The Changing Status of the Artist
The changes over time in the production and reception of art has led to some confusion over categorization and the appropriate words used to denote activities that form part of our visual culture - a statement that amounts to little because it's well nigh impossible to give a comprehensive definition of art. Should it be called art or craft? What is the difference? There is no essential definition in an absolute sense because usages change more quickly than language. Different people living in different societies at different times and places have thought about these terms in many different ways. In Ancient Greece the word used to denote what we call art was technos, and in Latin the word for skill was ars. It was from the time of the Renaissance that the concept of genius (with its masculine procreative and property connections) began to be applied to art, as it was in the process of being distinguished from the less intellectual practice of craft. This divergence coincided with the separation of this intellectual art from its guild based origins. From this time artists were to varying degrees dependant on patronage for work and reputation resulting hopefully in financial security and enhanced social status. Some of the 'stars' of the Renaissance such as Leonardo, Michelangelo and Bruneleschi were sons of the middle-class and Alberti came from an aristocratic family and those female artists who achieved a reputation were high born, but most artists had relatively lowly social origins: Uccello's father was a barber, Filippo Lippi's a butcher, Botticelli's a tanner, Pollaiuolo a poultry dealer and del Sarto (as his name suggests!) a tailors's son. The medieval guild was concerned with safeguarding the standard and quality of work and protecting the collective interests of the community where it may be threatened by aggressive or devious business practice.
The genius of Michaelangelo and Leonardo as seen by 'Biff' (strip cartoonists Chris Garratt and Mick Kidd):
(For more Biff cartoons you can visit www.biffonline.co.uk)
Vasari, as Christine Battersby said (ed. Edwards, Art & its Histories, pp131-2) is credited with inventing the concept of genius, The word subsequently translated into English as 'genius' appears in The Italian as ingegno which is associated with good judgement or knowledge (ingenuity) and also talent. Another Italian word genio was confused with ingegno, whereas it began as a word referring to divine forces associated with male fertility, procreation, generation and it was also attached to possessions & property or land. Battersby says how both words were symbolically represented in Cesare Ripa's dictionary of Renaissance iconography by cupid-like genii, sometimes bearing harvest produce symbolising fertility and sometimes with a bow and arrow symbolising strength, vigour, inquisitiveness and unageing intellect. The two words gradually collapsed into each other and by the 18th century they were translated as one word 'genius' as it is currently understood, but which is misleading when applied retrospectively to the stars of the Renaisance.
Another word of Latin origin with male associations and used in the discourse of art is virtu, variously translated into English as 'prowess, skill, strength and wisdom'. It derives from vir meaning 'a man' and virtus which is 'proper to man'. It has less to do with 'virtue' as a moral quality than 'virtuosity', a model and technique of artistic and political behaviour.
On the subject of changing word definitions, the English word 'craft' deriving from the German kraft has an interesting etymology. In Old English it meant 'power' and 'physical strength', then expanded to include 'skill, science, and talent'.
'Genius and melancholy: the art of Durer' which focuses on iconographic and formalist analyses of Durer's engraving Melencolia, 1514, is discussed in this second part of the course. Melancholy may correspond to a symptom of the mental condition, manic depression, now perhaps more commonly known as bipolar disorder. In this case study a precedent set in the ancient world where madness was connected to creativity is examined.
In the 19th century Edgar Allan Poe wrote 'Men have called me mad but the question is not settled whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence'. The way that artists, including writers and musicians, have apparently been especially afflicted by bipolar disorder has been the subject of research by bipolar explorers at different universities in the United States. For a more detailed look at the subject see 'Mysteries of the Mind' in Scientific American by K.R. Jamison, but a common conclusion seems to be that people with bipolar disorder are not necessarily more creative than the norm, nor are artists necessarily more likely to be classifiable as mentally abnormal or hypernormal.
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Vasari's art Petrarchian (cyclical) and Florentine centred historical approach has long ceased to be considered as 'the' authorititive account of renaissance art and artist, he nevertheless provides several interesting, albeit with mythic foundations, anecdotes about artists in his Lives of the Artists. The painter Buffalmacco was working in Calcinaea where instead of prompt payment he received promises. He responded by painting a bear cub in water-based colour in the place of the baby Jesus in a Madonna and Child panel. He sponged it clean only when he was paid. Later in Perugia he was doing a painting for the municipality out of public sight. When officials began to pester him to hurry him up he replaced the gold diadem above a saint's head with a wreath of cockroaches and fled to Florence.
Michelangelo allegedly responded to the suggestion that in his Pieta, the Virgin Mary seemed the same age as her son Jesus, by saying that the chaste remain young for longer. in Michelangelo's Last Judgement, Pope Paul III's Master of Ceremonies complained that he had been placed amongst the damned. The Pope's alleged response didn't help his MC as he said that power over hell was beyond his papal competence.
Giotto apparently justified the sad expression on Joseph's face in one of his frescoes, saying that it was natural as he saw that his wife was pregnant without knowing by whom.
Although sculpture had its champions such as Michelangelo during the Renaissance, the lives of 16th c Netherlandish and Germanic sculptors do not appear in the Lives of the Artists by the enormously influential Giorgio Vasari.
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In this course book two there are a number of examples of how artists managed to satisfy the demands of their patrons. In the painting The Holy Trinity, the Virgin, St. John, and Donors in Sta Maria Novella, Florence, the painter Masaccio manages to give due prominence to the donors (comissioning patrons), the large figures kneeling in the foreground, while at the same time maintaining the importance of the holy figures behind, by his clever use of perspective and colour.
During Charles Le Brun's time as Director of The French Academy he was also in charge of the Gobelins factory where royal furniture was made by workers who belonged to craft guilds. Tapestry, for example, was conceived as part of a decorative whole and with the theoretical low status of decorative art, but when Le Brun's paintings were made into tapestries for prestigious settings, their status was raised thereby enhancing the status of their director.
An article by Suzanne. E. May entitled 'Attempts toward fame and fortune' (The British Art Journal, Volume XI, No.1) shows how far removed 18th century British artists were from the modern preference for seeing artists as conceptually original and creatively independent. She makes a case study of Joseph Wright of Derby (1734-97) who in in the later stage of his career apparently relied increasingly heavily on the advice of influential patrons, such as Josiah Wedgwood and poets such as the 'Vasarian' William Hayley, for formal details in his paintings. The famous manufacturer of classically decorated pottery commissioned the Corinthian Maid (1782-5) whose story sited in classical antiquity was told in Pliny the Elder's Natural History. 'The maid, Dibutades, was the daughter of a potter. She was in love with a youth who was soon to depart, so to preserve his likeness she traced in outline his lamplit shadow on a wall as he slept. Her father then filled the outline with clay and baked it.' Pliny identified this as the founding of the plastic arts. The Corinthian Maid stood as an emblem for the two academically privileged arts of painting and sculpture, thereby becoming to neo-classicists what St Luke had been to the medieval guilds. May refers to various 'extremely humble' advice seeking correspondance between Joseph Wright and Wedgwood and between Wright and Hayter. Regarding another painting intended for Wedgwood, the self-deprecating, not to say fawning painter asked Hayley, 'Would to God I could see the picture you designed in your warm imagination, for anything I can do will fall vastly short of it...'
Poets and writers had traditionally been socially higher placed than artists and were therefore instrumental in introducing painter friends into 'society'. Vasari, in the 16th century, said in Lives of the Artists that it was customary for painters to make gifts of small portraits or other artistic courtesies in return for writers bringing them fame and honour with their pens. May says that the number of poems and epistles addressed to Sir Joshua Reynolds bears out Vasari's comments on the usefulness of earning the respect of poets. She also mentions Giotto and Martini who achieved status through their associations with Dante and Petrarch.
In the same issue of The British Art Journal there are other articles on Joseph Wright that show the precarious nature of late18th century artists' fortunes, the importance of reliable colleagues, influential friends and of being in the right place (the recently founded Royal Academy, the Society of Artists or the Free Society of Artists; London or the provinces) at the right time.
Corinthian Maid, 1782-5, 106 x 130 cm, National Gallery, Washington D.C.
As it says in the introduction to the course book, attitudes to artists were affected by the legacy of the Romantics, art writers and artists around the first half of the 19th century. The philosophical attitudes of the Romantics may be summed up as follows:
'The umbilical cord of gold' which is how Clement Greenberg characterises the connection between artist and patron continues into the 21st century. Calvin Tomkins, an American cultural commentator known for his profiles of artists, has spoken about how (patronage) fits in with the modern corporation's wish to appear to be socially responsible and that it provides opportunities for self-congratulation. He discusses the kinds of difficulties that can arise out of such relationships. He mentions one artist, the German Hans Haacke, whose art is critical of corporate practice, an artist who Tomkins notes has not been in great demand for corporate collections, before adding however that it could conceivably become acceptable (Tomkins was writing at the end of the 1980s) as a kind of corporate 'in' joke demonstrating a company's commitment to tolerance and artistic freedom. Of course the all-pervasive spirit of irony has since made straightforward interpretations less reliable.
For the same reasons to do with art market trends and attendant publicity, artists from the past have been 'discovered' and artists who were once highly celebrated are now ignored except by a few investigative Phd students. For example the Salon favourites of the first half of the 19th century were gradually replaced by the first modernists as the century drew to its end. In the mid 19th century buyers and collectors lacked art education and were satisfied with whatever flattered their eyes and hearts: pretty nudes, sentimental stories, heroic deeds, realistic flowers, patriotic scenes and religious subjects with an easy moral message. So said John Rewald in his History of Impressionism. While Ingres and Delacroix (champions of dessin and couleur respectively) were both apalled by these offerings at the Paris Salon they reacted differently, with Ingres clinging to the ideal classical past and Delacroix to a glorified present. The Realists, with Courbet the most prominent, and then Manet, were usually rejected by art critics and Salon juries of the 1850s and 1860s. The baton was taken by the Impressionists in the 1870s.
Most mid 19th c artists deperately hoped for acceptance by the Salon. They had to depend on the wheeling and dealing of jury members (artists and studio tutors). Even when an artist's work was admitted there was still the obstacle of getting a good position on the wall, which involved the bribery of janitors. Artists felt there was a need for much more exhibiting space in Paris, but even with the opening of the alternative Salon des Réfusés, paintings that did not conform to the offerings mentioned above were much ridiculed by an uncomprehending public and parodid by merciless caricaturists.
Couleur (Delacroix) contre Dessin (Ingres)
THE ARTIST AS A SPECIAL TYPE OF PERSON
It is commonly believed that artists' personalities are essentially different from those of other people, thereby reflecting a belief that being artistic is a rare condition. If I take just two artists - Francis Bacon and Brigitte Riley as random examples for comparison, without knowing either of them I would hazard a guess that the only characteristic they shared was that they worked with paint on a flat surface. Apart from the difference apparent in their work there was also the difference in their respective working environments. Bacon's paint splattered studio was cluttered with canvases, ankle deep with tins of brushes, dead tubes of paint and various bits and pieces, whereas in Riley's tubes of paint are aligned in rows on a table, each tube bearing a code indicating colour tone and other equipment is put in drawers.
The ability of artists to draw still seems to be seen as a litmus test of real artistic skill. Not so long ago the two most controversial British artists, Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin, have exhibited drawings of mediocre quality; possibly from sketch-pads they had managed to hang on to from art college days. Bridget Riley, mentioned above and also an ex-Goldsmiths student, exhibited a series of sketches at the National Portrait Gallery (2010).
Young British Artists, Mark Birch (Private Eye, no. 1274).
We are dependent on mediated evidence for our 'knowledge' of artists and their work. Historically this has been provided by writers with an agenda such as art historians and also by artists themselves. In study handbook 2, there is a section dealing with different artistic personas. Some artists are used as examples of a) the passionate tormented character e.g Van Gogh, b) the silent ones who don't help to dispel ambiguity in their work e.g Warhol, c) the 'trickster' who talks but offers complex and apparently contradictory explanations e.g Duchamp and d) the artist-philosopher who rejects mythic constructions e.g Leon Golub and Jeffrey Steele. Of course some artists have attracted more attention and curiosity than others and some have courted media attention in order to establish their identity in the mind of the public (or those who pay attention). The controversial contemporary and elusive British artist - 'Banksy' whose reputation and worth (his work now fast heading towards six figure sums) has elevated him from clandestine street graffiti sprayer to collectable celebrity artist, whether he likes it or not, still maintains the mystery around his identity. He has been reported as calling these wealthy collectors and possibly fans of his as morons. The money & fame must be a temptation though.
www.artfacts.net have devised an artist ranking system in the form of graphs. The system works by ordering artists according to the professional attention invested in them. It is explained in The Economy of Attention, a book by Georg Franck, who says that attention (fame) is an economy that works along the same lines as capitalism.
Few practices undermine the concept of genius more than convincing replication or even forgery (which obviously indicates a moreorless entirely profit motive). Some artists have intentionally appropriated the work and ideas of other artists as a tribute or critique. One such artist, Sherry Levine, called an 'appropriationist' rephotographed reproductions of photographs by Edward Weston, having prints made from these negatives and hanging them unchanged except for the addition of her signature. She also made exact copies of art-book reproductions of paintings by artists such as Miro, Mondrian and Malevich, which she exhibited under her name with titles such as 'After Joan Miro'. This would seem to be a fascinating legal area for art.
Several artists working mainly on canvas have concentrated on the rich and famous, or the cult of celebrity, particularly since the advent of Pop Art, 'famously' for example Andy Warhol. More recently British painters such as Gary Hume, Julian Opie and Stella Vine have received acclaim for their interest in fame. Also some quite interesting 'photo-morphing' celeb portraiture can be found on Planethiltron.com
The art critic Robert Hughes (mentioned later in block 6) puts the demise of western art down to the precedent set by Andy Warhol who established Warhol Enterprises in 1957, but as an art business that was small compared with Damien Hirst's enterprises (multi-tasking like mad with a line in clothing, restaurants, publishing house and art collection). The Sothebys auction on September 15 - 16, 2008, sold £111.5 million worth of art.
A report in The Economist (November 28th, 2010) by Sarah Thornton and Fiammetta Rocco examine the Warhol phenomenon and use his work (brand, image) as a yardstick to assess the health of the art market. They quote one dealer who foresees Warhol eventually eclipsing the giant of 20th century modern art Pablo Picasso. This is, he says, 'because he is more relevant to the younger generation.' Part of the reason for the success of Warhol's work lies in the mystery - where it's undecided whether the artist was superficial or deep, subversive or conservative, boring or provocative. It's still in the air. It seems to me that intensifying popular fascination for celebrity and for sex and death, irony and disaffection for ideology (Marilyns, Elvises, electric chairs, race riots, Chairman Maos), all Warholian themes, propels the man, the myth and the work ever higher.
According to an article by Hal Foster (London Review of Books, October 9, 2008), art critic Julian Stallabrass highlights the parallels of art and corporate culture in his book Art Incorporated, 2004, where he talks of the artist once seen as a bohemian outsider (he) is now seen as a model of the inventive worker in a post-Fordian economy. Foster also cites sociologists Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello who say that managerial discourse for the last two decades has promoted attitudes and attributes once associated with the artistic personality: creativity, visionary intuition, autonomy, spontaneity, multi-tasking, being attracted to informality and the search for interpersonal contacts. Other big multi-tasking fish beside Hirst, like Jeff Koons and Takashi Murakami oversee factories with several employees, where signed work is designed on computers and executed by fabricators, 'at times underscoring the collapse of the difference, says Foster, between museum art and mass culture.'
Having already hit Paris, Japan's 'King of Pop Art' Takashi Murakami came to Tate Modern on October 17th 2009. The Tate's new show was about the legacy of Warhol's commercialism. Murakami, son of a taxi driver, now runs a global corporation that mass produces towels, purses, soup. You name it. 120 employees work at his factory in silence on rotation 24 hours a day.
What about the similarity between the art and money markets? They both mystify the public, impress with the exchange of unfeasible amounts of money, they are managed by an elusive and seemingly unaccountable (still largely male) elite, based in temple-like structures, and their work comes with a romanticised narrative - the stuff of which films are made.
An interesting article, 'He Paints Paint', in Parkett 75 2005, discusses the painter Glenn Brown's recent work. (His work became controversial a few years ago when, following his entry for the Turner Art Prize, he was accused of plagiarism, and to add fuel to the fire his painting was priced infinitely higher than the source of his inspiration, as he claimed, which was the illustration of a spaceship for a book-jacket, by a lowly book-jacket illustrator!) He is treating moreorless well known paintings, past and present, as ready-mades, and as he says, inventing new brush marks to reinvigorate tired paintings:
Special Needs, 2002,103X85cm.
Love Never Dies, 1993,70X49cm.
In March 2002 Lewis Wolpert, professor of biology at UCL wrote an article in the Observer in which he wrote critically on the current vogue for bringing together art and science. He detects an element of snobbery saying that artists seem envious of scientists and scientists want to bethought of as artists. He underlined the difference between the personal view reflected by art and its absence in science. He said that while one talks of progress in science one only talks of change in art. One can criticise art but not refute it as one can a scientific proposition.
Calvin Tomkins again. He said that Mark Rothko once refused to deliver a group of commissioned mural paintings on finding out that they would be hung in the Four Seasons Restaurant, where people would be eating in front of them.
"Fashion is not art" was Jean-Paul Gautier's response when asked by the Cartier Foundation to stage an exhibition. "I am not an artist. Rather I am an artisan just like a baker." The fashion designer settled on the idea of transforming the foundation into a bakery. He went on to say "the historical legacy of my work doesn't interest me. I do keep some pieces of my work, but I certainly don't keep them to consecrate my work." (The Art Newspaper, July-August 2004)
In 2008 there was an exhibition entitled 'Demons,Yarns and Tales' of some well known 21st century British artists who have turned to needlework, traditionally considered to be a craft and the domain of women. Such reputable names as Gavin Turk, Gary Hulme, Grayson Perry and Peter Blake participated. I don't know whether the artists actually did the stitching themselves (And I've unintentionally but clearly played my part in giving higher profile to these artists than to the other participants here).
More boundary breaking - Damien Hirst has put his mind (and perhaps his hands too) to the jeweller's art of diamond setting with his diamond encrusted skull (2007), while continuing the vanitas theme of previous work.
The Independent arts correspondant, Nick Clark, reported on an impending row between two of the best known British artists, David Hockney and Damien Hirst (3rd January, 2012). This follows Hockney's criticism of artists, Hirst in particular, for not creating their own work, adding that 'it's a little insulting to skilled craftsmen'. Other contemporary British artists using assistants without crediting them include Antony Gormley and Mark Wallinger, and the tradition goes as far back as recorded art history, a subject covered in Michael Petry's book The Art of Not Making. Gian Lorenzo Bernini for example had most of his statues carved by assistants, one of whom, Giuliano Finelli, fell out with him over lack of creditation. I mention Auguste Rodin and his relationship with one of his assistants Camille Claudel in the next part of the course, on Gender and Art.
'Banksy' (See part 4 for more) is the subject of a large new show - exhibition in his home city of Bristol (Summer, 2009). The now internationally renowned artist has jealously guarded his anonymity with success and the exhibition has been promoted with that very much in mind. Bristol City Council were kept in the dark while plans for the exhibition were being put into operation. Students could consider anonymity as an effective fast track towards celebrity. 'He's a megastar', proclaimed Bristol Museum Director, Kate Brindley, about Banksy whose early work (trademark stencils) in the 1990s were sprayed onto walls in the streets of Bristol and scraped off by the Council hot in pursuit of all clandestine wall sprayers and painters. His work, having achieved controversy, has now become highly collectable attracting celebrity A lister buyers such as Damien Hirst, Robbie Williams and Brad Pitt. How subversive is that?
Art war or turf rivalry? No, nothing of the sort; the spate of defacing or painting over Banksys, or possibly even Banksy look-alikes, in the last couple of years, has apparently left the elusive artist unfazed. A genuine (if verifiable) 'street' Banksy is said to be worth up to £300,000 but of course it must be easy enough for Banksy (or anyone else) to reproduce, so long as he can still feel motivated to put on his balaclava, pack his hold-all and hit the streets in the small hours. As for the attention, well Banksy may be elusive but famously so; he is hardly publicity shy.
It doesn't seem that long ago when town councils across the South-East were intent on effacing Banksys and all uncommissioned murals in campaigns to clean up graffiti, as was the generic name, but how things have changed. The BBC report (News, Hampshire & Isle of Wight, 24 November, 2010) on Banksys being 'outrageously vandalised' by graffiti merchants makes you think - of the worth of images that have had the power to shock and outrage, and then once they have passed through the process of critical judgement deeming them to be art of merit then have the power to excite people in speculating on their financial value. In the report the BBC correspondant asked a concerned looking local council representative how much he thought 'the damage' was worth?!
Two of the Banksys on the Israeli-built 'apartheid' wall have been removed and put up for sale for up to almost half a million dollars. In the process they have of course been given titles - which are straightforwardly descriptive: Wet Dog (which shows a wet dog) and Stop and Search (which shows a young girl frisking a soldier). There is said to be paperwork supporting the provenence of both pieces. Not surprisingly the removal and sale has angered those who saw them as public works of art intended to belong to everyone. However, Palestinian opinion will have been mixed; some feeling celebrity art and political resistance are incompatible anyway, some welcoming foreign solidarity and appreciative of modern urban graffiti art forms, while others will have been wary of foreign cultural interference. Others, believing that art should be created in pursuit of beauty and exhibited at conventional venues, may have regarded the wall as inherently ugly and therefore an inappropriate place for the images. For some Palestinians nostalgic wall paintings of imaginary rolling hills with occasional glimpses of the Mediterranean evoking the pre-occupation landscape may be preferable to Banksy's contributions. (August, 2011)
The exhibition 'The Sacred Made Real' at the National Gallery, London (Autumn 2009) brings together the extremely naturalistic and explicit, even gory, polychrome sculptures of Jesus, members of the holy family and various saints produced in Spain between the 17th and 18th centuries for churches and cathedrals where some of them still reside. The sculptors who were governed by the guild system discussed in this part of the course were generally less well known than painters, such as Velasquez and Zurburan, who completed the sculptures. Some of the sculpting in this exhibition is attributed to anonymous sculptors. The presence of work attributed to the canonical Velasquez and Zurburan provides additional attraction for the exhibition.
The English National Gallery exhibition of Italian altarpieces (summer, 2011), showing 200 years of change in altarpieces, belonged to the highly instructive variety of temporary exhibitions. The exhibits, which were themselves instructive as representations of venerated imagery when they were made, reflect changes in liturgical practices and church architecture between the 15th and 16th centuries and also show the 19th c habit of dismembering the altarpieces into smaller commercially viable panels . Giorgio Vasari's great-nephew Luca Signorelli's painting The circumcision of Christ (1490-91) was one of the exhibits. A216 students would also be interested in the signatures identifying the artists/artisans who painted and oversaw the production of these works of the Italian Renaisance period.
The Dulwich Picture Gallery launched an exhibition of the work of Salvator Rosa (15 September - 28 November, 2010). The artist's etched self-portrait, an allegory of his talent, is included in the case study on the means that renaissance artists made use of in order to publicize their reputations. Rosa had a reputation of anti-clerical rebelliousness and and his work tended towards the macabre and picaresque.
Lucrezia as Poetry, Salvator Rosa
BOOKS
Michael Baxandall'sPainting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy, Oxford University, 1972, is referred to in this part of the course. It examines the commercial practice of early Renaissance painting, contracts, letters and accounts, and the 15th c social context. The author died on August 12th, 2008.
Terry Eagleton reviewed Peter Conrad's Creation: Artists, Gods and Origins, Thames & Hudson, in the London Review of Books 24 January 2008. He is critical of the author for being a 'cultural elitist who believes in inspiration, the autonomy of the human spirit and the Great Genius theory'. He adds that what is supposed to characterise a gifted minority is revealed by psychoanalytical thought to be commonplace.
Julian Stallabrass, Art Incorporated, 2004, takes the reader inside the international art world to suggest answers to questions over American political and cultural influence on art.
The Economic Lives of 17th Century Italian Painters, Richard Spear, Philip Sohm et al., Yale, 2010, investigates the economics of the 17th century art world when Boulogna and Naples were in the ascendant, while Florence and Venice which had shone so brightly in the High Renaisance were stuck in their own shadows.
Vision and Painting, Norman Bryson, Macmillan, 1983. This book questions assumptions of Gombrich's Art and Illusion where analysis of perception is based on the conception that classical painting of the West has been an progressing art of the copying of visual experience.
The Art of Not Making, Michael Petry, Thames & Hudson, 2011.