Theories of Art

1. From Plato to Winckelmann

Moshe Barasch

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135199791
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Art
• Categoría: History of Art

This book, the first in Moshe Barasch's series on art theory, offers a comprehensive analysis and reassessment of major trends in European art theory and its development from the time of Plato to the early eighteenth century. Barasch expertly guides the reader from the interwoven attitudes and traditions of antiquity, through the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas and the aesthetic values of the Middle Ages, to the branching out of several disciplines--art history, art criticism, abstract aesthetics--in the late Renaissance. Clearly outlining the development of art theory and exploring the central issues of each historical period, Theories of Art is a valuable resource for the art historian as well as a stimulating introduction for the general reader.

1

Antiquity

I. Introduction

A student of ancient classical thought on painting and sculpture cannot avoid a certain perplexity in examining the scattered texts and fragments that have come down to us, for an apparent paradox seems to emerge with increasing insistence. Greek and Roman authors, of almost every period from Homer to late Antiquity, were obviously familiar with many works of the visual arts; they describe works of painting and sculpture, or they refer to them in an astonishing variety of contexts, often displaying an intimate acquaintance with the techniques employed in the production of such works. Moreover, philosophers, poets, and rhetoricians laid the basis for the critical discussion of the visual arts by coining such key concepts as imitation, expression, harmony, and the like, concepts that have remained fundamental in the whole tradition of European aesthetics. Yet such familiarity with the works, and even the techniques, of the visual arts does not necessarily imply a clear and comprehensive conceptual structure; it does not prove that the ancients had a theory of art, in any modern sense. What we sometimes rather loosely call the ancient theory of art is often elusive; in attempting to present, in succinct form, ancient views on painting and sculpture, one cannot avoid a certain feeling of vagueness. Does this vagueness result simply from the loss of texts, or does it perhaps reflect some profound ambiguity of the concepts themselves?

Classical literature, as everybody knows, has come down to us in a fragmentary state, and the literary historian sometimes resembles the archaeologist attempting to reconstruct a whole work from a few sentences that have happened to survive, frequently as a quotation in another work of literature. Art theory is no exception to this rule. The De architectura by the Roman architect Vitruvius (late first century B.C.) is the single completely preserved ancient treatise that deals directly and exclusively with art, but its subject matter is architecture; it refers to the representational arts only in passing, and it does not provide a theory of painting and sculpture. Yet can we really assign the absence of treatises on the representational arts only to the randomness of survival? As Jakob Burckhardt has noticed, among the numerous titles of lost books transmitted to us by Diogenes Laërtius not a single one indicates a treatise on painting or sculpture. And the Sophists, who paid such careful attention to technique in all fields of human endeavor, seem to have disregarded the representational arts altogether (with the exception of Hippias of Elis, who is said to have “talked about painting and sculpture”; cf. Philostratus, Vitae sophistarum I. 11).¹ Compare this state of affairs with the many treatises (extant or known to have existed) on music, poetry, and rhetoric, and the absence of discussions of the representational arts becomes clearly not merely a matter of texts that happen not to have survived.

Is it not possible, one is tempted to ask, that the paradox of familiarity with the works themselves and the absence of a coherent theory reflect an ambiguity inherent in the Greek and Roman view of the representational arts?

The elusiveness of ancient thought on the visual arts is compounded by the strange fact that classical culture did not have a specific term for what we now call art. Probably closest to our modern concept is the Greek term technē (τɛχνη) and Latin equivalent, ars. When examining these terms, one is struck by their exceedingly wide scope, which almost makes them unusable in our discussion. Technē (or ars) is not limited to fine arts but rather denotes all kinds of human skills, crafts, or even knowledge. Thus, one can speak of the art of agriculture, of an art of medicine or an art of carpentry, as well as of an art of painting or of sculpture. The specific values now attributed to the fine arts—values that themselves are far from unequivocal—are missing from the classical usage of technē.

Nevertheless, it is of some interest to examine what is implied in this classical concept. Most important, technē is frequently opposed to nature (physis). Thus, Hippocrates contrasts nature (life) with art (medicine). In Greek thought it is generally assumed that whereas nature acts out of sheer necessity technē involves a deliberate human choice. For this reason technē can also be opposed to instinctive ability (as is suggested by Plato in Republic II. 381c and in Protagoras 312b ff), and at the same time it can also be contrasted with mere chance. Broadly speaking, then, technē can indicate the procedure of deliberately achieving a preconceived goal.

This leads us to another aspect of art. Especially in the Aristotelian tradition technē is geared toward production (poietike) rather than merely action. Aristotle’s basic statement of what art is may be found in his description of it as a purposive process that produces a final form out of preexisting matter (Physics 194b. 24 ff.). But in order to be purposeful technē must follow rational rules. The system of such rules, the organized body of knowledge related to some kind of production, is an essential part of technē, and this term can also denote such a body of knowledge. Speaking of architecture, in the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle (VI. 4. 1140a) gives a definition of technē: “Now since architecture is an art [technē] and is essentially a reasoned state or capacity to make, and there is neither any art that is not such a state nor any state that is not an art, art is identical with a state of capacity to make, involving a true course of reasoning.” Stressing the intellectual overtone of the concept, Cicero (De oratore II. 7. 30) says that ars cannot be cut off from science because it always refers to things that are known.

What this brief summary shows is that the paradox encountered in the classical literature regarding the visual arts (familiarity on the one hand, lack of any specific theory on the other) is not the result of the loss of treatises; the paradox indicates a basic problem inherent in the classical approach to the representational arts.

How did the classical views of painting and sculpture develop? What opinions were held regarding the artist? Two great cultural traditions form our principal sources: the doctrines of the philosophers and the teachings of the workshop. Let us now turn to these sources.

II. The Philosophers

The philosophers of Greece and Rome did not contribute directly to the theory of the visual arts. They were usually quite removed from the workshop experience, and whatever they may have had to say about painting and sculpture is fragmentary and marginal to their thought, although sometimes indeed they offer surprising insights into the artist’s work, and, above all, they formulate the conceptual framework for the discussion of art in most later ages. But they reflect and helped to establish the broad cultural context in which the visual arts were viewed in Antiquity.

1. Plato

Nowhere does the paradox in the ancient conception of art become as manifest as in Plato’s thought. Plato never expounded a theory of the visual arts, yet perhaps no other philosopher in history had such a profound impact on artistic thought.² It was Plato who based any discussion of the arts on the concept of imitation. In speaking of imitation, to quote the well-known classical scholar, Wilamowitz, Plato “rapped out a fatal word.”³ Up to our own day the concept of imitation, whether accepted or rejected, has remained the focus of any interpretation of art. But what does imitation mean? There are few concepts as chameleonlike in their significance. Richard McKeon correctly says that Plato used the term “imitation” (mimesis) sometimes in order to single out some specific human activity, sometimes to denote all human activities; sometimes he even applied it to nature, to universal cosmic and divine processes.⁴ Now, what did Plato mean when he used the term in connection with the visual arts?

Plato’s view of pictorial imitation must be pieced together from brief observations always made in a specific context. Under such circumstances certain contradictions in detail are inavoidable, yet some broad, general tendencies can clearly be discerned.

Plato’s conception of reality, as is well known, is hierarchic. Empirical reality is but an approximation of “absolute existence” (i.e., of the Ideas) but falls short of them (Phaedon 74b ff.) and is therefore only their “image” (Phaedros 250b). Plato’s use of the term “image” shows that his theory of imitation is closely related to his hierarchical conception of reality. The pictorial image is never more than an approximation of the material object that it imitates; it is never a true copy of it. “I should say rather that the image, if expressing in every point the entire reality, would no longer be an image… . Do you perceive that images are very far from having qualities which are the exact counterpart of the realities they represent?

“Yes, I see.” (Cratylus 432b, d).

Imitation is, then, never more than a suggestion or evocation.

The classical formulation of this view is an often quoted passage in Book X of the Republic, where Plato introduces the famous example of the couch.⁵ There is only one form or idea of the couch. The carpenter imitates this idea by making a certain couch of a specific material and in a concrete form. The painter who represents the couch does not actually reproduce the craftsman’s product; he portrays only its optical appearance, the couch as he sees it from a certain angle, in a certain light, and the like. The painter is thus twice removed from lasting reality, that is, from the idea.

Plato’s rejection of pictorial imitation is based on the illusionistic character of painting. Sense perception is confused, and the realm of optical experience, on which painting is based, is devoid of truth. “And the same objects appear straight when looked out of water, and crooked when in water; and the concave becomes convex, owing to the illusion about colors to which the sight is liable. Thus every sort of confusion is revealed within us; and this is that weakness of the human mind on which the art of painting in light and shadow, the art of conjuring, and many other ingenious devices impose, having an effect upon us like magic” (Republic X. 602c-d). Skillful uses of perspective and polychromy are therefore denounced as imposture and jugglery. The painter is also compared to a revolving mirror: “you would soon enough make the sun and the heavens, and the earth and yourself, and other animals and plants, and furniture and all the other things of which we were just speaking, in the mirror.”

Imitation as such is inferior, not only because of the status of the image in the hierarchy of being, but also because the imitator, clinging to appearances, does not know the object he is representing. The poet and the painter produce likenesses of a cobbler without knowing anything about cobbling. Only the horseman knows the forms of the reins; the leatherworker who manufactures them has only an “opinion” or “true belief”; the painter who represents them does not have even such an opinion; he is acquainted only with their appearance (Republic X. 601).

Within pictorial representation, however, Plato sometimes distinguishes between two kinds. One type is called “likeness making,” and its criterion is the striving for correctness and faithfulness to the object represented. Likeness making is achieved whenever the artist produces an image “by following the proportions of the original in length, breadth, and depth, and giving, besides, the appropriate colors to each part” (Sophist 235d, e). With reference to painting, Plato here seems to be thinking of a flat, linear style in which easily identifiable local colors are applied.

“Fantastic imitation,” the other type of pictorial imitation, is characterized by a complete adherence to deceiving appearances corresponding to no external reality, or by the intentional creation of convincing optical illusions. Perspective illusions are the best-known examples of fantastic imitation. Adjusting a monumental statue to the conditions under which it will be seen is an example adduced by Plato himself. If some sculptors “reproduced the true proportions of beautiful forms, the upper parts, you know, would seem smaller and the lower parts larger than they ought, because we see the former from a distance, the latter from near at hand” (Sophist 236a). Elongating the upper parts so as to create a correct appearance is fantastic imitation. Another example mentioned by Plato is a certain kind of impressionistic painting, making use of strong effects of light and shade, and is intended to produce striking illusionistic effects, especially when seen from a distance (Sophist 235e). Fantastic imitation is of course “falsehood” (Sophist 266e-267e). It is worth remarking that music and the literary arts are not mentioned in this context; apart from painting and sculpture, only acting is suggested.

Behind Plato’s condemnation of visual imitation one sometimes senses a different attitude, an awareness of the symbolic significance of the act of artistic creation. This attitude is only vaguely intimated—it can never be firmly established—but, given Plato’s overwhelming impact on European thought, even this shade of meaning was influential. It can perhaps best be grasped in Plato’s view of the universe as a work of art created by the divine artist. By imitating the world of Ideas the divine artist fashions the real world. The word used for the divine artist, “Demiurge,” is a word the Greeks, and Plato specifically, also applied to an artisan engaged in useful activity, as a rule of a manual type. The physical world created by the Demiurge is of course not able to match the world of unchangeable ideal patterns at which the Demiurge looked when he was shaping the cosmos, but within its own limitations it is “likely and analogous” to the world of Ideas (Timaeus 29c). It is somehow implied, though never expressly stated, that the artist may sometimes be granted the ability to envision ideas or eternal patterns.

Within the specific medium of painting Plato distinguishes between artists who are altogether dependent on sensory impressions and poietic painters who are not wholly engulfed by the world of physical objects and optical appearances, but retain a certain independence. The poietic painters, deliberately directing their glance to one side or the other of what they represent, and thoughtfully and attentively blending their colors, “produce … that human image in the conception of which they let themselves be guided by what Homer described as divine and godlike when met with among mankind” (Republic VI. 501). The poietic painter is perhaps endowed with the ability to create images of examplary figures, in a sense “likely and analogous” to the unreachable ideal. Here Plato does not speak of individual, historical artists. But in another context he refers with admiration to Phidias as an “outstandingly fine craftsman” (Meno 91d). In his admiration for Egyptian art Plato attributes to it some of the qualities—especially rationality and permanence—that are characteristic of the real or the eternal patterns. “Ten thousand years ago … paintings and reliefs were produced that are no better and no worse than those of today, because the same artistic rules were applied in making them” (Laws II. 656e ff).

The modern reader, acquainted with Plato’s harsh condemnations of the visual arts, especially painting, is surprised to learn of an ancient tradition according to which Plato himself studied painting. This tradition, whether authentic or not, contributed to the image of the venerated sage, as it was handed down through the centuries, and, by implication, may have had considerable influence on the ways in which painting was considered. Perhaps the first source of this tradition is Diogenes Laërtius, who, writing around A.D. 150, relates in his The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers—something of a best-seller in Antiquity—that Plato “applied himself to the study of painting, and that he wrote poems, dithyrambics at first, and afterwards lyric poems and tragedies” (III. 6). This passage is also interesting because it relates painting to noble and venerated types of poetry and literature. Another author of the second-century A.D., Apuleius, flatly states that Plato “did not reject the art of painting,” intimating that he studied it in his youth. In a later period, around A.D. 500, the Byzantine author Olympidorus wrote that Plato derived from the painters whom he visited the knowledge of blending colors, a knowledge displayed in the Timaeus. Whether Plato studied painting or not, it has recently been pointed out that he did indeed use the language of painters, the technical vocabulary of the workshops, with competence and a professional understanding.⁶

Plato’s intimate acquaintance with painting cannot be doubted, but his attitude toward it is deeply ambivalent. On the one hand, as we have seen, he rejects it as inferior imitation, devoid of inherent value. In Laws (797b) an interlocutor is assured that, by not having any knowledge of painting, he has not “missed anything”; in the Statesman (277c) it is said that speech can better represent animated life than can be done “in painting or by any other handicraft.” On the other hand, Plato’s fascination with the process of painting and its many intricacies c...