In medieval times, the arts were in the service or ...



The Path to Art for Its Own Sake

Tina Janockina

Mr. Briski (1)

Society and art share a complicated relationship, albeit a close one. While art helps to define a society, the form it takes and the message it delivers are in turn shaped by the society in which that art appears. Art tells us about the world we live in. It shows us our fears. Most importantly, as time goes on and society changes, so does art. Thus, art is the diary of the human race and in its pages can be found the heritage and the spirit that marks human existence.

A quick skim through key periods in art will reflect key moments in history as well, especially those of Europe. For instance, in medieval times, art was in the service of religion, and it was created to awe people into submission to a God and, by extension, to the Church. To that end, austere and grand Gothic and Romanesque churches as well as majestic Byzantine mosaics were created to demonstrate the power of the divine and of its servants (see Appendix A). Renaissance artists gradually replaced this ecclesiastical focus with a humanistic emphasis on the individual—seen from the rise of distinguished artists like Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Michelangelo as well as a massive influx of patrons and donors who immortalized themselves in contemporary altarpieces (See Appendix B). The artist lives today on the accumulated prestige of these preceding artists who made art a profession, “one having its own rights of expression, its own venerable character, and its own claims to recognition by the great” (Kleiner 576). The Renaissance period is marked by an astounding mastery of both technical and aesthetic skill due to the development of the oil medium, the perfection of the linear perspective, and the rendering of form with precise standards of beauty and harmony.

When the 17th and 18th centuries arrived with their scientific and enlightened thought, social and intellectual trends intertwined and influenced each other to bring out modernity. The heightened economic competition and the resulting international trade set new rules for etiquette and careful diplomacy, which increased disposable income and allowed the wealthy to invest more money on art and create new avenues for patronage that saw artists like Rubens, Rembrandt, and Vermeer as its beneficiaries (Kleiner 675). Furthermore, Europe was shaken by the great political and social revolutions of France and America, whose societies challenged tradition and sought their claim to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Consequently, a gradual weakening of the nobility and the clergy occurred and with it, a division of society into workers and the bourgeoisie, which eventually led to new ideology that resulted in both physical and psychological world wars. The rise of science, which not only fostered the questioning and challenging of knowledge, but supported a massive technological revolution, led to industrialization. This industrialization, in turn, led to both development and growth but also to alienation and widespread poverty. In society and in art, a reaction to the good and evils inherent in these big changes became evident; for example, artists became both liberated and insecure with their new- found freedom and became disengaged from the world of nature that had inspired those who had come before them.

Following Napoleon’s exile, the political geography of 19th century Europe changed dramatically, as did its technological and economic landscape. The Industrial Revolution caused a population boom and massive railroad construction that facilitated the spread of ideas. At the turn of the 19th century, Neoclassicism, with Jacques David at its helm, reigned supreme, but by 1870 Romanticism and Realism captured the imagination of artists and the public alike (Strickland). Artists had long forsaken apprenticeships to guild systems, turning instead to national academies and galleries as the source of their knowledge and artistic standards. Moreover, the invention of photography revolutionalized the art world as it “challenged the place of traditional modes of pictorial representation originating in the Renaissance” (Kleiner 815). As a result of the aforementioned development, artists channeled their skills into imbuing artwork with qualities un-reproducible by the camera. Thus, impressionists, symbolists, post-impressionists, abstractionists and others were able to make history.

The first half of the 20th century was a period of significant upheaval in which nations fought two global wars, saw the rise of Nazism, Fascism, Communism, and suffered the ravaging effects of the Great Depression. At this time, art also underwent a radical change as painters and artists challenged the basic assumptions about the purpose of art (Kleiner). Artists now subscribed to the avant-garde style as they sought to become trailblazers transgressing the limits of established art forms. These avant-garde principles emerged forcefully in European art in the form of Expressionism, which refers to art resulting from an artist’s inner vision that has emotional dimension (Pioch; See Appendix C; See Appendix D). Cubism, founded by Picasso and Georges Braque, was a similar art form that rejected naturalistic depictions and focused instead on the composition of shapes and forms abstracted from a conventionally perceived world (See Appendix E). After World War I, the Dada movement also came into full swing as a reaction to what many artists felt was an “insane spectacle of collective homicide” (Kleiner). Dada posited that wars resulted from logic, and the only way to obtain stability and salvation was to adopt political anarchy and the irrational (Dada; See Appendix F). A cornerstone of Dada lies thus in its absurdity and in the face of death and destruction, the Dadaist declaration of intent was as follows:

Dada knows everything. Dada spits on everything […] Dada does no catch flies. Dada is bitterness laughing at everything that has been accomplished, sanctified […]. Dada is useless, everything happens in a completely idiotic way…We are incapable of treating seriously any subject whatsoever, let alone this subject: ourselves. (Richter)

Dada involved a submission to the unconscious and, like later Surrealism, was heavily influenced by Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. Surrealists, however, sought to explore the inner world of the psyche and had a special interest in the world of dreams (See Appendix G).

Another noteworthy art movement occurred after World War II, a truly global catastrophe that claimed 35 million lives. The cynicism that emerged after the fact, found a voice in existentialist philosophy, which asserted the absurdity of human existence and the impossibility of achieving certitude in a world of isolation (Crowell). This spirit of pessimism emerged in European art in the postwar period as a “brutality and roughness appropriately expressing both the artist’s state of mind and the larger cultural sensibility [that] characterized the work of many European sculptors and painters” (Kleiner 971). The sculpture of Swiss artist Alberto Giacometti perhaps best expresses the spirit of existentialism (See Appendix H). According to Sartre, Giacometti’s friend, Man Pointing was the epitome of existentialist thought as it was “alienated, solitary, and lost in the world’s immensity” (Kleiner 971). Of course, Giacometti never claimed to follow existentialist philosophy and such an existentialist interpretation could have been due to Sartre’s bias as a leading existentialist and a matter of wishful thinking. Notably, all these later art forms contrast radically with prior Western art that focused on describing the empirical world, leading, inevitably, to the matter of interpretation.

In the mid 20th century, more elaborate standards were created to justify expressionism whose buzzwords, flatness, purity, and picture plane carried meanings that viewers were told they could find in the blobs of paint on the canvas. Today, as one looks at a work of Jackson Pollock or Mark Rothko or Barnett Newman, one can only appreciate the art by interpreting it (See Appendix I).As Dissanayake points out, there must be a recognition that “what is said (or written) about a work is not only necessary to its being art but is indeed perhaps more important than the work itself.” Art does not need to mirror nature and should not be judged based on one’s own personal interest in the object or its social or religious ramifications. The idea of art for art’s sake suggests that art “ha[s] no purpose but to ‘be’ and to provide opportunities for enjoying an aesthetic experience that [is] its own reward, and that one [can] have no higher calling than to open oneself to these heightened moments” (Dissanayake). Art, unlike most things, can be universal.

Art reflects its artist. An artist reflects his society. Society changes with time and so does art. Art and its society or society and its art are connected, and it is no wonder that the two are defined in terms of one another. Thus, there cannot be one without the other.

Appendix A

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Amiens Cathedral (Gothic)



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Durham Cathedral (Romansesque)



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Christ as Pantokrator (Byzantine mosaic from Daphne, Greece)



Appenix B

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Robert Campin’s Mérode Altarpiece (the patrons are kneeling on the left)



Appendix C

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Henry Matisse’s The Dessert: Harmony in Red (Fauvism, the avant-garde)



Appendix D

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Wassily Kandinsky’s Composition V (Expressionism)



Appendix E

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Pablo Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (Cubism)

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Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain (Dada)



Appendix G

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Salvador Dali’s Temptation of St. Anthony



Appendix H

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Alberto Giacometti’s Man Pointing



Appendix I

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Jackson Pollock’s One: Number 31, 1950



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Mark Rothko, Untitled (Blue Divided by Blue)



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Barnett Newman’s Vir Heroicus Sublimis



Works Consulted/Cited

Crowell, Steven. “Existentialism.” Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy 26 Nov. 2008. 9 June 2009

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“Dada” Artflex. 8 June 2009 .

Dissanayake, Ellen. “Art for Life’s Sake.” The World and I April 1990: 571-583.

Kleiner, Fred. Gardener’s Art Through the Ages. 13th Edition. Boston: Thomson Wadsworth, 2009.

Pioch, Nicolas. “Expressionism.” WebMuseum 14 Oct. 2002. 8 June 2009

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Richter, Hans. Dada: Art and Anti-Art London: Thames & Hudson, 1961. 64-65

Strickland, Carol. The Annotated Mona Lisa. 2nd Edition. John Boswell Management, Inc., 2007

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