The Collapse of Culture

Coventry Cathedral

Well, that is quite a hefty title and this is only a  short blog post rather than a multi volume academic treatise so I had better start by explaining very briefly what I mean by it. I am talking today quite specifically about the fact that over the last 100 years or so, our artists and architects have stopped producing works which previous centuries would  have recognised as being serious works and, which is perhaps more insidious, the public at large have generally not noticed, or if they have, they have regarded the decline as inevitable and irreversible.  Of course these two facts are closely connected, artists and architects are members of the public and subject to the same prevailing cultural influences; all art is, and always has been, reflective of the social milieu out of which it came. However before taking a closer look at these cultural influences I want to add the further point that a central tenant of the modernist movement, which has become the established and entrenched dominant ideology over the last century, has been that an intellectual divide between artist and public has been not merely acceptable but positively to be sought for and encouraged.

No doubt to some "the collapse of culture" sounds a pretty damning and sweeping statement, so before I go further in trying to dissect why it happened perhaps I had better illustrate that it happened. Ok then, what I am wondering is how we went from this

Paulo Veronese
 

 and this

Giovanni Bellini

to this

Jean-Michel Basquiat

 and this

Cy Twombly

 

 Or, in the field of architecture, how is it that once we produced buildings like these:

A Cambridge College

and now we produce buildings like these:



A Modernist Tower Block 



 

 

I hardly doubt that to a reasonable mind it is obvious that there is a loss there.

 

So how did this collapse come about? Well, it seems to me that the tremendous rate of change at the end of the nineteenth century must have seemed irresistible to those who lived through it. There were huge and rapid social, technological, political and economic changes. People could see and feel their lives change almost year on year as new inventions arrived, more and more people moved into booming cities, the world started shrinking in terms of both trade and tourism, and there is no doubt that many people felt a state of change had become a new mode of life. The world was in flux; old realities and stabilities were being challenged and overthrown in so many areas of life it was perhaps inevitable that young artists should feel that art needed radical change as well.

In addition to this general zeitgeist of restless change there were further factors in the art world which were identified even at the time as encouraging a seeking out of novelty for its own sake. These were, most particularly, the huge growth in exhibitions and private dealerships and the corresponding development of an arts media and professional commetariat. Young artists needed to make a big noise to be heard, and they needed to make it quickly. Sensations had to be made and they can be made more easily by shouting profanities than talking quiet good sense. Dealers and critics were competing to find the next big thing, the Impressionists and others had already eroded the distinction between a finished work and a quick sketch, in short all the conditions were right for an explosion in the amount of art produced, and inevitably in such circumstances getting any kind of art out there was more important than its quality. Thus it suited all involved to create a new environment where "quality" as previously understood was no longer a factor in critical or commercial appreciation.

 

Here we come to the role of the critic and professional opinion former. In previous ages perhaps one or two great men had had the power to influence taste in art, Ruskin being the last such and the first to reach anything like a mass audience. In previous times the power of these people was limited to a very small circle. But at the turn of the twentieth century with mass literacy, an ever expanding class of potential picture buyers and people keen to be educated in the arts their influence grew enormously. I have written in an earlier post of the baleful influence of Roger Fry but he was only the first of a long line of critics who engaged in a cynical attempt to destroy the arts and re-fashion them in their own image.

 

For in truth the great mistake of artists, architects and their literary supporters was to suppose that art could flourish without being aware of its own past. The urge at the time was to break completely with tradition and create a sort of year zero for art and to do this it was necessary to totally subvert all existing standards and traditional criteria for excellence. I should mention at this point that the catastrophe of the First World War cannot be under-estimated. It at once seemed to justify the wholesale rejection of the cultures and societies which had produced it and made reaching back to a time before it unthinkable to the generation who grew up in its shadow.  For five centuries the work of artists such as  Bellini as seen above had been considered a standard for excellence because of the skill with which he manipulated paint, his handling of tones and colour masses, the sensitivity of his drawing, the tenderness of expression and quality of ideas. Now clearly work such as that produced by the early heroes of the modern movement, still less later efforts by the likes of Twombly or Basquiat, could not hold a candle to the old masters judged by those standards so new standards had to be invented. Chief amongst these were meaningless words like "energy" "originality"  (no real artist ever strives after originality) "freshness" and the like. In fact when boiled down the importance of these works was considered to lie in their being unlike works which had gone before.

 

 It is still a commonly expressed idea, that there is value in a work of art just because it looks different from art of previous ages and this is true of architecture too. In fact so firmly has this idea taken root that it is probably impossible for an architect now to propose to build a building for example in the Gothic style. When reference to an historic style is made, as in the  vaguely neo-classical style at Prince Charles' development at Poundbury, both the Prince and his architects received a huge amount of criticism for just this fact; for "looking backwards" or not being "progressive". Never mind that people take pleasure from living in a well proportioned and well constructed house!  From personal experience also I know how much prejudice one has to overcome if one attempts to paint pictures in a style un-influenced by modernism. This may strike some people as an obvious fact, why should a mediaeval or pre-modern style have any relevance to the modern world? but yet what is "relevance" and why should we reject work of real quality simply because previous generations were able to enjoy them as well?

 

This indeed is a poisonous idea, that historic methods and styles which have graced our civilization for centuries are no longer valid merely by the fact of their being historic. It would seem, and in fact in a way, is really so, that a great divide has been erected between the past and the present; a chasm we are discouraged not merely from crossing but even acknowledging. We are told that the "modern" is qualitively different from anything preceeding it, the very phrase "modern art" is a giveaway, why is it not just "art"? The truth is that, in cultural terms, the greatest invention, (the only invention one is tempted to add) of the modern age is the concept of modernity itself, with which catastrophic results the pictures at the top of this post demonstrate.

 

It often strikes me as odd that people are so often keen to marvel at the artistic and architectural wonders of the past and yet seemingly accept that it is no longer possible to produce work of a similar standard. When queuing for a blockbuster show of Titian or Velasquez I am tempted to ask people if they feel angry or cheated that they can not get a similar pleasure by going to a contemporary show, but I suspect many people would not even understand the question. The belief seems to be ingrained that the art of the past is one thing and the art of our time is something else. One goes to the former for pleasure, joy, spiritual uplift, to the latter (if at all) to be "challenged" or "provoked". Quite what is being "challenged" by the way is never made clear, conventional notions of something or other usually, in some banal self referential way that requires a long winded curatorial explanation designed apparently to enlighten but in reality rather to obfuscate.

 

Well, as I often say "thank God for the past!" Can you imagine a world with art and architecture existing only from after the First World War? What a mean- spirited, ugly and depressing world that would be! how childish, narrow and self-absorbed! Culture is an organic growth, it cannot long survive being up-rooted from the past, and this, for a century had been the stated aim of a small but deadly band of theorists and practitioners. We all live with the results but I believe it is the duty of all of us who work at art to try and re-establish the link with history and tradition even if at times it seems hopeless. For surely to let ourselves be cut adrift and spin in an endless whirl of degraded modernist anti art is to accept that western civilization will in future be a thing only to be observed from the outside, as it were, rather than lived and breathed and enjoyed and nourished by in the way that previous generations took for granted.

 

 

Lord Leighton
 

 

 

 

 

The Mythic School of Painting

Hope: G.F. Watts

In my last post on Burne-Jones I talked a little about the difference between his poetic style of painting by comparison with the more  realistic style of Millais and the other first wave of Pre-Raphaelite painters, and in this post I propose to say a little more about this difference both in terms of style and technique and we will see how the one can affect the other.
I have borrowed my title from a talk given by Ruskin at Oxford in the early 1880's, one of a series of six lectures published under the title of "The Art of England".  Ruskin meant by the word "mythic" the desire to represent general truths rather than specific facts. One of the examples he chooses to illustrate the  "realistic" school is a watercolour by Rossetti of  "The Virgin in the house of St.John" where Mary is depicted rising in the morning to trim her lamp. Although the incident may have symbolic value it is presented in such a way as to impress on the viewers' mind the absolute veracity of the thing actually having happened. The contrast with the mythic school thus becomes clearer; here we are concerned primarily with the presentation of symbols and personification and the two artists he chooses to represent the mythic school are Watts and Burne-Jones. He summarises the difference between the two modes of thought thus: " had both Rossetti and Burne-Jones been set to illustrate the first chapter of Genesis, Rossetti would have painted either Adam or Eve - but Edward Burne-Jones a Day of Creation.

My experience at the Pre-Raphaelite exhibition was that the "mythic" school of painting, as represented primarily by Burne-Jones, seemed to suggest a deeper truth, to be in a sense more true, than the realistic school, although I accept of course that is entirely a matter of temperament and has no objective basis in reality. Nonetheless as a painter I am always interested in how a thing is done, and so  I then move on to the thorny question of why should this be so. What is it about the mythic school which seems to me to reveal something more profound? Here we come to the point which I often come back to in the analysis of painting, ie the means of expression at an artists' disposal are in fact fairly limited. Critics will talk of abstract emotions, of the anguish, joy or sympathy with the plight of lovers or whatever it may be that a painter puts in to his pictures but as a painter I have looked in vain in the art supplies shops for a tube of paint marked "empathy". They don't exist. All an artist has is a range of colours and the ability to arrange them on a flat surface. Subject of course is important, more important even I must confess than I used to be prepared to admit, but it is not as all important as many people might think. Here to demonstrate the point are two pictures of a very similar subject






Arthur Hughes ; The Nativity
 

Madonna and Child with St.John: Bouguereau.
 

One of the most interesting points a comparison of these two pictures raises, interesting especially for a practising painter, is how does the level of realism utilised by the artist effect the response of the viewer. Or to put it in the terms of the debate about the realist and mythic schools, do the different schools demand or require different levels of realism. It is fairly obvious that an artist who is intent on emphasising the actual facts of the scene depicted is hardly able to over play the realism of his or her technique but what interests me is does a similar technique help or hinder a painter of the mythic school in his attempt to portray the general or universal rather than the specific? If we look at Bouguereau's picture we are struck by the reality of the figures, by their weight and solidity, and of the props likewise, we feel we could give our knees a nasty crack against the Madonna's marble throne. The message of the picture is partly at least therefore, "this is real, the Christ child was also a human child, very similar to any we might meet every day of our lives". In comparison, look at the little picture by Hughes, surely what is being stressed here is the miraculous nature of the incarnation, what we see is a vision of something other, the fact of such an event once having taken place in history at a specific time and place is surely of secondary importance to the universal and on-going miraculous nature of that event.

What are the technical means deployed by the two painters to help convey the different messages? The thing which distinguishes the Hughes from the Bouguereau above all is the flatness of the former. This flatness is apparent in two ways; firstly in terms of the overall composition, the figures are pushed up towards the picture plane and it is hardly possible to imagine walking around the manger whereas with Bouguereau the space is fully articulated, there is not a great deal of depth but everything is in its place. Secondly and perhaps more importantly the figures and objects in the Hughes picture are painted with the minimum amount of chiaroscuro. The development of chiaroscuro (literally light and dark) which occurred in painting around the turn of the sixteenth century was greeted as a great step forward in the quest to depict the natural world and was seized upon by almost all painters of the period. A generation or two later, the Mannerists had already come to realise that accurate depiction of natural light phenomena was a double edged sword and one great painter of the earlier period also seemed to sense the possible dangers and ignored it, to the great harm, it must be said, of his career at the time and subsequent reputation for almost three centuries. That painter of course was Botticelli, and its no accident I think, that the painter most concerned with mystery and allegory should have felt the new methods of realism would not help him achieve his aims. A picture such as this surely depends at least partly for its impact on the fact we don't pause for a moment to consider whether it depicts an historical fact.



Mystic Nativity: Botticelli



 

Compare this to the treatment of light by Raphael in his famous picture of the Transfiguration



The Transfiguration of Christ: Raphael

What we can see here is a demonstration of the interesting fact that most masters of the High Renaissance were happy to light their figures with a studio light even when they were placed outdoors, giving them a full tonal range and thus a great degree of roundness and solidity which, in fact would never be the case in an outdoor light. It is done so skilfully that the unnaturalness of the lighting tends to pass unnoticed.  Botticelli's figures on the other hand have enough chiaroscuro to prevent them looking perfectly flat like a playing card but no more. Solidity is not one of his concerns and I think it reasonable to suggest that too much solidity and thus too much reality can be counter productive for the painter who wishes to deal with allegories and archetypes.  Ruskin himself was certainly aware of the fact that too much realism could be inimical to symbolism. The critic who insisted on the minutest observation of nature for the painter of nature was also able to say :" I cannot...demand botanical accuracy in the graining of the wood employed for the spokes of a Wheel of Fortune. Indeed .... I am under an instinctive impression that some kind of strangeness or quaintness, or even violation of probability, would be not merely admissable, but even desirable, in the delineation of a figure intended to represent ... an idea or an aphorism." Well there is certainly no shortage of strangeness or quaintness in this wonderful picture by Botticelli

Burne-Jones, the starting point of this inquiry himself mused over the same problem, He once said that his pictures ended up as being "a reflection of a reflection of something purely imaginary". This wasn't merely a pretty turn of phrase but an accurate way of describing his work process. If he wanted a prop in a painting he would, if it were something complicated, have it made, armour particularly, then he would make studies from the made item and then make the final image on canvas from those studies. I can't help but feel that he was thus intentionally keeping realism at arm's length, he didn't want to get too involved in the physical matter of his pictures for fear that it would muddy the poetic matter. There is no "botanical accuracy in the graining of the wood" in this picture  below and it would seem that Burne-Jones agreed with Ruskin that that was to the pictures benefit rather than otherwise.






The Wheel of Fortune: Burne-Jones





 

In fact a quick survey of  art history (a very quick one I must admit!) appears to suggest that artists whose primary interest was of the symbolist persuasion have often cultivated a certain strangeness or vagueness of execution, Gustave Moreau is another name which springs to mind amongst a myriad of others, particularly from the nineteenth century, although as I mentioned earlier, Mannerists such as Pontormo or Rosso Fiorentino could also be included. Maybe we can introduce another duality into art history, to accompany the age old classic/romantic dichotomy, perhaps we might term it matter/spirit or fact/poetry. Either way, its a post for another day...




Hesiod: Moreau

The Pre-Raphaelites at Tate Britain Part 4: Sir Edward Burne-Jones



Sir Edward Burne-Jones: Love among the Ruins

I will finish my round up of the Pre-Raphaelite exhibition at Tate Britain with a piece about the artist, who, I must confess at the outset, I consider to be one of the very great artists of the world, Sir Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898). This estimate depends to a certain extent on what one considers to be the purpose of art and its role in the life of society and I will be discussing this in a bit more detail in later posts. Purely in technical terms though, that is to say, the skills necessary to produce any worthwhile artwork, there are few in the history of art who can surpass him in the range and extent of his abilities. You may, reasonably enough, doubt my credentials to make such a statement, but you would be foolish to ignore the opinion of such a considerable artist as G.F.Watts so I can't resist quoting a passage from the memoirs of Charles Hallé who records the following conversation in which Watts asks "whereabouts in art do you place Burne-Jones?" "Amongst the first 12 or 15" I [Hallé] replied, "I place him first of all" said Watts. "Do you really mean that you place him above Michaelangelo, Raphael, Titian and Leonardo?" "No", was the answer; "I do not mean that the men you have mentioned were not greater in many ways, but that no artist who has ever lived at any time has united in himself so many gifts of the highest order - imagination, design, drawing, colour and manipulation". Praise indeed, and one thing is for sure, if that was true in the 1890's it is certainly still true today!

 

 There are one or two small early works of Burne-Jones in the first rooms at the exhibition, but, quite rightly, they are dominated by the works of the PRB painters themselves and their early associates  and friends. The work of the later period, of Burne-Jones and Morris, are left to the last two rooms. The penultimate one contains work in the applied arts, tapestry, embroidery, stained glass and the like but it is the last room where Burne-Jones' pictures can really be seen in all their glory.

Sir Edward Burne-Jones: The Rock of Doom

Sir Edward Burne-Jones: The Doom Fulfilled

 

The special attraction of this exhibition are three works from the Perseus series which normally live in Stuttgart and are rarely seen in Britain, It is perhaps not widely enough known that the complete series of gouache paintings, 10 in all, though in various states of completion, can be seen in Southampton Art Gallery, hung together in one room and a wonderful experience it is too, to be able to absorb the whole series at one sitting. Here though we have 3 of the oils, 8 were planned, only 4 of which were brought to completion. Poor Arthur Balfour, philosopher and future prime minister, meekly went along with Burne-Jones' recomendation to re-panel his drawing room to better suit the pictures only to wait 15 years and see the artist die before the commission was completed. Along side these works we have other masterpieces from the painters's mature years; "King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid" and the "Golden Stairs" from the Tate's own collection plus the wonderful "Laus Veneris" and "Love Among the Ruins". Burne-Jones is one of those artists who are at their best when seen in large quantity, many artists suffer in those circumstances, but Burne-Jones creates an imaginary world for the spectator to enter and when literally surrounded by his work the effect, I might have said "the spell", is hypnotic.


Sir Edward Burne-Jones Laus Veneris

As my previous posts have made clear, I dearly love the paintings of the Pre-Rapahelites, I mean those paintings which truly merit that tag, the work of the Brotherhood and others such as Hughes and Brown, but looking at several rooms of their work and then passing on to these magnificent Burne-Jones's was a shock and I want to try and examine the nature of the this shock because it tells me a lot about what art can do and will I hope be instructive for others.  So, my first reaction, completely unpremeditated, and catching me somewhat by surprise having bowed the knee before Millais and the others was something to the effect of "now this is real art". I was aware suddenly that I had been looking at descriptions of the physical world and now I was contemplating something which went beyond the physical, which used the physical world as a reference point but somehow hinted that the actual material appearance of things could be just a cipher for some kind of greater and more profound truth. I know this will seem a bit airy-fairy for some and yet it is what I felt and I felt it very forcibly too, in a moment all the truthful realism of the earlier rooms, beautiful though it often was, suddenly seemed rather thin and literally superficial. I hang on to the power of that first perception because I believe it to be very important. Of course with later reflection I was aware that many of the earlier works, especially some of Millais work, "Autumn Leaves" and "The Blind Girl" to name only two of many could be categorised as being much more than just a material description of the physical world but the strength and power of Burne-Jones' work was such as to make these pictures fade from my mind.

How Burne-Jones does this, how he achieves what du Maurier called the "Burne-Jonesiness of Burne-Jones" I will discuss in a later post, insofar as it is possible to analyse at all. But for now, the point I wish to make is that it struck me, not for the first time of course but with an unusual  sharpness and clarity that if art could do this, if it could lift the veil of the material world and give us hints of something more profoundly spiritual, if it can raise our eyes from the mud and give us even a hint of a better and fairer land (a land in Burne-Jones' own words, "more true than real"), then, simply, shouldn't it? Can there be a more valuable  purpose for art than as a repository for and conduit to, the highest ideals of mankind, and if the answer is, as it surely must be, no, then doesn't it follow that the greatest art is that which fulfills that purpose to the highest degree? Of course this is not to say that all artists should try and paint pictures of this sort or that sort, each must paint whatever he or she feels compelled to do.  In Ruskin's words "you can't tell a secret if you don't know it". Not everyone has a real sense of the immaterial, I adore Veronese for example but it was clearly this world in all its mundane physicality which delighted him, and with that delight to help and guide him he produced some of the world's most lovely pictures. I would maintain my belief though that it is reasonable to reserve the highest category of art, that which is most valuable to the spiritual being which is man, for that art which goes beyond the facts of the material world and provokes a sense of and reverence for the unnameable immaterial realm which we sometimes sense but can never fully grasp. I am led back to Burne-Jones' own famous definition of his art which is so superbly illustrated by the pictures in this exhibition: "I mean by a picture a beautiful romantic dream, of something that never was and never will be, in a light better than any light that ever shone, in a land no-one can define or remember, only desire"



Sir Edward Burne-Jones: The Baleful Head