|
Erstellt von Dearbhla Dunne
vor etwa 10 Jahre
|
|
Meaning and Interpretation - Dutch painting 17th century. Small scale, everyday scenes. Realism, pictorial record of Dutch life. New state, new art - 1648 The Netherlands independence from Spain. Early 17th years - the 'golden age' starts, flourishing centre of trade, shipping and finance, and made significant contributions to the domains of science, technology and culture. Huge naval fleet, colonisers, wealth and power. Provinces were basically self-governing, predominantly urban society. Calvinism not Catholicism. Calvinism prohibited the use of imagery on church, this played a huge part in the development of art as there were no church commissions. Dependant on aristocratic patrons only. Highly commercialised society, growth of an independent open art market. Portable easel painting - dominant visual art form, accessible and affordable to Dutch citizens, households owned many paintings. Open market led to an increase in specialisation, artists trying to earn an income. Specialisation in landscape, still-life and even types of cloth and animals. Sir Joshua Reynolds - president of the British Royal Academy of Arts, Journey to Flanders and Holland 1781 - Weenix specialising in game birds. Contrast to the 'grand style' of the academies. Reynolds was a believer in the classical. idealising manner, biblical, historical and mythological, he saw Dutch realism as mere imitation and lowly in genre. German philosopher G.W.F. Hegel - more positive evaluation. out of its independence from Spain, developed a new form of art that was rooted in the activities and accomplishments of its citizens. attention to detail and realism was admired. Jan Baptist Weenix, A Dead Partridge, 1650–52 Our interest in the painting is not identical with our interest in what it depicts. Subject being ordinary drew attention to the technical mastery of the artist. Object such as a wine glass or a satin dress is made twice over, once by the maker and once by the artist. Fromentin - Les Maîtres d’autrefois (The Masters of Past Time) in 1876. celebrated new subject matter of Dutch art, not influenced by the antique, fresh approach. Connection between art and society. ‘portrait’ of urban and rural life in the Netherlands and claims that it provides us with an ‘external image’ that is ‘faithful, exact, complete, life- like, without any adornment’. Character of Dutch painting is primarily descriptive. Fromentin is contrast to Reynolds but both agree on the 'truthfulness' and lack of idealisation. Realism-art-for-art's sake: Dutch national tradition of realism 2 aspects of realism, realism of subject matter, in what is being represented, everyday s scenes. And realism to characterise a form of painting that offered a more truthful or exact imitation of visual appearances. Here realism serves to identify how an object or scene is represented. An interest in painting for its own sake. Fromentin contends that ‘the great Dutch school seemed to think of nothing but painting well’ and that it is characterised by ‘the total absence of what today we call a subject’. Here the term ‘subject’ doesn’t simply mean the painting’s depicted content but rather the moral, emotional or intellectual message that it is intended to convey. The quality of a painting is therefore independent of the subject that is represented. Adriaen van Ostade, Boors in a Tavern, 1633, oil on panel. Urbanisation led to a market for rural images, freedoms outside the city Painting of peasants in the countryside, simple, escapism from the urban. But also reinforced the self-perception of city dwellers as more cultivated and sophisticated than those who lived in the countryside. Urban disdain towards country dwellers. Dutch history painting still flourished. Dutch mannerism, inspired by Carravaggio, spotlighting effect, chiarascuro, dark shadows, illuminated areas. Rembrandt van Rijn - Belshazzar’s Feast. Disguised symbolism and ‘seeming realism’ ‘iconological turn’ in Dutch art history in the second half of the twentieth century. Content and subject more important then style, technique etc. Motifs and subjects. Panofsky's Studies in Iconology and Early Netherlandish Painting . Decoding of the symbolic and allegorical concepts. 'disguised symbolism' Eddy de Jongh, defines iconology as ‘the branch of art history that seeks to explain the c content of representations in their historical context, in relation to other cultural phenomena and to specific ideas’, ‘sees works of art as vehicles of meaning’. Objects and motifs represented different things, mountains, flowers etc. Calvinist society, moralising messages to live a virtuous life. De Jongh drew attention to a wide range of literary and other sources that delighted in word play, metaphor, riddles and rebuses. 'seeming realism' - Schijnrealisme - although the outward appearance of a painting might provide a realistic representation of, say, figures in a domestic interior, this can be used to communicate abstract ideas, which the viewer grasps by interpreting the painting’s symbolic or allegorical content. Elias - Merry Company - group of figures engaged in a variety of activities, seated or standing around a table in a well-appointed interior. Draws attention to the two paintings that are shown hanging on the wall behind the figures, picture on the left depicts the biblical theme of the Deluge and the oval picture on the right a battle scene. their inclusion in the work defies the 'Merry' title. Couple that stand on the right, looking out at the viewer, allegorical representation of the temptations facing a wedded pair, who must use their resolve to ensure the virtuous conduct of their future life together. The diners are an allegory for the 5 senses representing possible vices, they act as a moral mirror. clues within the work as to its intended moral message. This also applies to Jan Steen's work, Jan Steen, The So-Called Brewery of Jan Steen - merry scene again, focus on the boy blowing bubbles in the upper story, roof area, skull - memento mori, bubbles bursting after a fleeting existence, represents the transience of worldly pleasures. curtain acts as a theatrical device. Emblem book. The application of seeming realism to other genres, landscape, still-life, 'flower paintings', portraiture.
'To Instruct and delight' exhibition, De Jongh. contrast to Fromentin's belief that there was no meaning to Dutch paintings, de Jongh believed in hidden meanings. Iconographic approach is rooted in Humanist, classical, writings of Horace. Criticisms of the iconographical approach, limitations - landscape presuppose that the great variety of Dutch painting possesses the same basic moralising content Joseph Bruyn - an essay published in the catalogue to an exhibition entitled Masters of Dutch Seventeenth-Century Landscape Painting, controversy. The painting is no longer an artwork but just a vehicle for moralising messages. 'tonal phase' of Dutch painting. Bruyn - van Goyen's , Landscape with Two Oaks, religious meanings? Painting reduced to a mere composite of elements. Simon Schama - attentive to the innovative pictorial characteristics of early Dutch landscape painting, recognising that ‘these repeated images of sand, scrubby vegetation, bleak, wind-torn t trees, and tattered dwellings’ are without precedent in the art of any other country. For Schama, the explanation for the development of this new type of painting, in which native scenes and habitats are depicted with great intimacy and feeling for locality, is to be found in Dutch patriotism and a ‘loyalty to the homely’ awakened by the vicissitudes of the early seventeenth century. ‘the emergence of a native aesthetic'. Conventions -shared strategies of representation. Goedde - study of shipwrecks and storms at sea. Same structures and motifs arise again and again. set of conventions. Realism reconsidered: Alpers - how did images shape contemporary views rather than just reflect it. Northern tradition of descriptive art rather than the narrative art of the Italian Renaissance Overlook ‘the pictorial mode itself – the reality effect – so basic to these pictures’ ‘descriptive’ character of Dutch painting is closely tied to the ‘advancement of learning’ ‘descriptive’ character of Dutch painting is closely tied to the ‘advancement of learning’ Visual not textual quality of Dutch painting. Alpers analyses the relationship between pictures and maps – both involve the artifice of depiction. The northern tradition did not generate a huge volume of written discourse, unlike Italy. Alpers says that Dutch culture was primarily visual, not textual. Paintings by Gerrit Dou seem to demonstrate his belief that painting is more skilled at depicting reality than sculpture. Italian Renaissance, relied heavily on classical and biblical texts and, in turn, generated a large body of textual commentary and theory, the northern tradition of ‘descriptive’ art did not generate a comparable written discourse. Moreover, since most artworks were produced for the market rather than commissioned, we cannot look to contracts between artists and patrons as a source of information. Alpers uses this to support her claim that Dutch culture was predominantly visual rather than textual. Lack of evidence to prove any theory regarding Dutch art. Philips Angels (1616–83) Praise of Painting fijnschilders - fine painters from Leiden. Gerrit Dou - Cook at the Window , highly finished, virtuoso display of the artist’s ability to depict an astonishing range of textures and surfaces, including fabric, feathers, fur, scales, metal, cabbage leaves and human flesh, and the different ways in which these reflect or absorb the play of light. Peter Hecht - claims it it artificial as it does not display a realistic scene, posed within the stone framing. Realistic effects can be combined with a high degree of artifice, allowing the viewer to delight in the verisimilitude or ‘true-seeming’ quality of the representation without confusing art and reality.
Iconography: concerns the subject matter of works of art, which an iconographer seeks to describe and classify. An iconographical approach might, for example, involve identifying a figure in an altarpiece as a particular saint from his or her attribute. Similarly, an art historian might refer to ‘the iconography of kingship’ (or some other such theme) in order to designate the symbols, poses and other motifs conventionally used to represent this theme. In other words, iconography is above all a matter of formulae or conventions for conveying meaning by visual means, of which symbol and allegory are the most clear-cut examples. It thus lends itself to a systematic approach on the part of scholars, ranging from the authors of early publications classifying works of art by subject to the modern art historians, who have developed databases such as Iconclass Iconology: originally referred to this kind of systematisation, as demonstrated by the title of a famous early handbook of iconography, Cesare Ripa’s Iconologia (1593). In the twentieth century, however, it came to be used as the label for an approach that did not simply seek to describe and classify subjects and themes in works of art, but also, more fundamentally, to interpret them by locating them in their historical context, that is to say, to understand them in terms of the ideas and values of the period in which they originated. The distinction between iconography and iconology was elaborated by the art historian Erwin Panofsky, who argued that iconographical analysis provides the basis for an iconological interpretation that reveals the ‘intrinsic meaning or content’ of the work of art. Such a concern with ‘intrinsic meaning’ and the accompanying assumption that there is one correct interpretation means, however, that iconology does not ultimately depart so very far from iconography’s concern with describing and classifying subject matter. Both stand in contrast to the more open-ended approach to meaning and interpretation now widespread in art history. An iconological approach has the benefit of revealing the ‘hidden meanings’ of Dutch painting, which would have been readily understood by its original audience but are no longer obvious to us today. It serves to demonstrate the moral messages that underlie its ‘ 'seeming realism’, and, in so doing, makes clear that such pictures do not simply ‘reflect’ Dutch life, but were constructed in a highly deliberate, even artificial, way. The limitations of such an approach lie in its reductiveness. It assumes that all of the different types of Dutch painting were motivated by the same moralising agenda and tends to downplay the visual aspects of painting in its emphasis on subject matter. In so doing, it also assimilates this art to the cultural traditions of Europe as a whole and overlooks the way it was shaped by more recent and distinctively Dutch experiences and concerns. Reynolds quoted in the chapter reveal, the technical accomplishment involved in depicting external appearances accurately was not highly valued, but instead regarded as necessarily inferior to a consciously elevated and idealising classical art. More broadly, this demonstrates how far what seem to be purely aesthetic judgements are bound up with social and political values. Reader Texts: The key term that Angel uses to characterise the reality effect at which Dutch artists aim is ‘ 'naturalness’ or ‘the imitation of nature’. His usage is closely related to the term ‘naturalism’, which, as you will have seen from the Grove article on Realism, is now used as a near synonym for the latter term, though without such close associations with nineteenth-century art. In fact, Angel does use the term ‘realistic’ (under the fifth point), though it has to be remembered that this is a translation, so we cannot be sure what the original Dutch word was, and, moreover, this is not quite the same as using the noun ‘realism’. Overall, Angel emphasises the close observation and faithful rendering of what he calls ‘real things’ or ‘actual things in nature’. He criticises errors in this respect, such as the inaccurate rendering of human anatomy and the failure to render the blurry effect created by the spokes of a wheel turning fast. He argues that artists need a command of such disciplines as mathematics and perspective in order to capture volumes and spaces accurately. He also emphasises the need for accurate representation of surfaces and textures, such as flesh and fabric. Above all, perhaps, he praises what he calls a ‘fluid’ or ‘graceful’ naturalness, which requires the artist both to organise his composition around ‘a single idea’ and to arrange the lighting effects in a believable way. In short, Angel thinks that artists should aim at a totally coherent illusion. What he does not discuss is the types of subject matter that artists depict, which is also part of our current understanding of realism, though the references to wagons and velvet does suggest that he is thinking of scenes of everyday life of the kind that his contemporaries painted. (In fact, however, elsewhere in the text he also mentions Rembrandt’s Samson, that is, a scene from the Bible, such as Dutch artists also painted.) Alpers has argued forcefully for a renewed attention to the realistic character of Dutch painting, in opposition to the iconologists. Most obviously, her approach differs in its emphasis on ‘visual culture’, tied to the science and technology of the period, though her concern to distinguish Dutch art from that of the rest of Europe, above all that of Italy, does parallel that of earlier writers. In practice, her work also differs from theirs in other ways, notably in her concern with the way that Dutch painting engages with gender roles, especially as they relate to women, as you will have seen if you took a look at ‘Picturing Dutch culture’.
Dutch Painting 1
Dutch Painting 2
Study Guide
Möchten Sie kostenlos Ihre eigenen Notizen mit GoConqr erstellen? Mehr erfahren.