Translation by Francesco Mazzaferro
Konrad Fiedler
L'attività figurativa [On Figurative Art Activity]
Three essays on aesthetics and theory of “pure visibility"
Vicenza, Neri Pozza, 1963
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| Hans Thoma, Portrait of Konrad Fiedler (1884) |
1. The assessment on figurative art works (1876)
2. Is it possible to promote interest in art? (1879)
3. On the origin of art activity (1887).
[2] Text of the strip:
"The PISA COLLECTION is particularly pleased to present the first Italian translation, authored by Carlo Sgorlon, of three among the mains essays by Konrad Fiedler, of whom only the Aphorisms were available in Italian until now.
Even in [Benedetto] Croce’s opinion, Mr Fiedler was the main and most original philosopher of art in Europe in the second half of the nineteenth century, and for the rigor of his concept and expressive power he was only comparable to Francesco De Sanctis.
By reading these thorough and enlightening essays, it will become finally possible to distinguish the "pure visibility" from the mixture and distortion it suffered in the doctrines of the Gestalt psychology; and furthermore to explore anew a doctrine which, especially developing the Kantian theory of knowledge, has created a foundation - through the general concept of the autonomy of expression – for a positive and concrete finding of the features and the process of art making, in its distinction from the verbal and musical processes."
[3] By courtesy of the Ragghianti Foundation, we are displaying below the review of the work published on 19 October 1963 at the signature of Carlo L. Ragghianti in the daily La Stampa. The original article is conserved in the Luciano Mazzaferro Collection of articles and other clippings, preserved at the City Library Giulio Cesare Croce of San Giovanni in Persiceto.
A Precursor of Croce's Aesthetics
Word and Art
by Carlo L. Ragghianti
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| Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti |
In most ancient times, since prehistory until Mediterranean civilizations, there were certainly periods or regions in which the activities of human life and the development of consciousness took shape with figurative language, rather than with verbal language. This means that – starting from gesture, mimic, dance and ritual to include painting and sculpture – the visual language set up by mankind not only ensured its expression, but even its communication, from logic to technique.
There is a certain trace of this historical phenomenon also after the expansion of the Homeric epos, in the philosophy itself until Pythagoras and even the Sophists. But exactly the creation work of Homer on the one hand (that is, due to its poetic power), and later on the thinking of Socrates, with the emphasis he gave on interiority ethics, on the other hand, laid visual arts - which nevertheless still benefited of a great creative force just in Greece - in a condition of inferiority and subjection to poetry and thought.
Despite the, at times, bitter opposition of the artists, Greek philosophy and "poetic" established that difference and hierarchy between mind and hand, due to which all those arts that were not based on words or speech were considered "mechanical", i.e. not free and tied to the material word, while their value was identified in their ability to visually translate ethics, historic, rhetoric, and poetic contents.
This is the reason why, then and in later centuries, all theories or intuitions aiming at explaining what is intrinsic and specific in the visual arts have been almost entirely produced by artists. But the prevailing philosophical and literary culture also influenced the latter, forcing artists to include their needs within that framework, and then achieving mixed results or limited liberating power. Besides, artists were - and felt - isolated, in a cultural world that did not accept the premise of the independent value of art, and indeed denied the claim of his humanitas, and reduced art to a sensual or practical service, to the point of confining artists to a lower social status.
"Renaissance", as an era of great creative intensity in the arts, did not lead by itself to an overthrow of the situation. Even the entire Middle Ages were equally an era of creativity. The true reversal was due to the concept of man as creator, made equal to God and Nature, as a producer of new living existences that take place in the world in perpetuity. As this conception of man is precisely due to the unprecedented expansion of arts and their genres, the old "poetic" must also include art as a true protagonist.
The traditional justifications and references to the quality of the discourse die hard, and indeed they will continue until the nineteenth century and even today. With Leonardo, however, the ancient inferiority of art vis-à-vis word broke, and we find in him the acute claim that painting is science, that is has a total and unlimited capacity for knowledge, and not only as autonomous poetry. This is true not only in its own fundamental terms, but also in the specific characters of its action – i.e. philosophy and analysis and practice - which have no need of mediation, and even less need the condition of word, as it instead greatly exceeds its possibilities.
Yet, for almost three centuries this new yeast turned to be ignored by aesthetics and philosophy. But the problem returned with Lessing and was placed by him with a force, which is not yet exhausted. The general principle of art activity had been given different and further reaching definitions. From then on, however, the reality of the various forms of expression, in their peculiar and not confused characters - poetry, music, visual arts – had to be taken into account.
Since 1901, [Benedetto] Croce had said without hesitation that the most remarkable aesthetic theory produced in Germany in the second half of the XIX century was due to Konrad Fiedler, known as the "theory of pure visibility." This implied that Mr Croce recognised only Mr Fiedler as a predecessor of his thought; and this was indeed true.
Who was Mr Fiedler, little known even then in the German culture, now forgotten, and present in the Italian culture because of Mr Croce? Born in Oederan in Saxony in 1841, as a young man attended the circles of Munich, in 1866 moved to Italy and Rome, since 1872 onwards settled in Florence, later on alternated stays in Italy and in Germany, and died in Munich in 1895. Little is known of his education. In Italy, he was tied with a long cooperation with the idealist painter von Marées and the sculptor Hildebrand, both subtle meditators and fruitful interlocutors, even if the entire intellectual initiative remained in Fiedler’s hands. Published since 1876, the most important essays of Fiedler were conceived and written in Italian.
The Italian translation of his major works has long been waited for, after the presentation made by Antonio Banfi of Aphorisms (1945). After long time, the printing of three of the main essays of the German thinker, under the title L'attività artistica (On Figurative Art Activity) (Pisa Collection Pisana No 11, Pozza publisher, 40 page foreword by C.L. Ragghianti, 180 page text, superbly translated by Carlo Sgorlon) has permitted to fulfil the expectation.
It would be impossible to summarize Fiedler’s thinking, because of its richness and complexity, and even because of the extreme rigor. Therefore, it is enough to merely limit ourselves to its most original and pregnant core, which still arises today as a condition of aesthetic and critical progress, as an experience that no man of modern culture can avoid, and which, by the way, is very lively from the dense pages.
Mr Fiedler, with the same lucid sureness of Mr Croce, hollowed out from Kantian thinking what had remained adherent to the old aesthetics of beauty, and pointed resolutely towards the doctrine of "pure reason" and the distinction between intuitive, sensitive and artistic knowledge of reality on the one hand, and logical knowledge on the other hand. He was also attentive to Hegelian thinking, in understanding the relationships and steps of the spiritual life in their movement as well as in dialectical unity. Heir of the great poetry and criticism of German romanticism, he became immediately clear to him that intuitive knowledge and language are identical, as man's original activities, which form his reality.
Although so important historically, such a framing of his thinking does not give its real originality. Recovering and discussing Lessing, Mr Fiedler addressed the concrete and historical human languages, i.e. poetry, music, and visual arts. Of the latter, he looked at the source of production and at the construction processes of the images: they are activities by the individual which are not to be understood in general terms, but are such that they are to be realized in terms of visibility. In analysing these processes, Mr Fiedler discovers that artistic production is conscious of itself, and that just as a creative vision, it implements all the activities of consciousness, without any exception. Figurative language is demonstrated to be total, outside of any verbal discourse.
With Fiedler, therefore, a millennial cycle of thought is concluded, and a new one is opened, and - whatever the objections or disagreements or changes may be – it is inevitable to cope with (and try to resolve) the issue, like it was set and discussed by him. Not many books, even in a long period of time, can be said to have such an original and fundamental character. For Italian studies on art, the meditation and discussion of Fiedler will mark a very important time.
[4] In 2006, Aesthetica Edizioni published the Writings on figurative art by Konrad Fiedler, with a new translation by Andrea Pinotti and Fabrizio Scrivano. Here are published, in particular, the first and the third of the essays in this volume.
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