comments on ernst gombrich

8/14/2019 COMMENTS ON Ernst Gombrich

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COMMENTS ON Ernst Gomrichs 1958 TYRANNY ARTICLE tm. 2007

By PAUL HENRICKSON 2005

Ernest Gombrich begins his revelatory article The Tyranny ofAbstract Art which appeared in the April 1958 issue of TheAtlantic Monthly with the confession that he and his arthistorian colleagues were, perhaps unintentionally, responsiblefor having misled the public by the use of language whichfailed to adequately describe the facts of creative artisticproduction.

In consequence, the metaphoric language employed may have

seduced the reader. Although Gombrich refers to art historiansspecifically and not to art critics, it is, I have found the artcritic who is more likely to be guilty of a seductive use oflanguage than is the art historian.

After all, it is the job of the historian, at least nominally so, todeal with the sequence of artistic events. The function of thecritic goes beyond that by hypothesizing the reasons certainartists selected approaches to their craft that distinguishedthem from other artists and what the meanings of thosechanges in direction have meant or might mean. Both the art

historian and the art critic might respond to the formalcharacteristics of a work of art, the historian as a means ofdetermining the proper chronology of the piece and the criticas evidence of the motivation which gave issue to the change.In this regard the social environment out of which the workshave been produced is of some importance, but, in addition, soare the more personal and, perhaps more hidden, reasons whya particular change was adopted over some other. It is this lastwhich borders on the personal psychology of the artistinvolved.

In short, the main job of the art historian is to establish whatthe historical facts might be. The art critics responsibility ismore complex and more variable and controversial in itsresults. Additionally, the art critics ability to express himselfin comprehensible language is of prime importance since oftenwhat he may be expected to convey are the non-verbalmeanings inherent in a mute object. This is tricky. Exactly how


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tricky it is, is probably one of the major reasons why Gombrichwrote what he wrote.

In his second paragraph Gombrich lays before us yet anotherchallenge to the reader by reminding us that there are critics

who believe that painting in this last century became too easy,a mere splashing ofcolors.

Kirk Hughey: Grey

Kirk Hughey: Abstraction

Kirk Hughey: Teal Rider


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Constance Counter: untitled

Well, it would be possible for me to assert that the belief is notmistaken for there are painters whose works give testimony tosupport that belief. Yet I feel impelled to point out that great

works of art are neither conceived nor created, necessarily, outof painstaking effort or physical strain.

Edvard Munch records the story of the banker who hadcommissioned him to do a family portrait and who after thethirty minutes it took Munch to complete the work the bankercomplained that the painter hadnt spent enough time on thework to warrant the large sum of money he was asking. Muchis said to have responded that it had taken him thirty years tobe able to expertly paint the work in thirty minutes. Thisseems like a very good reply and, in this case, quite probably

honest.

The bankers observation is, in a limited way, justified at leastfrom the amount of evidence he had available at the time, butMunchs argument is stronger. It is not infrequently reportedthat a work of art just flowed from the artists brush, thewriters pen or the sculptors warm wax. It can be rightlyassumed, however, that such fluidity of artistic expressiondoes come from a lengthy period of effort during which theartist does, at least metaphorically, sweat blood.

The development of an expert technique does take not onlyphysical energy but a great deal of critical mental evaluationas well. A handyman and gardener whom I had employed whohad just seen me produce a painted wooden panel usingstencils and spray cans of paint in about ten minutes exclaimin near disbelief, you really are an artist, once astoundedme! I was stunned not because this very basic personality haduttered an aesthetic judgment but that the judgment seemed


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to carry with it the idea that an artist is someone who canperform at will and with ease.

I am still stunned by the comment because it seems to resistanalysis. The apparent ease comes only with concentration and

intelligent selection. It is also the result of long periods of trialand effort as well as painful peer criticism and difficult-to-bareself-analysis. It is probably this sort of experience thataccounts for some of the unconventional social behavior ofmany artists. An artists audience often has difficulty inrelating to the person of the artist because the audience haslittle understanding and no sympathy for what the artist hashad to go through in order to reach what he has reached. It isthis sort of thing that may explain why Peter Paul Rubens isless an artist than, say, Michelangelo Buonarotti, El Greco, orCaravaggio.


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Michelangelo: slave


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El Greco: Toledo

Caravaggio: Crucifixion of Peter

Gombrich reminds us that one of the more frustratingexperiences is to be entirely free to do what one wishes, freefrom any restrictions or constraints. This seems to suggestthat the individual is motivated primarily by rebellion.Thorndycks stimulus response theories of learning may

dovetail this concept nicely, but there seems to be animportant item missing in this theory and that might be therole of curiosity, simple, bald curiosity. A curiosity sodemanding of satisfaction at times that some individuals havebeen known to so without food, sleep and companionship. Ifone takes, by way example, Ludwig Beethoven, who was deaf,totally deaf, was largely forgetful of other of lifes amenities inorder to focus on the composition of musicmusic that hewould never get to hear except, perhaps, in his mind, onemight well wonder if there had not been an extremelycompelling reason for him to concentrate on the development

of a talent that had been so victimized by the situation of hisbirth from a syphilitic mother. There is evidence in the work ofCarravagio that suggests that he, too, may have been driveninto producing a large amount of work in a short period of timeas a result of his having been aware of fate have dealt him a

joker card.


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It is this curiosity and intense involvement in something whichsome have described as play which needs a more subtleexplanation. The word play seems to disregard the veryserious nature of the involvement. I suspect that the wordplay may have been initially chosen simply to distinguish it

from the idea of work which carried with it the idea of anexterior force pressuring the individual to produce and theconcept of their being an interior pressure compelling one toproduce was not yet ready for consideration. It is now,however.

Such an intense concentration of energy on the production of acreative work of art can be more fatiguing than an eight-hourday of straight labor. It has also been noted that once the feverof creation has taken hold of an individual that that individualmay work until he drops. The physical body, it seems at such

times, can hardly keep pace with the flow of images. This hadbeen described as the fire of creation. I do not fullyunderstand why the image of fire in connection with creationshould be so meaningful except that destructive fires oftenprecede creative reconstruction.

Gombrich is such a fertile writer. I cannot get past the thirdparagraph before a third rich idea is expressed. Gombrichdescribes the state of the artist as he stands in front of hiscanvas facing the existential nightmare, the responsibility forevery decision, every move, without any convention to guide

him, any expectation to live up to except the one of creatingsomething recognizably himself. The emphasis is minebecause it is this that is the artists major, if not his only,responsibility. What else can the artist honestly do but tocreate from what he is able and willing to create from what hehas been given or developed. Now, the key word in thatsentence is honestly.


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Paul Shapiro: Tap Root(The reader is invited to consider the meaning of the above text in the light of thegraphic evidence offered by Hughey, Counter and Shapiro.)

I realize that such a claim can be and has frequently been usedto trivialize the artistic effort generally and to legitimize theculturally destructive efforts of dilettantes who seek thepatronage of bored, unintelligent, wealthy sources which seekout the opportunities that will allow their egos to ride thecrests of fashion. Such are the fatuous.

The effort the creative artist makes to reach into that depth ofbeing where the deposit of universal prime evil soul-knowledge resides is awesome and exhausting, at least for theone who achieves it. For the observer who is able toparticipate in this moment of sharing it is an ennoblingexperience. Not many works of art achieve that level. As forexamples that do achieve it I would include the following:Michelangelos Last Judgment, Rodins Burghers of Calaisand Mestrovics Job.


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Michelangelo: The Last Judgment


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August Rodin: Burghers of Calais

Ivan Mestrovic: Job

Now, if the truth were told, I dislike the phrasing in theforegoing paragraph. It carries with it much too much of theelegant language of the Victorians, too much of the tone of the


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romantic, the mysterious and the ambivalent. Why, it mightwell be asked, doesnt one just say what is good and what isbad, and get the job done?

One doesnt do that because one cannot do that and also it

should not be done because it is not certain, given the variousnatures of human beings, that language can convey what it isintended to convey. Why does a woman ask a man if he lovesher and then when he tells her she doesnt believe himand itmakes no difference what his answer is she will still notbelieve him?

Also, I resent having to submit to the weak resolution thatthere are some things that are ineffable, so I, and others, keeptrying. In addition to all that, language also is not static, it isvery mutable indeed.

Matisse is supposed to have stated that he wanted to createart for the common man who, when he came home from workhe would not be confronted by an item that demanded hisconcentration, attention and accumulated knowledge to beappreciated. If one were to judge Matisses success by hisstated aim we would have to conclude that he failedindeedhe failed utterly. There is not point of view that would granthim the luxury of claiming success. He is a colossal failure.


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Henri Matisse:


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Matisse: Woman before a Window

Not only could one not ever, except by some unbelievableaccident, find a Matisse in a common mans house. In fact, it ishighly doubtful that one could find a common man who wouldwant a Matisse in his house. If his house held any paintings atall, they would be Rembrandts and something or other from

the Pre-Raphaelites and then they wouldnt be originals, butcheap prints.


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Rembrandt van Rijn: self portrait


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Burne-Jones: The Sea Depths

Referring to Walter Pach, Gombrich asks an awesome question;Are those who oppose a false art of one kind safe from beingimposed upon by another? Gombrich, in that paragraph atleast, escapes from being compelled to answer the question bydiverting our attention from the primary issue and calling us toconsider the fact that there were few economic incentives for a

copyist to focus his attention where there was no significantmarket for those images.

The real issue, it seems to me, is not whether there might bean economic incentive, but why is it that the images seem ofmore value than the work, the original work itself, whichsupports the image. How else might I put this?


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I think it necessary to firstly separate the idea of an imagebeing a shown subject such as a still life or a figure from themore basic idea of an image being the structure of the work.

We must include the possibility that an image might also

simply be the way something, anything, looks. The look ofa Hans Hoffmann, for example, which is the image theHoffmann offers us, is as valid a look or image as anIngres look or image.

Hans Hofmann: Golden Wall


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Ingres: Pauline de Bearn

Let me try another way. A woman has hired a gardener to workin the garden. At about mid-morning on an increasingly hotday he comes to the back door looking sweaty, a wet shirtunder the arms and in the middle of the back and asks for icewater. In the early afternoon he returns wearing only hisunder shorts and sandals to ask for more ice water. Now the

woman sees that the man is handsomely built and wondershow much warmer it might get in a few more hours.

The point of this little anecdote is this. What is important tothe woman is the structure of the man. What should be ofimportance to the art critic and the art historian is thestructure of the work.

Some of us are more practiced than others in seeing the figurehidden by the clothing but a good critic is able to accomplishthis. This is one reason why it may be dangerous for them to

appear in public for there are some people who feel somethingwhen they are being undressed and inspected for how they arereally composed.

If one of these paintings has a degree of virtue greater thanthe other it may be the Hofmann because there is little doubtin the mind of the viewer as to what it is he is looking at. Theaverage viewer may ask the question But what is it? We are


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sympathetic with that frustration which arises out of acenturies old inculcated expectation that a painting must be apainting OF something or it does not properly belong in theseventh heaven of works of genius.

The value of Hofmann over Ingres is that Hofmann the work heshows us is showing is only the work he shows us, whereasIngres, with all due respect for his excellence draughtsmanshipand control over the medium is presenting a disguised paintingin the form of a beautiful two-dimensional woman. I suspectthat were the painterly elements existing in the Ingres portraitwere disattatched from the subject matter they describe andallowed to exist on their own they might be as valuable anaesthetic experience as is the Hofmann.

So, one may argue: But that is what art is all aboutthat is,

artifice!

And one counters with the argument: but that is what otherartists are trying to change, to free the creative spirit from theslavery of having to represent an image of something otherthan itself. In addition, to show that such an approach has asmuch, if not more, validity in its attempt to inform the humansoul of values existing elsewhere as does the work of highlytalented illustrators.My reaction to both Gombrich and Pach in this regard is that

while I concur with their descriptions I do not think themcomplete. For a further understanding of the participantinfluences we must, I believe, consider the nature of thereadiness to receive, and understand, the message of theimage.

If one has ever talked with a five year old about what hisdrawing represents it might have been noticed that frequently,so long as there is not much of a time lapse between when thedrawing was done and the questioning about it, the child isquite ready to tell you the meaning of nearly every mark that

he had made. Too much of a time laps and he probablywouldnt understand what you meant by the question. Therelationship, then, between the marks made and their meaningseems very intimately connected with the actual motorperformance. Sometimes even adult actors have a problem inanswering questions of that sort not too long after having leftthe stage. They will, however, be able to answer the questiongiven time to reconstruct what they know intellectually about


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the role and to be able to recollect the experience of playing itin front of the foot lights. If a researcher has ever asked a longpracticing artist whether or not an early work was indeed histhey, may also have noticed some significant hesitation inresponding to the question. What this speaks to, I believe, is a

state of mind, during the period of creation, which is quiteclose to being a trance where the interrelationships betweenevents have a logical relationship all their own quite otherthan such relationships occurring during normal relationshipperiods. It is quite another universe, indeed.

As a middle teenager, in my case it was a longer than usualperiod, I failed utterly to notice the semi-turgid male memberson Breughels painting The Peasant Dance whereas, at aboutthe same period in my life they were immediately obvious inthe work of Paul Cadmus. Readiness for the experience seems

to play a significant role in ones understanding of it.

Pietre Breughel: The Wedding Dance


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Paul Cadmus: The Fleets In

Recently a friend who delights in revealing the number offacets of meaning he sees in nearly every gem of a thoughtgoes on, literally non-stop for two hours, without interruption,polishing all the facets of the gem and usually ending up witha mildly sardonic quip. He will get up to leave after a fewmusical notes emerge from his trousers groinal pocket and hegets called home for supper and very seriously extend hisgratitude to his listener for a very interesting conversationindeed.

But the spousal reminder is only partially successful and helaunches into a new aspect of the subject with as muchenthusiasm as he had two hours previously. Actually, theeffects of his contribution linger on for several hours after heleaves in the form of remembered aesthetic experiences andsurprises.

All in all this fellow is, among other things, a performer, but hisaudience is necessarily limited to a cultured, literate andintellectually involved group of people. There may actually bemore of such people than it might appear at first glance and

the reason we fail to meet them is because they have learnedit is safer to be silent than witty.

I recall that as a late teenager it had taken me months of dailycontact with one Monet landscape before I suddenly, and I domean suddenly, experienced the visual meaning of all thosegreen and blue dots. The dots had been on that particularcanvas for at least three generations before I experienced


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them. I had not been able to make sense out of that visualchaos because my expectations for the making of symbolicrepresentations had been linear and focused on the contour ofan object and not eidetically trained to focus on light ratherthan the object. It was not the dots that shifted, it was my

mental focus. One must be ready to receive the meaningbefore the process of meaningful communication can takeplace.

These sorts of experiences continue and can be the source ofconsiderable humor if the manner of cultural conflict is not toosevere. These sorts of things are a matter of cultural exposureand there are many cultures with smaller populations withinwhat one generally considers to be a national one.

What my talkative friend mentioned before he left and strongly

indicated that he wouldnt be able to complete all he had tosay had to do with the matter of semiotics. It was fully 20minutes before he did leave, but it was all-worthwhile. I, too,had for some time, wondered about the academics interest insemiotics and wondered what they might have in mind to dowith it.

The subject is very wide, including such things as directionalsigns for traffic, comfort stations for men or women,internationally packaged cooking instructions, the facial andbody movements which, generally, only an initiate can

understand and frequently lead to serious misinterpretation.The ways of miming no and yes would take one around theworld and be worth a liberal education. A series of silent filmsof men and women in various cultures arguing with each otherwould be a treasure trove for any choreographer researchingthe meaning of movement.

In short, and without doubt, there exists a language ofaesthetics and it is not to mans credit that he has ignoredresearching and developing this aspect of communication.

In sum, then, it will be helpful to remember that thegoodness or the badness of a work of art can only beappropriately judged by the effectiveness of the signals thatare transferred from the creator of the work to the receptor. Irealize that this notion may be found offensive by those whomay have a more structured idea of achievement, but in allfairness to ourselves and to the many faceted aspects of theenvironment in which we live all things are not everything to


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all people. This statement should not be construed as awillingness to accept everything and anything, but rather, thatbefore a judgment is made, we delay decisions until we havechecked more out than what we thought we needed to do.Extend the parameters of the discipline and make them as

flexible as an amoeba.

Gombrich additionally discusses Pachs idea of snobbism andtells us that the society to which Pach had reference allowedentrance into noble circles by virtue of some intellectualrefinement. Gombrich observes that the word snobbismimplies the existence of a nobility and that of a hierarchicalsociety. Such a society does exist. In fact, many of them existsimultaneously and it isnt at all certain that a member of onenoble group would wish to associate with another noble group.The existence of such elitist groups within a largely

democratic society needs to be explored along with thedistinct possibility that it may be one or more of the elitistgroups which may be the seminal causes for the society as awhole to develop.The very notions of democracy any society may possess maybe the root cause for the suppression of elitist groups neededfor the continued expansion of democratic ideals.

However, the preferential treatment of some groups in thetheory that past disadvantages must be balanced out in orderto level the contemporary playing field will fail in its objective

by demoralizing one of the most treasured qualities of socialambitionconsensual agreement as to worth. The maker hasto believe he has done well and the society must understandwhat he has done. Reward on the basis of something otherthan real achievement has the same effect as a leaky carbattery; it corrodes everything with which it comes intocontact.

After a well-explored history of his frustration Gombrich,seemingly out of patience, states that the much applaudedexploration and experiment in the visual arts tolerated at the

time of his writing must come to an end as we developstandards for success and failure. I, in part, agree with him,but I personally need room in which to change my mind in theevent of the appearance of new evidence.

One very important new evidence is not, as Gombrichassumes that abstract art is the same as non-objective art.They are not the same, but as Gombrich implies even the


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intellectual elite has broadly accepted this intellectual error ofwhich Gombrich is a part.

It is my understanding that much of what irritates Gombrich isa result of this intolerable intellectual misunderstanding. The

verb abstract means to take from, to draw from, or toseparate from much as one does when one produces asummary or a prcis of a written document. There is noeditorializing involved. There are NO alternatives available.The sense and the meaning of the document may not bealtered. No argument is possible, none are permitted.

Contrary-wise, in the area of the graphic and plastic arts anydeparture from the visual reality was labeled an abstraction.To my knowledge there has never been an objection madeconcerning the questionable issue of whether all persons see

the same object in the same real way, but even if we acceptthe gross generalization that reality is reality and everyoneagrees on that there will still remain the fact that, by properdefinition, anything that re-presents that reality has departedfrom the process of abstraction and started on the course ofpersonal selection and editorializing. At that point it is the jobof the art critic to determine, as best he can, the inspirationalsources be they art historical, psychological, mercenary orwhatever. It is further the critics job to assess the value ofthese changes.

Gombrich laments the passing of a framework of conventionthat had been built up prior to the twentieth century and feelsits passing has castrated the traditional function of the criticwhich was to comment on how well, or how badly, an artist hadadhered to these conventions.

It has been another generation and a half since Gombrichmade these statements and, today, he may have felt obligatedto add a few comments. Be that as it may, it can be safely saidthat while the function of the graphic and plastic arts havechanged so have the responsibilities and opportunities of the

critic in regard to them and since both the critic and the artistare in a position to alter the environment in which we all live itwould be in the best interest of the rest of the populations tostart to take an active and informed interest in their futures.


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