adjunct and not an intrinsic constituent in the complete
representation of the object, in augmenting the delight of taste
does so only by means of its form. Thus it is with the frames of
pictures or the drapery on statues, or the colonnades of palaces.
But if the ornamentation does not itself enter into the composition of
the beautiful form-if it is introduced like a gold frame merely to win
approval for the picture by means of its charm-it is then called
finery and takes away from the genuine beauty.
- Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgement (1789)
Below is a little promo for Sarah Chang's performance of Antonio Vivaldi's beloved "The Four Seasons". Have a look and a listen.
I won't even bother to ask whether this is genuine Art or dreadful Kitsch. Of course it's junk.
What I will ask you to consider though is exactly why, from a Kantian perspective, it is so bad. Is this Kitsch through and through, or is there actually something genuinely decent here which just happens to be mixed with horrendous accretions of incidental ornament? In the video below Chang keep refer to "the poems": "The sonnets are integrated into the music and one can't go without the other, giving a vision of a certain animals or emotion to go along with the music." What are these poems to which she refers, James Thomson's "Seasons," a set of four baroque poems, no doubt based on four different aspects of nature capture in for painterly images. They are, by all currently standards and accounts, utterly dreadful.
Anyhow, watch the following and see what I consider BAD to look like. I welcome and encourage all comments.
The sonnets or poems to which Chang refers are the same poems to which famed art critic Clement Greenberg refers in his landmark essay, "Toward a Newer Laocoon".
Lessing in his Laokoon written in the 1760s, recognized the presence of a practical as well as a theoretical confusion of the arts. But he saw its ill effects exclusively in terms of literature, and his opinions on plastic art only exemplify the typical misconceptions of his age. He attacks the descriptive verses of poets like James Thomson as an invasion of the domain of landscape painting, but all he could find to say about painting's invasion of poetry was to object to allegorical pictures which required an explanation, and to paintings like Titian's "Prodigal Son," which incorporate "two necessarily separate points of time in and and the same picture".
The Seasons
by James Thomson
(1700 - 1748)
"Winter"
SEE! Winter comes, to rule the varied Year,
Sullen, and sad; with all his rising Train,
Vapours, and Clouds, and Storms: Be these my Theme,
These, that exalt the Soul to solemn Thought,
And heavenly musing. Welcome kindred Glooms!
Wish'd, wint'ry, Horrors, hail! -- With frequent Foot,
Pleas'd, have I, in my cheerful Morn of Life,
When, nurs'd by careless Solitude, I liv'd,
And sung of Nature with unceasing Joy,
Pleas'd, have I wander'd thro' your rough Domains;
Trod the pure, virgin, Snows, my self as pure:
Heard the Winds roar, and the big Torrent burst:
Or seen the deep, fermenting, Tempest brew'd,
In the red, evening, Sky. -- Thus pass'd the Time,
Till, thro' the opening Chambers of the South,
Look'd out the joyous Spring, look'd out, and smil'd.
THEE too, Inspirer of the toiling Swain!
Fair AUTUMN, yellow rob'd! I'll sing of thee,
Of thy last, temper'd, Days, and sunny Calms;
When all the golden Hours are on the Wing,
Attending thy Retreat, and round thy Wain,
Slow-rolling, onward to the Southern Sky.
BEHOLD! the well-pois'd Hornet, hovering, hangs,
With quivering Pinions, in the genial Blaze;
Flys off, in airy Circles: then returns,
And hums, and dances to the beating Ray.
. . . (read more)
With respect to the painting of the same cultural moment, monumental modernist art critic Clement Greenberg passed a similarly harsh verdict: "The worst manifestations of literary and sentimental painting had already begun to appear in the painting of the late 18th century - especially in England, where a revival which produced some of the best English painting was equally efficacious in speeding up the process of degeneration." To whom or what could Greenberg be referring here? I will wager most anything that by the best English painting he was referring to this (please, click the image).
William Hogarth
(1697 - 1764)
The Marriage Contract,
from the "Marriage a la Mode" series (1745)
Tate Gallery, London
To what abysses of vulgarity did Greenberg believed such painting inevitably lead? How about the Pre-Raphaelites? At least as far as Greenberg is concerned, this is about as bad as it gets.
Holman Hunt
"The Hireling Shepherd" (1852)
Oil on canvas -30" x 48"
Manchester City Art Galleries
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