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| (L) Portrait of a man in a red cap, ca. 1510, Titian (Tiziano Vecellio). (R) Portrait of woman in d'hermine pass (Olga), 1923, Pablo Picasso |
Before we commenced with the semester’s proceedings, I figured we should at least attempt to define the word “art.” Students were made to write a paragraph answering the question before sharing their definitions with the class.
Much to my chagrin, yet not to my surprise, one particular and unfortunate aspect of art made itself present in almost each and every student response: Art is a mode of self-expression.
Why did each student mention self-expression in their definition of art as a matter of course? How did this concept become such an idée fixe in the collective mind?
There is no doubt that self-expression in art exists. That is fact. But why has self-expression become practically synonymous with art itself in the present day? From whence did self-expression originate? Was it always present in art?
In order to gain some clarity, let’s attempt to answer some of these questions. In the following paragraphs, I will as closely as possible follow the form and sequence of the discussion I led with my students in the lecture hall that day after they attempted to answer the question posed to them.
First, we must address the origins of self-expression in art. When asked, my students immediately proclaimed, without so much as giving it a thought, that self-expression dated back to the beginnings of art itself.
It does not.
The earliest examples of art, i.e. Venus figurines, cave paintings, images carved into pre-historic temples and the like simply cannot be described as results of self-expression. The collective efforts involved, directed by an overarching spiritual impulse, immediately negates any semblance at all of prehistoric art to modern self-expression. That our modern idea of self-expression has been grafted upon these early works of art is preposterous.
How can we ascribe our modern concept of individuality to prehistoric peoples who relied so heavily upon the collective for their very survival, both physically and spiritually?
We cannot.
So what of the ancient world, then? Surely this self-expression we speak of must have existed in the ancient world?
No, it did not.
An artist of antiquity simply performed the task he was assigned. Pharaoh, emperor, and high priest all dictated what to carve and paint. Even those ancient Greek sculptors and painters of renown, of highly developed skill and a sensitivity to form were more akin to what we would deem artisans by today’s standards.
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| (L) Idealized Portrait of a Lady (Portrait of Simonetta Vespucci as Nymph), 1480, Sandro Botticelli. (R) Portrait of a Young Woman, ca. 1918, Amedeo Modigliani |
In the Renaissance, we begin to see a cult of personality emerge, names of individual artists recorded for posterity, and their life stories recounted time and again. Most importantly, art becomes replete with the discernible styles of individual artists.
Does this constitute self-expression?
No, it doesn’t.
Art of the Renaissance does not embody self-expression in the present sense of the term. Artists were still beholden to God, Church, and patron in that order. At least for the time being.
However, the seeds of destruction of the eternal impulse of art itself were being sowed during this time. The flowers, though growing a little more poisonous each generation, were breathtaking, at least for a few centuries.
It was only in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, that these flowers, once tender with the promise of spring, withered and died before our very eyes in the cold winter of a new world. But not before imparting their poison, blinding their beholders. In short order, the artist was finally “liberated” once and for all from the confines of the spiritual, the hierarchical, and the conventional. Here marks the birth of our modern, ubiquitous concept of self-expression.
So what exactly happened?
Secularly speaking, the visual arts suffered due to several contributing factors of modernism. For example, the mechanization afforded by the Industrial Revolution allowed for the French painter and physicist Charles Daguerre (1787-1851) to invent the Daguerreotype in 1817, thus ushering in the age of photography. Though we take this modern amenity for granted, photography was revolutionary - and deadly to the time-honored naturalistic painting processes already established nearly six hundred years previously. No longer was painting the most effective way to fix a three-dimensional image upon a two-dimensional surface.
Photography laid waste to representational painting, and in a few generations, the requisite skill necessary for painting was inevitably replaced by abstraction. Following in the wake of the widespread acceptance of abstraction came the artist’s reliance on his “unique and individual view” of the world. All in lieu of the well-established representational tradition, a tradition artists were no longer beholden to follow.
As a result, the art academies with their “elitist” mentalities and their “high standards” in regards to accepting and educating students were no longer considered to be the bastions of culture and learning they once were. Instead, they were seen as “rear guard;” effete and ineffectual, the stuffy and stodgy domain of old academicians, out of step with the times.
Another invention worth mentioning that was detrimental to representational art was that of the collapsable paint tube, patented in 1841 by American painter and inventor John Goffe Rand (1801-1873). The paint tube allowed artists portability and freed them from their studios, enabling them to paint out of doors, albeit in an increasingly flat, impetuous and superficial manner. Gone were the months of thoughtful and studious labor necessary to craft a painting. Instead, the artist traded nuanced skill for rapidity, and subtle application of delicate glazes for the matter-of-fact flatness of the alla prima technique. Sadly, over time the erosion of the artist’s skill became accepted fact.
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| (L) Portrait of Isabel Rawsthorne, 1966, Francis Bacon. (R) Girl with a Pearl Earring, ca. 1665, Johannes Vermeer |
Self-expression now took the place of tradition and became an ideal entrenched in the minds of artist and viewer alike. At its best, self-expression became a term which in most instances could be considered interchangeable with the word narcissism. At its worst, self-expression existed as a shameful display of the workings of a largely disordered inner state.
On the spiritual side, the story grew existentially more grim with the passage of time. The rejection of the spiritual brought about by the Age of Enlightenment resulted in the beginnings of a major shift in patronage away from the Church and towards secular institutions. This hierarchical shift was detrimental to the religious artist who had been practicing his craft since time immemorial. As religious art waned, the popularity of secular art increased, and a good portion of it became self-referential to a fault. Artists generally no longer aspired to spiritual ideals. Instead, they unceasingly worshipped at the altar of the self, no matter how profoundly deranged that self was.
Philosophically, art after the Age of Enlightenment devolved in a most dangerous fashion. Over the last century and a half, the eternal ideals which were once the given philosophic domain of art were replaced with du jour relativistic uncertainty. Gathering momentum, this uncertainty culminated in Postmodernism.
With its resistance to hierarchies and its insistence that there exists no overarching meta-narrative, the Postmodernist ideology is perturbing to any sane mind to say the least. Postmodernism has enabled and elevated the idea of self-expression to an ultimate, banal and meaningless terminus. Under the aegis of Postmodernism, self-expression continues to be a deliberate affront hiding in plain sight; a purposeful contradistinction to the ideal of self-sacrifice for the greater good, which is the embodiment and vivifying essence of the Christianized Western World.
Thus, the aforementioned has lead us to an impasse. Fortunately, however, the present situation is neither inexorable nor inextricable. A critical mind is indeed necessary when considering the dangers of self-expression; the singular, crucial facility that can lead our world towards a sane ideation of what art always was and what it should again be: selfless-expression.
Art is the visible result of the search for and attainment of greater meaning, reflective of beauty, ideal and truth.
Once a meaning-oriented selfless-expression in art becomes imperative in the mind of viewer and artist alike, it is then incumbent upon the artist to orient himself towards this greater meaning and create accordingly.
By Prof. Pico Retrocelli