Revealing Art

Matthew Kieran

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• ISBN:
  9781134469802
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Filosofia
• Subtopic: Storia e teoria della filosofia

Why does art matter to us, and what makes it good? Why is the role of imagination so important in art? Illustrated with carefully chosen colour and black-and-white plates of examples from Michaelangelo to Matisse and Poussin to Pollock, Revealing Art takes us on a compelling and provocative journey.Kieran explores some of the most important questions we can ask ourselves about art: how can art inspire us or disgust us? Is artistic judgement simply a matter of taste? Can art be immoral or obscene, and should it be censored? He brings such abstract issues to life with fascinating discussions of individual paintings, photographs and sculptures, such as Michelangelo's Pieta, Andres Serrano's Piss Christ and Francis Bacon's powerful paintings of the Pope.He also suggests some answers to problems that any one in an art gallery or museum is likely to ask themselves: what is a beautiful work of art? and can art really reveal something true about our own nature? Revealing Art is ideal for anyone interested in debates about art today, or who has simply stood in front of a painting and felt baffled.

Chapter One

Originality and Artistic Expression

Priceless

Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa (1503–6) is housed in the Louvre behind plastic glass, some distance away from where its audience must stand. The viewing conditions are atrocious, and usually compounded by the gaggle of spectators crowding round to look at one of the most famous paintings in the world. Most of them have seen endless reproductions, but somehow the draw of the original is intensified rather than lessened. Why is this? Why do we assume that the original work is so precious? That we do seems clear, from the huge sums paid on the art market for original works to the lengths some people will go to to see particular exhibitions. If we could see a copy that was just as good would we really be missing out on anything? Why do we presume that forgeries and pastiches can’t be as artistically worthwhile?

It is a commonly held view that an art work has no worth other than the value of the experiences it affords us. Does experiencing a work give pleasure? Do we gain insight or understanding? How can we distinguish between the values tied up with experiencing the work and those only loosely connected? As important as such questions are, assuming that only the experience counts sits uneasily with the thought that artistic originals matter. Perhaps a forgery or pastiche could give us experiences just as good as an original, in which case why bother? But it also seems to be in tension with the way we appreciate certain kinds of art, from contemporary conceptual art to recognising the innovations of cubism. Historically the importance of the original, and originality, is tied up with the Romantic idealisation of the artist. Central to Romanticism was the claim that distinctive, imaginative expression in art constituted one of humanity’s highest achievements. It is a rarefied view and much out of favour. Is artistic value always just a function of valuable experiences? Or does there lie, in the shadows of the Romantic view, a clue as to what else artistic value can consist in?

Faking it

In the twentieth century, with its explosive developments in reproductive technology, many thought that the aura surrounding original art works would evaporate. Artists had been influenced by photography since the late nineteenth century, and in the 1920s, particularly within the Dada and surrealist movements, it came to be used in a distinctively artistic manner. Max Ernst used photomontage to unsettling effect by combining distinct photographic images and engravings, ranging from mundane adverts to landscapes superimposed with amorphous figures. John Heartfield’s vicious satire juxtaposed figures ranging from a member of the Nazi SA superimposed on to the image of a murdered body to Hitler saluting whilst gobbling huge amounts of money. From Duchamp and Man Ray through to the 1960s, with work by artists like Andy Warhol and Richard Hamilton, up to contemporary artists such as Jeff Wall, there is a common thread which seems to suggest that the original work of art is, strictly speaking, irrelevant. What matters is whether what you are looking at, be it the original or no, gives you the same kind of rewarding experience. In Walter Benjamin’s suggestive phraseology, the work of art had entered the age of mechanical reproduction. Our fetishism of originals was supposed to diminish in proportion to the fidelity of copies realised by our use of machinery. For the age of photography (and no doubt cinema and now the world of computer generated imagery) was held to usher in an age when ‘for the first time in world history, mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual’.¹ Only eleven years later, in 1947, André Malraux was to imagine and look forward to a museum full to the brim with photographic reproductions of the great art works of mankind.² Viewing the reproductions would not just please the eye but enhance our understanding of the complex relationships amongst the photographed works.

In a way we already move within Malraux’s imaginary museum. There is no end of beautifully reproduced art works in monographs on particular artists, movements or epochs. Images of past masters, contemporary artists, great works and not so great works can be found on lavishly produced posters, postcards and even mugs. We’re lucky to find ourselves in such a position. For the many of us who can’t afford to buy original works can still enrich our lives with copies of works we find beautiful or intriguing. We can see how particular artists developed or the summation of the glories of the Renaissance without having to go to an exhibition – which may or may not ever be put together and which, even if it is, may or may not even be in our country.

It is easy to decry the ubiquity of images such as Monet’s Water Lilies, yet we should be wary of snobbery – it’s no different in principle from a Fornassetti mug or a Rothko poster – or the accretions of cliché from blinding us to great artistry. It is true that the ease of mass reproduction can lend itself to purposes that render banal even the greatest of artistic achievements. A few years ago I was in a fashionably monochromatic bar which had various art prints hung on the walls. One of them happened to be from Monet’s Water Lilies series and, if giving it more than a brief glance, you could see it was hung upside down – the shifting pool of water reflecting the lilies was where the sky should be. Thus was a copy of Monet’s Water Lilies reduced to coloured wallpaper. But all this shows is that people can misuse or fail to appreciate what the images are copies of, not that mass reproduction of such images is bound to lead to a cheapening of our appreciation of art.

Given the virtues of the mass reproduction of art works, and their quality, what is the point of going to see the originals? The answer by some is thought to depend on the nature of the artistic medium we’re dealing with. In photography it is often assumed that, art market reasons apart, whether a photograph is an original print or a photographic reproduction doesn’t matter. Photographs are, it is thought, utterly transparent with respect to what they are images of. Indeed, this has led some to claim that photography cannot even be an independent representational art.³ Another reason is the belief that a photographic reproduction of a photographic image, at least one which preserves the image’s size, will preserve the relevant appreciable qualities of the latter. By contrast this is held not to be the case in painting, since the artist can choose how to represent the scene before him, hence every brushstroke matters, and reproductions fail to keep the relevant qualities intact.

However, this is a mistake. It’s true in photography that ‘the work’ is usually a kind of which there can be many instances. Consider the work of Bill Brandt. One of the great photographers of the twentieth century, Brandt originally worked with Man Ray, then moved on to produce social commentary images of 1930s Britain. Some of his best work consists in images of dark, industrial northern towns, his poetic yet often bleak landscapes and his abstracted nude studies (for which he is most well known). Now for any one of his works, since it is a photograph, there can be many instances. On taking a photograph the image is captured on film and can be developed many, many times over. So, in principle, the same work could be sold to as many buyers and museums as possible. Hence I could see the same work in London, though not the same particular print of it, at the same time as you see the work in New York. They are two different versions of the same work. Now it is often assumed that photographers aim to make identical prints of the same photograph. Yet though this is often the case it isn’t always true. Thus the print on display in London might be artistically different, darker lighting, blacker shadows, a more flecked and grainy tone, because the artist intended it to be so. This is just one way in which photography’s representational qualities can be chosen and altered by the artist.⁴ It is like listening to two different versions of Beethoven’s Choral Symphony which vary in tempo, emphasis of tone and lyrical interpretation in performance. So though viewing the original in the case of photography admits of many instances or prints, which may vary, seeing an instance of the original matters for the same reason it matters that we’re listening to a performance of Beethoven’s score. Photographers usually try, though not always successfully, to limit the number of prints available of one of their images and often make sure there are subtle differences in the development of each print. This is partly for aesthetic reasons. Just as we value different performances of the same piece of music so too we often value different versions of the same image. It is also partly for economic reasons. If there are too many versions of the same image available then the exclusivity of the work diminishes and their prices plummet. If the artistic reason isn’t sufficient motivation to limit the number of prints made, then the economic reason usually is. The same kind of characterisation applies to lithographic prints, etchings, screen printing and sculptures produced from mouldings. Even if in many cases the exact look of each version of the work is aimed for, it needn’t always be the result, or the intended aim of the artist. It’s true that in some cases the possible instances of a work are not limitless; in that of etchings, for example, the metal plating degenerates with each imprinting. None the less, such works are kinds of which there can be many instances – and lithographs, etching plates or sculpture mouldings are often destroyed by artists to limit the numbers of the work that can be reproduced.

Now, by contrast, we might think that originals matter in painting because we are dealing with a unique particular object. Take the work of the seventeenth-century Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer. There are only about thirty-six of his paintings left in existence and most of them focus on people in domestic scenes, mainly indoors, often with allegorical or religious significance. Vermeer’s work is rightly celebrated both for the sheer smoothness of his painted surfaces and for the subtle interplay of light, shadow, colour and proportion. But the formal techniques are used to give a sense of the vivid reality of his subjects and finely express their moods and attitudes, as in, for example, the realism of his The Little Street (1657–8). This is a masterly street scene with the painterly delineation of bricks, mortar and houses serving as the background for ordinary household activities. But there is more to it than this. One starts to take in the blank, mute façades, the closed or half-open shutters and empty windows of the house on the right, and occasional female figures of whom we can only identify their external activities. An impression builds up that there is animating, interior life, within the figures themselves and behind the mute façades; yet we cannot know the exact nature of that life just in virtue of their appearances. So the quality of the painting and its formal virtues embody an insight into how difficult it may be to understand others – what a person is thinking and feeling cannot just be perceived from observing them. Had Vermeer’s brushstrokes been different, the smoothness of the surface would be lacking; had the structural composition been different, the sense of scale would have been lost; had the grouping of figures been rendered differently then the sense of isolated figures going about their private, solitary, human activities would have been lost. In the painting each particular feature makes a difference to the composition as a whole, from the particularly fine brushstrokes characterising the brickwork to the echoing of each figure by the others. Given that every painterly feature matters in this very particular way, then looking at the original matters hugely. No matter how good the painted copy, the photograph, or the lusciously reproduced plate in a book, features of the painting which are crucial to appreciating it properly are bound to be lost – whether it be the brushwork, the sensuous surface or the light – and its proper impact thereby diminished. Interestingly, one can also get a false impression of how good certain paintings are because of the way they are reproduced. I remember being at an exhibition at the Georgia O’Keefe museum in Sante Fe a few years ago and was astonished at how comparatively small much of her work actually is. When one looks at reproductions of her flower studies, one imagines that they are painted on an epic scale. The formal structuring, the use of line and colour, the lack of detailing, suggest a vivid impact partly based on a contrast between the grand size of the paintings themselves and the fine, small-scale nature of the flowers depicted. In fact they are painted on a much smaller scale than the reproductions suggest and their impact is subsequently much less than one would imagine. Painting seems intrinsically particular, and no matter how good even the most painterly copy or forgery is, something will always be lacking.

There is good reason to think that no reproductive copy or forgery is likely to be as good but it is a mistake to think this is necessarily the case. In principle both a painting and a photograph could be copied perfectly. Consider modifying Malraux’s imaginary museum. Imagine that it houses not good-quality photographic copies of original works but, instead, photographs and paintings which are visually indistinguishable from the originals. By some fantastic yet to be discovered cloning technique, any and every work can be exactly reproduced in the very same materials as perfectly as any original. Then painting would be in a similar position to photography and lithographs. We might be tempted to deny such a thing is or could be possible. But that’s either because we are thinking about what can actually be done with our present technology or because we are just assuming that there could be no perfect copy. But just imagine that there could be such a thing. Would we then have any reason to value the original? At least, would we have any reason to value the original more than its perfect copies? It is tempting to assume that the answer is no – which helps to explain why people have fought over whether paintings are necessarily particular or not in contrast to photographs, books or musical works. But this would be a mistake. There is no good reason to hold that paintings couldn’t be just the same. The crucial point is, even if we did have perfect copies, we would still have reason to value the originals more than the perfect copies. It is neither irrational nor sentimental to do so, since the reason runs very deep indeed.

What is the reason then? It concerns the essentiality of origin. What this opaque phrase picks out is the idea that what matters regarding our attitudes to something is not just a function of what its inherent qualities are, but also a matter of the relations in which the object stands to us.⁵ It’s easier to grasp the point if we consider a concrete case. Imagine that there are two young girls who are in every qualitative respect the same but one of them is a clone of the other – they look exactly the same, they act the same, they even think the same thoughts and one is a genetic copy of the other. Yet only one of them is your natural daughter whilst the other one is an exact copy of her, so they stand in different relations to you. Should we treat them exactly the same? If the only thing that matters is the nature of the girls then the answer is yes. But this is not so. For you have good reason to care about, and act differently towards, one of the girls because she is your daughter (which is not to say you can treat her clone any old way). Similarly, there could be two paintings that are exactly the same in terms of appearance but the relations in which they stand both to each other and to their origins may be different: one of them was created by the artist we credit with the work; the other was perfectly copied from that original by someone else. The copy may happen to give you exactly the same rewarding experience that the original gives when you look at it (just as both the girls can do exactly the same things). But it is none the less a copy of the original work rather than another version of the original (just as only one of the girls is your daughter and the other an exact replica). What this shows is that the relations in which a particular work stands make an essential difference to the nature of the work – and thus to how it should be treated. For without recognising the importance of such relations we could not explain why certain attitudes towards works of originality, pastiches and fakes are appropriate. Now, it could be asked why this really matters. Sure, whether a painting is really a Vermeer or a photograph a Brandt depends on the relations of the work to its creator. But why should that be relevant to artistic value? To answer that question we have to examine why originality matters.

Originality

One of the things we prize highly in good or great art is originality. By that I don’t mean merely doing something novel. After all, someone can be novel by producing something spectacularly bad and awful (there was a good reason why no one had done it before), or by reproducing someone else’s thoughts or techniques with minor variations. Mere novelty does not make for originality. Rather, originality consists in a certain kind of artistic achievement – for example, the independent and remarkable realisation of a solution to an artistic problem, the development of a new artistic technique, the strikingly fresh treatment of overly familiar subject matter. Caravaggio’s claim to greatness partly lies in his revolutionary treatment of familiar religious subjects and scenes. Born in 1573, Caravaggio turned on its head the previous hundred years’ tradition of idealising human and religious experience. In formal terms what is most striking about his work is the intense contrasts between darkness and light, through the use of vivid chiaroscuro effects, so that shadowy scenes are strikingly illuminated, often from an unknown source, to highlight the dramatic focal point of the depicted scene. Yet the most revolutionary aspect of his work is the way in which biblical characters are represented as ordinary, contemporary people. Biblical characters had more traditionally been represented in highly conventionalised, ethereal ways, marking them out as distinct in kind from those gazing upon the scene. Thus they were presented as people to be idolised and worshipped because their nature, whether by divine grace or by saintly goodness, was so much more perfect than our own. But Caravaggio rejected convention and strove for radical naturalism. Not only are his incidental figures represented in highly naturalistic ways, but his Christ, his Madonna, his St Matthew, are all represented in just the same way. They are of the same flesh, the same blood; they are part of the very same world as the viewer, not set apart from it. Thus do they partake of the same nature. In the Contarelli Chapel in the Church of San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome, for example, is Caravaggio’s The Calling of St Matthew (1599–1600). Here St Matthew is represented seated at a table with four others in the process of counting money, probably from their tax collecting duties. Christ stands on the right with St Peter, backlit from the window on the right, the light straining through to pick out St Matthew who is pointing at himself in surprise. The two boys counting on the left fail to notice and the two other figures seem afraid or threatened. The dramatic point of the picture concerns St Matthew’s shock of recognition, frozen in a moment of wonder and indecision. The portrayal’s revolutionary aspect conc...