Notes - Chpt 2 B2 P1

 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