DOI article:
John Weichsel, Cosmism or Amorphism?
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.31249#0107
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the norm. A possession of animal forms in the shape of art gave, in accordance
with well-established primitive man’s belief, the cave-man a much-desired
power over his animal foes. A drawing of an artist thus became a valuable
weapon; too important for our weak human ancestor to be trifled with, or
left to the play-instinct of any man. Convention, therefore, must have had
very ancient beginnings.
All primitive communities could produce only standardized art. Socialized
to the extreme as those ancient organizations are known to have been, they
brought all of their members’ activities to one common denominator. All
socially propitious acts were sanctified; digression from the norm was a menace
to the social order, as they thought. Therefore the suppression of all diver-
gence seemed to those communities a prime condition for their survival.
The usurpation of arts by castes; their subservience to rigidly crystallized
ideologies in Egypt and other early civilizations could not help producing the
high symbolization of classic arts. And a symbol precludes unity of discipline,
a oneness of apperception, a mass-acceptance of imposed norms. Even
classical Greece was no exception to the general rule of social coercion of
artists. Even such men as Praxiteles were not immune from it, and were
frequently made to feel its sting.
The art of Japan never freed itself from immemorial Buddhist and Chinese
conventions. Religion and class-dominance conditioned the survival ' of
frozen principles. When the great awakening came, through the Ukiyo-e
school, ostracism and starvation were the class-weapons against “vulgariza-
tion” of art. The art-loving Samurai never rescinded their condemnation of
this great attempt at freer art-expression.
Returning to “our” civilization let us recall the absolutism of the Holy
Catholic Church, whose attitude towards art may be summarized, briefly,
in the declaration of one of its great councils: “It is not the invention of the
painter which creates the picture, but an inviolable law, a tradition of the
Catholic Church. It is not the painters but the holy fathers who have to
invent and to dictate. To them manifestly belongs the composition, to the
painter only the execution.”
Absolute monarchy fostered historical painting, with a pseudo-romantic
tinge; democracy favors shallow classicism; the bourgeois, self-satisfied and
triumphant in worldly pursuits, demands realism from Hals and Rembrandt.
Leaving such as Rubens, Van Dyke, and Velasquez to create a false glory
around court-life, they wanted no mere artist to express his painted opinions
against their authority. They were not slow in making Rembrandt feel
their displeasure when he dared to mask their workaday sobriety and vulgar
self-importance in his “Night Watch.”
And what of today’s parvenu-approved art, whose academies have sanc-
tioned what Caffin sees in La Touche’s canvases: “The blatancy of an age
of mushroom millionaires and diamond Kaffir Kings . . . reflected in
the decorative orgies. . . .”
In fine, the New artist seems fully justified in his distrust of traditional
“spontaneity and individuality.” He defies the influences of church, state,
75
with well-established primitive man’s belief, the cave-man a much-desired
power over his animal foes. A drawing of an artist thus became a valuable
weapon; too important for our weak human ancestor to be trifled with, or
left to the play-instinct of any man. Convention, therefore, must have had
very ancient beginnings.
All primitive communities could produce only standardized art. Socialized
to the extreme as those ancient organizations are known to have been, they
brought all of their members’ activities to one common denominator. All
socially propitious acts were sanctified; digression from the norm was a menace
to the social order, as they thought. Therefore the suppression of all diver-
gence seemed to those communities a prime condition for their survival.
The usurpation of arts by castes; their subservience to rigidly crystallized
ideologies in Egypt and other early civilizations could not help producing the
high symbolization of classic arts. And a symbol precludes unity of discipline,
a oneness of apperception, a mass-acceptance of imposed norms. Even
classical Greece was no exception to the general rule of social coercion of
artists. Even such men as Praxiteles were not immune from it, and were
frequently made to feel its sting.
The art of Japan never freed itself from immemorial Buddhist and Chinese
conventions. Religion and class-dominance conditioned the survival ' of
frozen principles. When the great awakening came, through the Ukiyo-e
school, ostracism and starvation were the class-weapons against “vulgariza-
tion” of art. The art-loving Samurai never rescinded their condemnation of
this great attempt at freer art-expression.
Returning to “our” civilization let us recall the absolutism of the Holy
Catholic Church, whose attitude towards art may be summarized, briefly,
in the declaration of one of its great councils: “It is not the invention of the
painter which creates the picture, but an inviolable law, a tradition of the
Catholic Church. It is not the painters but the holy fathers who have to
invent and to dictate. To them manifestly belongs the composition, to the
painter only the execution.”
Absolute monarchy fostered historical painting, with a pseudo-romantic
tinge; democracy favors shallow classicism; the bourgeois, self-satisfied and
triumphant in worldly pursuits, demands realism from Hals and Rembrandt.
Leaving such as Rubens, Van Dyke, and Velasquez to create a false glory
around court-life, they wanted no mere artist to express his painted opinions
against their authority. They were not slow in making Rembrandt feel
their displeasure when he dared to mask their workaday sobriety and vulgar
self-importance in his “Night Watch.”
And what of today’s parvenu-approved art, whose academies have sanc-
tioned what Caffin sees in La Touche’s canvases: “The blatancy of an age
of mushroom millionaires and diamond Kaffir Kings . . . reflected in
the decorative orgies. . . .”
In fine, the New artist seems fully justified in his distrust of traditional
“spontaneity and individuality.” He defies the influences of church, state,
75
