BOOK

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Chapter one:

The Art Service Industry.

How we see the art world is very much influenced by the commentators:

The art historians, the art critics etc.

The term art historian carries with it an implied degree of knowledge about the quality of art. However, although they may have the best of intentions it is quite possible for an art historian to learn all the dates and movements etc, but be unable to acquire the necessary ability to access quality. Often the claims made about many art historians understanding of art or painting are not always justified. Commentators in other disciplines such as music, maths or tennis are usually exponents in that particular field. In fact it would be unthinkable to have a commentator in maths who was not a very considerable exponent. Reading between the lines it soon becomes evident that many art historians understanding of art is flawed. Before we deal with this in any depth, it is often expedient for artists to go along with the writings of commentators, in fact it would not be an exaggeration to say that artists careers are made by a certain symbiosis. Each giving the other what is required to drive the market, this is fine when both are in a reified atmosphere, the realms of genius. My concern is that the recent past has seen a rise in the less visually literate becoming involved in the arts. As often or not it seems more like the blind leading the blind, beginning with that transition period known as the Modernists. That period from the late 19^th century to the early 20^th century. The question is, is it now time for a review of this period? Hind sight is never a bad thing, is it now time to say that some of the information that we were fed was not always correct. I know from my own experience that some of the information from Art College was not factually correct. Coincidently I saw the same information repeated recently on a TV documentary on art i.e. that the some what strange sinewy images painted by Cimabue where done in this fashion out of choice. The art historian on the documentary made a point of saying that Cimabue could quite easily have painted a more representational image. This a fundamental flaw in the art historians understanding of the painter. The art historian continued with how wonderful the eyes were in the Byzantine paintings and he reasoned that they had been painted in this way to seem elemental and filled with awe. Art historians often have the idea that if someone is called an artist they are automatically granted a God given talent, that they can paint like Michael Angelo and that any divergence from this is through choice and certainly not through lack of ability, they seem to misconstrue sheer inability for design. Byzantine work can be considered analogous to a childs attempt at producing a picture. They both confuse symbols with vision. Nicely illustrated in Ernst Gombrich’s book Art and Illusion, where another art historian, this time a much celebrated art historian, suffers from a more dramatic example of this misunderstanding.

When a child draws mummy as a round head with eyes, nose and mouth and strands of hair, a triangle for a dress with two arms and two legs sticking out, this is a symbolic illustration of the child's perception, the child perceives the mummy and draws a symbol for that perception.

Although vision is part of that perception, visually this symbol has very little resemblance to mummy. Gombrich in his book 'Art and Illusion' asks the question "a problem which has haunted the minds of art historians for many generations..........will the paintings we accept as true to life look as unconvincing to future generations as Egyptian paintings looked to us?"  What Gombrich fails to understand here, and it seems fellow art historians, is that the Egyptians were illustrating perception.

This is not a progression, as Gombrich suggests where painting improves with time, this is pre disentangling vision from perception. I hope the minds of art historians are hence forth released from this haunting (I excluded those who were so much further up the artistic ladder than Gombrich that they were never so haunted) So the reader is left in no doubt of Sir Ernest Gombrich's status in the art world I list his honours and credits below: 

What we perceive can give us shorthand we know as symbols and introduces a value judgement: what is the most important aspect of this subject? When the subject is a person, this value judgement shifts up a gear, the physiological impact of the face of this subject takes precedence over feet or knees, the eyes on this face out rank any other feature. When these features are translated into 2D their precedence is ranked by size. In reality eyes are give or take, about the size of finger nails, yet if we look at the Byzantine example we can see that they are relatively enormous. This dysmorphia continues into the Proto Renaissance, tiny hands and big heads are all too apparent in works as late as Giotto. Medically speaking this type of image could be called a physiological homunculus. Why civilisations should react like a child is a mystery, but whether by a child or a civilisation this sort of work can not really be considered art. Even during the early  period when the problem began to be  addressed the proto Renaissance artists such as Cimabue 1240 - 1302, Duccio 1255 - 1318  and Giotto 1267 - 1337 I would have a great deal of difficulty calling this work  'art'.  The Renaissance can really be considered the science of vision, it is interesting that civilisations which produced the symbolic representations prior to the science of vision, such as Japan with the Hokusai wave approach, don’t have a word for art.

Art is a western concept, where the visual representation moved away from the symbolic. The Renaissance began when the problem with symbolic representation had been recognised, this was the beginning of a journey.

Piero della Francesca broke objects down geometrically;

Alberti defined a form of perspective, the tracing of the subject on to a screen (window). Although it sounds like the definitive solution unfortunately this form of perspective does not acknowledge lateral perspective;

Anatomy and figures became a primary area of study, with the aim of overriding the psychological homunculus epitomised by the Byzantines all with the objective of establishing the retinal image. To be able to override the psychological homunculus and produce a human figure closely approximating the retinal image turned out to be so difficult it became the litmus test for visual literacy. So difficult is the psychological homunculus and there by the test of visual literacy, that ever since, art colleges have the study of the human figure at the centre of their curriculum.

The next step along this path is as important as the first and could be considered as modifying the meaning of art. This step is the acknowledgement of the medium. Rembrandt in his later works such as his Kenwood House Portrait  and his National Gallery portrait and his painting of Jan Six . These are no longer the drawing and colouring in of the Renaissance they are interpretations in the medium of paint. To the uninitiated this may seem an arty distinction, but an analogy with music may dispel any idea that this is either woolly or arty language. At this point on the journey the mechanics of the Renaissance are no longer the major concern in the same way in which Hendrix’s no longer had to mechanically pick out the notes as a lesser guitarist may. This is where the word art takes on the meaning of something special, where a stroke of genius can be seen to shine out from a smudge of paint. I suspect that the epistemology could bare this out.

However, it is unlikely that Rembrandt would be bothered one iota whether he was called an artist or a painter, though I suspect it would not be academic to Jeff Koons whether or not the $2.16millon Hoover in the Perspex box was granted the label of art, in fact if I may be so bold I suspect the price would fall faster than a speeding bullet if it were suggested that it was not a valid work of art.

Let me say that I make no apologies for making it my aim to bring into question the validity of such claims. But excuse me I am getting ahead of myself. To return to the main theme and in particular the commentators depth of understanding or otherwise of the pre retinal image. An example of the commentators understanding can be seen in Gombrich’s comments referred to earlier in this writing.                   

Here we have a very clear picture of the commentators and their influence. Now as we move through the centuries although there are peaks and troughs the general direction of this graph is onward and upward. And we eventually arrive at the Impressionists and the next big step along this journey.

History of Modern Painting. In the opening pages he refers to Cezanne and suggests that he was the first artist to be objective: ‘let us ask why in the long history of art it had never previously happened that an artist should wish to see the world objectively'. When I was a student in the sixties suggested reading was Herbert Reed a Concise at an artist should wish to see the world objectively’ Firstly, I hope I have made it abundantly clear that the entire period of the Renaissance was devoted to the retinal image. But secondly, has this much respected and influential historian never heard of Vermeer or seen his ‘Maid with a milk jug’.

As we have seen from what has gone before it seems that there is a wide discrepancy between the none artists view and what the artists where aiming to achieve or in fact where achieving. Herbert Reed goes on to touch on Impressionism, a movement which could have be said to have had its waters muddied, by its title, suggested by a critics slur:  That the paintings where merely impressions.

Herbert Reed speaks of Impressionism as a subjective movement. However, the truth is somewhat different the movement emerged parallel to the invention of photography. Painters had a big break through when they realised that a camera did not see objects as separate entities, as in a bottle on a table, two separate objects, but as patches of light. The bottle may be lost and found in the tones and colours of the table. A second and just as important aspect was that the grainy resolution was oblivious to distance, hence the trade make rain effect of Impressionism. Nether did the mindless machine pay any attention to the psychological precedence. Equal treatment was given to all areas whether a finger nail sized eye or a finger nail itself.

But what of Herbert Reeds choice of objective artists. We find a few pages later he refers to Seurat as a genius and one who ‘gave precise expression to the idea of objectivity’  

If we refer to the painting ‘an afternoon at La Grand Jatte’ a more stilted painting it would be hard to find, we find that the figures have no resemblance to the retinal image what so ever, the hands and feet are far too small, a tell tale sign of a lack of visual understanding. The sitting girl, centre holding a pose, shows no understanding of a head, again hands too small, no understanding of hair in visual terms, granted a very difficult area. The floating dog does not help the situation. The lack of visual understanding with regard to the trees or grass or any aspect of surface quality. The ladies hat, one of three sitting figures bottom left, the inability of the painter to produce the illusion of the flowers going around the hat indicates a very low grade ability and a fundamental lack of understanding of physics, even though Herbert Reed says that Seurat understands science. The hat, head, body and hands show a woeful lack of the understanding of the retinal image, anatomy, physics, proportion, drawing, modelling, surface quality, tone, the lost and found of the Impressionist, colour, the medium, structure, resolution, perspective, both linear and aerial and the inevitable psychological homunculus. This catalogue of short comings of this low grade artist is not aimed as a criticism of the artist but to describe the disparity between reality and what the art historian sees as objectivity.