Research: Review Paintings re. the Accurate Representation of the Human Figure, Part 4, Project 3

Symbolised, abstracted images of the human body have been around since humans first appeared on earth. They can be seen in carved human symbols ( the Venus Figurines of 25,00-23,000BC ) and cave paintings, and give us the first examples of representations of values and ideas that were prevalent at the time. The name, Venus Figurines, implies that they were made as examples of female beauty, but anthropologists have argued that they could have been deity symbols, or hopes of health and survival during an Ice Age.  Societies are always in a state of change, and are affected by various pressures. They need to be analysed within their cultural context to be fully understood. 

The ancient Egyptians certainly had a concept of what they saw as ideal in human beauty (remarkably similar to the long-limbed, small-hipped, wide-eyed symmetrical look of the present day!) and would work hard with their cosmetics and personal hygiene rituals to maintain their attractiveness. They portrayed static images of people, with little variation, and little attempt at anatomical accuracy.

In ancient Greece Aristotle said that, "Art completes what Nature cannot bring to a finish. The artist gives us knowledge of Nature's unrealised ends". This says more about how Aristotle viewed the role of art - i.e. as something to take us into the realm of the ideal, and away from the everyday. The Greeks strove to bring the Gods to the people in a way that emulated the human form, but as it would be in perfection - stronger, more symmetrical, more well-developed, more desirable, but with just enough unblemished exaggeration that ordinary mortals would still be in awe.

Kenneth Clark agreed with him in his classic book on the nude in art, writing,  "The body is not one of those subjects which can be made into art by direct transcription — like a tiger or a snowy landscape. . . . We do not wish to imitate; we wish to perfect. The nude as a conceptual and artistic category always involved the notion of an ideal abstracted from the reality we confront in our everyday lives. As such, we may add, the nude in art plays a role similar to that of the hero in epic: it provides the means and occasion to figure forth what a particular society takes to be greatest excellence".(Clark, 1956)

The Romans and Etruscans developed the art they revered from the Greeks by producing more dynamic, realistic poses that ordinary people could relate to, and the 16th and 17th century "academies" that sprung up in Europe, starting in Italy, set out to educate young artists in this classical tradition in a way that set them apart from mere craftsmen. By stressing the intellectual element of fine art with very fixed ideas of what was aesthetically correct or pleasing, these academies appeared to be enlightened when they first began, carrying on the ground-breaking work by Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. At the time, there was no question that art was about intellect, not emotion. But by the 17th Century, an argument had developed over whether the style of Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665) with its importance of line was superior to the style of Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640). Which was more important - disegno (line) or colore (colour)? Underlying this argument was the fundamental question of whether art was about intellect or emotion.

The problem with the academies having these fixed ideas was that they did not account for changing tastes in society and the different techniques (including photography) available by the 19th century, when artists like Gustave Courbet rejected the inflexible approach because it paid more attention to idealism than it did to contemporary social concerns.

Academic art declined throughout the nineteenth century because its approach was totally inflexible. and its image out of date with public taste. Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres (1780-1867) represented the ultimate academician with his history paintings and neo-classicist style portraits - in stark contrast to the dramatic style of the Romantic works of Eugene Delacroix (1798-1863) with their vigour and energy. The academies could make or break an artist's reputation, by rejecting or accepting works for public display. They held a stranglehold on the hierarchy of genres, which artists objected to because of the lowly position afforded landscapes and still life. Although most of the 19th century artists had trained under the academy conditions, many wanted freedom from academic art so that they could dispense with the idealized imagery and perfect detail demanded by the academic style. One artist who managed to "sit on the fence" and appease both sides of the stylistic argument was Antoine-Jean Gros (1771- 1835). Another debate that raged over time was to do with working methods. Was it better to learn art by looking at nature, or by scrutinizing the works of Old Masters? In other words, what is good art - the ability to interpret and organise what you see in nature or the ability to faithfully copy what the Old Masters produced?
 

These arguments about art had their effect on public taste, of course, and this anecdotal story about one man's perceived idea of perfection shows the impact of trying to impose a fixed ideal of beauty on society by attempting to control how people judge beauty.  In a letter written by Effie Gray to her father about the reason for the unconsummation of her six-year long 1848 marriage to the well-known philanthropist and art critic John Ruskin, Effie wrote,

"He alleged various reasons..................and finally this last year he told me his true reason..........that he had imagined women were quite different from what he saw I was, and that the reason he did not make me his Wife was because he was disgusted with my person the first evening 10th April." Janet Malcolm relates the explanation given by Mary Lutyens for Ruskin's disgust in his wife's appearance as:- ".......he discovered that Effie had pubic hair. Nothing had prepared him for this. He had never been to an art school and none of the pictures or statues on public exhibition at that time depicted female nudes with hair anywhere on their bodies. In his ignorance he believed her to be uniquely disfigured." (Lutyens in Malcolm, J. 2013) Lutyens explanation has been disputed (and a counter argument about to be put forward in Emma Thompson's film, Effie Gray, to be released this year), but the sad public scandal of their marriage did expose the disconnect between idealised images of the female body and reality which still exists today. If the beauty and desirability of all women is to be judged against the perceived perfection of the classical ideal, each of us is going to be found wanting.

It seems to me that the question, "Is there any tension between an art based on the classical ideal and art pursuing anatomical accuracy?" must be answered with a loud, "Yes!". It is really a re-statement of a more fundamental question posed for centuries. What is good painting today? Is it about intellect or emotion? Is there a place of interpretation? 

According to Paul Trachtman of the Smithsonian Institute, we are now witnessing a resurgence in interest in representational or figurative art mixed with elements of abstraction and ambiguous narrative in ways that have not been seen before. If artists stop experimenting, they have ceased to develop their art and have nothing more to say. He states, "As the 20th century progressed, painters such as Wassily Kandinsky and Jackson Pollock abandoned the concept of art as representation altogether, producing canvases that contained no recognisable objects at all. In their "abstract" works, the paint itself became the subject. By the 1960s, conceptual artists—inspired by Marcel Duchamp and other Dadaists of the 1920s—adopted the view that art should aim at the mind, not the eye, turning out paintings in which the idea behind the work was more important than the work itself. With a few obvious exceptions—Pop Art, Photo Realism and artists such as David Hockney—representational or figurative art was largely considered a thing of the past by the end of the 20th century." 
 

Western society is individualistic, expressive and far less religious than ever before. It is far more complex, multi-racial, multi-faith, yet more democratic in structure than the city-states where the classical ideal was born and flourished. Individuals today are encouraged to think and form opinions for themselves, not to slavishly follow dogma, and to be tolerant of differences. They do not risk ostracism if their ideas are not mainstream. Artists reflect the culture and society they live in so we should expect them to interpret, not to reflect ideals that were relevant in societies very different from the ones we live in today. What is more, tension produces debate and debate encourages ideas. We are far from an ideal society yet, so we accept the tension and we celebrate the freedom to debate.

Web-sites:

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/back-to-the-figure-164135338/?no-ist

http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/history-of-art/academic-art.htm

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/10659826/Will-Emma-Thompsons-film-about-Ruskin-now-see-the-light-of-day.html

http://www.unl.edu/rhames/courses/current/venus1.pdf

Books:

Malcolm, J., 2013, Forty-One False Starts: Essays on Artists and Writers, Granta Books, London

Clark,K.,1956,The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form,Bollingen Series 35.2. New York: Pantheon Books.
Strickland,C., 'The Annotated Mona Lisa: A Crash Course in Art History from Prehistoric to Post-Modern', pages 12-15, 68