History of Art Literature Anthologies
Click here to see all the anthologies reviewed in the series
Francesco Mazzaferro
Lights and Shadows of the Two Versions of the Anthology "Artists on Art" by Hans Eckstein (1938 and 1954)
Part Three
[Original Version: April 2017 - New Version: April 2019]
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| Fig. 34) Hans Heckstein in a picture of 1950 ca. Source: http://www.digiporta.net/index.php?id=779567059 |
It is time to draw some conclusions, by
answering the questions that we asked ourselves when we picked up the two
volumes of 1938 and 1954.
(1) What was common and what was different in the
two editions? The
1938 edition was restricted to German-speaking artists and architects, while
the 1954 edition was open to the entire world. For the rest, the bottom lines were
not substantially different in the two anthologies. In both of them, the
cultural basis was the German culture of the beginning of the twentieth
century. From the point of view of the theory of visual arts and architecture,
the conclusions were substantially aligned. The introductory texts were
basically written in the same style.
(2) Was
there a direct link with the Soviet anthology of art history sources 1933-1939?
Notwithstanding the identity of the titles and the common interest of the
authors (Hans Eckstein and David Efimovic Arkin) for modern rationalist
architecture, we did not find any direct evidence of contacts between the
authors. Indeed, there were some important differences: the four-volume Soviet
anthology did not contain sections devoted to architecture. In fact, the first Soviet
anthology of writings by architects was released in 1953 [17].
(3) What was
the relationship between Eckstein and the Nazi totalitarian regime? The
author had the profile of an ‘internal immigrant’. He did not adhere to the
regime, disregarded all its directives, but did not oppose direct resistance
against it. He completely ignored in the anthology all motives of national-socialist
rhetoric and aesthetics. He also included - albeit with great caution -
references to artists whose art orientation was not in line with the regime
(Marc, Corinth, Loos). Also the edition of 1954 - for its part - completely
ignored Nazism.
(4) What was
the relationship between Eckstein’s anthology and the previous ones? It was
an ambiguous relationship, and plagiarism cannot be excluded. While Eckstein was
in debt to Uhde-Bernays’s anthology, both in terms of the chosen artists, the
specific selection of the letters, and last but not least the contents of the
introduction, he never made any specific reference to him.
(5) Did Eckstein
profit from the banning of Else Cassirer’s anthology of letters of nineteenth
century artists? Probably, he did. When he returned to publications in
Germany in 1938, after a few years of voluntary exile in Switzerland, he occupied
a highly successful market niche in the German-speaking world, just as the main
competitor was taken off the market by the Nazi authorities.
* * *
We are displaying below the introductory texts
to the anthology "Artists on Art"
in the 1938 and 1954 versions. Specifically, they include the pages which Hans
Eckstein placed at the beginning of the anthology, in order to justify the
choice of texts and explain the core reasons of the work, as well as the
introductory pages on architecture, discussing - on the basis of the chosen texts
– its course during the nineteenth century (1938) and in the nineteenth and
twentieth century (1954). We are displaying the texts in the following order:
Part three
(i) general introduction, in the 1938 version;
(ii) general introduction, in the 1954 version;
Part four of this post
(i) introduction to the section on
architecture, in the 1938 version;
(ii introduction to the section on
architecture, in the 1954 version.
The parts in common between the
two texts are highlighted in italics.
Artists on art. Letters, reports, writings of German painters, sculptors and architects.
1938 Version.
Introduction (pages 7-16)
Any form, even
the richest in feelings, has something not true; it alone is the lens through
which we collect, once and for all, the sacred rays of nature, which spread to
the hearts of men and light up their eyes. Goethe [Editor's note: quotation
taken from the introduction to Goethe’s writing 'Aus Goethe Brieftasche', 1775]
We do not know what
the masters of medieval cathedrals or the Bamberg sculptures, Stefan Lochner,
Giotto, Grünewald or Veit Stoss thought about art and their creations. Even
those letters from Mantegna, Durer, Raphael, Titian, Rubens and Rembrandt which
have reached us today, have not given us any information to the point. They
were, in most cases, business letters. Artists informed their clients about the
progress and the efforts of their work, reaffirmed devotion to them, and
finally celebrated, full of pride, the value of their products. Sometimes, as
in the case of Michelangelo, they complained animatedly of customers’ whims. Or
they lamented of being poorly paid, like when Durer was asked to paint a
picture of Our Lady for only 400 guilders. "I immediately rejected,
otherwise I would risk becoming a beggar. In fact, I intend to produce a large
amount of simple paintings [note of the editor: gmeine Gmäll] in a
year, many more than one might think it possible. And yet, to produce a quality
painting [note of the editor: fleisig kleiblen] takes much longer...". Artists wrote on
material aspects, tried occasionally to justify their interpretation of the
theme, and also offered explanations on technical issues. They entrusted to the
care of their clients the panels they had painted "with great zeal"
and "with the best colours," as Durer wrote in a letter to the merchant
Jacob Heller: "I know that you will keep the panel clean, and it will
remain in good condition even in 500 years, since it was produced so as not to
require that we should care: just do not touch it or pour holy water on him. I
know that it will not be damaged, unless this does not happen intentionally to harm
me ...".
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| Fig. 35) Albrecht Dürer, Self-portrait with landscape, 1498 |
Only in the eighteenth
century and fully
during the nineteenth century, art
history sources became rich, very rich indeed. From them we can come to know the artists’ thoughts on art and the
problems of artistic creation. Even
in this era some of the greatest masters were silent or spread in their letters
only limited observations on their work or on the problems of artistic creation
in general. Others, however, published their thoughts, as Salomon Gessner
or Josef Anton Koch, an artist who certainly
liked to argue, or even as Schadow,
Trübner or Hildebrand, a very clear thinker. Any artist who felt
responsible for his talent could no longer make simple reference to luck to
justify his creative faculties; he was forced, therefore, to deal consciously
with traditional forms and address the problem of clarifying his creative
activity; he indeed felt obliged to give
explanation for the relationship between art and nature, between form and
content, between art and the spirit of the time [n.d.r. Zeitgeist] and to take a position on the question of what in art could be the subject of teaching and
learning. It applied to
nineteenth-century artists what Karl Stauffer-Bern wrote: "Cognition is
the first condition and the so-called 'making art without having thought'
[n.d.r. naive Künstlertum] really exists only in novels."
Medieval art was a
craft like any
other, and the laws that the artist
consciously followed were craft rules. The
artist was not aware of any other rules, of a 'style', a two-way relationship
between subject and object, of a conception and sensory expression. Even a
so much reasoning artist as Dürer knew nothing of the internal rules of art
creation. He aimed at the theoretical goal of creating an exact method; on the
basis of geometry shapes and linear perspective, in fact, he wanted to realize
his ideal of an objective beauty, independent of 'opinions'. He certainly did
not deal with the relationship between creative idea and sensory perception,
which was later the focus of the epistemological or psychological reflection of
Marées and Hildebrand. Likewise, as the theorist of Italian Renaissance Leon Battista Alberti and Leonardo, also Dürer wanted to fix a certain relationship
between object and image, against the scientific background of linear
perspective, and therefore also in this case with a view to define a rule. The
difference compared to craft rules and the art doctrine of medieval proportions consisted exclusively of the mathematical exactness with which the depth of the
space effect was defined. In respect of
nature, Renaissance artists still revealed a lack of reflection. They were not
aware of the existence of a regular relationship between form and object and of
an immanent rule of origin and development [n.d.r. Wachstumgesetz] of creative
expression. The famous and
much-quoted sentence by Durer "So, in truth, art is in nature – only those
who snatch art from nature can own it" was definitely conceived in a less
profound way than it is often interpreted.
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| Fig. 36) Albrecht Dürer, Self-portrait with fur, 1500 |
Only towards the end of the eighteenth century artists
began to theorize not only on rules, but also on the creative process itself
and the essence and the meaning of art. Classicism
was still a prisoner of Winckelmann’s aesthetic dogmatism and the dialectic of
enlightenment. Winckelmann believed
that the ultimate goal of all arts was to find the "beautiful", to
generate something more beautiful than nature and especially to convey a meaningful
content: "All arts - Winckelmann
said - have a double ultimate goal: they must please and at the same time
teach." The ultimate measure of judgment was taste - which is the
least suitable criterion for art: already Latins said De gustibus non est disputandum (you shall not discuss about taste)
- and they did it with this justification: if you did discuss taste, you would always
have to defend any lack of good taste.
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| Fig. 37) Joseph Karl Stieler, Portrait of Goethe, 1828 |
The aesthetic concept of Goethe was certainly
defined by Winckelmann’s aesthetics, but his
genius of researcher broke the chains of dogma: he paid homage to the
classical taste, but gained the most profound visions when he investigated
mutual relations between nature and art. He
recognized the wonder of all fine arts in the secret of the inseparable union
between art and nature: "Nature
and art seemed to want to get away from each other, but they found themselves
sooner than you would think." Goethe
said to Eckermann: "An artist has a dual relationship with nature: he is
both his master and his slave. He is
his slave since he must act with earthly tools in order to be understood.
However, he is his master to the extent that he subjects such earthly tools to
his highest intentions and puts them in their service. An artist wants to speak
to the world through an entire [n.d.r. ein Ganzes]; however, he does not find this entire
in the nature, but it is the fruit of his own spirit, or, if you will, of the
presence of a fruitful divine breath."
Goethe saw, in a
completely conscious way, the opposition between art and nature and at the same
time the affinity of the created form and natural structure, of the internal
and external appearance of the image, which are attracting each other, and becoming something single in the work of art: "There
is something incomprehensibly regular in objects, something that matches the incomprehensibly
regular in the subject." He spoke
of an "exact sensory fantasy, without which in reality it would be
impossible to make any art." These were concepts that went far beyond
the dogmatic aesthetics of the antique classical world and the artistic rules of Renaissance.
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| Fig. 38) Paul Cézanne, Self-portrait, 1883-1887 |
The awareness of this mysterious relationship
between internal image and external appearance is the foundation of the creative problem and the artistic
consciousness of the nineteenth century, the reflections by Marées and Cézanne
on the creative process, and the art theory of Fiedler and Hildebrand. A
conversation with Cézanne reported by Joachim Gasquet, dwelling on the subject,
originated from the same awareness or insight of the immanent laws of origin
and development of creative expression. Here is the quotation, as translated
and published in the "Treatise on the beautiful" by Alois Riegl.
Compare the German version of 'Gasquet- Cézanne', translated by Elsa Glaser,
Berlin, 1930, page 101): "The
painter lives in parallel to nature. If only he did not interfere through his
will! His will must be silent. He should put to rest all his views, forget them,
forget them. Speaking no word, he must become a perfect echo. In this way the
landscape will write itself on his canvas. Craft may possibly be added, but
only with full respect, ready to obey. Even when the artist understands well
his language, he must have no conscience to translate the text that deciphers,
or rather the two parallel texts: the external one, i.e. nature like one may
feel it, and the internal one, in his head. Both have to become one single thing,
to be able to endure, and have to be part of a single life, half-divine,
half-human, or of the life of the art and God. The landscape is reflected, is
humanized, is thought in me. You recently told me about Kant - of course, I am speaking
as a layman - but it seems to me as if I were the subjective consciousness of
the landscape and the painting its objective consciousness. My canvas, the
landscape, are both outside of me. But I'm not an academic scholar. No
theories, just works!"
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| Fig. 39) Paul Cézanne, The road, about 1871 |
It was especially romanticism that created awareness
of the opposition and interaction of spirit and nature, art and nature, me and
everything. And above all, starting from it, what in earlier times it had been
possible to leave, without any danger, under the barrier of the unconscious, suddenly
appeared, as a whole, as an explicit problem. But there were aspects which
paralyzed the creative activity of the romantics too and directly weakened their
sensory strength. It was neither the awareness of rules governing artistic
creation nor the reflections on the perception of regular relationships between
art and nature. There were two other reasons, interrelated among others: the
intention to vehicle, through art, intellectual contents and superior ideas, as
it had already happened with Enlightenment and Neoclassicism; and the desire to
disclose their impulses through a thematic material transfigured by a
retrograde nostalgia. Just as it had happened to the neoclassical, even the
romantics saw the intrusion of ideas which interposed themselves between the
capacity of the senses and the creative force. These ideas were not observed through
the 'internal eye', were not ideas 'parallel to nature', but were the result of
a separate conceptual product. That is how the taste for the convoluted, the addiction to fantasy, to allegory and symbolism
prevailed at least on sensory strength. As it had already happened to
classicism, art ceased to be a global force that knew itself how to independently
create and personify forms. It became a servant who acted as a mediator to
"ideas", and thoughts on culture and cultural heritage. The details
that gave nineteenth century art - in particular to the German one - its bipartite face and consequently led to
the separation between art and spirit of the time already dated back to the
years around 1800. They diversified conceptual art [note ofthe editor: Gedankenkunst] on the one
hand and realistic art [note of the editor: Wirklichkeitskunst] on the other. Schiller referred
to the danger of this division already in a letter to Goethe of 14 September
1797 (see quotation on page 43) .
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| Fig. 40) Carl Julius von Leypold. Hiker in the Storm, 1835 |
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| Fig. 41) Alfred Menzel, Flute concert of Frederick II in Sanssouci, 1850 |
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| Fig. 42) Franz von Lenbach, Italian Boys, 1859 |
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| Fig. 43) Friedrich Gunkel, The battle in the Teutoburg forest, 1862-1864 (lost during World War II) |
“Conceptual art",
with its variant of history painting, was generally the most successful genre
with the public.
Paradoxically, in the second half of the century this bond with the ideal
content increasingly led to a separation between art and public, as well as
between art and time spirit. The opposition between historicist
conceptualization of history painting and love for the immediacy of realist art
evolved into an opposition between non-art [note of the editor: Unkunst] and art. The art that was idealistic on the basis of
its own content, but naturalist (or eclectic) in form, was therefore a non-art
without any 'eternal' value which could be preserved; to the contrary, the art which
was condemned by the public because of its natural content, its truth and
closeness to reality was the real idealist art, the 'eternal' art. The art
that used to be celebrated as 'great' has by now become part of the past, along with
the time to which it was linked without any relation to eternity. To the
contrary, the art that was then rather misunderstood - and that seemed alien to
the life and spirit of the time - has taken over by now the role of true art in
our consciousness, that truly great art this century brought us. And
its creators are our greatest masters. This reversal of evaluation did not take
place only in Germany. It also happened in France. Both here and there the
natural connection of art with life as a whole [note of the editor: das Lebensganze] was first
attenuated and then overwhelmed and destroyed.
In truth, the division
between art and time spirit was only apparent: it was a separation that occurred
exclusively on the surface. One could therefore better say that a
differentiation took place between deeper and surface layers of our lives. This
gap, however, determined the destiny of art, and isolated every artist who did
not want to put his talents at the service of opportunity. Artists became defenders of art
and its independence; they defended it not only with their own works, but also
with writings and speeches. They did not only manifest a desire for liberty;
they managed to get for themselves a freedom which was at the same time full of
pride and dangers. For artists, theory became a weapon to be used not only to
defend themselves, but also to establish a secure point of view of their own,
both for themselves and their art and to assign the subjective to superior spiritual
contexts.
It was like this that modern artists - some
more than others, depending on their inner need and their personal attitude -
consciously sought to scrutinize the laws of artistic creation, the mysterious
relationship between art and nature, between form and subject, between what was
contemplated inside and what appeared outside, between art and spirit of
the time, etc. As a theorist, the artist
also became an educator teaching how to see art.
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| Fig. 44) Hans von Marées, Self-portrait (left) with Franz von Lenbach (right), 1863 |
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| Fig. 45) Hans von Marées, Self-portrait (centre) with Adolf von Hildebrand (right) and Charles Grant (left), 1873 |
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| Fig. 46) Adolf von Hildebrand, Bust of Konrad Fiedler, 1874-1875 |
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| Fig. 47) Hans Thoma, Portrait of Konrad Fiedler, 1884 |
The young discipline of art history, which had become
popular due to Franz Kugler and Jacob Burckhardt, and the research on art
theory owed much to artists, not only for
stating their personal attempts and goals, and the artists' subjective
conception, but also for the creative process in general. While artists in the
neoclassical era had shown too willing to follow scholars and emulated a
concept of literary beauty, this relationship was reversed: the great masters
of art became the guiding references of scholars. With the simple words, which
they found while reflecting on their artistic work, they offered insights on the process giving rise to the origin and
development of the creative expression. These insights were often deeper than
the whole aesthetics, when it arbitrarily identified art with the beautiful or raised
questions about taste, but not on artistic forms.
This is the perspective according to which we
collected here letters, passages from memoirs
and other documents of this volume. They must not only document and show the
state or progress of culture, spirit and art history. The historical point
of view, on the contrary, took second place. Nor did we want to recall the individuality of the artists as such; if
we had wanted to emphasize the personal element, other documents, different from
those chosen here, would have better highlighted them. What we wanted to do is to
give the floor to the artists themselves in order to explain the creative
process. Artists devote to it the whole passion of their hearts. For it they engage their "full and
complete existence" [note of the editor: ganz Volles Dasein], even without prospect of success,
by simply following the voice of their inner precept, in full awareness of theirs
responsibility towards art.
Artists prefer then to accept the disavowal and
the mockery of their contemporaries and the most abject poverty, rather than
betraying their genius.
The work of art itself, i.e. the language of
the created form, is always more valuable and important than the artist's
thoughts on his creation. Even the most intelligent and profound word on art is
less important than the eye's ability to capture sensations and - in the very
act of seeing - to produce the created form. The significant word is only an indirect
mediator. If even the seeing eye does not know how to read and translate all
the artist's words in the artist's direct language, those words remain a dead
letter. And yet what the artist says when he uses the language of thought, can
certainly help to introduce us his works, clarify the meaning of their form and thus make our eye more receptive.
And thus our collection of letters and writings
of German artists could also be called a guide to art. It would be succeeded in the task that we assigned to it, if it
had given an impetus to look at the
art works more with the eye of the artists, which means from an artistic point
of view, i.e. to observe art starting from its core.
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| Fig. 48) Franz Marc, Deer in the wood, version II, 1912 |
Generally, we are well prepared to denounce the
social conditions, from which art and artists suffered in the nineteenth
century: the lack of participation in a full and successful life [note ot he editor: Lebensganze];
the split that resulted between an art for a few connoisseurs and an art for a
wider audience, which however found in his time only the support of surface
currents and then disappeared along with the time that it represented; the
absence of a real monumentality in architecture, painting and sculpture and the
lack, which was a direct consequence of it, of the unified action of the arts,
which so much surprised, instead, those who considered the history of art in
the past. We are complaining that modern artists produced too much theory;
therefore. many think that their creative force suffered because of their
intellectualism. And it is indeed true that, in most recent times, art and
artists exceeded in conceptual aberrations or in the chaos of feelings, and
even in the nightly and demonic atmosphere of the subconscious. To get to
create the purest forms, it was believed that it was possible to do it without
the object. It was even intended to directly represent the internal process of
creation. To this end, it was not about representing a hen, "but [note of the editor: as
written by Franz Marc] the image that materialises in the eyes of the little
hen when immersed in water: the thousand circles that fringe each little animal, the
blue of the whispering sky (which is drunk from the lake), and the rapid
re-emerging in another place." The artist became a metaphysician: he wanted
to represent not a dog, but the 'essence ' of a dog, not a deer, but what "the
deer feels.” Like a monkey, the artist tried to grab things behind the mirror.
If the social and spiritual structure of the nineteenth century made these
phenomena possible, the sterility of the subsequent artistic "isms",
and their futile love for difficult and deep concepts, were not a necessary
consequence of the art of their time. Such art, in fact, declared itself
independent not for arbitrary reasons, but because of a deep sense of unease.
Michelangelo was not responsible for the mannerism of their successors. Those
periods of the nineteenth century, whose weakness was so often emphasized,
witnessed however an enormous wealth of talent and artistic forms. It is not
true that all earlier ages were so rich in genes and good art. And it is
completely false that the awareness on artistic issues made us poorer. On the
contrary, such awareness gave us extraordinary things, because it transformed
the simple artistic taste into happy insights.
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| Fig. 49) The Last Judgment, Tympanum of the portal of the principles, Bamberg Cathedral, 1230 |
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| Fig. 50) The statues of Ecclesia and Synagogue, from the portal of the cathedral of Strasbourg, XIII Century |
Indeed, knowledge is not a condition for the
production of good art. The sculptures in cathedrals in Bamberg and Naumburg,
the figures of Ecclesia and Synagogue in the Strasbourg Cathedral, the Chartres
and Reims sculptures were the work of 'ignorant' artisans of medieval sites.
But the reason why this art was so excellent is that it was created to serve
the church. The awareness of being at the service of the deity certainly gave
the moral energies to the creators and facilitated their role. No art, however,
simply can draw origin from religion and feelings; for this reason, even
sentiment is never enough to understand art. Every art form is art only through
itself. Michelangelo - in great advance compared to the opinion of his times -
said: "All true art is devoted thanks to itself". So then as now, the
thematic content generated the natural link of art with the needs of people in
wider strata, and will always continue to be the link between art and life.
Although the medieval creator spoke then only as a good craftsman, in fact he
always implied the artistic element, the method, the created form, the core and
the alpha and omega of all art forms. The artisan element cannot in fact be
disconnected from the artistic one. The actual artistic element can only
manifest itself in what is called technique and craft: art is spiritual and
ingenious craftsmanship. Although the medieval creator did not know it, he did
nothing else but what modern artists still do: he put his creative concept into practice, joined its internal image to the outward appearance, created
that wonderful and mysterious something, which we do not know how to express in
words. And yet, we can observe and experience his form. The fact that the
modern creator knows, while the medieval did not know, is the effect of fate, of
history, but it is not based on a difference in the creative process; and
likewise it does not presuppose a difference of types of art or the creative
quality level. We do not know how the medieval man looked at art and whether it
was happier to know nothing about the immanent laws of creation. The nostalgia
for lost paradises is not productive. Awareness can, however, become such an
advantage to the point it can silence such nostalgia. The views of modern artists allow those who
contemplate art also to discover a more direct way to understand past art,
compared to the one which goes through the historical knowledge about the world
of the spirit and the conditions of time and space, from which art arose.
To consider artworks regardless of historical
knowledge does not imply restricting the examination to formal-artistic aspects
only. Similarly, the attitude of nineteenth-century artists, like Marées or
Leibl, was not limited to pure creative actions. Since art is the unification
of opposites. The great nineteenth-century artists defended the unity of form
and content, not the artistic element by itself, against meta-artistic claims
of their time. They did not want to eject the figurative and shy away from any
connection with pre-established forms in nature. They did not practice the art
of denial, or abstract art, but the absolute art, which made visible the
eternal and divine law, confirming in every specific case a representation of
reality: in any particular situation, whatever form of art is always searching
for the totality of existence. 'What is general? It is the individual case.'
* * *
Hans Ekstein
Artists on art. Letters and writings of painters, sculptors and architects
Artists on art. Letters and writings of painters, sculptors and architects
1954 Version
Introduction (pages
5-9)
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| Fig. 51) Phidias, Athena Lemnia (Ancient Roman marble copy) |
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| Fig. 52) Smiling Angel, Cattedrale di Reims, 1236 et 1245 |
We do not know what
the masters of medieval cathedrals or the Reims
sculptures, Phidias and Praxiteles, Stefan
Lochner, Giotto, Grünewald or Veit Stoss thought about art and their creations.
Even those letters from Mantegna, Dürer, Raphael, Titian, Rubens and Rembrandt
which have reached us today, have not given us any information to the point.
They were, in most cases, business letters. Artists informed their clients
about the progress and the efforts of their work, reaffirmed devotion to them,
and finally celebrated, full of pride, the value of their products. Sometimes,
as in the case of Michelangelo, they complained animatedly of customers’ whims.
Or they lamented of being poorly paid, like when Dürer was asked to paint a
picture of Our Lady for only 400 guilders. "I immediately rejected,
otherwise I would risk becoming a beggar. In fact, I intend to produce a large
amount of simple paintings [note of the editor: gmeine Gmäll] in a year, many more than one might think it possible. And yet, to produce
a quality painting [note of the editor: fleisig kleiblen] takes much longer ... ". Artists
wrote on material aspects, tried occasionally to justify their interpretation
of the theme, and also offered explanations on technical issues. They entrusted
to the care of their clients the panels they had painted "with great
zeal" and "with the best colours," as Durer wrote in a letter to
the merchant Jacob Heller: "I know that you will keep the panel clean, and
it will remain in good condition even in 500 years, since it was produced so as
not to require that we should care: just do not touch it or pour holy water on him.
I know that it will not be damaged, unless this does not happen intentionally
to harm me ...".
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| Fig. 53) Eugène Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People, 1830 |
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| Fig. 54) Max Liebermann, Two horse riders on the beach, 1901 |
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| Fig. 55) Paul Signac, The Port of Saint-Tropez, 1901 |
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| Fig. 56) Piet Mondrian, Tableau I, 1921 |
Only in the nineteenth and twentieth century, art history sources became rich. From them we can come to know the artists’ thoughts on art and the problems of artistic creation. Even in this era some of the greatest masters were silent or spread in their letters only limited observations on their work or on the problems of artistic creation in general. Others, however, published essays, programmatic texts and statements, like Delacroix or Josef Anton Koch, Wilhelm Trübner, Hildebrand, Liebermann, Signac, Kandinskij, Mondrian. The eloquence of artists made clear that the pleasure-of 'making art without having thought' [note of the editor: das Glück naiven Bildens] became a rarity. Artists indeed felt obliged to give explanation for the relationship between art and nature, between form and content, between art and the spirit of the time [note of the editor: Zeitgeist]. They had to reflect on the question of what in art could be the subject of teaching and learning. It applied to nineteenth-century artists what Karl Stauffer-Bern wrote: "Cognition is the first condition and the so-called 'making art without having thought' [note of the editor: naive Künstlertum] really exists only in novels."
Antique and middle age artists were craftsmen, and
the laws that they consciously
followed were craft rules. The artist
was not aware of any other rules, of a 'style', a two-way relationship between
subject and object, of a conception and sensory expression. In respect of
nature, Renaissance artists still revealed a lack of reflection. Their
thoughts were concentrated on the definition of a normalized relationship
between the object and its representation, which would combine the rules of
proportion and perspective construction. Artists were not aware of the existence of a regular relationship between form
and object and of an immanent rule of origin and development [n.d.r. Wachstumgesetz]
of creative expression. The famous
and much-quoted sentence by Durer "So, in truth, art is in nature – only
those who snatch art from nature can own it" was definitely conceived in a
less profound way than it is often interpreted.
Classicism was still a
prisoner of Winckelmann’s aesthetic dogmatism and the dialectic of
enlightenment. Winckelmann believed that the ultimate goal
of all arts was to find the "beautiful", to generate something more
beautiful than nature and especially to convey a meaningful content: "All arts - Winckelmann said - have a
double ultimate goal: they must please and at the same time teach."
Goethe’s genius of
researcher broke the chains of dogma. He
recognized the wonder of all fine arts in the secret of the inseparable union
between art and nature: "Nature
and art seemed to want to get away from each other, but they found themselves
sooner than you would think." Goethe
said to Eckermann: "An artist has a dual relationship with nature: he is
both his master and his slave. He is
his slave since he must act with earthly tools in order to be understood.
However, he is his master to the extent that he subjects such earthly tools to
his highest intentions and puts them in their service. An artist wants to speak
to the world through an entire [note of the editor: ein Ganzes]; however, he does not find this
entire in the nature, but it is the fruit of his own spirit, or, if you will,
of the presence of a fruitful divine breath."
With a different awareness from Renaissance
artists, Goethe saw in a completely
conscious way the opposition between art and nature and at the same time the
affinity of the created form and natural structure, of the internal and
external appearance of the image, which are attracting each other, and becoming something single in the work of art: "There
is something incomprehensibly regular in objects, something that matches the
incomprehensibly regular in the subject." He spoke of an "exact sensory fantasy, without which in reality it
would be impossible to make any art."
 |
| Fig. 57) Juan Gris, Pitcher, Bottle and Glass, 1911 |
 |
| Fig. 58) Vasilij Kandinskij, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, 1912 |
The process which led to recognise this
mysterious relationship between internal
image and external appearance is the
foundation of the creative problem and the artistic consciousness of the
nineteenth and twentieth century: the
reflections by Marées and Cézanne on the creative process, the art theory of
Fiedler and Hildebrand, and also neo-impressionism (which systematized the
development of Impressionism and its instinctive application), analytical
cubism, the treatise "Concerning the Spiritual in Art", Mondrian and
Doesburg’s theories on composition.
Joachim Gasquet reported a conversation on the
topic with Cézanne: the latter defined the artist as a container of emotions, a
machine recording them. In his view, artworks would lose their value, if also the
will of the artist came into play. Gasquet asked: So, for you, is the artist
less important than nature? And Cézanne tried to explain his thoughts as
follows: “The painter is not inferior to nature. The painter lives in parallel to nature. If only he did not interfere
through his will! His will must be silent. He should put to rest all his views,
forget them, forget them. Speaking no word, he must become a perfect echo. In
this way the landscape will write itself on his canvas. Craft may possibly be
added, but only with full respect, ready to obey. Even when the artist understands
well his language, he must have no conscience to translate the text that
deciphers, or rather the two parallel texts: the external one, i.e. nature like
one may feel it, and the internal one, in his head. Both have to become one
single thing, to be able to endure, and have to be part of a single life,
half-divine, half-human, or of the life of the art and God. The landscape is
reflected, is humanized, is thought in me. You recently told me about Kant - of
course, I am speaking as a layman - but it seems to me as if I were the
subjective consciousness of the landscape and the painting its objective
consciousness. My canvas, the landscape, are both outside of me. But I'm not an
academic scholar. No theories, just works!"
After Goethe, it was especially romanticism that created awareness of the opposition
and interaction of spirit and nature, art and nature, me and everything. And
above all, starting from it, what earlier times had been possible to leave without
any danger under the barrier of the unconscious, suddenly appeared, as a whole,
as an explicit problem. Starting from this moment, this led to the separation between art and spirit
of the time: conceptual art [note of the editor: Gedankenkunst] on the one hand and realistic art
[note of the editor: Wirklichkeitskunst] on the other. This gave to XIX century art its bipartite face and consequently led to the
separation between art and spirit of the time. In “conceptual art” prevailed
the passion for the convoluted, the addiction
to fantasy, to allegory and symbolism.
With its variant of
history and genre painting, conceptual art was generally the
most successful one with the public. The
art that was idealistic on the basis of its own content, but naturalist (or
eclectic) in form, was therefore a half-art without any 'eternal' value, which could be preserved; to the contrary,
the art which was condemned by the public because of its natural content, its
truth and closeness to reality was the real idealist art, the 'eternal' art. It
was therefore not only the art whose form was separated from contents, to
remain misunderstood.
In truth, the division
between art and time spirit was only apparent: it was a separation that
occurred exclusively on the surface. One could therefore better say that a
differentiation took place between deeper and surface layers of our lives. This
gap, however, determined the destiny of art, and isolated every artist who did
not want to put his talents at the service of opportunity. The 'misunderstood' artist and the
'cultural misunderstanding', whose motives and effects have been studied by
Franz Roh in a really worth reading study, were not only an image of the
nineteenth century. In this period, however, there was no great master who had
not to suffer from the misunderstanding of his art. This is why artists often
presented themselves, in written texts and oral discussions, such as the
defenders of art in general and their own art specifically and sometimes also
as accusers of their contemporaries. Word and theory became a weapon for them
and served to establish a defined point of view. As theorists, artists also became educators teaching how to see art.
Art history and
the research on art theory owed much to artists, not only for stating their
personal attempts and goals, and the artists' subjective conception, but also
for the process creative in general. While artists in the neoclassical era had
shown too willing to follow scholars and emulated a concept of literary beauty,
this relationship was reversed: the great masters of art became the guiding
references of scholars. With the simple words, which they used to explain
their work, they offered insights on the
process giving rise to the origin and development of the creative expression.
These insights were often deeper than the whole aesthetics, when it arbitrarily
identified art with the beautiful or raised questions about taste, but not on
artistic forms.
Letters, passages from
memoirs and other documents of this volume must not document and show the state
or progress of culture, spirit and art history. Nor did we want to recall the individuality of the artists as such; if we had wanted to
emphasize the personal element, other documents, different from those chosen
here, would have better highlighted them. What we wanted to do is to give the
floor to the artists themselves in order to explain the creative process, for
which artists – as Marées said – engage
their "full and complete existence" [note of the editor: ganz Volles Dasein], even
without prospect of success, by simply following the voice of their inner
precept.
And thus this collection of statements of artists
on art would have succeeded in the task
that we assigned to it, if it had given an impetus to look at the art works more with the eye of the
artists, which means from an artistic point of view, i.e. to observe art
starting from its core.
NOTES
[17] Мастера советской архитектуры об архитектуре. Киев, 1953. Si veda: http://www.twirpx.com/file/745678/
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