factories, and cities more intelligently from the start, they wouldn’t even need to think in terms of waste, contamination, or scarcity. Good design would allow for abundance, endless reuse, and pleasure.”
They call for human society to see good design not as a luxury for the wealthy but as a fundamental human right for everyone.
In this book they show how people can go from being less bad to becoming part of the natural cycle of regeneration on the planet—that the presence of people can benefit the earth
And, their dreams are being realized.
With a global clientele, McDonough and Braungart are applying upcycling to designs ranging from a space station for NASA to rooftop gardens in the city of Liuzhou, China.
Plato The Republic (360 BCE)
“Surely then to him who has an eye to see, there can be no fairer spectacle than that of a man who combines the possession of moral beauty in his soul with outward beauty of form, corresponding and harmonizing with the former, because the same great pattern enters into both.”
This brings us full circle.
QUOTE
Plato’s thinking expressed a commonly held view in ancient Greece:
that inward conditions could be expressed through outward appearances and
that moral and ethical matters were intrinsically related to art.
We see these values and concerns still resonating in the visual arts of the 21st century.
From here you will go on to look at a variety of Learning Resources that will introduce you to the history and scope of the visual arts, the range of media associated with the visual arts, and methods and approaches to use when analyzing visual arts.
These Learning Resources will be the basis for this week’s class discussion.
At the end of this week, you should have a good understanding of the relation of the visual arts to the humanities.
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