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When we recall the great artists of the nineteenth century,
perhaps the vibrant and theatrical images of Delacroix will
pass before our mind’s eye. Or would scenes of daring and
struggle from Hugo flood our memory instead? Or the
ebullient audacity of a Schumann song resonate in our ears?
Perhaps all three, and more, for theirs was the dramatic,
exuberant age of the individual, in life and in art that was
“larger than life.”
How different are the images of our own generation. Today,
in a culture that glorifies violence, vulgarity and
ugliness—where art has become bereft of any objective
standards—we witness a sad scene as most artists flounder to
a graceless finish of the twentieth century. They are not
alone. Intellectuals, public officials, and almost everyone
else approaches this millennial birthday warily.
Shall there be cause for celebration—or greater trauma?
The hot ashes of twentieth century collectivism and nihilism
still spit and sputter around us, but ashes they are. The
1990s signal not only the end of a turbulent hundred-year
era but also the rather swift death of (most of) Communism
as a social system and the drawn-out demise of the serious
modernist art movement, both of which dominated the period.
The future? Some dare to hope, for we are beginning to
witness a resurgence of those hallmarks of the nineteenth
century: concern for individual freedom in society and a
romantic spirit in the arts.
Renewed appropriately, these values could lead us out of our
present morass and beyond, to a veritable Renaissance. We
hear the word, “Renaissance” tossed about carelessly these
days simply because we approach a turn of a centennium, but,
in fact, the concept holds true currency. Glimmering here
and there beneath the debris of twentieth century collapse,
sparks of individualism and humanism wait only for a breath
of air to flame and fuse them together once more into a
phoenix that may rise to lead us, now, into the twenty-first
century. If this is to be so, then beauty must be its
wings. A restoration of beauty and life-affirming values in
art alone cannot forge the path to a full cultural
Renaissance—only philosophy can do that—but art that makes
manifest these values can inspire us by showing us our
ideals in concrete form. Indeed, art may be the one dynamic
powerful enough to envision for us the way to a
better future.
A Renaissance, however, is not a “revival.” The word means
“re-birth.” We cannot and should not seek to repeat the
past. No matter how ground-breaking was ancient Greece or
how brilliant the Italian Renaissance or how progressive the
Enlightenment, we must begin here and now. We must
prepare the intellectual soil—in our own land, in our own
context—to produce our own unique flowering of the values
that made those great periods of history so significant for
all time. Which means especially that, in art, a fresh
under-standing of romanticism must be advanced and new
implications sought that reflect contemporary
sensibilities. As
“modernism” contrived to put a modern face on primitivism
and mysticism, so must romanticism now refresh images of
reason and an affirmative view of human life on earth.
We do not plant our seeds in an
Enchanted
Garden. Like it or not, the present environment is what it
is. Art has become a commodity cannibalizing itself daily
in order to survive without any fresh source of ideological
sustenance. Allegiance to human values, to discipline of
technical skills, and to the love of beauty would appear to
be the radical art ideas of our time. Contemporary
artists of the ROMANTIC REALISM persuasion are the
new “radicals” for they embrace these very premises and
express them—each individually—in their work.
Philosophically, they (fundamentally) view the world as a
positive/beautiful place in which to live and mankind
capable of living in it. Psychologically, they view reason
and emotion as capable of being in harmony with each other.
Artistically, they unify form and content in the same
way—and for the same reasons—that they unite reason and
emotion. Through examining these premises as expressed in
the work of Romantic Realist artists, we may attempt to
point the way to definition and understanding.
In a broad swath, we may say that the best contemporary
Romantic Realists weave into their work the greatest beauty
of nature and the highest thoughts of man; beauty enhances
truth, and truth strengthens beauty—weft and warp are
tightly entwined. To disassemble this intricate tapestry
for the purpose of understanding its construction takes
patience. And to further unravel the tangled mess of the
present art world in which Romantic Realists find themselves
takes nothing less than fortitude.
Let us begin with the term ROMANTIC REALISM,
itself. Realism in art may be divided into a wide
variety of sub-categories: “Classical” Realism, “Photo”
Realism, “Political” Realism, “Social” realism, the
straightforward mimesis of “Realist” Realism, plus a hundred
modifiers more. Simply put, all forms of realism in the
visual arts present recognizable images representative of
objective reality, that is, the physical world, including
mankind.
The “realisms” important to our present examination are
“Classical” Realism and “Realist” Realism, for to some
degree both are employed by the “Romantic” Realist. Artists
of both schools produce representational work that relies
upon established Western art techniques of painting and
sculpture for the physical execution of their art.
“Classical” realist artists work within the canons of form
derived from Greco-Roman art in order to create the ideal
through generalization (we are reminded that it was
precisely the formulization of Academic Classicism against
which the nineteenth century European romanticists
rebelled). “Realist” realist artists use the same technical
skills in order to represent real life through
particularization. We might say that although technically
similar, the main difference between Classicists and
Realists is that the first seeks perfection and the second
seeks accuracy; the first projects universality and the
second, specificity.
But the “Romantic” seeks, above all else, expression.
Individuality as expressed through the subjective emotions
of the artist was—and is—the leitmotif of the romantic
spirit. Romanticism has undergone a variety of
interpretations. Even such a quintessential romantic as
Delacroix, when hailed as the “Victor Hugo of painting,”
could retort, “Sir, I am a pure classicist!” Nevertheless,
one attribute of romanticism is unchanging: a romantic
(whether in art or in life) is one who loves emotions. And
emotions are highly individual stirrings.
Today, we know much more about emotions than did our
nineteenth century counterparts. We understand that
emotions flow directly from value stimulation. Whether
values are rational or irrational is, here, beside the
point; in art we are concerned with their visual
manifestation. On value expression in art, the
philosopher/novelist Ayn Rand, in her 1969 Romantic
Manifesto, defines art thus: “Art is a selective
re-creation of reality according to an artist’s metaphysical
value judgments.” On emotions, she (elsewhere) states:
“Just as the pleasure-pain mechanism of man’s body is an
automatic indicator of his body’s welfare or injury...so the
emotional mechanism of man’s consciousness is geared to
perform the same function...by means of two basic emotions:
joy or suffering. Emotions are the automatic results of
man’s value judgments integrated by his subconscious...”
Needless to say, emotional conflicts are the
power-packed stuff of which good fiction is made. This is
precisely because—as value responses—emotional conflicts are
highly charged dramatizations of value conflicts.
Romantic Realist painters and sculptors, however, tend to
project harmony between reason and emotions and the senses.
Whether in conflict or harmony, reason and emotions are
human attributes, so art that explores these attributes must
by definition be anthropocentric; hence, it must be
representational and executed through the same technical
skills employed by Classical and Realist Realists.
Treatment—and importance—of subject matter can be quite a
different matter. Many twentieth century Classical Realists
have buried their heads in the sands of time, merely
creating over and over again subjects from antiquity through
the nineteenth century. Some Realist Realists, bitten by
the modernist bug, treat subject only as form in order to
address aesthetics exclusively, in which case subject matter
doesn’t matter at all; the work can be as dehumanized as any abstract work.
Subject alone, however, does not make a work of art
romantic; images of girls in white dresses, porch swings and
pets are but sentimental attempts at romanticism. For the
mature romantic artist, subject matter “matters” because it
is selected primarily for its ability to best express the
content of a work. “Content” is the pulsing inner life—the
deeper theme—of a work of art; it is the sum of the ideas
held, consciously or unconsciously, by the artist that is
revealed by his choices of form, medium and subject right on
down to every brushstroke or chisel mark. Content and
content alone causes a work of art to transcend its obvious
subject matter and communicate, indirectly, the most
intimate values of the artist. And it is content,
transformed by the artist into a silent melody of visual
aesthetics, that echoes through our senses to find an
answering “Amen” in the private recesses of our souls when
we respond profoundly to a work of art.
But it is, above all, the artist’s feelings for the
ideas he holds about life and about humankind—and about
himself—that turn him from a realist into a “romantic” who
needs to suffuse his work with the emotional aura of his
values. Like his nineteenth century forbearers, today’s
romantic uses form (the physical presentation) to
communicate content (human values) through individual style
(emotional expression), thereby making the means and the end
merge, blend and re-emerge as one totality of experience
that unifies mind, body, and soul. The whole, then, is much
greater than the sum of its parts. Herein lies art’s
ability to afford us a spiritual experience as well as an
aesthetic one. The spiritual in art, as in all spiritual
experience, is not evoked by an escape from reality
but by an embrace of it—existence and consciousness
unified and experienced as one. Remember that one of the
root meanings of the word “holy” is whole, as in
“complete.”
With such potent similarities as these, we may wonder if any
significant difference arises between our split-by-a-century
romantic brethren. It does. It is the difference, in fact,
that makes the twentieth century romantic a Romantic
Realist. Rather than fixing a focus on history,
mythology, the remote or the exotic, the contemporary
romantic expresses his views through images of the present,
of the here and now—the real. Yet once again like his kin,
subject matter is handled with the touch of a poet. Images
are imbued with beauty and created with tender ferocity or
fierce tenderness; it doesn’t matter which because it is the
artist’s temperament, alone, that chooses his style of
communication.
Art, however, should be more than just an artist’s
temperament revealed. There are those who claim that
Abstract Expressionists are the offspring of the nineteenth
century romantics, engaging in expression for the sake of
expression. But, upon reflection, the Romantic Realists are
the rightful heirs. Simply to follow the linear path of
individual expression begun by the romantics to abstraction
is to arrive at the dead end of subjectivity and
unintelligibility at its worst or decorative art at its
best. The theatre of emotional expression can become the
street brawl of emotional explosion if it is not channeled
through the discipline of a form versatile enough to act as
a strong but plastic conduit.
Another reason that form must be malleable is that ideas
change as knowledge and development expand; artists,
therefore, must have the continuing ability to adapt form to
fresh purpose in order for it to absorb the content of new
ideas as well as recast the equally important statement of
eternal verities in contemporary terms. The strength of
realism as a form derives from its integrative power and its
elasticity, both of which enable it to stretch into an
infinite variety of shapes in order to contain that power
surge which is content electrified by temperament. In his
1863 obituary of Delacroix, Baudelaire wrote that the
painter was “passionately in love with passion and coldly
determined to seek out the means to express passion in the
most visible manner.” Once again, we are reminded that form
must serve content, even if the content is emotion itself.
Perhaps this respect for established Western forms is what
kept nineteenth century romantic masters from crossing over
the line into the abstract aesthetic. Some talked about it,
and others nearly went over the brink, but the great ones
never toppled. Perhaps they grasped that abstract art (as
beautiful as some of it may be) is a highly limited art
form, one within which they could not expand their aesthetic
vocabulary any more than they could fill its shallow vessel
with a rich content that would tie it to human life, human
concerns and human needs. Within the discipline of
architecture, abstraction has ample room to evolve into a
complex and noble literature, but in painting and sculpture,
the abstract aesthetic must by its nature turn inward upon
itself and become an examination of its own form. In
abstract art, aesthetics is all.
As for self expression? Demonstrably, it can quickly become
self indulgence or else so personal and esoteric a lingua
that it holds little interest for anyone other than the
artist. Not a few “artists” in the twentieth century have
proclaimed a new aesthetic “language” only to obfuscate the
fact that they were speaking gibberish. But to expand the
breadth of the romantic vocabulary from the nineteenth
century romantics laterally, within the form of
realism, is for contemporary Romantic Realists to meet no
boundaries at all. The form is inductive rather than
reductive, its potential so infinite that limitless
expression and limitless ideas can be explored within the
aesthetic, pleasing the senses and the mind as well
as the heart.
The work of Classical artists engaged in searching for the
ideal can become impersonal and codified. That of Realist
artists in searching for the “real” can become trivial and
literal. That of the best abstract artists stops at the
point where all good representational art begins: with a
strong abstract design. The work of Romantic Realist
artists synthesizes all these various persuasions into a
subtle integration that combines their strengths while
avoiding their weaknesses. Then, unable to resist—for that
is what makes them romantics!—Romantic Realist artists
ignite the flame of emotion deep within the interior of
their work, and it spreads and glows throughout. If
successful, the resulting art offers us tantalizing visions
of a heightened reality, a reality that is universal
yet individual, imagined yet real, timeless yet
timely—emotion harnessed by technique, expression evolving
from content, and the eternal explored in the temporal:
Mood, mystery and metaphor. Possibilities. Passion. Life.
Romantic Realists do not deny and may even dramatize human
struggle, suffering or absurdity, but if they choose to
explore the underbelly of life, the best of them do so with
a higher purpose. It takes little imagination to bewail the
ills of existence or to stamp one’s artistic foot at reality
through irony or retreat into either angst or the endless
distraction of novelty; it takes even less imagination to
propagandize and promote political agenda through the
“media” of art. Artists can address human struggles, to be
sure. But rather than resorting to the easy outlets of
whine or tantrum, they can express struggle as an act of
affirmation, by respecting the power of human sight rather
than degrading it and by offering visions of why the
struggle is worthwhile so that life might be enhanced and
encouraged toward the better.
Self absorbtion and fascination for the “Dark” are pastimes
of the idle, the alienated and the angry; artists so
preoccupied are serving as the handmaidens of death and
destruction. Worse, even, than the nihilism of much
modernist art, the deliberate immersion into the horrific
and demonic in which too much contemporary art wallows lacks
either aesthetics or purpose—except, perhaps, the purpose of
shocking an artist’s name into headlines for an illusory
moment of fame.
Warnings against artistic descent into decadence have come
to us repeatedly throughout the ages. Aristotle: “As for
those [works of art] that by means of spectacle arouse not
fear but only horror, they have nothing in common with
tragedy.” Mozart: “Violent passion should never be
expressed to the point of provoking disgust. Even in a
horrible situation, music should never hurt the ears, nor
cease to be music.” Goethe: “There is an empty spot in the
brain, a place, that is, where no object makes an
impression, just as the eye too contains a blind spot. If
man pays attention to this place, he becomes absorbed in it;
he falls into mental illness; he imagines things of another
world, which in fact are pure nothings and have neither
forms nor boundaries, but cause fear like that of night’s
empty space and pursue more cruelly than specters anyone who
does not tear himself from their grasp.”
All of us who love art must heed these warnings. If we fail
to generate a Renaissance of the twenty-first century, then
surely we shall suffer a Dark Age.
The alternative exists, because the legacy lives.
The rebels, today, are less vocal than their nineteenth
century romantic brothers who banded together in camaraderie
and with common purpose to become the vanguard; if they are
“radicals,” then they are radicals for Beauty. Today’s
genuine rebels are men and women—painters, sculptors,
composers, writers—who work quietly and individually to
create meaningful art from the fountainhead of their
personal vision. They care not for bombastics against other
persuasions. They work confident in the knowledge that
beauty illuminating pro-human ideas speaks through their art
to anyone who wishes to see the Light.
It is a passion for life that leads contemporary Romantic
Realist artists forward to express a rebirth of values that
can elevate their own spirit as well as the spirit of those
who experience their art. It is a reverence for and a
tenacious love for the beautiful—and for the possible—in the
world and in humankind that clears their vision to create
images of glory in their art, images that thrill us, that
move us, that inspire us. For what cannot be imagined,
cannot happen.
Artists have always been the dreamers. Whether we follow
beautiful dreams or nightmares is up to us. Ugliness and
cruelty and tragedy are part of life, to be sure, but the
Romantic Realist knows that in art, it is
life-serving values that we need to see—to experience—in
order to bring those visions of values into existence in the
real world. The avant garde artists today may be again the
romantic crusaders of the
future yet unsung, each armed not with a sword but with a
rose.
Copyright
© Alexandra York. All rights reserved. |
