Romantic Theory of Art
Romantic versus Enlightenment Thinking
Classic (Iconic) Works of Romantic Art
Kant’s
Critique of the Limits of Pure Reason
Hegel’s Response to Kant (Hegel and The
“Knowable”)
“Romantic Theory” of ate really refers to a “family” of
theories about art. Generally it subscribes
to the idea that Art is Expressive (Adheres to the “Expressive Theory of Art),
but adds that art is the communication of important, ideas, ideas that might
not be readily accessible to the “Rational Mind.”
Art is symbolic communication of significant cultural,
moral, political, religious concepts, beliefs and values. If this is the case, then not all art works,
nor all artistic media, are created equal.
It stands to reason that, given a certain cross-cultural uniformity with
respect to human cognition, some forms of symbolic expression might be better
able to communicate important ideas while others are incapable of succeeding at
this function over a sustained period of time.
Many romantic thinkers claim that some modes of communication are more
central and universal to humans (e.g. image and word). They therefore suggest
that some modes of communication are more suitable for the expression of
important ideas. Additionally, some
modes of expression are capable of greater precision and clarity.
This is partly the origins of the notion of the “Fine Arts”
to be distinguished from folk arts, commercial arts, popular arts and
crafts. These are thought to be the distinguishing
characteristics of The (Five) Fine Arts:
·
painting,
·
poetry,
·
sculpture,
·
architecture,
·
music;
Note that music is there by the skin of its teeth because
it does not support the communication of ideas, as such. It does perform a quasi
linguistic function however. Add
to the above the general tenor of Romanticism (that there are severe limits to
how much and what the sciences can tell us about reality).
Romantic versus Enlightenment Thinking.[1]
Romantic ‑ supra-rational; beyond reason: Evocative of:
There was a general disenchantment with the Enlightenment
and the mechanistic view of human nature and reality that seem to follow from
this (Modern Science) world view. We are
all cogs in some Newtonian Mechanistic Clock, so to speak. Romantics were looking for something else, pining
for something else. (See:
Transcendentalism, Vitalism, British Idealism, Hermetic Order of the Golden
Dawn, Theosophical Society, etc.)
“The Heart has reasons
that reason cannot understand.”[2]
·
The
Moon
·
Madness,
·
Love
·
Passion
·
Candlelight
·
Death
·
Magic
·
Spirit
·
The
General Failure of Reason.
Classic (Iconic) Works
of Romantic Art
·
“Robert
Le Diable”
·
Frankenstein
·
“Giselle”
Kant had drawn a line past which rational investigation
could not/ dare not go. This was the
limit of Pure Reason. But romantics were
diving past that line. Rational
investigation (science) can only go so far, they claimed, because there are
more mystical (supra-rational) truths that can only be accessed through passion
and imagination. For these, you need art
to articulate. For instance, Theological
Ideas require symbolic expression. Hence,
we need architecture like pyramids, temples, basilicas, cathedrals, etc.
These Romantic theories started to articulate themselves in
the 1700's. A lot of art was produced
either with this as the background theory, or quite consciously with the idea
that this is what art is supposed to do. As this prescribes a function to art,
it provides a standard for evaluation. Good
art is that which adequately expresses the cultural ideas. If not, it is considered bad art or low or
inconsequential art. This also provides a basis for distinguishing between High
or Fine Art and Pop Art, Decorator Art.
Hegel
·
was
deeply influenced by Kant.
·
accepted
Kant's idea-that the mind imposes ideas on experience, but drew a different
conclusion
·
attempted
to go beyond the limitations established by Kant on Rational Thought.
·
Sought
to give an account of the universe and our place in it.
·
The
universe is orderly and rational (Logos).
·
By
using our highest faculties (reason and intuition) we can know our place in
the scheme of things.
Romantic View ‑
Hegel ‑
art is supposed to communicate (symbolize) the most important ideas and ideals
(political, social, religious, etc.) of a community to that community.
·
Art
which does this well is good.
·
Art
which does this poorly is bad.
·
Art
which does not do this is not (really) art (Dance)
Art and Hegelian
Idealism: (See Hegelian Idealism lecture notes.)
Kant’s Critique of the Limits of Pure Reason
Kant argued for
limitations on our ability to know metaphysical or “Absolute Truth.” We cannot
know "things-in-themselves;" our knowledge is limited to the phenomenal
world of human experience.
For Kant, the human
intellect must conceptualize the world with mind’s inherent categories which
means knowledge of the world is always mediated.
(Think
of the near logical absurdity of conceiving of the world un-conceptualized.)
Though human knowledge
is limited to the world of experience (the phenomenal world), we yearn to know
the noumenal world, reality-as-it-is in and of itself such as the answers to
metaphysical questions such as God, freedom, and immortality. However, for Kant we can have no theoretical
knowledge of these though we continue (must continue) to act on these ideals.
Hegel Claims that Whatever
Is Real (e.g. exists) Is (must be) Knowable
Kant
was mistaken, Hegel claims, when he said the noumenal world (the world of
things as they are in themselves) exists, but that we cannot know it. That we
can say anything about it at all shows that it is NOT unknowable. What makes nature and the noumenal world
knowable is that its essence is Spirit (which
also is translated as Mind). Spirit,
said Hegel, is the Absolute (God) -the total reality.
Hegel
became particularly interested in what reason could do to unpack the Mystery of the Trinity and related
Christian Mysteries (That Jesus is Man and That Jesus is God and That God is
NOT the same as Man).
According to Kant, we
can think about the noumenal world (reality un-categorized), but never know it. This means that, in that sense, we cannot
have knowledge about "ultimate reality." But Hegel wanted to show a different
connection between epistemology and metaphysics. He argued that if we know
there is an unknowable world, then it is not
unknowable; it is "known." All that “is” is, all that can be
known to exist. Reality is all that can
be known about it. (Again, I can’t even
conceive of an unconceived reality.)
Hence
all
of reality is rational (yields to rational investigation). In this sense it is impossible to even
conceive of an unknowable reality. All
an object IS, is only all that can be known about it. Further, all reality
IS, is only all that can be known
about it. This led Hegel to one of his
most famous statements- "What is real is rational, and what is rational is
real."
Unlike
Plato, who made a distinction between the world as it appears to us and
reality, Hegel argued that appearance is reality.
For him, everything is consciousness
and thus everything is in relation to everything else. His view is similar to
the Monist views of Parmenides and Spinoza.
But while they claimed that the One is a single substance with
attributes, Hegel claims that Absolute Spirit is an intricate process
in which all objects are related. The Absolute Spirit is the world.
When
we view objects as separate from each other, we do not understand the dialectic process that will lead us to
unity in the Absolute Spirit. He did not mean the Absolute Spirit unifies
objects that were once separate. Rather
his contention is that the very idea that the object known is separate from the
knower is an illusion created by consciousness.
This illusion is finally superseded with the advent of his own philosophical
system.
This
history of the world - in particular HUMAN history - is the Absolute Spirit in process. Absolute Spirit eventually
comes to know itself through the human mind.
Absolute Spirit expresses itself objectively in Nature before it becomes
conscious of itself in human beings. Through our subjective consciousness of
objective nature, Spirit "returns to itself." Absolute Spirit first becomes conscious of
itself in the individual (Hegel called this subjective spirit). When it reaches a higher consciousness in the
family, civil society, and the state, it becomes
objective spirit. The objective
spirit appears in interaction between people. (Cultural Institutions, Social
Realities)
Hegel
called his triadic method the dialectic
process of thesis, antithesis, and
synthesis.[3] When Hegel said "The rational is real,
and the real is rational, " he was saying Absolute Spirit expresses itself
through nature, humans, and everything in the world.
Hegel thought the
highest expression of reality was the Absolute Spirit, with subjectivity and
objectivity integrated in the spiritual life. Our knowledge of the Absolute
Spirit is actually the Absolute Spirit knowing itself through the finite spirit
of humankind. You can think of this way
if you like. History is a grand
narrative where our hero is on a quest to discover Himself, a romantic tale
where God comes to know who He truly is. Alternatively, imagine a Rodgers and
Hammerstein musical with God singing “Get to know Me, Getting know all about
Me.” The material world is God
self-alienated. Consciousness of the
material world is God’s reintegration, culminating in self-consciousness. Hegel’s system tuns on a quirk of
consciousness. To know (be conscious of)
anything requires we turn that thing into an object of our conscious attention. And it is no different with God. For God to know Himself, he must turn himself
into an object of His own consciousness, much the same way to know ourselves,
we need to look at ourselves in a mirror.
Paradoxically, the image in the mirror is really me, but me projected
and objectified and thus, in a sense, alienated from me. This was the game of history all along
according to Hegel, but initially we only “saw through the glass darkly[4],”
so to speak. Hegel held that our
consciousness of the Absolute Spirit progresses as the mind moves through three
stages from art (where the truth is highly symbolizes) to religion (where the
truth si more clearly (understood) and then finally
to philosophy, the aletheia if you will. The final unconcealment.
Beauty, is spirit in sensuous form. We see
beauty in plants and animals, but we also can create forms of beauty that are
superior to nature. The spiritual beauty of art is obvious in music and poetry,
forms that not only imitate nature, but also, as Aristotle claims, express
moral values and purify the emotions.
Hegel's
system of the arts is roughly as follows:
For
Hegel, History is like a giant Story with a Plot and Important Events and
not-so-important events and Main Characters and not-so-main characters,
etc. It is (or at least was)
progressing in just the way stories move towards their own resolution. Art, had been, a main character in the Story
of history.
As
civilization advances, the arts
become more refined.
Symbolic Art (in which spirit
partly informs matter) gives way to…
Classical Arts (in which spirit and
matter are perfectly fused) gives way to…
Romantic Art (in which spirit
dominates its material embodiment).
After
that, spirit assumes autonomous forms, and Art is “over.” Art is no longer the vehicle for the most
advanced forms of rational communication, by which civilization defines itself.
The
paradigm of a symbolic art is architecture; of a classical art, sculpture. The
romantic arts are painting, music, and poetry. These five arts, architecture,
sculpture, painting, music, and poetry make up the inherently determinate and
articulated System of what Art
is in both essence and reality.
According to Hagel these five artistic media are the only media human civilizations
have consistently used to express its most important religious political moral
ideas.
And
remember that, for Hegel, the Rational is the Real and the Real is the Rational, Neither human nature nor human cultural
history is accidental. Whatever could
have be has been.
Art is "the
self-unfolding idea of beauty." However, the history of the world will
require an "evolution of countless ages" for the developing spirit of
beauty to reach the highest realization of the ideal beauty.
Hegel saw art as a
triadic development
(1) symbolic
(2) classical
(3) romantic.
Symbolic Art is vague
in its idea and form of expression. Hegel viewed symbolic art as the art of the
Orient, of the East, which suggests a meaning without adequately expressing it. Note the pyramids do express a lot of ideas
that were prevalent in ancient Egyptian culture, political, social and
religious ideas. But the first thing that strikes you about the pyramids is, “Wow!
That's a lot of rock.” It takes a lot to
get to the ideas symbolically represented here.
Classical Art
The well-balanced classical art of the Greeks
harmonizes the form and the idea (spirit) in equal proportion. Greek sculpture provides us with a closer
balance between the idea expressed and the material used to express that idea.
The Greek gods were idealized humans again suggesting that humans and by extension
the material world was the divine and the divine was the material world.
In Romantic art, the
idea (spirit) predominates over form. It is a higher means of expression than
either Oriental or Greek art, because its content is of the inner spiritual
world. Hegel looked to poetry as the
discipline to lift us from the sensuous to the spiritual, from art to religion. With poetry and even the visual image the
material used is somewhat irrelevant. It doesn't matter whether you're reading the
poem in a book or on a kindle or on a computer screen or what font the poem is
written in. The materiality is irrelevant to the idea expressed.
Hegel thought these were real arts:
1. architecture (Pyramids)
2. sculpture (Greek Statues)
3. paintings (Romantic Image )
4. poetry (Romantic Verbal effective communication)
5. music (expressive of feelings)
Poetry and painting are the most romantic of the romantic
arts.
Perhaps the most famous of Hegel's claims about art is that
art comes to an end. As Spirit reaches its full self-realization, the need for
images and symbols withers away, and with it goes the need for any art that
uses physical means to express itself. This "end of art" thesis is
puzzling in somewhat the same way that his "end of history" thesis
itself is puzzling. Hegel does not seem to have meant by it that art would stop
altogether; but rather that the need for it, and its role in the development of
spirit would be fulfilled. To say we are
in a post historical age is not to say time stops but rather that the linear
story of history has concluded. There's a sense in which we are in the “happily
ever after” phase. The adventure is over and now we're just pulling days off
the calendar.
The end of art thesis has had a new incarnation in the work
of Arthur Danto, who (with acknowledgments to Hegel), has advanced a similar
thesis about modern art. According to Danto, western visual art, in the period
from the Renaissance to the very recent past (say, 1970), has had a linear
history. Whether one wishes to call it progress or not, at each stage in that
history, one had to move forward if one wished to be a serious artist. But that
history has come to an end, with works like Warhol's Brillo Box, in which
"art has become philosophy", and one can no longer tell works of art
from other things just by looking at them. Since then, the linear history has
been replaced by a pluralism in which (almost) anything goes.
The idea of progress in art, and the need not to fall
behind the prophetic movement of the avante-garde,
has had a strong life in modern European and American art. While it surely
cannot be traced back to Hegel alone, it is a very Hegelian idea. So Picasso,
for example, when he blamed Bonnard for not being a modern painter (quoted in
Smithsonian, July 1998, p. 33) was being very Hegelian, even though, one
imagines, Hegel would have thought such paintings as Les Demoiselles d'Avignon were throw-backs to symbolic art rather than
representing progress in art. Kandinsky also spoke of the true artist as a
lonely visionary at the leading edge of human spiritual development.
[1] I have an extended treatment of Enlightenment Thinking vs. Romantic Thinking, see my notes on “Halloween Philosophy.”
[2] Actually, "The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know. We feel it in a thousand things. It is the heart which experiences God, and not the reason. This, then, is faith: God felt by the heart, not by the reason." This comes to us from Blaise Pascal (1623 – 1662) and his Pensées, which, strictly speaking, predates Romanticism. But here he seems to anticipate it.
[3] Actually, he doesn’t use these terms but everybody else does when attempting to explain Hegel…so
[4] For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. 1 Corinthians 13:12