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Part one: Representation
What does a painter or a sculptor do? The most common answer would surely be, “makes pictures or statues of things.” Although representation and imitation are not exactly the same thing, the meaning of the terms overlaps, and they are often used interchangeably. Art as imitation was the most common theory about many of the arts prior to the twentieth century. The artist was seen as a skillful copyist. Not only painting and sculpture, but also some other arts such as poetry, drama, and even music were seen as forms of imitation. That was Plato’s view, and it was the view of Aristotle as well. Obviously representing, whether by imitation or not, is an important topic when we are talking about the arts. Think for a while about the whole idea of representing something. When you take the word apart (re-presenting) it means “presenting the thing again”, and this is not a bad way of beginning to think about representation. Why would you want to re-present something? Here are some reasons that occur to me:
- To remind you of something (A wedding photo.)
- To give instructions for assembling or copying the thing (An Ikea instruction sheet. Very few words, mostly just pictures.)
- To gain power over the object portrayed, or reduce its power over you (The Lascaux cave paintings may have had this purpose. So, in another way, does “Anonymous”, the image of the pinheaded politician or bureaucrat on page two.)
- To show others what they would not otherwise see (War photos).
- To present a new vision of something (Warhol: Gold Marilyn, also on the second page)
- To capture or show what is interesting, or unusual, or important about something; to capture its essence (Rogier Vander Weyden's Descent from the Cross, on first page); Brancusi's Bird in Space (page 2 of Intro pages) Goya's “The Shootings of May 3, 1808 (page 1, bottom row).
- To give an official interpretation of something in order to influence peoples’ beliefs; to make propaganda (Socialist realist art - first image on page two).
- To tell a lie about something, or to distort the truth about it, in order to control what people think and do (Most weight loss product ads, and arguably a lot of other advertising, not to mention most political campaign ads)
I’m sure you can think of more reasons for re-presenting something. Think about these reasons, and see if more come to mind, as you look at the images on these course lecture pages. The more you think about representation, the more you will realize that it is not just about making accurate pictures. Even abstract paintings may represent something. And then there is representation in music and dance, and in other art forms. The first image on page one is the famous Discus Thrower (or Discobolos) by the Greek sculptor Myron. Look how beautifully and accurately Myron has portrayed this athlete’s body and his pose. It is a perfect representation. In fact it is far more perfect than a photograph would be. In spite of the dynamic pose, the sculpture is static. Look at the perfectly calm, stylized face. A snap shot of an actual discus thrower would reveal grimaces, sweat and strain. This image is more like the Platonic Form of an athlete. It is hard to imagine that Myron, with his fine grasp of the human form and the dynamics of motion, did not notice the actual expressions on the faces of competing athletes. Surely the serenity of the figure is deliberate. It is a good example of the theory of visual art that Plato considered and rejected, the theory that the representational artist captures the ideal essence of things more accurately than does ordinary experience. (Plato thought the artist just copied what was visible, without understanding the essence.)
But if the artist should present an essence, what is that essence? Maybe the sweat and grime are closer to the truth. The next two images, from the Hellenistic period, show a grittier side of reality, from a time when changeability and uncertainty were more acceptable subjects for art. The Laocoon, by Hagesandros, Polydorus, and Athanadorus of Rhodes, is full of tumultuous struggle. Laocoon and his sons struggle with the snakes that the gods sent to punish them. Plato would not have liked the story any more than he would have liked the sculpture: it makes a perfect vehicle for the expression of just those emotions that Plato was most eager to suppress in his ideal society. The next image, the famous Market Woman, steps much further in the direction of an unvarnished view of ordinary life. Who is this woman? We don’t know. Is she drunk, or just so exhausted or distraught that she no longer cares how disheveled she is? The face on the sculpture has been damaged; but even if it were restored, it would be that of a worn, aging, tired woman. The artist has portrayed someone that we might actually see in the market, and feel sorry for.
The final piece of Greek art on the first row is a grave stele, a kind of tombstone. With this carving we are back again in the classic period. In spite of the stylized features, however, the sculptor is clearly giving us a representation of the young girl’s spirit, and of the love and the grief felt by the family who lost her.
A picture can be worth a thousand words. That is the case for Traini’s Triumph of St. Thomas. It is an instructional painting. Much of Thomas Aquinas’ theology is diagramed in this image. The central figure is St. Thomas, of course, and the face is recognizably his. He is pictured ascending to heaven. The painting memorializes his recent canonization as a Saint. He is holding his Summa Contra Gentiles (or Compendium against the Nations), a kind of missionary manual prepared for use by his Dominican brothers in their evangelistic labors with Muslims, Jews and heretics in Spain. Immediately above him is Jesus; below Jesus on the right and left are the four gospel writers plus Moses and Paul, each recognizable by his customary symbol. On a level with Thomas on either side are Plato and Aristotle. Below him to his right and left are groups of clergy and lay religious (monks and nuns). The prone figure immediately below Aquinas’ feet is the Muslim theologian and philosopher Averroes. If you look very carefully, you can see gold lines representing rays of light traced between various parts of the painting. (Where you can see them at all in this reproduction, they look black.) The lines tell the story. Rays of light go from Jesus to Moses, Paul, and the Gospel writers; from the books of these authors, rays go to Thomas’ head, representing his understanding of this divinely inspired literature. Rays of light also go from the works of Plato and Aristotle to Aquinas, but not from Jesus to Plato and Aristotle. That’s because they reached truth by natural reason, rather than by divine revelation. From Aquinas’ book, illumination radiates to the clergy and religious gathered below. Finally, a ray of light transfixes Averroes (Ib'n Rushd), Aquinas’ defeated foe (whose book, you will notice, lies face down on the ground by his head). Averroes' views had presented a severe challenge to the church of Aquinas’ day. Aristotle’s writings had re-entered Europe in Arabic translation along with Averroes’ commentaries. The power of Aristotle’s philosophy was obvious to all who read him. Averroes’ view, in brief, was that Aristotle had disproved many doctrines central to both Islamic and Christian tradition (e.g., that the world had a beginning, that the soul is immortal, and that God cares what happens to creation). Averroes said that traditional religious teachings still had a value as a useful mythology for the masses. But it is philosophers like Aristotle who know the truth. Naturally the church was uncomfortable with this. So for a while they only allowed a very few people to read Aristotle or his Arab commentators. Aquinas was one of them. He was able to reconcile Aristotle's teachings with Christian doctrine to his own satisfaction and that of his superiors, and thereby defeat the threat of Averroes' opinions.
Whew! Not quite a thousand words, but close! Many medieval and renaissance paintings and sculptures are instructional in this same way. As they re-present their subject matter, they also educate their viewers.
Three more Christian paintings fill out the second row on this page. The middle two are traditional Russian orthodox icons by the 15th century master Andrei Rublev. They are not so much instructional as contemplative. They are very specifically intended to present a transcendent reality through visual means. As such, they are not meant to look realistic. The perspective is the reverse of what one sees with the eye; objects get bigger as they recede into the picture frame (because in spiritual matters, the inside is bigger and more real than the outside). In both the Christ in Majesty and The Trinity, the folds in the garments are highlighted with sharp, angular lines to represent the inner spiritual light. The Christ in Majesty represents Christ as the ruler of the universe, filling all the realms of creation from the elements of earth to the orders of angels. The Trinity shows the visit of three angels to Abraham, interpreted by Christians as an Old Testament revelation of the Trinity. For those who know how to decode the symbolism, the icon teaches about the believer’s relation to God. Contrast Rogier Vander Weyden’s Deposition from the Cross. There are no haloes here, and the figures are portrayed far more realistically. The hand of a master of composition is obvious everywhere, from the arrangement of the realistic figures in a flattened picture plane to the way that Mary’s grief-stricken swoon mirrors her son’s dead form. We are not looking at a casual snap-shot! Like the Rublevs, the Vander Weyden is contemplative, a composed devotional meditation on the theme of Christ’s death. Yet the approach is so different from that of Rublev. Where Rublev abstracts and stylizes his subject matter in order to emphasize its transcendence, Vander Weyden immerses us in the painful physical details and asks us to see the transcendent reality within them.
The bottom row of this page provides four secular representations. The first, by the great Diego Velazquez, shows his gratitude to the patron who brought him to court, the Count-Duke Olivares, by showing him as a triumphant general or even a royal figure on a horse. Again, a picture worth a thousand words. The next three images are all by Francisco de Goya. (The attribution of the third has recently been questioned; but if it and the other “black paintings” are not actually his, they certainly share the spirit of Goya’s cartoons.) In the first painting, Goya portrays the royal family. It is much less of a propaganda piece than is the Velazquez; in fact it is a very ambiguous work, whose subjects stare off into space or look lumpishly at the viewer. Interpreters disagree as to whether Goya was making fun of the royal family, or complimenting them by painting them as real people. About the intent of the next two paintings there is no doubt at all. The Shootings of May 3, 1808 is a tract against the brutality of the Napoleonic army that was occupying Spain at the time; and Saturn Devouring His Children is a horror that could be relevant to many of the worst situations in life.
The next six images all tell a story of one sort or another. All are propaganda, or advertising, or in some way are trying to persuade. The socialist realist piece, V. N. Yakovlev’s Construction Workers Writing a Letter to Stalin, is a clear example of propaganda. Perhaps Yakovlev should have shown a circle of socialist realist painters writing the letter, since without Stalin’s patronage and his hatred of modern art there would have been no school of socialist realism. The next piece, “Anonymous”, by Czeslaw Podlesny, was part of a show at the Clay Studio in Philadelphia that also traveled to Rowan. Under communism, the well established split between fine art and craft worked in favor of Eastern European clay artists. Since they were not considered real Artists, censors paid no attention to what they did, and they were able to make some powerful statements in clay that a traditional sculptor or painter could not have gotten away with. A tradition of politically and socially potent clay art developed and is still going strong. This piece makes a devastating and hilarious statement about a typical government bureaucrat. The before-and-after shot of Rae Lynn is a typical weight-loss ad; the ordinary, home-snapshot appearance is no doubt a deliberate attempt to make the product look credible. The next illustration, a visual history of female body image, is from the margin of Stewart Ewen’s wonderful book All Consuming Images. It pretty much speaks for itself! Finally, Andy Warhol’s Gold Marilyn portrays American icon Marilyn Monroe as if on a real icon, with a gold background and a special, almost sacred status.
Must art represent? Perhaps not. Certainly the beautiful Liao dynasty vase that comes next does not stand in for anything else. It is simply itself, a beautiful, functional form (although, of course, it also carries cultural meanings). It is also a good example of a skillfully made piece whose origin is outside the western art system that divides art from craft. We in the modern west might consider it an art object. In its ancient Chinese context, a vase would be expected to be beautiful and graceful as well as useful, but there would be no expectation that it should represent anything at all, nor would it be considered either “abstract art” or “merely utilitarian, not Art at all” because it did not represent anything. By contrast, while the Tantric image of Pure Consciousness is also abstract, yet it does represent in a way. It is meant to convey the emptiness of pure consciousness, as experienced in profound meditation. Mark Rothko’s paintings have a similar purpose as well as a similar appearance. They do not represent anything in the ordinary sense, and yet they are intended to communicate something, even to lead the viewer to an altered state of consciousness. The Rothko chapel, made just before he died, conveys this intent most powerfully. Its spirit is the same as that of the Zen garden in Koyasan, Japan. It does not represent; but it surely evokes and invites.
The images at the top of the next page show just a little more of the twentieth century’s explorations of so-called non-representational art (again, we are talking about work done within the western Fine Art tradition, which started out as representational, and assumes that a painting should be about something, should have a message). Vasily Kandinsky’s Autumn in Bavaria, while very gestural, is still representational. It is at least partly about the intimate landscape it portrays. Composition VII, by contrast, is not representational in the ordinary sense at all. It is not a picture of anything. Kandinsky wanted to make paintings that were pure in the way that instrumental music is pure; a pure emotional and spiritual communication without the aid of images. He is attempting to present a spiritual reality visually (is this actually a kind of representation?). Judge his success for yourself. He is one of the greats. The next image, Harran by Frank Stella, is purely abstract, but Stella (unlike Kandinsky) would deny any profound spiritual intent. It is just color and shape, because we like to look at things like this. Stella says about his work, “What you see is what you see.” Richard Diebenkorn is another such painter. In a letter to Maurice Tuchman, organizer of The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting 1890 - 1985, Diebenkorn affirmed the legitimacy of the exhibition's project, but questioned the impression created by the show that abstraction was generated by mysticism. Abstract painting, he said, was a formal invention deriving from Cezanne by way of Picasso and Braque and Analytical Cubism. No doubt it was the perfect vehicle for painters like Kandinsky, Malevich, and Mondrian, with their mystical leanings; but it would be incorrect to say that they invented it in order to express these leanings visually. See footnote 120 in the show's catalog (same title as the show, LosAngeles County Museum of Art and Abbeville Press Publishers, 1986, p. 60.)
The next image, Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks, is a twentieth century painting by an artist who continued to paint representationally when the avant garde were all rejecting representational work. His is definitely a twentieth century sensibility. But he re-presents the spirit of what he sees by a direct presentation of the people and objects that are there.
Well, we have spent some time exploring Plato’s idea that (visual) art represents something, as well as asking what kinds of things a piece of visual art can represent. The same questions about representation obviously arise for any other art (e.g., sculpture, drama, film, fiction) that can in any way make a representation. Should art portray an essence? Should it represent a “slice of life”? Should it not represent anything at all? Or are all of these legitimate options, as we seem to believe now? What do you think?
Part two: morality
Let’s turn now to our other advertised topic, Art and morality. Once again, Plato is not a bad place to start. You will recall that Plato had two problems with the arts. He thought they were emotionally powerful, able to stir up emotions like fear, rage, or sexual passion that could be harmful to people and to society and should be strictly controlled. And he thought the imitative arts copied the surface of things without understanding or conveying anything about their true essence. Art (or at least some art) can stir up the baser emotions; and art is illusion, it tells dangerous lies. Think about some of the reactions to gangsta rap or even rock, as well as to advertising art, and you will see that Plato’s moral concerns are shared by many people up to the present day. What about those concerns? Plato was surely right to say that the arts are emotionally powerful. Paintings, plays, poems, pieces of music, and the like can move us, they can stir us up, they can change our view of the world. They can convey a moral (or immoral) message. It seems that they can sometimes do these things without directly engaging our reason. In spite of W. H. Auden’s claim that “poetry makes nothing happen,” surely it is true that art can affect behavior. If that's true, should society censor the arts in order to protect against its own destruction? If even one murder, let alone several, can be attributed to the glorification of violence on television or in rap music, shouldn’t the offending items be censored to protect society? Plato thought so, and so have many others up to the present day. Similarly, if the abnormal female body image presented as the norm in most advertising increases the incidence of eating disorders , depression and unnecessary cosmetic surgery among women, shouldn’t advertisers be compelled to change their ways? What do you think?
The images on the next two rows illustrate the role of the artist as moral provacateur. Robert Mapplethorpe and Sally Mann are two photographers whose work has been criticized as immoral. Brian Ridley and Lyle Heeter is one of the tamer of Mapplethorpe’s homoerotic images. Others are much more explicit. A famous self-portrait shows the photographer on all fours, nude, with a whip protruding from his anus. Images of nude men embracing, of semi-erect penises, and of men engaged in homoerotic acts were included in a famous show of Mapplethorpe's work that drew outrage from Jesse Helms and other congresspersons. Should society be protected from such images, either because they are sexually explicit or because (as Helms thought) they affirm a perverse lifestyle? Or do they provide a necessary challenge to social assumptions and prejudices? Sally Mann’s Hayhook is another controversial photograph. Some have criticized these photographs of her nude children (the girl hanging from the hayhook is her daughter Jessie, and the boy squatting next to her is Sally's son) as a form of child pornography. For others, they express the innocence (and some of the other qualities too!) of children growing up. (The nudity is not artificial; in fact Mann's children did run around nude all the time in the remote wilderness area around the family's summer cabin.)
Ron Klein’s White and Black may not seem (or be) controversial. But in a way it makes a moral statement. It challenges viewers to think about how they see the world. A form from the Amazon jungles (a seed pod), made from industrially processed material (rubber, among others, which comes from the jungle), appears on a huge scale. It is beautiful, and startling, and might make some one pay more attention to the beauty and value of seed pods and other natural forms of life. The interaction of nature and technology is a powerful theme throughout Ron Klein’s work.
Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party is a famous work of feminist art. Chicago pulls no punches and takes no prisoners in her feminist critique of patriarchy, and in her celebration of the female. The evocation of female genitalia in the form of the table, the forms of the flowers, and in many other places is deliberate and celebratory. Chicago is an artist with a strong moral message, a social critic who isn’t afraid to preach.
The last four images are all paintings that present a vision. Delacroix’s Liberty leading the People is justly famous, and unabashedly glorifies the militant spirit of the French Revolution. It is very clear from this painting which is the right side! Velazquez’ famous painting of Pope Innocent X shows a pope “fierce and crafty”, in the words of Arthur Danto, a man “innocent by name but.hardly by nature” (Danto, Embodied Meanings, quoted on Mark Harden’s Artchive entry under Velazquez). Francis Bacon’s modern tribute to Velazquez has been interpreted in many ways. Is the pope being electrocuted? Is he about to attack the viewer? It is to say the least an unsettling image of a supposedly holy person, and an apparent deconstruction of the institutions for which the pope stands. Bacon himself says about it that he was obsessed with the Velazquez portrait, which he considers one of the greatest portraits ever painted. He would hardly want to be considered a moralist (or an anti-moralist either). “I have no moral lesson to preach, nor any advice to give,” he said. Still, his view of the world is not that promoted by the papacy, and the painting shows it. The scream is a theme in much of his work. He has transposed the image of the screaming nurse from the Eisenstein film The Battleship Potemkin onto the visage of the pope. It would be hard to accept this painting and not be pulled toward seeing popes in a different way! The last painting in the row, by the painter to whom I am fortunate to be married, is Anima, by Bettina Clowney. Without a narrative or a “message”, the painting nevertheless evokes and provokes thought about the self, about spiritual energy, about interior space, growth and exploration. As such it conveys a view of the world.
Perhaps this has been an odd meditation on art and morality. I could have chosen many more controversial works, and gotten much further into questions about censorship. I have chosen instead to show the power of visual art to stir up emotion and thought, the power of looking to change us. A similar meditation could be made by reference to dance, film, music, poetry, fiction, theater, and other arts. Given this power, does the artist have a corresponding responsibility? And if so, what is it? Does society have a responsibility to promote or to restrict the arts and the messages that they convey? If so, what is that responsibility? What do you think?
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