From Greenbergs New Laocoon Back to Lessings Laocoonand Back Again 1960s1760s1960s

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From Greenbergs New Laocoon Back to Lessings
Laocoonand Back Again (1960s-1760s-1960s)

• Three aims today
• Link what Paul has said about Early Modernism in
  Philosophy to Modernism in Painting (and
  Literature)
• Clarify how Lessing is a fulcrum, oscillating
  between Ancient and Modern. In particular,
  will focus on
• His rejection of religious art
• Yet his valuation of beauty over truth in art
• Time permitting, examine how the formalism that
  Lessing expounds is revised by subsequent
  Romantics, Expressionists, Minimalists, etc.

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Clement Greenberg ON KANT I conceive of Kant
as the first real Modernist . . . Kant used logic
to establish the limits of logic . . . (By the
nineteenth century) a more rational justification
had begun to be demanded of every formal social
activity, and Kantian self-criticism was
(adapted) to meet this demand in areas that lay
far from philosophy (Modernist Painting,
65) APPLICATION TO PAINTING The arts.have
been hunted back to their mediums, and there they
have been isolated, concentrated and defined . .
.the history of avante-garde painting is that of
a progressive surrender to the resistance of its
medium which resistance consists chiefly in the
flat planes denial of efforts to hole through
it for realistic perspectival space . . .
Painting got rid of imitationand with it,
literature. (Newer Laocoon, 40)
3
Greenberg oversimplifies art history by leaving
out social context and, to a degree, ignoring
contradictions (Hals) and continuities (Sheeler)
. See Marx on the revolution of the means of
production and the new.
lt Vermeer, View of Delft Monet, Water Lillies
But he has a point, no? By emphasizing the means
of seeing and painting, art does seem to
accentuate the plane and suppressor
complicatethree dimensional illusion.
4
In the early Renaissance, vanishing point and
atmospheric perspectives enhanced the holing
out of the plane for illusionism.
Distant objects were rendered proportionately
smaller and fainter as they neared the vanishing
point. This point, situated on a horizon level
with an ideal viewers eyes, also determined the
degree to which objects appeared from below or
atop.
Canaletto, Venice
5
Until of course, one encounters the ultimate
denial of representation and the ultimate
exploration of shape, support, plane, and color
in minimalisms and expressionisms.
lt Newman, The Name Pollock, Lavender Mist v
The less art concerns itself with the world, the
morethe theory goesit can explore its media and
refine itself.
6
No longer mimetic, arts become its own object.
And the picture plane becomes a sculpted
shapeitself three dimensional. And titlesthe
narrative clueclue.what?
Frank Stella, Eskimo Curfew, Stella Lunna
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So, the the question is, To what extent is
Lessing implicated in this story of art?

• In a nutshell, Lessing sees the plague of the
  Modern as confusion of genres and hence of
  inappropriate means and ends
• Critics and painters take literally Simonides
  conceit that painting is dumb poetry, poetry a
  speaking picture. (Pref 5)
• The Modern painter mistakes the goal of
  sciencetruthfor the goal of paintingbeauty.
  (2 14) See Burke, Reynolds, Hutchinson, Johnson,
  etc.
• And the Ancient artist often was fettered by
  religion, which turned natural form into a
  hieroglyphics that signified spiritual meaning.

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• He aims to purify the Modern by
• Establishingin Greenbergs words, and like
  Kants approach a more rational justification
  for the nature of each art form and, from that,
  deriving, appropriate subjects.
• Discovering as first principlesart represent
  absent things, create an illusion that
  pleases pleasure attributable to beauty
  beauty follows rules that differ by art form
  (Pref 3)

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• So, for instance, painting consists of natural
  signs on a flat surface hence, it imitates
  beautiful objects.
• Poetry consists of arbitrary signs arranged
  consecutively across non-representational space
  hence, it represents the progressive imitation of
  actions. (cf. Aristotle on tragedy)
• Making the (neo)-classical move finding
  precedent for these definitions of genres and
  rules in the AncientsSophocles, Virgil,
  Laocoonin an mythical age of reason and clear
  thinking.

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• He also enshrinesmore or lessartistic freedom
  (within the limits of genre) and iconoclasm in
  art
• See Chapters 8, 9, 10 51-52, 55, 59 for
  discussions of beauty in form (natural signs)
  vs. meaning in symbols (arbitrary signs) that
  function as letters.
• Religion, like an ideology, subordinates
  intrinsic ends of art to extrinsic agenda see
  reaction of Impressionists in 1860s-1880s of
  Surrealists in 20s Minimalists and
  Expressionists in late 30s and 40s.
• To what extent is the renouncement of the
  extrinsic for the intrinsic possibleor engaged
  in?
• To what extent does doing so alienate the public?
  See Baudelaires Salons in the 40s-60s.

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Giotto, Mourning Christ
David, Marat
Lessing would object to the instant in Marats
death that David focused on and to the putrescent
color as not beautiful. Nonetheless, the
earthbound subject contrasts with the gilded
halos and the incredibility of hovering bodies
(as angels) in Giotto. To Lessing, the Giotto
requires us to see the forms not as natural
signs but as symbols of spiritual meanings.
12
Yet, Lessing in 1766despite his emphasis on
medium and on iconoclasmis not Greenberg in
1940. He would be repelled by Courbets realism
and by Newmans minimalism. Why?
Courbet, The Stonebreakers
Newman, Painting
13

• Art still must serve the beautiful (and the
  moral) it has a public function, albeit not
  religious (see Chaps 2-3 14)
• Painting as the art which reproduces objects
  upon flat surfaces is now practiced in the
  broadest sense.the wise Greek . . .confined it
  strictly to the imitation of beauty (12)
• The ultimate goal of the arts is pleasure, and
  hence this pleasure is not indispensable.hence
  it may be for the lawmaker to determine (15)
  (Plato, More)
• Many an artist of our time would say, Be as
  ugly as possible, I will paint you nonetheless.
  (12)
• We must remember that, while art imitates life,
  life imitates art. (15) See Samuel Johnson on
  moral duty over power of example in the
  novel see Defoes Moll Flanders, born in
  Newgate, 12 years a whore, 5x married,
  transported as a felon.

14

• Hence the beautiful (and moral)
• As subject of beauty, not every individual worthy
  of imitation to capture essence/ideal of type or
  genus
• As subject of beauty, not every aspect of
  individual worthy of imitation to capture essence
  of individual
• Sir Joshua Reynolds, updating Aristotle beauty
  arrived at by the long laborious comparison of
  particulars.by this means the artist corrects
  nature by herself, her imperfect state by the
  perfect, accidental discrepancies from their
  general figures (Discourses on Art)
• Hence for Lessing, broadly speaking, the artist
  does not invent s/he imitates (ideal) natural
  beauty.

15
It is easy to say that this tensionbetween the
particular and the general or abstract as the
subject of imitatiodied with neoclassicism in
the eighteenth century.
But within Modernism, Constables representation
() of the ephemeral in White Horse endorses the
particular while Cezannes restrained brushwork
and emphatic massing in Mount Saint Victoire (gt)
suggest a general or essentialist approach.
16
Picasso, Girl Reading
Picasso, Gertrude Stein
17
Why does Lessing use the Laocoon and how so?

• 1st century BC
• Depicts Trojan priest and sons
• Appears, before that, in Gk myths, Gk and Roman
  epics. For instance, in the Aeneid
• Lessing assumes that work done by Gk after Virgil

Compares Virgil with sculpture to show how medium
affects representation. See the body, the snake,
the instant, the (non)- scream (Chap 1 17). See
Winklemans false take (Chaps 1-2) on
StoicismPhilotectes, Hercules, as examples of
screamers!
18

• Classical Character and Classical Art, according
  to Lessing, Chaps 1-4
• Winkleman et al. attribute sculpted Laocoons
  stifled cry to stoicism
• They attribute Laocoons cry in Virgil, though,
  to Roman weakness and/or barbarianism
• However, Lessing cites the influence of
  form/genre on subject a scream would disfigure
  the sculpted mouth (Chap 2 17)
• And in fact, Virgil showed Laocoon could express
  pain yet still behave in manly fashion. The
  writer can round-out character as the
  sculptor/painter cannot.
• Also, whereas Winkleman says that Sophocles
  Philoctetes (Chap. 1 7) bore pain stoically,
  Lessing says that, no, he both cried out and
  later behaved bravely.

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The Modernist turn in Lessing steps in a process
of (re-) legitimation

• Reject the (previous) modern on theoretical
  groundsanything goes realism, genre confusion
• Justify the (new) modern on revaluation of the
  mediums propertiesthe flat surface, color, etc.
• Discover a predecessor style as historical
  groundsthe classical
• Claim a pristine relation to natureimitate
  nature

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• Again, what does all art do
• Represents absent things
• Creates an illusion
• Pleases the viewer
• Assumes rules of beauty

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Illusionism--Reynolds the great end of art is
to strike the imagination the painter then is to
make no ostentation of the means by which this is
done. The perfect state of natureis the great
leading idea of art
But what is that perfect state? Is it in us, or
outside? Is there a beauty, a perfection, of the
horrific? Why must painting observe one view,
one instant? Why must it suppress its means?
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A long list of revisions within Modernism as
neoclassical imitatio is rejected,
including Romantic exceptionalism and
creationBlake, Coleridge, Goya, Delacroix,
Emersonthe imagination is godlike Social/Scientif
ic Realism the rise of the novel and the
conflict of fact with exemplum, from Defoe
through Flaubert the rise of the nature
lyric Symbolism, Impressionism, Expressionsim
the turn inwardsBaudelaire, Rimbaudthe
rejection of the public function of art the move
from real to percept and concept,
1840s-1920s Minimalism and degree zero
suppression of iconography and narrative forms to
formal elements in the art form and, sometimes,
the spare functions of the lived life Mondrian,
Newman, Sartre, Barthes, Russian formalists.