Sprezzatura

Concealing the Effort of Art from Aristotle to Duchamp

Paolo D'Angelo

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780231540346
• Topic: Kunst
• Subtopic: Kunsttheorie & -kritik

The essence of art is to conceal art. A dancer or musician does not only need to perform with ability. There should also be a lack of visible effort that gives an impression of naturalness. To disguise technique and feign ease is to heighten beauty. To express this notion, Italian has a word with no exact equivalent in other languages, sprezzatura: a kind of unaffectedness or nonchalance.

In this book, the first to consider sprezzatura in its own right, philosopher of art Paolo D'Angelo reconstructs the history of concealing art, from ancient rhetoric to our own times. The word sprezzatura was coined in 1528 by Baldassarre Castiglione in The Book of the Courtier to mean a kind of grace with a special essence: the ability to conceal art. But the idea reaches back to Aristotle and Cicero and forward to avant-garde works such as Duchamp's ready-mades, all of which share the suspicion of the overt display of skill. The precept that art must be hidden turns up in a number of fields, from cosmetics to interior design, politics to poetry, the English garden to shabby chic. Through exploring different articulations of this idea, D'Angelo shows the paradox of aesthetics: art hides that it is art, but in doing so it reveals itself to be art and becomes an assertion about art. When art is concealed, it appears as spontaneous as nature—yet, paradoxically, also reveals its indebtedness to technique. An erudite and surprising tour through aesthetics, philosophy, and art history, Sprezzatura presents a strikingly original argument with deceptive ease.

1

CONCEALMENT

We might begin with a dive from a springboard. What makes a dive a beautiful dive? What is it that, in competitions, ensures that a dive gets a high score? Let us look for an explanation in the words of a writer who, in his early years, was an excellent diver as well. In Letteratura e salti mortali, Raffaele La Capria argues that for a dive to be a beautiful dive, one that is to be appreciated by the judges, it is necessary, of course, that the figure is perfect in the approach, as much in the flight as in the entry. Woe if the body is disorganized, woe if some part of it is not perfectly aligned! The diver’s jump from the springboard must be the highest possible, the flight must be graceful, and the entry must be smooth, plowing through the water surface with the proper grade. Almost every dive, at least in competitions, is a somersault, and requires not only athleticism and training but also self-control, courage, and concentration. Each dive is a tour de force, a display of skill, determination, and strength. But all of this is still not enough to make a dive beautiful. What must be present is a peculiarity, a feature that is at the same time the most indefinite, the least definable, and the most elusive. It is above all to this peculiarity that La Capria wants to draw our attention, and his entire discourse is aimed at its characterization. In his words, “Thus a dive is a tour de force … but it must possess a quality if it is to be a beautiful dive: it must be performed, regardless of its difficulty level, with souplesse, as my trainer used to say, or sweetness, as I felt it, and grace. Without effort or, if the effort is present, it must remain unseen. The dive must be performed with the same smile Flo Griffith had while running the hundred-meter final, a smile that she showed in the last thirty meters and that for me was one of the most unforgettable things of the 1988 Olympic Games.”1

Obviously, this kind of observation is not only made in the context of dives. We refer to a similar, even identical, principle when we think about public behavior. We think that truly refined conduct consists of an unforced ease, a kind of effortlessness and spontaneity of manners, and an absolutely nonrigid respect of conventions, always ready to bend according to opportunity, situations, and circumstances. When remembering the industrialist Gianni Agnelli on the first anniversary of his death, Sergio Romano cited exactly this ability to conceal his own talent as one of the primary traits of the man who, for decades, embodied the icon of grand seigneur for all Italians. Romano writes that Agnelli played this role, or, better, his various roles of businessman, Italy’s “ambassador” abroad, and political compass, with nimbleness and distance, that is, with an ability to conceal his own commitment and give the impression that what he did, he did effortlessly without being overengaged.2

Similarly, in interior design there is a particular kind of care that consists of an apparent carelessness, a shabby elegance, that shows itself when, as Alvar González-Palacios points out, “elegance is imposed by chance, and, despite it perhaps being formal in tone, it can at the same time reflect a sort of indifference to details, producing what is called ‘shabby chic.’ This is a particular kind of chic, made up of exquisite objects and torn sofas, loose and overwashed covers, stained or faded lampshades, an unaffectedness resulting from the use and abuse of inventiveness.”3

But the field in which it is most natural for us to point to the ability to dissimulate one’s own mastery, and to spurn affectation, is that of the arts. That art has to be concealed represents for us an understanding and depiction of art that became prevalent in contemporary culture, that is, art as fine and great art. A diver is not the only one who must dissimulate effort and struggle. This kind of dissimulation is required of a dancer as well: it is not good if her face shows a grimace from fatigue or pain, as everything must appear effortlessly, lightly, smoothly, and naturally performed. And we could say the same about a painter, a writer, or a poet. No wonder Raffaele La Capria’s book is titled Letteratura e salti mortali (Literature and Somersaults): the point of his argument is that, just as dives must be performed with an apparent ease, so in literary works the effort, the quest for effect, and the display of skills must remain unseen. Referring to the amount and kind of work that is required to complete a musical or literary piece, Thomas Mann wrote in Doktor Faustus: “The appearance of art is thrown off. At last art always throws off the appearance of art.” Facilement, facilement, Frederic Chopin is said to have instructed his students when they sat at the piano, even when they were about to play extremely difficult pieces. Those who, in art, grow excited about the overcoming of difficulties, technical skills, or the ostentation of abilities—as happens with virtuosity, a phenomenon typical, though not exclusive, of musical performance—end up mistaking the artist for the tightrope walker. They would underappreciate form in their (always quite obtuse) admiration of the crafty ability of execution. This kind of wonder is hopelessly naïve, and pertains to simpletons and children, who, as we learned in a recent study, are indeed unable to appreciate art that conceals its sophistication behind an apparent simplicity, and are much more disposed to value what is patently complex, is duly executed, and manifests the exercise of skills.4

In order to express this kind of naturalness, which is not a gift from nature but the result of serious study, and to illustrate the necessity that art, skills, and mastery remain concealed and not be shown off boastfully, the Italian language has a beautiful and ancient word, one of those words that makes a language unique: sprezzatura. In its original meaning, which is the one that interests us, this word is not related to scorn or disdain (even if it is sometimes used precisely in this sense). Rather, since it is etymologically connected with disregard and heedlessness, we should bear in mind expressions such as “heedless of danger”: one is heedless of art, ability, and ostentation, just as she is heedless of a dangerous situation, that is, she is not ignoring the situation but preventing it from making her behave rigidly or with apprehension. The connection to disregard—a connection that creates difficulty in the very translation of the word—becomes clear if we take a look at some of its lexical variations. For example, in his Letters from Virgil, Saverio Bettinelli (in the middle of the eighteenth century) compares two poets, one of them, “because of an unknown harshness and violence impressed to his verses, seemed somewhat gaining in force and gravity,” while the other could benefit from “a certain heedlessness [sprezzatura], simple and gracious in appearance.” Bettinelli concludes, “in the former one could sense too much of the struggle and study, while in the latter appreciate too little of it.”5

But, one might ask, what is sprezzatura if not disregard? Giacomo Leopardi talks about it as “negligence, certainty, carelessness, and I would even say ignorant confidence.” In his Dizionario, Niccolò Tommaseo defined it as a “manner of doing and talking that appears to be neglectful, but that often consists in masterly ease.” The Great Italian Dictionary by Salvatore Battaglia refers to it as an “intentional carelessness, more apparent than real, that gives naturalness and spontaneity to a literary work or a style, and also a kind of elegance that is perceived as much more refined as it is artificial and studied.” Cristina Campo warns us against the danger posed by apparent synonymies:

[What could be called its] “sister word,” namely, elegance, doesn’t acknowledge sprezzatura’s creative quality, its fresh communicative flame; manner restricts it in the domain of deliberation; ease dissolves it in gestures. Carelessness is more similar, but it fills up only sprezzatura’s hollow, negative, and thus temporary shape. Sprezzatura is actually an overall moral stance that, just like the very word, needs a context that is nearly lost today, and that, again like the word, is in danger of fading away together with it.6

Like many other words, this subtle and intense word was not anonymously born to the language. There was a time in which it was considered a neologism, a creation of a single author’s mind. And it is precisely as a neologism that Baldassarre Castiglione, who invented or used it for the first time in his famous Courtier, presented it. “And, to use possibly a new word, to practise in everything a certain ‘nonchalance’ [sprezzatura] that shall conceal art and show that what is done and said is done without effort and almost without thought.”7 Let’s try then, as Cristina Campo suggests, to reconstruct the context of the term sprezzatura within the literary work in which it first appeared.

The context is the first book of the Courtier, nearly at the beginning of the dialogue. The chosen company of gentlemen and ladies gathered at the Palazzo Ducale in Urbino begins to play the “game” of “portraying a perfect courtier.” They only had time to discuss the equestrian and military exercises that should be expected of the perfect courtier, and to enumerate some of the physical and moral qualities he should possess. Nonetheless, they immediately realized that these qualities are nearly worthless if not accompanied by a particular kind of constraint, a quality of a different order. This quality, which must permeate all the others, since in a sense it is a prerequisite for them, had been given a familiar and ancient name, namely, grace. But even if in this case the name is ancient (“grace” stands for the Greek charis, the Latin gratia or venustas), its meaning is not obvious or unequivocal at all. Rather, grace in behavior seems to be something as mysterious and indefinable as the homonymous grace in the theological sense of the particular kind of benevolence and help that God concedes—or doesn’t concede—to human beings according to his unfathomable plan. At the very beginning of the Courtier grace is considered in this way as well, that is, as an innate quality, resulting from an inexplicable gift, something intended to remain cryptic and indefinable or something that can be defined only in a tautological way. “From the very force of the word, it may be said that he who has grace finds grace.”8 But a distinguo (distinction) is drawn immediately afterward. While it is very true that for many grace is a natural gift rather than an ability that could be acquired by learning, for others, I mean for those who aren’t blessed with it and thus have to acquire it, is there a way to learn to be graceful at all? Count Ludovicus’s answer represents a fine rhetorical masterpiece. At first he hedges a bit: “I am not bound to teach you how to become graceful, or anything else; but only to show you what manner of man a perfect courtier ought to be.” Knowing how to define the qualities of a perfect courtier doesn’t necessarily imply that one knows how to teach someone to acquire these qualities. But, “although it is almost a proverb that grace is not to be learned” (the count can admit that), to some extent at least it can be acquired from study and exercise, and he can even give a universal rule for grace:

But having before now often considered whence this grace springs, laying aside those men who have it by nature, I find one universal rule concerning it, which seems to me worth more in this matter than any other in all things human that are done or said: and that is to avoid affectation to the uttermost and as it were a very sharp and dangerous rock; and, to use possibly a new word, to practice in everything a certain nonchalance [sprezzatura] that shall conceal design and show that what is done and said is done without effort and almost without thought. From this I believe grace is in large measure derived, because everyone knows the difficulty of those things that are rare and well done, and therefore facility in them excites the highest...