The Grotesque in Modern Art and Literature: Toward Definition
From Wolfgang Kayser's The Grotesque in Art and Literature
1. [paraphrasing and quoting eighteenth century art critic Christoph Martin
Wieland] "He distinguished between three types of caricature:
(1) true
caricature, `where the painter reproduces natural distortions as he finds
them,' (2) `exaggerated caricature, where, for one reason or another, he
enhances the monstrosity of the subject without destroying its similarity to
the model,' and (3) `purely fantastic caricatures, or grotesques in the proper
sense, where the painter, disregarding verisimilitude, gives rein to an
unchecked fancy (like the so-called Hell Bruegel) with the sole intention of
provoking laughter, disgust, and surprise about the daring of his monstrous
creations by the unnatural and absurd products of his imagination." ***
Consider: Is all caricature grotesque? Is all grotesquery caricatural? What
is the relation of grotesquery to "reality"? to "nature"? What is the artist's
relation to his grotesque creation? (is he/she showing off? declaring
otherness? displaying fancy? challenging the observer's sense of normality and
declaring the challenge?...?)[p.30]
2. Describing Bosch's "Garden of Lusts":
"In brief, a frightful mixture of
mechanical, vegetable, animal, and human elements is represented as the image
of our world, which is breaking apart."
*** Consider:
What's the role of the "frightful" in the grotesque? Does
grotesquery typically appear when "our world" is under stress ("breaking
apart")? [p.33]
3. Discussing Pieter Bruegel the Elder's paintings: "`With cold interest,'
Bruegel paints the increasingly estranged world of our daily life not with the
intention of teaching, warning, or carousing our compassion but solely in order
to portray the inexplicable, incomprehensible, ridiculous, and horrible. In his
book Mimesis Erich Auerbach has disclosed the only two perspectives from which
humble reality could become the object of artistic representation in the Middle
Ages. Either it was considered in a humorous vein or it was made meaningful in
relation to the physical settings of the Christian legend (the stable, the
shepherds, the craftsman's shop, the fountain, etc.). Bruegel seems to have
added a third perspective:
that of the terror inspired by the unfathomable,
that is the grotesque."
*** Consider:
What is the relation of the inexplicable, to the
incomprehensible, to the ridiculous, to the horrible?
Are each of these
equally parts of grotesquery? Where does terror fit in? What has all of this
to do with humor? with the commonplace? with received ways of seeing? of
interpreting? with symbol systems?
To what extent should we be conscious of
the creative artist's (author's) intentions? [p.35]
4. "The grotesque world is -- and is not -- our own world. The ambiguous way
in which we are affected by it results from our awareness that the familiar and
apparently harmonious world is alienated under the impact of abysmal forces
which break it up and shatter its coherence." *** Consider: What's the role of
cultural difference here?
of historical perspective? Is there a definition
that crosses time and space and place? (one culture's demons may simply be
another culture's realities, or its comedy, for example). [p.37]
5. Discussing the fiction of German Romantic writer E.T.A. Hoffman (early 19th.
century): "Madness is the climactic phase of estrangement from the world." ***
Consider: Is grotesque art the art of insanity? [p.74]
6. Discussing Poe: "The distortion of all ingredients, the fusion of different
realms, the coexistence of beautiful, bizarre, ghastly, and repulsive elements,
the merger of the parts into a turbulent world (Poe used to speak of his
`daydreams') -- all these features have here entered into the concept of the
grotesque." *** Consider:
What is the role of dreams?
of daydreams? What
determines the notion of "distortion"? How do we recognize distortions? What's
the relationship of beautiful to bizarre? Can (how can) "different realms" be
"fused"? How can they not be? Are such fusions always "grotesque"? how? how
not? [p.79]
7. Discussing "comedy": "If it was Schiller, the esthetician, who pleaded for
emotional detachment, Schiller, the teacher of poetics, added further advice by
setting up a distinction between two basic types of comedy: `In the comedy of
intrigue the characters are subordinated to the events, whereas in the comedy
of character the events are subordinated to the characters.'"
*** Consider:
Is there a kind of comedy appropriate to the grotesque?[p.95]
8. "In the genuine grotesque the spectator becomes directly involved at some
point where a specific meaning is attached to the events. In the humorous
context, on the other hand, a certain distance is maintained throughout and,
with it, a feeling of security and indifference." *** Consider: How does one
become "involved" in art? To what degree do Kayser's distinctions seem right to
you? Can you offer examples in support? in opposition?
[p.118]
9.Discussing "surrealism," Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll, Charles Dickens: "The
alienation of familiar forms (both Lear and Carroll indulge in playing with
words and names [why is it called an "indulgence?] creates that mysterious and
terrifying connection between the fantastic and the real world which is so
essential for the grotesque. But whereas Lear and Carroll immediately remove
us to their fantastic realms, Dickens appears to lead his readers through the
familiar everyday world." *** Consider: What is the role of the supernatural?
of playfulness? of mystery? of terror?
How do these things coexist in the
same object? [p.122,123]
10."The mechanical object is alienated by being brought to life, the human
being by being deprived of it.
Among the most persistent motifs of the
grotesque we find human bodies reduced to puppets, marionettes, and automata,
and their faces frozen into masks." *** Consider: Do you agree? disagree?
What's the role of "showmanship" in grotesquery? of ornament? of entertainment?
of the puppet master? of the puppet stage? of the marionette's strings? of the
machine?
of technology? Can one distinguish grotesque people from grotesque
situations, from grotesque ideas, from grotesque images, from grotesque
meanings? [p.183]
11."The grotesque is a structure. Its nature could be summed up in [the] phrase
. . . THE GROTESQUE IS THE ESTRANGED WORLD. But some additional explanation is
required. For viewed from the outside, the world of the fairy tale could also
be regarded as strange and alien. Yet its world is not estranged, that is to
say, the elements in it which are familiar and natural to us do not suddenly
turn out to be strange and ominous. It is our world which has to be
transformed. Suddenness and surprise are essential elements of the grotesque."
*** Consider: What does it mean to say that the grotesque is a "structure"? Is
it a matter of perception (a way of seeing, a way of understanding)? Is it a
way of organizing perception? Does it transcend genre? Is it a basic experience
or a self-conscious manipulation of basic experience?
How is it translated
from "happening" to "representation"?
Are suddenness and surprise essential?
If so, why so? If not, why not? [p.184]
12."We are unable to orient ourselves in the alienated world because it is
absurd.
Here the difference between the grotesque and the tragic becomes
apparent. Initially the tragic also harbored the absurd. We can see this in the
tragic nuclei of Greek tragedy. It is absurd for a mother to kill her children,
for a son to murder his father or a father his son, and for a man to eat the
flesh of his sons. . . . But, first of all, these are individual deeds.
Furthermore, they are deeds which endanger the principles of the moral order of
the world. The grotesque is not concerned with individual actions or the
destruction of the moral order (although both factors may be partly involved).
It is primarily the expression of our failure to orient ourselves in the
physical universe.
Finally, the tragic does not remain within the sphere of
incomprehensibility. As an artistic genre, tragedy opens precisely within the
sphere of the meaningless and the absurd the possibility of a deeper meaning -in fate, which is ordained by the gods, and in the greatness of the tragic hero
. . . revealed through suffering. The creator of grotesques, however, must not
and cannot suggest a meaning." *** Consider: Where do grotesquery and tragedy
conjoin? diverge? Where do grotesquery and comedy conjoin? diverge? . . . and
satire? Is the grotesque without meaning? Must it be? [p.185]
13. "The unity of perspective in the grotesque consists in an unimpassioned
view of life on earth as an empty, meaningless puppet play or a caricatural
marionette theatre. The divinity of poets and the shaping force of nature have
altogether ceased to exist." ***Consider:
What is the "divinity of poets"?
What might it have to do with grotesquery?
What does it have to do with
grotesquery? Is writing or art that doesn't confirm a "shaping force of nature"
inevitably "grotesque"? Is writing or art that does confirm a shaping force of
nature invariably not grotesque?
[p.186]
14. "THE GROTESQUE IS A PLAY WITH THE ABSURD." It may begin in a gay and
carefree manner. . . . But it may also carry the player away, deprive him of
his freedom, and make him afraid of the ghosts which he so frivolously
invoked." ***Consider:
Is grotesquery invariably a "game" of some sort? Who
sets the rules? If there are no rules, how does one "play"? Is the game defined
by the player? by the goals? When is a game not a game? [p.187]
15. "[THE GROTESQUE IS] AN ATTEMPT TO INVOKE AND SUBDUE THE DEMONIC ASPECTS OF
THE WORLD." ***Consider: why? how?
So, some general issues to gnaw on (in keeping with the nature of the subject):
Consider the relationship of grotesquery to dreams, to masks, to puppets, to
dolls, to dance, to art that has rigid rules and structures, to art that
explodes rigid rules and structures, to madness, to religion, to psychology, to
magic, to the sublime, to the satiric, to the comic, to the tragic, to REALITY,
to SURREALITY, to art that's symbolic. Who is at the center of the grotesque:
the artist? the perceiver? the created characters? Is the relationship of maker
to perceiver any different from that relationship in other kinds of art? To
what extent is grotesque art an art of gesture? Does grotesque art have its
own grammar? Is (how is) grotesque graphic art different from grotesque written
art, from grotesque cinematic art? from grotesque performance art (theater,
dance, music)? What's the relationship of grotesque art to human deformity
(emotional or physical: to what society sometimes calls "freaks," to the
handicapped, to the "ill," ...); how is the grotesque art (the process of it
or the object itself)
affected by your own attitude to, response to, these
facts and factors? How all encompassing must grotesque art be to be called
"grotesque"? That is, can one distinguish grotesque "worlds" from grotesque
characters, from grotesque situations and actions, from grotesque places, from
grotesque landscapes. . . (in what may not otherwise be "grotesque" art)? Can
something be partially grotesque? Must something be partially grotesque? Can
we distinguish (define) a "cultural" grotesquery rather than a "generic"
grotesquery -- that is, a grotesquery that's specific to one culture but not to
another? And on and on and on and on. The point of the class is to explore, to
"play," to uncover and recover, as we explore the nature of modern grotesque
art. We need not (and surely will not) "solve" the mysteries of this appealing
and appalling art.