stages in art history
I am not an art historian.
Very early in human history the tie between art and aesthetics was very tight. Music, and things like color stone formations, were almost modern in their aesthetic simplicity.
Not long after, though, the affect of art was noticed, and tied to the "other worldly", much like the power of math was also thus noticed and attributed to deep secrets.
The tie-in with cultural and/or political art soon followed ... using the dance productions to convey to youth the mysteries of the tribe. This was both myth and politics.
All these elements are very strong by the time we reach the Greeks. Already the distinctions of high and low art (as we would name them) and ratioanal and irrational art (also as we would name there) are there. But, at least in earlier Greek culture they are not "schools of art" in any sense as we would take them, they work side by side ... though certainly not always.
The rise of the later Greek philosphers, Plato and especially Aristotle, also gave rise to the critics. Plato certainly saw a distinction between high and low art and thought the latter should not be aloowed in the perfect Rebuplic. Aristotles concerns seem more descriptive ... and he gave us the earliest "art is" statement of which i am aware, "a mirror held up to the world". The hard arts (such as sculpture) especially, but also even the theatre and its use of acting and music had become highly structures and in some sense realistic (compared to the early dithyramb, very realistic).
[There is so much left out up until here, but time, time, time. Most of the counter examples that Spring to my mind would make wonderful clarifications for the above, but this is meant to be a very rough outline.]
Medieval art, and to a high degree, Roman art before it, conforms well to the Aristotelean norms. Art, as a whole, is somewhat self-aware after the Greek philosophers, but as of yet there is no real artistic narrative going on. Medieval art is a repitition of and improvement on the Aristoteleon notion of mimesis. (I acknowledge that my knowledge of Medieval art is near bare and that any Medieval art historian would (should) probably crucify this notion ... it is for me "future operations" to do so myself.)
But i want to get onto the Renaissance. Danto dates this as the begging of the narrative he sees as ending in 1964 with Brillo Box. What stands out to me in the art from this time until about the impressionists is the role of movements and schools and the lack of stable accepted form over time. The artists and artistic groups are seeking but not finding. Also, the artist is really starting to become aware of the medium of his work, and striving to improve that as well. All of this stands, however, within a positive doctrine at this point. That is, it is about art and how the specific medium of art can obtain an end (which is still primarily "a mirror held up to the world").
The art world jumping from movement to movement is a world waiting for a crisis in a Kuhnian paradigm theory sense. The artists and critics are waiting for and willing to take the chance on a new way of doing things. What they have not up to this point considered giving up is the faming concept of art as mimesis.
The crisis arises via technology. The camera is the paradigm case, but material advancements in architecture (the ability to create objects like the tower of Paris and taller and taller buildings), and the succession of stills that would become the movie.
Suddenly each genre of art was finding in the world competitors in the project of mimesis. With a camera even the entirely unskilled could capture a still of life in light. In architecture, and perhaps also sculpture, the conception of dominating the landscape, the reality of the place, arises. Those ats with no direct technological competition picked up the ideas second hand, the death of mimesis as the (only legitimate) aim of art. The rise of the question, then, of what is this specific medium of art in which i am working capable?
I claim this is a negative question. It is reacting to something (technology) and it is dicussing what a specific medium can and cannot do (defining). Surely the medievals learned a lot in this regard too, but they merely threw out the results rather than making further art based on those findings.
So while i can see a single narrative from the Reinnasance to today in a Danto-esque sense ... a narrative about what specific mediums of art can do ... i think there is a major shift after the technology caused paradigm crisis.
I'm really not committed yet to the idea the Renaissance art is more similar to Modern Art than it (Renaissance Art) is similar to Medieval Art. It has long been an assumption of mine, but it has recently been called into question in my research ... and at this stage i do not know enough about Medieval Art to answer the question satisfactorially.
I shall next study more why Danto believes the main narrative split is Medieval into Reinnasance. It seems a good of place as any to start the project. (If others have suggestions in this arena, please feel free to post them along to me.)
Very early in human history the tie between art and aesthetics was very tight. Music, and things like color stone formations, were almost modern in their aesthetic simplicity.
Not long after, though, the affect of art was noticed, and tied to the "other worldly", much like the power of math was also thus noticed and attributed to deep secrets.
The tie-in with cultural and/or political art soon followed ... using the dance productions to convey to youth the mysteries of the tribe. This was both myth and politics.
All these elements are very strong by the time we reach the Greeks. Already the distinctions of high and low art (as we would name them) and ratioanal and irrational art (also as we would name there) are there. But, at least in earlier Greek culture they are not "schools of art" in any sense as we would take them, they work side by side ... though certainly not always.
The rise of the later Greek philosphers, Plato and especially Aristotle, also gave rise to the critics. Plato certainly saw a distinction between high and low art and thought the latter should not be aloowed in the perfect Rebuplic. Aristotles concerns seem more descriptive ... and he gave us the earliest "art is" statement of which i am aware, "a mirror held up to the world". The hard arts (such as sculpture) especially, but also even the theatre and its use of acting and music had become highly structures and in some sense realistic (compared to the early dithyramb, very realistic).
[There is so much left out up until here, but time, time, time. Most of the counter examples that Spring to my mind would make wonderful clarifications for the above, but this is meant to be a very rough outline.]
Medieval art, and to a high degree, Roman art before it, conforms well to the Aristotelean norms. Art, as a whole, is somewhat self-aware after the Greek philosophers, but as of yet there is no real artistic narrative going on. Medieval art is a repitition of and improvement on the Aristoteleon notion of mimesis. (I acknowledge that my knowledge of Medieval art is near bare and that any Medieval art historian would (should) probably crucify this notion ... it is for me "future operations" to do so myself.)
But i want to get onto the Renaissance. Danto dates this as the begging of the narrative he sees as ending in 1964 with Brillo Box. What stands out to me in the art from this time until about the impressionists is the role of movements and schools and the lack of stable accepted form over time. The artists and artistic groups are seeking but not finding. Also, the artist is really starting to become aware of the medium of his work, and striving to improve that as well. All of this stands, however, within a positive doctrine at this point. That is, it is about art and how the specific medium of art can obtain an end (which is still primarily "a mirror held up to the world").
The art world jumping from movement to movement is a world waiting for a crisis in a Kuhnian paradigm theory sense. The artists and critics are waiting for and willing to take the chance on a new way of doing things. What they have not up to this point considered giving up is the faming concept of art as mimesis.
The crisis arises via technology. The camera is the paradigm case, but material advancements in architecture (the ability to create objects like the tower of Paris and taller and taller buildings), and the succession of stills that would become the movie.
Suddenly each genre of art was finding in the world competitors in the project of mimesis. With a camera even the entirely unskilled could capture a still of life in light. In architecture, and perhaps also sculpture, the conception of dominating the landscape, the reality of the place, arises. Those ats with no direct technological competition picked up the ideas second hand, the death of mimesis as the (only legitimate) aim of art. The rise of the question, then, of what is this specific medium of art in which i am working capable?
I claim this is a negative question. It is reacting to something (technology) and it is dicussing what a specific medium can and cannot do (defining). Surely the medievals learned a lot in this regard too, but they merely threw out the results rather than making further art based on those findings.
So while i can see a single narrative from the Reinnasance to today in a Danto-esque sense ... a narrative about what specific mediums of art can do ... i think there is a major shift after the technology caused paradigm crisis.
I'm really not committed yet to the idea the Renaissance art is more similar to Modern Art than it (Renaissance Art) is similar to Medieval Art. It has long been an assumption of mine, but it has recently been called into question in my research ... and at this stage i do not know enough about Medieval Art to answer the question satisfactorially.
I shall next study more why Danto believes the main narrative split is Medieval into Reinnasance. It seems a good of place as any to start the project. (If others have suggestions in this arena, please feel free to post them along to me.)
posted by Thomas F. Schminke at 3:00 PM
1 Comments:
Another way to look at art from the medieval period to the renaissance is to look at its religious function. Whereas medieval art propagated chivalric notions of Christianity (because they had to get people willing to die for the comitatus, after all), renaissance art rewrote the Christian tradition as having natural ties to the classical tradition, which had been written off as "pagan" hitherto.
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