Art_Addict
November 15th, 2007, 07:41 PM
Hi all !
In continuation of a post by my friend darkwolfb87 I have written out an excerpt out of 'The classic point of view' by Kenyon Cox. He talks about the
narrative subject in painting. I thought it would be of some interest amongst you. If this is against the rules of copyright I sincerely apologize and this post
may off course be removed. Just thought I'd share :
From 'the subject in Art' :
.....The different kinds of merit proper to the different kinds of subject can never be quite perfectly united
- there must always be some sacrifice, somewhere - but now and then, in the works of the greatest masters,
so much of technical beauty and perfection is found united to so much of grandeur of conception and
largeness of style that we may receive from one work the largest possible sum of enjoyment.
These are the worlds unapproachable masterpieces.
But if the modern world has come to think any subject as good as any other it has made one very curious exception to the rule.
It has come to think what it calls "the literary subject" an actual drawback, and to consider that the presence in a work of art,
of what is called a "story" is of itself enough to relegate that work to an inferior rank. Yet how such an opinion can have
been arrived at, in view of the history of art in all ages, is the greatest of puzzles.
For art, from its beginnings among the cave men,
has always told stories; and its twin purposes of illustration being generally, in the mind of the artist as in that of the audience,
the more important of the two. The Assyrian celebrated the prowess of his kings in hunt or in battle and the Egyptian recorded
the whole life of the people upon the walls of royal tombs. The art of Greece told the story of its gods and heroes on every vase
and on every temple front, and in the pediments of the Parthenon recounted the legends of the birth of Pallas and of the founding of Athens.
In like manner the art of the Renaissance occupied itself, almost exclusively, with the sacred story of the old and new testament
or with the legends of the saints, from time that Giotto painted the life of Christ in the Arena Chapel until Raphael
spread his "Bible" upon the vaultings of the Loggia of the Vatican. The greatest work of its mightiest master,
the most sublime and awe-inspiring creation of all art, was nothing else than the story of the creation and the Fall of Man,
so told, with such clarity and such power, as never story, before or since, was told in colors.
Even the Venetians, those lovers of the sumptuous and the decorative, the creators of what we know as genre, could not get on without a story to tell,
and when the story seems absent to us it is because it has been lost, not because it was not there. Titian's enigmatic picture
which is traditionally known as the "Sacred and Profane Love" is now said to represent " Medea and Venus,"
and Giorgione's "Partie Champetre" and "Soldier and Gypsy" are thought to be illustrations of this or that Italian novel.
It may be that in these later instances the story was a concession to the demands of the public, and that while
the ostensible subject was the temptation of Medea by Venus the real subject was the contrast between a nude figure and draped one.
It may be that Giorgione would have been equally content with his idyllic dreams had they no definite context in his mind
or in the minds of those for whom he painted. It certainly was not so with the earlier masters, and as certainly it was not so
with that later master, Rembrandt.
It is commonplace of criticism that Dutch art told no stories, and that the Dutch burghers,
for whom it was created, asked nothing of it but the portraiture of themselves and their wives or of their daily life
and their tame and comfortable country. The artist who attempted more did so at his peril, and Ruysdael paid for his love of
rocks and waterfalls as Rembrandt paid for his love of stories, with poverty and discouragement. Yet Rembrandt was
always telling stories. His public did not want them; it wanted nothing but portraits that should be like; and when his portraits
ceased to be neat and obvious likenesses it wanted nothing of him whatever. Yet he painted stories over and over again,
his etchings are filled with stories and, more than all, his drawings, which the public never saw, are one long series of illustrations.
He was haunted with stories from which he could not escape and to which he returned again and again, illustrating their
every phase and turning and twisting them in every aspect. there is the story of Lot, the story of Joseph, the story of Tobit,
for each of which he made almost numberless drawings, and the story of Christ, which is the subject of his greatest etchings.
He was a great painter, a great master of light and shade, a portrait painter who has excelled all others in the rendering
of the human soul behind the features; but more than anything else he was a great storyteller, and his imaginative grasp of a story
and his power of so telling it that it shall seem real and immediate to us, as if it had actually happened in front of our very eyes,
is perhaps the most wonderful of his many wonderful gifts.
So great has been the dominance of the story in art that even
the landscape painters of the seventeenth century, to whose main purpose story telling was in no way necessary,
nearly always put in a few figures supposed to represent the characters in some legend, sacred or profane;
and the light and frivolous art of the eighteenth century tells stories too though the stories may be as light and frivolous as the manner of telling.
But if you wish to know how seriously the telling of a story may be taken by a great artist you must read the fragments
of criticism left us by that great nineteenth century classicist Jean François Millet. In his letters, in the fragments of his
conversation recorded for us by others, in his few formal announcements of his beliefs in art, you will find hardly anything
else mentioned. For all he says about them, such things as drawings, or color the handling of his material might as well not exist.
Apparently his whole mind is concentrated on the story of the picture and the manner of its telling- everything else is of value
only as it helps the clarity and force of the expression .For him "Art is a language and ... all language is intended for the expression of ideas."
"The artist's first task is to find an arrangement that will give full and striking expression to his idea." And again, " To have painted
things that mean nothing is to have borne no fruit." Hear him discoursing on a print, after his favorite master Poussin,
of a man upon his death-bed : " How simple and austere the interior; only that which is necessary, no more; the grief of the family,
how abject; the calm movement of the physician as he lays the back of his hand upon the dying man's heart;
and the dying man, the care and sorrow in his face, his hands... they show age, toil and suffering." Not one word about anything else
- all other things are but means - the telling of the story is the end and the essential. He has given us, in a letter to a critic of art,
a more formal procession of faith-a brief statement of what the thought fundamental in art of the principles
by which he was consciously guided in his own work.
"The objects introduced in a picture," he says, "should not appear to be brought together by chance, and for the occasion
but should have a necessary and indispensable connection. I want the people that I represent to look as if they belonged
to their place, and if it would be impossible for them to think of being anything else but what they are.
A work must be all of a piece, and persons and objects must always be there for a purpose. I wish to say fully and forcibly
what is necessary, so much so that I think things feebly said are better not to be said at all, since they are, as it were, spoilt
and robbed of their charm. But I have the greatest horror of useless accessories, however brilliant they may be.
These things only serve to distract and weaken the general effect." The classic spirit, in its austered form,
as it envisages the subject and its treatment, could not be more clearly expressed: and Millet's practise was strictly in
accord with his theories. His pictures are seldom so specifically related to a written text of his characters as those of Rembrandt,
but each of his characters has a history and a station, and "could never think of being other than what it is." ......
In continuation of a post by my friend darkwolfb87 I have written out an excerpt out of 'The classic point of view' by Kenyon Cox. He talks about the
narrative subject in painting. I thought it would be of some interest amongst you. If this is against the rules of copyright I sincerely apologize and this post
may off course be removed. Just thought I'd share :
From 'the subject in Art' :
.....The different kinds of merit proper to the different kinds of subject can never be quite perfectly united
- there must always be some sacrifice, somewhere - but now and then, in the works of the greatest masters,
so much of technical beauty and perfection is found united to so much of grandeur of conception and
largeness of style that we may receive from one work the largest possible sum of enjoyment.
These are the worlds unapproachable masterpieces.
But if the modern world has come to think any subject as good as any other it has made one very curious exception to the rule.
It has come to think what it calls "the literary subject" an actual drawback, and to consider that the presence in a work of art,
of what is called a "story" is of itself enough to relegate that work to an inferior rank. Yet how such an opinion can have
been arrived at, in view of the history of art in all ages, is the greatest of puzzles.
For art, from its beginnings among the cave men,
has always told stories; and its twin purposes of illustration being generally, in the mind of the artist as in that of the audience,
the more important of the two. The Assyrian celebrated the prowess of his kings in hunt or in battle and the Egyptian recorded
the whole life of the people upon the walls of royal tombs. The art of Greece told the story of its gods and heroes on every vase
and on every temple front, and in the pediments of the Parthenon recounted the legends of the birth of Pallas and of the founding of Athens.
In like manner the art of the Renaissance occupied itself, almost exclusively, with the sacred story of the old and new testament
or with the legends of the saints, from time that Giotto painted the life of Christ in the Arena Chapel until Raphael
spread his "Bible" upon the vaultings of the Loggia of the Vatican. The greatest work of its mightiest master,
the most sublime and awe-inspiring creation of all art, was nothing else than the story of the creation and the Fall of Man,
so told, with such clarity and such power, as never story, before or since, was told in colors.
Even the Venetians, those lovers of the sumptuous and the decorative, the creators of what we know as genre, could not get on without a story to tell,
and when the story seems absent to us it is because it has been lost, not because it was not there. Titian's enigmatic picture
which is traditionally known as the "Sacred and Profane Love" is now said to represent " Medea and Venus,"
and Giorgione's "Partie Champetre" and "Soldier and Gypsy" are thought to be illustrations of this or that Italian novel.
It may be that in these later instances the story was a concession to the demands of the public, and that while
the ostensible subject was the temptation of Medea by Venus the real subject was the contrast between a nude figure and draped one.
It may be that Giorgione would have been equally content with his idyllic dreams had they no definite context in his mind
or in the minds of those for whom he painted. It certainly was not so with the earlier masters, and as certainly it was not so
with that later master, Rembrandt.
It is commonplace of criticism that Dutch art told no stories, and that the Dutch burghers,
for whom it was created, asked nothing of it but the portraiture of themselves and their wives or of their daily life
and their tame and comfortable country. The artist who attempted more did so at his peril, and Ruysdael paid for his love of
rocks and waterfalls as Rembrandt paid for his love of stories, with poverty and discouragement. Yet Rembrandt was
always telling stories. His public did not want them; it wanted nothing but portraits that should be like; and when his portraits
ceased to be neat and obvious likenesses it wanted nothing of him whatever. Yet he painted stories over and over again,
his etchings are filled with stories and, more than all, his drawings, which the public never saw, are one long series of illustrations.
He was haunted with stories from which he could not escape and to which he returned again and again, illustrating their
every phase and turning and twisting them in every aspect. there is the story of Lot, the story of Joseph, the story of Tobit,
for each of which he made almost numberless drawings, and the story of Christ, which is the subject of his greatest etchings.
He was a great painter, a great master of light and shade, a portrait painter who has excelled all others in the rendering
of the human soul behind the features; but more than anything else he was a great storyteller, and his imaginative grasp of a story
and his power of so telling it that it shall seem real and immediate to us, as if it had actually happened in front of our very eyes,
is perhaps the most wonderful of his many wonderful gifts.
So great has been the dominance of the story in art that even
the landscape painters of the seventeenth century, to whose main purpose story telling was in no way necessary,
nearly always put in a few figures supposed to represent the characters in some legend, sacred or profane;
and the light and frivolous art of the eighteenth century tells stories too though the stories may be as light and frivolous as the manner of telling.
But if you wish to know how seriously the telling of a story may be taken by a great artist you must read the fragments
of criticism left us by that great nineteenth century classicist Jean François Millet. In his letters, in the fragments of his
conversation recorded for us by others, in his few formal announcements of his beliefs in art, you will find hardly anything
else mentioned. For all he says about them, such things as drawings, or color the handling of his material might as well not exist.
Apparently his whole mind is concentrated on the story of the picture and the manner of its telling- everything else is of value
only as it helps the clarity and force of the expression .For him "Art is a language and ... all language is intended for the expression of ideas."
"The artist's first task is to find an arrangement that will give full and striking expression to his idea." And again, " To have painted
things that mean nothing is to have borne no fruit." Hear him discoursing on a print, after his favorite master Poussin,
of a man upon his death-bed : " How simple and austere the interior; only that which is necessary, no more; the grief of the family,
how abject; the calm movement of the physician as he lays the back of his hand upon the dying man's heart;
and the dying man, the care and sorrow in his face, his hands... they show age, toil and suffering." Not one word about anything else
- all other things are but means - the telling of the story is the end and the essential. He has given us, in a letter to a critic of art,
a more formal procession of faith-a brief statement of what the thought fundamental in art of the principles
by which he was consciously guided in his own work.
"The objects introduced in a picture," he says, "should not appear to be brought together by chance, and for the occasion
but should have a necessary and indispensable connection. I want the people that I represent to look as if they belonged
to their place, and if it would be impossible for them to think of being anything else but what they are.
A work must be all of a piece, and persons and objects must always be there for a purpose. I wish to say fully and forcibly
what is necessary, so much so that I think things feebly said are better not to be said at all, since they are, as it were, spoilt
and robbed of their charm. But I have the greatest horror of useless accessories, however brilliant they may be.
These things only serve to distract and weaken the general effect." The classic spirit, in its austered form,
as it envisages the subject and its treatment, could not be more clearly expressed: and Millet's practise was strictly in
accord with his theories. His pictures are seldom so specifically related to a written text of his characters as those of Rembrandt,
but each of his characters has a history and a station, and "could never think of being other than what it is." ......