As Students of Alberti,
What is Art?
[the great “art” debate]
What are the three “parts” of
painting?
• Line:
– the art of drawing.
• Composition:
– the organization of the parts of the painting a
whole, including their organization in perspectival
space.
• Color and light:
– the final overpainting of the preliminary drawing
and blocking in of values with color.
What tool does Alberti
recommend for painters and why
might it be useful?
• The veil or intersection was a ruled transparent fabric positioned
between the painter and what he was painting, that allowed him to
divide it into sections and more accurately render the different parts.
Later, he recommends using a mirror for color correction (p. 83).
Albrecht Durer recommends a similar device in his treatise on
drawing:
•
QuickTime™ and a
decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
What is istoria and how is it linked to
composition?
• Alberti introduces the key term of his theory art, istoria, in the
context of composition (p. 70). Istoria can be translated as
“story,” “history,” “narrative,” “plot.” The istoria is the narrative
content of a painting. It is linked to composition because for
Alberti, the istoria is supposed to organize all the significant,
meaning-bearing elements of the painting so that each body,
gesture, movement, and even object supports in some way the
story that the painter is trying to tell. Composition is a broader
category, not specifically attached to meaning, but still, in
Alberti’s opinion, in the service of supporting the narrative
content.
What are some criteria for
appropriateness?
• Appropropriateness is a key aesthetic value, covalent
with the rhetorical idea of decorum, throughout the
text. The members of a body must be appropriate to
the age, gender, and function of the human figure
(young girl, old man, etc). Exterial expressions and
gestures should be appropriate to internal feelings,
and these feelings should be appropriate to the
situation, as dictated by the istoria. Clothing must be
appropriate as well.
What does Alberti mean by
dignity?
• Alberti defines “dignity” as the overall
appropriateness of a figure in relation to the istoria.
What does Alberti mean by “copiousness”
and “variety”? How are they different?
Which is more important?
• Although copiousness (copia) and variety (varieta) are largely
synymous, Alberti draws subtle differences between them. The
words are borrowed from classical rhetoric. Copia refers to the
sheer abundance of stuff in a picture or description. Variety
refers to the articulation of stuff into particular kinds of things.
Copia is quantity; variety is quality. Alberti prefers variety to
copia because it brings order to abundance and helps link the
object world to the human-world of the istoria.
• For more on rhetorical copia, see
http://rhetoric.byu.edu/Pedagogy/Copia.htm and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copia:_Foundations_of_the_Abunda
nt_Style
What is the relation of gesture and pose
(“movements of the body”) to emotion
(‘movements of the soul” in Alberti’s theory of
painting?
• Gestures, including bodily movements as well as
facial expressions, serve to communicate the
passions of the soul. Gestures should be
“appropriate” to the mental states they are meant to
communicate, and those mental states should be
appropriate to the narrative situation (istoria).
Can a painter go too far in
representing emotions?
• Although gesture is a key element in the narrative
painting that Alberti prefers, too much gesture is a
problem. Mannerist and Baroque painters would
disagree with Alberti’s classical precepts.
Now let’s consider…
Jackson Pollock
• What would Alberti
say about Pollock’s
painting?
• Would he consider
it art?
• Does it follow any
of Alberti’s “rules”?
• Discuss…
Critics in “Favor” of Pollock
•
”What was to go on the canvas was not a picture but an
event. The big moment came when it was decided to paint 'just
to paint.' The gesture on the canvas was a gesture of liberation
from value -political, aesthetic, moral.” -Harold Rosenberg
•
Clement Greenberg supported Pollock's work on formalistic
grounds. It fit well with Greenberg's view of art history as being
about the progressive purification in form and elimination of
historical content. He therefore saw Pollock's work as the best
painting of its day and the culmination of the Western tradition
going back via Cubism and Cézanne to Monet.
•
The influence of the Native American art is very evident in
the work of Jackson Pollock. Pollock and Native artists work
using a similar process; Pollock takes direct images from the
unconscious mind like images from the natives’ “spirit world”; he
uses a primitivist aesthetic; he becomes “part of” the painting,
akin to native American sand painters, and he exhibits similarly
universalized subject matter to the Native Americans.
Against “reading” Pollock’s
work as “art”
•
Reynolds News in a 1959 headline said, "This is not
art — it's a joke in bad taste."
• “Certain left wing scholars, most prominently Eva
Cockcroft, argue that the U.S. government and
wealthy elite embraced Pollock and abstract
expressionism in order to place the United States
firmly in the forefront of global art and devalue
socialist realism. In the words of Cockcroft, Pollock
became a 'weapon of the Cold War'.”
• “[I am] astonished that decorative 'wallpaper',
essentially brainless, could gain such a position in art
history alongside Giotto, Titian, and Velazquez.” Craig Brown, artist, critic, & satirist
Pollack on Pollock
•
“I feel nearer, more a part of the
painting, since this way I can walk round
it, work from the four sides and literally
be in the painting. This is akin to the
methods of the Indian sand painters of
the West.”
– Jackson Pollock
Your turn…
• In groups you will “debate” one of the
following four images in light of our
Alberti readings.
• RESOLVED: Based on Alberti’s rules for
artistic composition [the image] is art.
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Roy Lichtenstein
Takashi Murakami
Archimboldo
Grant Wood
Citations
• The critical text and quotations for and
against Jackson Pollock were taken
from wikipedia. The entire article can be
accessed on:
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson_Poll
ock
• Additionally, the idea for this “debate”
was provided by M. Matteau.