Representation of life
Last night I was once again engaged in discussion with M. at the Cage. This time, it was about a priori art history. Maybe another time I will write more generally about the intellectual pleasure to be had from a priori historical inquiry. For now, I want only to relay an idea we had that struck me as, well, pretty cool.
M. spoke about a book he had read (I believe a work of historical fiction). I do not know what it was called, but supposedly it was about a major development in the practice of painting in the Ottoman Empire. The interesting part was that the development was that painters began to paint actual likenesses of their subjects. M. suggested that an interesting distinction was drawn between creating a representation of someone and creating a likeness of someone. The idea is that, before this shift, if you wanted to paint a picture of a person, you would paint a generic individual of the right sex and include in the painting symbolic elements that would clue in the viewer to the identity of the person being represented, and this was just what it was to paint a picture of someone. Only later would the idea of faithfully representing their appearance to the viewer be introduced as a way of doing the same thing.
This is something that is not entirely unfamiliar. How many of us have been struck by the apparent primitiveness of, for example, medieval European painting? But when I have heard expressed the view that such painting is technically primitive, the response I have often heard from those more in the know is that it we just don't get it. To understand medieval painting, I have been told, one has to know what to look for. There are elements of the (always religiously themed) pictures that stand for things, that are supposed to be clues to the audience about who and what are being represented. The reasons for this are, first of all, that these paintings were meant to tell familiar religious stories and, secondly, that the individuals depicted were often not people who the audience would be able to recognize by sight anyway--or even that anyone living at the time would have been able to recognize. Indeed, this style of representation is still used in religious art today, even if there is also some attempt to make the figures more life-like. In my childhood parish, a statue of St. Lawrence was marked as such by the grill he carried, symbolizing his matyrdom by roasting. St. Christopher is always depicted as carrying a boy on his back--how else would we recognize him?
And it is not only medieval European art that has this character. Think also, for example, of ancient Egyptian painting, with its rows of nearly identical figures in profile, its gods recognizable by their animal heads, all in the service, once again, of telling particular culturally important stories. Or think of the art of Grecian urns, of the kind on which Keats wrote an ode. I have no doubt that we should find similar examples in the art of less familiar cultures (such as that of the Ottoman Empire).
We are told (at any rate, I have been told) that we should not regard the creators of such art as artistically inferior to more contemporary artists (not just in virtue of the general style, at any rate). There is surely some truth to this. We are also told that the reason the art looks simplistic to us is just because we are not used to it--we do not know how to view it. But what if we did? We would surely see more richness of detail in the pictures, but would they look any less primitive to our eyes? What kind of cultural relativism is this? In some forms of relativism, recognizing that there is no reason to prefer what you prefer to what someone in a different culture prefers is the first step to being able, yourself, to appreciate the products of other cultures on their own terms. But although we may learn to 'read' the stories told by medieval or ancient Egyptian paintings, will we ever be able to see it without recognizing what it lacks--that is, the faithful representation of life? And, insofar as it lacks this, will we not regard it still as primitive?
I want, finally, to suggest that we are right to regard these art forms as primitive--that we should view the shift from symbolic representation to representation by likeness as a real advance. My support for this general claim derives entirely from my own experience. (This is close to what I mean, in conversational contexts, by the label a priori.) It used to be the case that I wanted to be a writer of fiction, or even, later, of non-fiction of a narrative kind. What made me abandon this dream was the recognition that I suck at this kind of writing. My evidence for this is that everything of that nature that I have ever tried to write came across as an allegory. But is it not the case that our greatest narratives are great precisely in virtue of transcending allegory?
Consider a recent favorite, Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain. One thing that is indisputably true of this novel is that there is no clear moral. Indeed, I think one effect of the novel is to generate, by the end, utter moral confusion in the reader as well as the characters. And how is this done? Mann's characters strive throughout to find meaning in life, to understand it, to get the better of it. Settembrini is the most striking example of this; his pedagogic tendencies have him throughout trying to distill life, reality, morality, etc. into a form that will be tranferable to his pupil, Hans Castorp. But this attempt is neverending, for he is thwarted at every turn by the complexity of things, or, later, by his adversary Naptha, who dialectically represents the mystical inaccessibility of things, the impossibility of coming to terms intellectually with human experience, the hidden 'illness' that lies within each theory by which we try to achieve understanding and threatens to destroy it. And the reader is, of course, invited to occupy a position like that of Settembrini, of trying to find the point of, not life, but the narrative. Yet this, too, is beyond our grasp. And the reason for its lying beyond our grasp is that the narrative is not an allegory (if it were, it would precisely be meant to bring us to grasp a particular point) but a faithful representation, by way of likeness, of human experience. For, insofar as a work of art presents to us a likeness of reality, it will necessarily be as maddening to look for the point of it as it is in life.
Of course, what is beautiful about representation-as-likeness is that, although it has no determinate allegorical or symbolic meaning, the opportunity it presents to us for reflection and understanding will be as rich as that afforded to us by experience, with the advantage of drawing our attention to it and inviting such reflection in a way that experience, by virtue of its constant presence, perhaps does not except on exceptional occasions. (Something like this is also a reason to prefer Joy Division's songwriting to Phil Collins'.) Indeed, although we cannot grasp the singular point of The Magic Mountain, the desire to make the attempt is as overwhelming as it is in life, and the effort we put into it is not wasted for all the impossibility of its goal.
But in any case, in painting and in writing, my own experience has shown that faithful reproduction is much more difficult than allegorical storytelling, and requires a good deal more talent and/or practice. Even if it is not to be preferred for its effects on its audience, the capacity to represent by likeness, without relying on symbolism and allegory as crutches, is a terribly difficult achievement, to be applauded for that reason only.
M. spoke about a book he had read (I believe a work of historical fiction). I do not know what it was called, but supposedly it was about a major development in the practice of painting in the Ottoman Empire. The interesting part was that the development was that painters began to paint actual likenesses of their subjects. M. suggested that an interesting distinction was drawn between creating a representation of someone and creating a likeness of someone. The idea is that, before this shift, if you wanted to paint a picture of a person, you would paint a generic individual of the right sex and include in the painting symbolic elements that would clue in the viewer to the identity of the person being represented, and this was just what it was to paint a picture of someone. Only later would the idea of faithfully representing their appearance to the viewer be introduced as a way of doing the same thing.
This is something that is not entirely unfamiliar. How many of us have been struck by the apparent primitiveness of, for example, medieval European painting? But when I have heard expressed the view that such painting is technically primitive, the response I have often heard from those more in the know is that it we just don't get it. To understand medieval painting, I have been told, one has to know what to look for. There are elements of the (always religiously themed) pictures that stand for things, that are supposed to be clues to the audience about who and what are being represented. The reasons for this are, first of all, that these paintings were meant to tell familiar religious stories and, secondly, that the individuals depicted were often not people who the audience would be able to recognize by sight anyway--or even that anyone living at the time would have been able to recognize. Indeed, this style of representation is still used in religious art today, even if there is also some attempt to make the figures more life-like. In my childhood parish, a statue of St. Lawrence was marked as such by the grill he carried, symbolizing his matyrdom by roasting. St. Christopher is always depicted as carrying a boy on his back--how else would we recognize him?
And it is not only medieval European art that has this character. Think also, for example, of ancient Egyptian painting, with its rows of nearly identical figures in profile, its gods recognizable by their animal heads, all in the service, once again, of telling particular culturally important stories. Or think of the art of Grecian urns, of the kind on which Keats wrote an ode. I have no doubt that we should find similar examples in the art of less familiar cultures (such as that of the Ottoman Empire).
We are told (at any rate, I have been told) that we should not regard the creators of such art as artistically inferior to more contemporary artists (not just in virtue of the general style, at any rate). There is surely some truth to this. We are also told that the reason the art looks simplistic to us is just because we are not used to it--we do not know how to view it. But what if we did? We would surely see more richness of detail in the pictures, but would they look any less primitive to our eyes? What kind of cultural relativism is this? In some forms of relativism, recognizing that there is no reason to prefer what you prefer to what someone in a different culture prefers is the first step to being able, yourself, to appreciate the products of other cultures on their own terms. But although we may learn to 'read' the stories told by medieval or ancient Egyptian paintings, will we ever be able to see it without recognizing what it lacks--that is, the faithful representation of life? And, insofar as it lacks this, will we not regard it still as primitive?
I want, finally, to suggest that we are right to regard these art forms as primitive--that we should view the shift from symbolic representation to representation by likeness as a real advance. My support for this general claim derives entirely from my own experience. (This is close to what I mean, in conversational contexts, by the label a priori.) It used to be the case that I wanted to be a writer of fiction, or even, later, of non-fiction of a narrative kind. What made me abandon this dream was the recognition that I suck at this kind of writing. My evidence for this is that everything of that nature that I have ever tried to write came across as an allegory. But is it not the case that our greatest narratives are great precisely in virtue of transcending allegory?
Consider a recent favorite, Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain. One thing that is indisputably true of this novel is that there is no clear moral. Indeed, I think one effect of the novel is to generate, by the end, utter moral confusion in the reader as well as the characters. And how is this done? Mann's characters strive throughout to find meaning in life, to understand it, to get the better of it. Settembrini is the most striking example of this; his pedagogic tendencies have him throughout trying to distill life, reality, morality, etc. into a form that will be tranferable to his pupil, Hans Castorp. But this attempt is neverending, for he is thwarted at every turn by the complexity of things, or, later, by his adversary Naptha, who dialectically represents the mystical inaccessibility of things, the impossibility of coming to terms intellectually with human experience, the hidden 'illness' that lies within each theory by which we try to achieve understanding and threatens to destroy it. And the reader is, of course, invited to occupy a position like that of Settembrini, of trying to find the point of, not life, but the narrative. Yet this, too, is beyond our grasp. And the reason for its lying beyond our grasp is that the narrative is not an allegory (if it were, it would precisely be meant to bring us to grasp a particular point) but a faithful representation, by way of likeness, of human experience. For, insofar as a work of art presents to us a likeness of reality, it will necessarily be as maddening to look for the point of it as it is in life.
Of course, what is beautiful about representation-as-likeness is that, although it has no determinate allegorical or symbolic meaning, the opportunity it presents to us for reflection and understanding will be as rich as that afforded to us by experience, with the advantage of drawing our attention to it and inviting such reflection in a way that experience, by virtue of its constant presence, perhaps does not except on exceptional occasions. (Something like this is also a reason to prefer Joy Division's songwriting to Phil Collins'.) Indeed, although we cannot grasp the singular point of The Magic Mountain, the desire to make the attempt is as overwhelming as it is in life, and the effort we put into it is not wasted for all the impossibility of its goal.
But in any case, in painting and in writing, my own experience has shown that faithful reproduction is much more difficult than allegorical storytelling, and requires a good deal more talent and/or practice. Even if it is not to be preferred for its effects on its audience, the capacity to represent by likeness, without relying on symbolism and allegory as crutches, is a terribly difficult achievement, to be applauded for that reason only.
posted by gregates at 4:06 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home