The art world expanded

This paper explores the evolution of the concept of the art world, starting with the going-away, in order to show that effective art criticism requires knowledge of the art world. The nature of criticism implies that a critic logically identify, define and evaluate a work of art. Reasons are used to justify the critical interpretation (the identification, definition and evaluation) of a work of art, and these reasons are found in what Arthur Danto called the art world. The precursors to the art world include artist colony, bohemia and avant-garde-all of which constitute what Michael Jacobs termed the going-away. Previous examinations of the going-away were partial because they addressed the historical context and ignored the critical perspective implicit in these artistic communities. This historical bias grew out of the dominant, modernist historical definition of art which dictated that art was definable in visual terms and evaluated by developmental standards. In other words, modernist art was defined and evaluated in ways that did not implore a knowledge of the going-away's critical perspective. Thus, the various stages of the art world's evolution from the nineteenth century artist colonies, to the nineteenth and twentieth century bohemia, through the twentieth century avant- garde, have been addressed insufficiently in sentimental memoirs and considered peripherally in criticism. Danto's delineation of the term the art world grew out of a philosophical reevaluation of art's historical definability in the postmodern. The term profiles a theoretical and social structure that was seen as a sufficient, but not a necessary, condition to interpreting art throughout modernism. Through review and analysis of the art world's evolution, its essential role in art criticism as a necessary condition to identifying and evaluating art materializes. The art world is a necessary condition of art's definability because it differentiates relevant artistic endeavors from stagnant institutional mandates and, subsequently, it distinguishes art from nonart.

THE ART WORLD EXPANDED by Anna Truxes A thesis submitted to the faculty of The University of Utah in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Art History Department of Art and Art History The University of Utah December 2008 Copyright © Anna Truxes 2008 All Rights Reserved T H E U N I V E R S I T Y OF U T A H G R A D U A T E S C H O O L SUPERVISORY COMMITTEE APPROVAL of a thesis submitted by Anna Truxes This thesis has been read by each member of the following supervisory committee and by majority vote has been found to be satisfactory. 9 A A<?<?/ i Ghair: Mary F. Francey T----' ' ' ft--------- Robert S. Olpin i / * ) 6 </ Ronald M. Smelser Elizabedi Anne Peterson T H E U N I V E R S I T Y OF U T A H G R A D U A T E S C H O O L FINAL READING APPROVAL To the Graduate Council of the University of Utah: I have read the thesis o f______________Afina Truxes______________ jn j[S finaj form and have found that (1) its format, citations, and bibliographic style are consistent and acceptable; (2) its illustrative materials including figures, tables, and charts are in place; and (3) the final manuscript is satisfactory to the supervisory committee and is ready for submission to The Graduate School. • X f * ' f " Date -"""Mary F. Francey Chair: Supervisory Committee Approved for the Major Department I&zabeth Anne Peterson Chair/Dean Approved for the Graduate Council ------------------------------------------------------- 1 ---------- David S. Chapman Dean of The Graduate School ABSTRACT This paper explores the evolution of the concept of the art world, starting with the going-away, in order to show that effective art criticism requires knowledge of the art world. The nature of criticism implies that a critic logically identify, define and evaluate a work of art. Reasons are used to justify the critical interpretation (the identification, definition and evaluation) of a work of art, and these reasons are found in what Arthur Danto called the art world. The precursors to the art world include artist colony, bohemia and avant-garde-all of which constitute what Michael Jacobs termed the going-away. Previous examinations of the going-away were partial because they addressed the historical context and ignored the critical perspective implicit in these artistic communities. This historical bias grew out of the dominant, modernist historical definition of art which dictated that art was definable in visual terms and evaluated by developmental standards. In other words, modernist art was defined and evaluated in ways that did not implore a knowledge of the going-away's critical perspective. Thus, the various stages of the art world's evolution from the nineteenth century artist colonies, to the nineteenth and twentieth century bohemia, through the twentieth century avant-garde, have been addressed insufficiently in sentimental memoirs and considered peripherally in criticism. Danto's delineation of the term the art world grew out of a philosophical reevaluation of art's historical definability in the postmodern. The term profiles a theoretical and social structure that was seen as a sufficient, but not a necessary, condition to interpreting art throughout modernism. Through review and analysis of the art world's evolution, its essential role in art criticism as a necessary condition to identifying and evaluating art materializes. The art world is a necessary condition of art's definability because it differentiates relevant artistic endeavors from stagnant institutional mandates and, subsequently, it distinguishes art from nonart. To The Rents, Blue, Mary, and Salvo, Thank you. For Gpa and Bob, you are dearly missed. TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT.................................................................................................................................iv Chapter 1. INTRODUCTION............................................................................................................1 Review of the literature.......................................................................................6 Art historical explorations of the going-away or artist colonies..................7 Worpswede........................................................................................................ 11 Die Briicke......................................................................................................... 16 The sociological examination of bohemia....................................................17 Historical studies of counterculture............................................................... 19 Philosophical debate regarding Danto's art world.......................................20 2. MICHAEL JACOBS' DEFINITION OF THE GOING-A WA Y ARTIST COLONIES AND BOHEMIA....................................................................40 The going-away and Worpswede....................................................................40 Bohemia and Die Briicke................................................................................. 47 3. CLEMENT GREENBERG'S AVANT-GARDE...................................................... 56 4. ARTHUR DANTO'S ART WORLD......................................................................... 69 5. CONCLUSION...............................................................................................................85 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 89 CH A PT ER 1 INTRODUCTION In the first stage of the art world's evolution, artists separated themselves geographically from the French Academy for practical reasons.1 The impetus for the separation became ideological when artists began rebelling against the "high art" prescribed by the French Academy.2 The ideological separation begun in the going-away became the foundation for the second stage of the art world's evolution, bohemia. Artists separated themselves ideologically from academic institutionalism with their art and their manifestos. Clement Greenberg called this ideological separation from academicism the avant-garde. Finally, Arthur Danto showed that the distinction between the art world and the artistic institution outlined the standards with which art was elevated from nonart. Thus, the art world's second essential characteristic, that it provides the reasons that justify critical interpretations of art, emerged in the postmodern. The going-away is a term that Michael Jacobs coined in his book about nineteenth century rural artist 1 For the purposes o f this paper, the term institution refers to art academies and artistic institutions that cling to artistic standards that are no longer appropriate for the concurrent definition o f art. 2 The French Academy valued historical paintings and royal portraiture above landscapes, genre scenes and still life paintings. Regardless, the artists o f the nineteenth century going-away began painting landscapes and genre scenes in order to celebrate the present moment. 2 colonies.3 He defines this nineteenth century tradition as a temporary geographic, and slightly ideological, relocation of an artist or a group of artists. According to Jacobs, artists left the artistic centers of Europe, namely Paris, France, to escape the economic pressures, the heat and the filth of urban life before modernization.4 In the mid-1800s, when artists summered in the country, they did so primarily to collect landscape sketches that would construct the background to their history painting for the upcoming Academic salon. As the tradition matured, however, it became a form of ideological rebellion against the dominant artistic institution, the academy. Eventually, artists rebelled against the state and the academy-sanctioned forms of "high art" and strayed from heroic history painting or portraits of royalty.5 Instead of the idealized historical paintings constructed in the studio, the artists of the going-away painted from their experience in rural colonies. Artists began painting radical subject matter like landscapes and peasants enplen aire. This was previously unthinkable subject matter for an artist interested in Academic acceptance and, subsequently, economic stability. The radical subject matter, i.e., the landscapes and the peasants, became fashionable and was accepted by the salons by the turn of the century. The vogue for going-away geographically, and to some extent ideologically, was set up in the nineteenth century by a variety of cultural ideals. For artists living in France it was a rebellion against the all pervasive academy and a 3 Michael Jacobs, The Good and Simple Life: Artist Colonies in Europe and America (Oxford: Phaidon, 1985). 4 In this context, modernization specifically means the Haussmannization o f Paris that occurred in the second half o f the 1800s. Baron Georges Haussmann rebuilt the medieval city o f Paris into the modem city that it is today by constructing new waterways, sewer systems, lighting, roads, boulevards, commercial centers, residential areas, parks and public transportation. Stephen F. Eisenman, Nineteenth Century Art: A Critical History (London: Thames and Hudson, 1998), 278. 5 Moshie Barasch outlines the prescribed art o f the French Academy and the rebellion against its standards at the turn o f the century. Moshe Barasch, "Classicism and Academy," in Theories o f Art: From Plato to Winckelmann (New York: New York University Press, 1985). 3 celebration of the pure, uncorrupted version of their respective nationality, e.g., the French peasant or the German volk. In the twentieth century, artists used the nineteenth century going-away as a prototype and a point of reference for what developed into bohemia. While twentieth century artists continued to participate in a nineteenth century geographic relocation, they also began experimenting with new forms of going-away made possible by modernism. The modernist artists continued to summer in rural villages, lake towns or on the coast. Simultaneously, they began to proclaim their ideological going-away in their manifestos and works of art.6 They deliberately addressed the characteristics of modernism by criticizing or celebrating industrialization, urbanization, revolution and war in congruence with the ubiquitous ideas of the time. The influential work of the great minds of the modem era provided the modernist artist with new avenues for their going-away.7 Artists used their poor understanding of modern philosophy, science and psychology to propose a path to a new reality, more specifically an utopia. In response to the confusion and hostility felt in modem environments, the artists took the going-away a step further. The modernist going-away evolved into a philosophical, social, psychological or artistic, self-conscious retreat. Die Brucke, modeled on a Nietzschean kultur kritik, retreated socially from bourgeois Wilhelminian stifling sexual norms. In step with the Nietzschean kultur kritik, die Brucke retreated spiritually from traditional religion which they considered irrelevant to modern times. In die Brucke's manifesto and art the influence of 6 Mary Ann Caws, ed., Manifesto: A Centuiy o f Isms (Lincoln: University o f Nebraska, 2001), 12. 7 For the purposes o f this paper, Friedrich Nietzsche will be the predominant great mind o f the modem era and a connection between his philosophy and the bohemia o f Die Brucke will be explored. However, other great minds o f the modern era greatly influenced the going away and bohemia for the twentieth century: Charles Darwin, Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein and Karl Marx. 4 modernization, the great minds of modernism and the nineteenth century tradition of the going-away combine to create what would later be called bohemia by Clement Greenberg.8 For Greenberg, the avant-garde and kitsch constitute the binary system of culture. In his attempt to understand how a Jackson Pollock painting and an Andy Warhol soup can were simultaneously considered "art" by society, Greenberg mapped out the dichotomy of postwar American culture using these terms.9 For Greenberg, the avant-garde is not pronounced in a society without kitsch.10 The historical and social context from which the avant-garde separated is as revealing as the products and characteristics unique to it. For Greenberg, that social context was Alexandrianism, a motionless academicism, which was the attribute of a culture bankrupt of truths that speak to everyone like religion, authority, tradition and style.11 Artists working in this context do not have a language of symbols and references that are guaranteed to communicate their expression to their audience. In response to depleting societal truths, the artist can do one of two things. One option is to reuse the remaining and diluted truths to communicate with their audience. The other option is to disconnect from the audience and society to search for truth in art. In a sense, Greenberg made explicit what the artists of the nineteenth century going away and the twentieth century bohemia had struggled to express in their separation, manifestos and art. Greenberg outlined the avant-garde from 8 Greenberg explained that, "the first settlers of bohemia . . . was then identical with the avant-garde." Clement Greenberg, "Avant-Garde and Kitsch," in Art and Culture (Boston, Beacon Press: 1961), 5. 9 Greenberg actually compared a Raphael to a Norman Rockwell or a Peter Max, but for the purposes of this paper, a comparison between a Jackson Pollock and an Andy Warhol will keep examples consistent within the text. I® Similarly, the going away would not have been distinct without the French Academy to compare it to. Also, bohemia would not have been apparent without outdated academicism to compare it to. 11 Greenberg, "Avant-Garde and Kitsch," in Art and Culture, 8. a historical perspective in order to distinguish high art from general culture. In Greenberg's essays, there is a clear articulation of the critical perspective embodied in the separation. In his discussion of the artists and the art he addresses the critical perspective, but he does not address its important role in art criticism. Greenberg's avant-garde distinguishes between art and nonart as does Arthur Danto's art world. Danto outlined the art world in an attempt to explain philosophically the difference between an "artwork" and a "mere real object," specifically Andy Warhol's Brillo Box (1964) and the Brillo carton it depicts. Danto's art world has two necessary parts, the members and the discourse of reasons. The members of the art world range in levels of knowledge of art history, art technique and art criticism. Ultimately, the members are distinguished from the general public. The discourse is a timeline of the reasons that can be referred to in order to justify that a "mere real object" is an "artwork." The reasons are important because they communicate the standards which distinguish art from nonart. In other words, the art world is a world of "artworks," connected by theories that are ordered historically (the discourse of reasons) and communicated between artists, art critics and art historians (the members of the art world). Danto says that the discourse of reasons is the art world institutionalized. He means that the consensus reached by the previous members becomes the foundation for the discourse of future members. Like its precepts, Danto's art world is distinguishable from the respective academic institution because it does not succumb to"fiat." By "fiat" Danto refers to the "experts" that declare an object a work of art without understanding the reasons that identify it as art or nonart. In contrast, the discourse of reasons is a process of thesis-antithesis in which members are able to identify the salient standards of art for a particular era. The standards that Danto's art world propose are not arbitrarily declared by "mere fiat alone"; rather, they are deduced by finding a consensus among the artists, art critics and art historians over time.12 In every stage of the art world's evolution, a boundary between the artist and the artistic institution is clearly articulated. In other words, a separation occurs either geographically, mentally or philosophically between the artist and her artistic institution. The modernist historical definition of art identified art in visual terms and applied developmental standards based on visual attributes. Once the modernist definition of art could not distinguish art from nonart, then additional insight provided by the idea of the art world was revealed: Each separation between artist and academy indicated the standards by which current art could be relevantly identified, interpreted and evaluated. Review of the literature A variety of scholars have considered the concept that Arthur Danto termed the art world. However, different writers use it to connote different ideas and often they use it carelessly to describe white-wine-drinking-socialites at gallery openings. In other words, the phrase is used in a multitude of ways and not all of the writers that use the term understand its significance within art criticism. Predecessors to Danto's art world have been researched by historians, sociologists and art historians. It has already been stated that an understanding of the art world was not a necessary condition of art's definition until the postmodern. Therefore, it is understandable that previous studies, like Michael Jacobs' The Pure and Simple Life, did not address its contribution to art 12 Arthur C. Danto, "The Art World Re-Visited," in Beyond the Brillo Box (New York: Harper Collins Publishing Limited, 1992). criticism. Furthermore, studies like Martin Green's book Mountain o f Truth and Cesar Grana's essay "The Ideological Significance of Bohemian Life" addressed conceptual predecessors to the concept of the art world, but they were not concerned with the definition of art or art criticism. Nonetheless, these studies and their bibliographies provide a substantial foundation for an exploration of the art world's role in modern and postmodern criticism. The modernist going-away or the postmodernist art world and its significance are best examined through the primary sources, in which characteristics central to the evolution of the going-away were articulated in concurrent criticism, manifestos and letters, long before Danto outlined the term's characteristics. Since Danto's seminal essay, "The Art World Revisited," philosophers of art have debated Danto's definition of the art world or attempted to develop it. Some philosophers like George Dickie attempted to build upon Danto's art world, but like other writers, he did not have a clear understanding of Danto's specific definition before he began. Currently, there is a cross-discipline effort to specify the term art world and use it to discuss an art community. Evidence of this effort is apparent in a recent state-of-the-research issue of Parachute and in lectures from a recent forum conducted on Danto's contribution to the philosophy of art. Generally, art historians have explored the modernist going-away or artist colonies, sociologists have examined bohemia, historians have addressed counterculture and philosophers have debated Danto's art world. Art historical explorations of the going-away or artist colonies Art historical studies that address the going-away often read like the primary documents from the colonies themselves. The primary documents of the going-away 8 exemplify the Zeitgeist of the author. For example, Paula Modersohn-Becker's letters romanticize the Earth Mother and the volk in step with the vogue for the German cult of the Earth Mother.13 Likewise, die Briicke's name came from the Nietzschean cult that followed his kultur kritik that called for a return to nature. The primary documents are critical of modernization, yet optimistic because the authors were searching for a utopian escape from the harsh realities of modernism. It is understandable that some expositions of the going-away adopt the optimistic tone of the artist colony's utopian literature. In contrast to numerous sentimental memoirs, Gill Perry's "The Going-Away," Michael Jacobs' The Good and Simple Life: Artist Colonies in Europe and America14 and G. Weitek's Deutsche Kunstlerkolonien und Kunstlerorte discuss the going-away in valuable art historical terms.15 Perry is the first art historian to address the significance of the going-away within art criticism. Both Jacobs and Weitek anthologize numerous colonies and address the artists and art that inhabited the colonies. Michael Jacobs' book is integral to a map of the art world's evolution. It is pivotal because he recognizes that the going-away was an implied criticism of its context. He does not explicitly show how a boundary was drawn between the art world and the artistic establishment, but his study suggests it. For example, his exposition on Paul Gauguin or Paula Modersohn-Becker recognizes that there was an implicit criticism of French and German art academies in their respective separations from society. By 1 ' The Earth Mother cult was one manifestation o f a widespread belief that nature could purify the modem person o f urban corruptions. In other words, urban residents would summer in rural mountain or lake towns. Through the process o f living closer to nature, "they would reconnect with what it meant to be ‘G erman'." Other manifestations o f this ubiquitous idea were the freikorper kult, nudist sun bather clubs and the jugendstil. 14 Jacobs provided the foundation and model for this literature review. Most o f the sources discussed in this literature review from before 1980 are from Jacobs' text. 15 G. Weitek, Deutsche Kunstlerkolonien und Kunstlerorte (Munchen: Verlag Karl Thiemig AG, 1976). coining the phrase, the going-away, he implies that there was ideological, maybe even critical, motivation for the geographic relocation. Jacobs also chronicles the daily activities of Western European, Eastern European and American colonies, indicating how artists lived their criticism of artistic institutions. In other words, the character of daily life in the colonies emphasized the reasons for their separation from artistic institutions. Additionally, Jacobs' bibliography was invaluable for the location of primary documents. Weitek's study addresses the history of style that emerged from a group of German artist colonies and towns. In general, his book deals predominantly with the history of the colonies and the art that was produced in them. However, inherent in Weitek's art historical study is the desire to reconstruct the environment from which the German colony artists created their work. Therefore, Weitek connects the vogue for artist colonies with two specific German critical traditions. First, Weitek points out that the move away from urban centers was motivated partially by the Earth Mother cult; the Earth Mother cult inspired artists to move from "corrupted" urban centers to to a "purifying" natural life in a rural village. Second, Weitek acknowledges that German artists separated themselves from German academies because the artists were exposed to the French realist tradition. Weitek does not specify that the separation from academies and urban centers is important to understanding the art, but his study does suggest it. Both Jacobs and Weitek provide excellent bibliographies for the student interested in 10 primary resources. Other studies refer to colonies, but there are no other books that address the subject art historically and exclusively.16 Within the Realist tradition, artists went to villages to observe and collect studies of rural landscapes and country laborers. Both Jacobs and Weitek name the Realist tradition as a primary cause for the going-away and artist colonies. In this regard, primary and secondary documents that address the Realists offer valuable references to artist colonies. The Realists and their colonies are addressed in books like J. Thompson's The Peasant in French Nineteenth-Century Art and in museum catalogues like K. McConkey's Peasantries: Nineteenth-century French and British Pictures o f Peasants and Field Workers. 17 Both Thompson and McConkey focus heavily on Realist subject matter. Regardless of their focus, these studies address the colonies because the subject matter was collected there. Neither are particularly concerned with the going-away's explicit critique of the academies, but it was a dominant trait of the Realist tradition. G. Weisberg deliberately addresses the criticism embodied in the separation from art academies and artistic centers in The Realist Tradition: French Painting and Drawing 1830-1900.l& Also, M. Quick's Expatriate Painters o f the Late Nineteenth Century considers the criticism of American institutions that was implicit in the American going- The one community-based movement that has been thoroughly addressed in literature throughout art history and across methodological borders is the arts and crafts movement. For example, Lionel Lambourne, Utopian Craftsmen: The Arts and Crafts Movement from the Cotswolds to Chicago (London: Astragal, 1981) and Fiona MacCarthy, The Simple Life: C.R. Ashbee in the Cotswolds (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980) which address the Arts and Crafts movement as a whole from an art historical. James Thompson, ed., The Peasant in Nineteenth Century Art: An Exhibition Organized fo r the Douglas Hyde Gallery, Trinity College, Dublin (Dublin: Douglas Hyde Gallery, Trinity College, 1980). Kenneth McConkey, Peasantries: Nineteenth Century French and British Pictures o f Peasants and Field Workers (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995). * ^ G. Weisberg, The Realist Tradition: French Painting and Drawing 1830-1900 (Cleveland, Ohio: Cleveland Museum o f Art, 1980). away.19 For the American tradition, Quick argues, the artist colony was the subculture to the academic experience. In that, she feels that American artists necessarily left their urban centers and academies for formal French training, thus participating in an initial going-away. Once they arrived in France, they retreated further from academic institutions to artist colonies. The colonies were further retreat for the American trip to French academies for formal training. Overall studies of the Realist tradition address the criticism inherent within the going-away better than studies addressing artist colonies. However, these studies do not consider how an understanding of the going-away might have enriched critical interpretations of the Realist's art. This is understandable because the studies focused on and wrote from a modernist perspective and the modernist definition of art did not require knowledge of an art world for a meaningful interpretation of art. Worpswede In the absence of art historical sources, cultural histories are helpful to the student interested in Worpswede. The literature on Worpswede is limited to a selection of artist monographs, a few focused studies of Worpswede art and a few explorations of the Worpswede colony historically. Paula Modersohn-Becker receives more attention than any other member of the colony. Documents regarding her work range from traditional monographs to feminist art historical interpretations. Overall, the lack of secondary sources leads the researcher to the primary documents of the colony. Worpswede documents have been impeccably archived by artists' family members and other 19 Michael Quick, American Expatriate Painters o f the Late Nineteenth Century (Dayton, Ohio: Dayton Art Institute, 1976). organizations in the town. Thus, documents from the colony members, like Rilke's criticism and Modersohn-Becker's diary entries, are available for further research. The secondary sources show that the going-away is an area of research in need of more attention. Meanwhile, the archives of artistic and critical documents of Worpswede help prove that relevant criticism of Worpswede art was grounded in an understanding of its particular going-away. Valuable contextual information in G. Mosse's The Crisis o f German Ideology: Intellectual Origins o f the Third Reich and F. Stern's The Politics o f Cultured Despair: a Study in the Rise o f Germanic Ideology is cited by both Jacobs and Weitek.20 These sources outline how the European trend towards rampant nationalism developed in Germany. Additionally, they show how German national fervor combined with a critique of modernism from great German minds like Friedrich Nietzsche shaped general culture in German speaking countries. F. Stern's history addresses the Nietzsche fanatic Julius Langbehn's Rembrandt als Erzieher. Stern relates Langbehn's celebration of German cultural heritage to its affects on artistic production in German art at the turn of the century. Stern's study is more particularly geared towards art than the first two historical surveys; however, he did not thoroughly address the artist colonies that arose out of this cult of German nationalism and critique of modernization. G. Weitek's Deutsche Kunstlerkolonien und Kunstlerorte addresses the difference between artist colonies and artist places across a large span of time. The scope of his study begins before Langbehn's Rembrandt als Erzieher with the Nazarenes. He attempts to chronicle how the different traditions of the artist colony and the artist town developed in step with G. Weitek, Deutsche Kunstlerkolonien und Kunstlerorte (Munchen: Verlag Karl Thiemig AG, 1976). cultural currents. This distinction, according to Jacobs, is not clarified nor is it thoroughly supported by the evidence, but that is probably because there were many contributing authors in Weitek's book so it is not as focused as his original thesis statement regarding the cultural forces that fueled the artist colony trend. Catalogues and articles specifically handling Worpswede are limited enough that most of them can be included in this review. Surprisingly, there are two publishers in Worpswede that deal predominantly with publications about the colony and the artists from Worpswede; however, the majority of publications are not scholarly.21 The most scholarly publication on Worpswede is Worpswede: Eine Deutsche Kunstlerkolonie um 1900, which was an exhibition catalogue from 1980. Because it was a catalogue for an exhibition, it presents limited information, but it is focused around specific works of art and artifacts from the colony. The article, Der Erste Maler in Worpswede, elaborates on Sigrid Wortmann Weltge's masters thesis, An Historical Investigation o f the Artists ' Colony Worpswede at the Turn o f the Century22 More recently, an article by Richard Pettit addresses Worpswede as seen from the critical perspective of R.M. Rilke. In an issue of Studies in the History o f Art dedicated to German culture between 1889-1910, which in itself was a valuable resource, Pettit chronicles Rilke's career in art criticism.23 Pettit gives background to Rilke's interest in art, showing his lifelong interest in the visual arts and his art historical studies at the universities that he attended. According to Pettit, Rilke rarely made a negative comment nor a judgmental observation about "new" 21 This is a point initially made by Michael Jacobs that was echoed throughout the literature. 22 Micala Sidore, "Sigrid Wortmann Weltge: Bauhaus Textiles," Shuttle-Spindle-and-Dyepot 26 (Fall, 1995): 36. 23 Richard Pettit, "The Poet's Eye o f the Arts: Rilke Views the Visual Arts Around 1900," Studies in Art History 53 (1996): 250-273. art. Specifically, Pettit addresses Rilke's move to Worpswede and his criticism of two Worpswede artists, Heinrich Vogeler and Paula Modersohn-Becker. Aside from Richard Pettit's article about Rilke and Worpswede, other articles like Dale Harris' from Architectural Digest are not art historical, but they are still valuable references.24 Each artist except for Fritz Overbeck has an artist monograph. The following monographs offer valuable visual resources and biographical timelines: B. Kauffmann's Fritz Mackensen, Monographie einer Landschaftskunstverein, H.W. Petzet's Von Worpswede nach Moskau-Heinrich Vogeler and C. Modersohn's Otto Modersohn, 1865­1943. Other than these monographs, Worpswede artists have not been the primary subject of many art historical studies, except Paula Modersohn-Becker, who seems to be the most widely studied Worpswede artist. An excellent monograph in English is Gill Perry's Paula Modersohn-Becker, 2 5 In 2000, Aya Solca reviewed a book about Paula Modersohn-Becker and the Worpswede artists.26 This book is the most recent book about Modersohn-Becker and the Worpswede artists; however, the colony's significance was not the book's topic. A recent exhibition of Modersohn-Becker's works were at the Wolfgang Werner gallery and the Kathe Kollowitz Museum in Berlin Germany. Critical reviews indicate the surprising artistic scope of her short life. The show's catalogue and critical reviews focus on a body of work without emphasizing the context of the colony. 24 Architectural D igest recently featured two separate articles about the Worpswede colony. These are good resources for visual aides, but they do not address the art or the history of the colony. Dale Harris, "The Ageless Spell o f Worpswede: Entering the World o f a Renowned German Artists' Colony," Architectural Digest 49 (May, 1992): 72-82; and Dale Harris, "Art: Germany's Worpswede Painters: The Influential Art Colony's Love Affair with the Land," Architectural Digest 48 (May, 1991): 130-135. 25 G. Weitek, Deutsche Kunstlerkolonien und Kunstlerorte (Munchen: Verlag Karl Thiemig AG, 1976). 26 Aya Soika, " Paula Modersohn Becker und die Worpsweder," Print Quarterly 17.4 (December 2000): 396-399. 15 Thus, they are more focused on her style and how she fits into a broader German context than the colony of Worpswede. From a different perspective, Diane Radycki wrote an article highlighting the concept of modern beauty as seen through the portraiture of Modersohn-Becker and other French artists.27 Radycki claims that Modersohn-Becker's portraits of herself and of the Earth Mother were outside the realm of the "sexual economy" in that they did not conform to the male gaze and desires of the time.28 Surprisingly, research and literature is limited in regards to Worpswede and Paula Modersohn-Becker despite their cardinal influence on other artistic movements. The apparent lack of secondary sources leads any researcher to the primary documents about Worpswede. Primary sources are well archived at the Haus im Schluh in Worpswede, which organizes materials by artist. There are typescripts of letters by Fritz Overbeck, Fritz Mackensen, Hans am Ende and Otto Modersohn. Additionally, contemporary articles, critical reviews and pamphlets from the colony are archived chronologically. Literary and documentary specimens of writing by original members or guests of the colony include R.M. Rilke's Worpswede, which is more a literary work of art than a critical review. G. Pauli discusses the colony in Erinnerungen aus Sieben 29 * Jahrzehnten as does H. Vogeler in Erinnerungen. There are four articles that were written when Worpswede first exhibited their art: F. Overbeck, "Ein Brief aus Worpswede," P. Schultze-Naumberg, "Die Worpswede" and K. Krummacher, 27 Diane Radycki, "Pretty/Ugly," Make, The Magazine o f Women's Art 72 (October/November, 1996): 19-21. 28 By sexual economy, Radycki refers to the widely held connection between woman and nature or man and civilization. In most paintings, this theme depicts women as uncivilized sexual objects in contrast to Paula Modersohn-Becker's positive depiction o f the pure and natural source o f life. 29 G. Weitek, Deutsche Kunstlerkolonien undKunstlerorte (Munchen: Verlag Karl Thiemig AG, 1976). "Worpswede und seine Bedeutung" and "Worpswede un das Teuffelsmoor".30 Fritz Mackensen wrote "Das Weltdorf Worpswede," which addressed Vogeler's communism critically. Otto Modersohn's letters in more comprehensive form are kept by the Otto Modersohn museum in Fischerhude; however, Jacobs says they are not readily available to scholars. Paula Modersohn-Becker's letters and diaries were published in 1979 by G. Busch. An anthology of primary sources about Modersohn-Becker was published shortly after her premature death. A group of her friends published a sentimental book, Ein Buck der Freundschaft, with an introduction by R. Hetsch, compiling her letters or their memories of her life and art. Die Briicke Literature regarding the artist group Die Brucke has not addressed the notion of going-away or the bohemian characteristics primarily or specifically, except for Gill Perry's "The Going-Away." Since die Brucke participated in the going-away and urban bohemia, an accurate examination of the group must address this characteristic. Besides the general studies about German Expressionism by Lothar Gunther Buchhaim, Peter Selz, Wolf-Dieter Dube, Paul Vogt, John Willet and F. Roh, there are numerous books articles and catalogues that address die Brucke artists more specifically. For instance, Jill Lloyd's German Expressionism: Primitivism and Modernity interprets die Briicke's art which adapted characteristics from "primitive" cultures and artifacts. This study necessarily addresses the going-away and the bohemia of die Brucke because the 30 G. Fritz Overbeck, "Ein Brief aus Worpswede," Die Kunst F ur A lle 2 (Munich: 1896); P. Shultze- Naumberg, "Die Worpswede," Die Kunst Fur Alle 12 (Munich, 1896); and K. Krummacher "Worpswede und seine Bedeutung," Heimathote2 \ (1896). "primitive" was linked to this artistic form of retreat. Their fascination with the "primitive" is in step with their relocation to nudist colonies. Additionally, the self-expressive urban bohemian was impressed by the authentic qualify of "primitive" artifacts in museums. Gill Perry addresses the mountain and lake retreats to nudist colonies in "The ascent to nature." Perry notes that Paul Reece has linked the local nudist groups in Dresden to die Brucke; unfortunately, Reece has not published much of this research. Another article that addresses the nudist going-away is "Edith Buckley, Ada Nolde and die Brucke: Bathing, Health and Art in Dresden 1906-1911," which ties ubiquitous early twentieth century health concerns about women to thefreikorper movement in Dresden. Gill Perry's evaluation of die Brucke ties the going-away from Worpswede to the tendencies towards nudist colonies and urban bohemia as seen in die Brucke. The elements of the going-away and bohemia can be extracted from these articles. However, sociological studies consider the ideological and societal causes for the retreat to bohemia in more detail. The sociological examination of bohemia The terms of bohemia and bohemians have a long history. It first gained currency in artistic circles shortly after artist colonies and the going-away emerged. Near the end of the modern period, the term bohemia overlaps with the word avant-garde. The character of bohemia and bohemians is not easily summed up, as is exemplified by the broad range of characteristics attributed to them. Among the many examinations of bohemia, two perspectives, the socioeconomic studies and the developmental studies, were the most valuable for this paper. Sociological studies discuss the socioeconomic foundations for the bohemian retreat from society, but they do not specifically address art. The history of the term was recently anthologized in On Bohemia: The Code o f the S e lf Exiled, by Cesar and Marigay Grana. The Granas address the foundations for the entity of bohemia in the Parisian neighborhoods, the literature that came from and grew out of that environment, and finally the theories about this cultural phenomenon and its pending doom.31 Grana and Grafla offer a valuable resource for understanding the ideological and socioeconomic grounds for the separation that occurs between mainstream society and bohemian society. Many of the excerpts from this book are from primary sources and members of such communities. Grafla and Grana offer a tremendous resource for somebody interested in the entity of bohemia and its significance to any topic. For the purposes of this paper, their work proved most valuable in tracking down possible primary source material. Other articles in this anthology address the mythical beginnings of bohemia. Mary Gluck's article about the modern bohemian artist was a welcome perspective on the subject.32 She addressed the cultural roots of the convention of bohemia and the bohemian. Gluck argues that there is no connection made in contemporary literature between the bohemian aesthetic and the social foundation for that bohemia. Additionally, she states that the cultural bohemian preceded the radical artist communities as early as the 1820s. Her definition of bohemian cultures in the nineteenth century grows out of the culture that was reworking social norms, themes and images. She traces the roots of this bohemianism from the 1820s through the twentieth century. Bohemia overlaps with the 3 1 Cesar and Marigay Grana, eds., On Bohemia: The Code o f the Self-Exiled (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1990). Mary Gluck, "Theorizing the Cultural Roots o f the Bohemian Artist," Modernism/Modernity 7.3 (Sept, 2000): 351-378. 18 19 going-away early in its development and later it overlaps with the avant-garde. Counterculture and bohemia seem to be phrases from different disciplines referring to a similar social arrangement. Historical studies of counterculture There are several good historical examinations of actual counterculture-communities. Martin Green's Mountain o f Truth: The Counterculture Begins, Ascona, 1900-1920 addresses the going-away historically.33 Green discusses specific commune members who were especially pivotal in the formation of counterculture ideas in Germany and Europe at the turn of the nineteenth century like Otto Gross, Gusto Graser and Rudolf Langbehn. Green discusses the numerous artists, psychologists, theorists, writers, dancers and dropouts that were in Ascona and what kind of a commune it was. Dropouts occur in artist colonies, counterculture and bohemia. They are the untalented people that join in the separation from societies, academies and traditions because they do not want to or cannot function within mainstream society. Beyond this, he addresses the central ideas held in Ascona about art, culture and politics, which sometimes overlapped and became one. There are other studies about counterculture and commune living that are valuable. However, Green's study is the only one that addresses the role of art in the countercultures and how the countercultures influenced art. Other noteworthy studies of experimental communities in Europe and America are W.H.G. Armytage's Heavens Martin Green, Mountain o f Truth: The Counterculture Begins, Ascona, 1900-1920 (Hanover: University Press o f New England, 1986). 20 Below: Utopian Experiments in England 1560-1960 and M. Holloway's Heavems on Earth, Utopian Communities in America 1680-1880.34 Philosophical debate regarding Danto's art world The basic vocabulary of Arthur Danto's term the art world was developecd in response to the Neo-Wittgensteinian claim that art was not definable in necessary and sufficient conditions. Danto was one of the first philosophers to refute the position of Neo-Wittgensteinians Morris Weitz and William Kennick.35 Danto proposed thait one necessary condition of art was that it be enfranchised by art historical theories. Beginning with Danto's art world, various philosophers revisited the definability of art.36 Some philosophers built on Danto's contention and others disputed it. This generation of philosophers defended or reconfigured art's definability by outlining the term art world or related concepts. Since Danto, philosophers arguing that art is definable have either elaborated on or taken issue with his construct of the art world. The philosophers from both the formalist and the contextualist approach to art criticism have disputed D anto's construct of the art world because Danto frequently combined methodologies from these ^W.H.G .A rmytage, Heavens Below: Utopian Experiments in England 1560-1960 (London: Routledge, 1980) and Mark Holloway, Heavens on Earth, Utopian Communities in America 1680-1880 (New York: Dover Publishers, 1966). Noel Carroll, ed., Theories o f Art (Chicago: University o f Chicago Press, 1996). 36 After the Neo-Wittgensteinians effectively argued that art was not definable, the subject of a rt's definability was marginalized for ten years. It was not until Arthur Danto wrote his essay "The Art World" that art's definability became a large topic in the philosophy o f art again. two disparate perspectives.37 In addition to contesting Danto's combination of methodologies, his contemporaries have debated the validity of the vocabulary that he used to build his notion of the art world. Thus, formalists and contextualists both support and criticize Danto's construct in the following areas: Danto's definition of an artwork; Danto's use of surface interpretation; Danto's conception of historical narratives; and Danto's application of the methodology of similarities. In each subheading, the philosophical responses to Danto's terms are listed discussed chronologically to convey the development in philosophical circles of Danto's concepts. Contextualist responses to Danto's definition of an artwork Before Danto's art world, Berys Gaut wrote "Art as a Cluster Concept" to explore the Neo-Wittegenteinian claim that art cannot be defined in necessary and sufficient conditions. He concluded that it was definable, but as a cluster concept. This proposal bridged the gap between Neo-Wittgensteinians who claimed that art can be known yet not defined and Danto who claimed that art can be defined and understood. Both Gaut and Danto believe that art is definable. Gaut did not explain how it was definable, but he did explain contributing factors to its definition. Later, Danto explained how it was definable. Gaut claims that to be an artwork means to possess a combination of ten characteristics: (I.) An artwork is an object that possesses positive aesthetic properties; 37 Formalism and contextualism are terms that are specific to art history. This paper is concerned with the art historical significance o f the going-away and the art world. Therefore, the philosophical literature is organized and addressed with the art historical terms formalism and contextualism in place o f the philosophical terms essentialism and institutionalism. In other words, essentialism represents a perspective regarding art similarly to formalism because it is concerned primarily with the meaning o f the object in isolation from its context. Institutionalism represents a perspective that takes into consideration how society informs a work o f art and is a far cry from Danto's art world, but it is the philosophical equivalent to contextualism o f art history. (II.) An artwork is expressive of emotion; (III.) If an object is only intellectually challenging it has a claim to the title of artwork; (IV.) Formal complexity indicates the "arthood" of an object; (V.) An object that is capable of conveying complex meanings is most likely an artwork; (VI.) The artwork indicates a particular point of view or perspective; (VII.) The creative imagination is exercised in the creation of art; (VIII.) In most cases, the artist needs a high degree of skill in order to produce the artwork; (IX.) The artwork fits into a genre or movement; and (X.) The product of artist's intent is to make an artwork. Gaut's definition far exceeds the scope of Danto's definition which says that an artwork is an embodied meaning or a symbolic expression. After Gaut's contribution and the debate started by Danto about art's definability, Noel Carroll edited an anthology of post-Wittgensteinian philosophers of art. Carroll points out that the development of the philosophy of art has centered on the debate regarding art's definability. He organizes seminal essays in this development chronologically. Additionally, he explains how the chronological development happened along the lines o f essentialism and institutionalism or, for the purposes of this paper, formalism and contextualism. Carroll, one of Danto's contemporaries, disagrees with Danto's definition of an artwork. Noel Carroll criticizes Danto's book After the End o f Art because he claims that Danto's conception of an artwork, a symbolic expression that is enfranchised and given the title of art by chronologically ordered theories, is too limited. Carroll takes issue particularly with Danto's explicit definition of art, claiming that through his rather exclusive definition, Danto is able to construct theories.about art that are not true to reality. In other words, Carroll finds art's definition to be far more complex than Danto's proposed definition. Contrary to Carroll's summary of Danto's 22 23 definition, an artwork as a theoretically enfranchised symbolic expression is not limited. Danto himself revisited this definition and found that there were too many possibilities within his term artwork to logically explain how art is definable, so much so that Danto found it too unlimited in scope and is searching for ways in which to focus its scope. According to Carroll, philosophers like George Dickie first built upon Arthur Danto's argument for art's definability. Dickie believes that the artwork is definable by the art world, but his art world is different from Danto's because it is a social and an institutional construct of experts.38 Dickie elaborates on Danto's art world, but he emphasizes the social nature of the art world. Later, Dickie's elaboration on Danto's art world was termed the art circle because of the social emphasis that Dickie places on the definability of art. For Danto, art's definability relies on two sources: first, the discourse of reasons provides a point of reference from which art can be identified and defined; second, the members knowledgeable of the discourse of reasons are able to cite it in order to identify, define and evaluate art. Danto believes that history and theory enfranchise the artwork into the world of art works, i.e., the art world. Yet, Danto's members are responsible for the knowledge of the history and the theory that distinguishes the nonart from the artworks. For Dickie, the experts (similar to the members of Danto's art world) are the definitive institution that identify and evaluate art. The experts of Dickie's art circle can declare than an object is an artwork with or without reason. In contrast, the members of Danto's art world support their definition and evaluation with reasons from 38 Institution and institutional refer to the standards o f art that have evolved from academies. In other words, the institutional is prescribed by the academy for a given period o f art. If it pertained to the eighteenth century, then institutionalism would refer to the standards prescribed by the French academy of Louis the XIV. At other times, the academy might not be as regimented. However, in many cases the institution or the academy are enforcing standards in a manner that does not account for the evolution of the definition o f art and subsequently o f the standards o f that art. art history and aesthetics. For both philosophers, the art world indicates what objects are and what objects are not art. Additionally, Danto's art world and Dickie's art circle are responsible for evaluating the quality of the art. Robert Steker and Carroll question Dickie's initial enthusiasm for Danto's definition of an art world and an artwork. Steker wonders if it is realistic to attempt a definition of current art. He proposes that the definition of art is revealed over time. Through time, a consensus emerges among experts and the definitive traits of the artwork emerge. In other words, debates over the necessary and sufficient conditions of arts definability are streamlined. According to Steker, the essential elements of an adequate definition include the following: first, the definition of an artwork must make reference to the history and the function of the artwork; second, there must be a consideration of the artist's intention in the definition of art; and finally, the scholar attempting to define an artwork must reference the institutional context of the art world.39 Steker and Danto agree that art is definable through reference to historical reasons. However, Steker's definition is more dependent upon an institutional context. Meanwhile Danto believes arts definability is found in two places. First, art is an "embodied meaning" or it gives form to its content. Second, members of the art world are able to justify their definition of an artwork by referencing historical and theoretical reasons. After Steker's essay, Joseph Zalman Margolis challenged Danto's end-of-art thesis on the grounds that his definition of an artwork is incorrect.40 Margolis contends that there is not an "embodied meaning" in an artwork and there is only the interpretation 39 Institutional, again, refers to the set o f standards dictated by tradition. Often these standards do not adapt to the changing definition o f art and they are rendered obsolete. Danto's " end-of-art" thesis states that the linear narrative o f history and the subsequent limited definition o f art ended when the art world realized that art was a symbolic expression. of the work of art.41 In other words, Margolis does not agree with Danto that an artwork is a symbolic expression that contains its meaning. Margolis asserts that he and Danto come from different views about the essence of art or the artwork. Margolis would not agree that there is truth in art that determines the validity of its interpretation because he is not an essentialist, nor is he a formalist.42 While Danto concedes that one may never uncover the fixed content of the object, he adheres to the practice that the truth of the object will render an interpretation more or less accurate. Danto claims that there are not visually discernible differences between art and a "mere real object." Nonetheless, the content or meaning within the artwork gives clues to identify and define the object as an artwork. The expression within the symbol is related to history and the artist's intentions. Margolis contends that it is impossible to explain the mere fact of "being an artwork" and "being a mere thing," so it is incoherent and paradoxical to propose such a system. Carroll and Margolis agree with Tom Leddy's criticism of Danto's term the artwork. Leddy's perspective is that there is not an artist's original intent and that there is not a definable meaning embodied within the artwork.43 In other words, Leddy does not agree with Danto's claim that the work of art is a symbolic expression that contains the meaning given to it by the artist and the art world. Additionally, he claims that a deeper interpretation rendered through contextual studies, i.e. perspectives from Marxist, psychoanalysts and feminist scholarship, provides a fuller idea of the artist's intent and 41 Joseph Margolis, "A Closer Look at Danto's Account o f Art and Perception," The British Journal o f Aesthetics 40.3 (July, 2000): 326-329. 42 The philosophical term essentialist is similar to the art historical term formalist. For the purposes o f this paper, they can be used synonymously because they both adhere to the idea o f truth in art that can be understood. 43 Thomas Leddy, "Against Surface Interpretation," The British Journal o f Aesthetics 57.4 (Fall, 1999): 459-463. 25 the object itself. He claims that the surface interpretation is only a set of points about the artist's intention or descriptions of those intentions. According to Leddy, the Marxist, Psychoanalyst and the feminist approaches provide a deeper interpretation and understanding o f the object and its context. However, Danto's approach requires the same attention to context to which Leddy refers in his essay. Many philosophers criticized Danto's term the artwork after his essay "The Art World" was published. In contrast to the criticism of Danto's terms, Mark Rollins supported and built upon Danto's art world.44 Rollins considers Danto's term "artwork" to be a tremendous contribution to aesthetics. Rollins claims that Danto explicated that an artwork is a form of communication. In doing so, Danto redirects our attention to what is understandable about art. Both Rollins and Danto agree that the artistic meaning is not detected in purely visual terms because it depends upon an accurate historical interpretation. According to Danto, an interpretation can be undermined by two errors of art criticism. First, if the interpreter misses key elements of the composition, then they interpretation will be incomplete or misguided. Second, if the context which shaped it is not significantly archeologized, then the interpretation might be anachronistic. Rollins finds the artwork's meaning evasive in yet another manner. In that every interpretation comes from a different strategy of perception, that each individual uses a different strategy to understand representations and that each person gains a new understanding from the various interpretations.45 In a similar vein to Rollins, George Bailey considers the term artwork a valuable 44 Mark Rollins, "The Invisible Content o f Visual Art," The Journal o f Aesthetics and Art Criticism 59.1 (Winter, 2001): 19-27. 43 Pluralism in this context refers to the variety o f historical narratives possible in the postmodern. 27 contribution to aesthetics. Bailey discusses art's definability in "Art: Life after Death?" To Bailey, the artwork is the product of social practices. In other words, the artwork reflects the rights and/or responsibilities of an individual within society when creating or responding to an artwork. For example, Bailey suggests that an artwork's primary function is to gain the title of artwork from the societal context in which it was produced. In that, individuals justify their definition of an artwork with reasons. Another instance of Bailey's rights and responsibilities is that an artwork is created by the artist with aesthetic reasons. Bailey sees, like Danto, that these reasons are dictated to audiences and artists through historical narratives.46 Bailey seems to echo Danto's construct, beginning with his acceptance of Danto's artwork and continuing with a system similar to Danto's art world. However, Bailey stresses the social implications of the art world over the theoretical structure that Danto stresses. Marcie Muelder Eaton, like Bailey and Rollins, supports Danto's definition of an artwork because it is not as susceptible to cultural biases as previous definitions of art. However, she seeks to eliminate Eurocentric definitions altogether and proposes that art is definable: (As) an artwork if and only if it is an artifact and it is discussed in such a way that information concerning the history of its production directs the viewer's attention to properties that are worthy of attention.47 Eaton stresses that the artifact must be treated by somebody fluent in the given culture as 46 The historical narrative being is a progressive development o f a historical definition o f art. In other words, for the Vasarian narrative the artwork progressively represented nature better than previous artwork. Apprentices learned mimesis from their masters and improved upon it. 47 Marcia Muelder Eaton, "A Sustainable Definition o f Art," in Theories o f Art, ed. Noel Carroll (Madison: University o f Wisconsin, 2000), 19. a valuable object. Thus she tries to discourage the dependence on European standards of art or the modernist definition of art in criticism. Eaton's definition of art builds on Danto's because her identification and definition is dependent upon the context and people knowledgeable of the context. However, like Dickie, she focuses more on the social aspect of the art community. In other words, Dickie and Eaton claim that an artwork only exists in the presence of experts, while Danto stresses the importance of the theories that justify a given object as art. James C. Anderson develops the social version of Danto's art world first proposed by Dickie and later developed by Eaton. Anderson proposes that there are two ways to define an artwork. One definition is descriptive and the other is evaluative, but both descriptions are aesthetic judgments. Anderson proposes a combination of institutional and historical conditions for the definition of art. He proposes that art is definable: According to the descriptive conception, an artifact is art if it is created with the intention of being an object of aesthetic appreciation, while according to the evaluative conception, an . . . . . . . . . 4s artifact is art if it functions to provide for aesthetic appreciation. In other words, the artist is able to define art by creating an object with the intention of it being a work of art. The audience is able to define art by considering the object aesthetically. Anderson's understanding of an artwork differs in one fundamental manner from Danto's artwork; in that Anderson's art alludes to an external cause. In contrast, Danto clearly articulates that an artwork embodies its meaning, or it gives form to its content. Therefore, for Danto, an artwork's cause is internal to itself. Stephen Davies and Dennis Dutton do not support nor do they criticize Danto's 48 James C Anderson, "Aesthetic Concepts o f Art," in Theories o f Art, ed. Noel Carroll (Madison: University o f Wisconsin, 2000), 17. 29 artwork. They address how artwork is classified by our culture and in other cultures. Davies and Dutton explain that an artwork can be defined in other cultures similarly to art with a small "a," in contrast to Art with a capital "A" from imperial cultures. In other words, what we consider "art" from another culture might be closer in definition to our artifact. The given culture might value the object for its functional purposes or ceremonial purposes, much like medieval altarpieces were valued. For Dutton and Davies, there are two definitions, the functional and the historical, even though they do not support or criticize Danto's definition of an artwork specifically to differentiate art from Art: Though the artworks in advanced art worlds may require enfranchisement on procedural and/or historical grounds, art worlds themselves may be identified functionally in virtue of their production, in their early stages of artifacts notable for their integral possession of aesthetic properties . . . there is a historically primary regard for which at least some artworks in all art worlds are intended 49 For Dutton and Davies, like other philosophers that expound on Danto's idea of an artwork, the theoretical framework is not their primary focus. In contrast, Danto stresses that the framework of reasons must exist before any artwork can be distinguished from artifacts or "mere real objects." Contextualist and essentialist responses to Danto's interpretation Most contextualists agree that surface interpretation is an accurate way to approach art criticism. Paul Taylor compared his critical approach to Arthur Danto's in a 49 Whitney Davis, "When Pictures are Present: Arthur Danto and the Historicity o f the Eye," The Journal o f Aesthetics and A rt Criticism 59.1 (Winter, 2001): 29-38. recent article that he wrote regarding the intertwined roles of race, beauty and aesthetics.50 He argues that antiracist aestheticism can only occur through contextually informed cultural criticism. In other words, Taylor urges critics to disregard Eurocentric definitions and standards of art in their evaluations. He advocates criticism that considers the object in relation to its cultural definition and standards. Taylor and Danto both participate in an interpretive seeing of culture. Taylor and Danto approach a work of art as a symbolic expression of its cultural or historical moment. While Danto is an essentialist philosopher, some of his colleagues take issue with the seeming relativism of Danto's definition and criticism of art. They take issue with his criticism because Danto considers individual interpretative seeing, historical perspective and cultural influence. In other words, Danto's peers or essentialists take issue with the emphasis Danto puts on the historical and theoretical context of the artwork. Despite the seeming relativism of Danto's conception of the art world, he is an essentialist in that he believes there is specific content embodied in the artwork that can be interpreted more or less accurately.51 Whitney Davis criticizes this as Danto's "extreme cultural-relativist thesis." Davis claims provides a universal visual experience for millennia to come. He stresses that the visual experience of the artwork stands the test of time. In one way, Danto agrees with Davis because he proposes the artwork has a fixed meaning or an essence. However, according to Danto, the work of art is created from within a historical and critical era that shapes its meaning or essence. Therefore, the object cannot be understood in isolation from its context. In other words, Danto does not concur with his Paul Taylor, "Malcolm's Conk and Danto's Colors: or, Four Logical Petitions Concerning Race, Beauty and Aesthetics," The Journal o f Aesthetics and Art Criticism 57.1 (Winter, 1999): 16-20. - * Whitney Davis, "When Pictures are Present: Arthur Danto and the Historicity o f the Eye," The Journal o f Aesthetics and A rt Criticism 59.1 (Winter, 2001): 29-38. 31 essentialist colleague, Davis, that art communicates its fixed meaning to all audiences. Danto and Davis agree that art is definable in necessary terms by its essence. However, for Davis, the essence is communicated to any audience. Meanwhile, Danto claims that the essence is only accessible through contextual knowledge. Like Whitney Davis, Richard Shusterman also criticizes Danto's approach to art.32 He claims that the main purpose of Danto's semantic and descriptive aesthetics serves to distinguish art from other human domains. Shusterman criticizes Danto's form of criticism for extracting the universal from the aesthetic discussion. However, like other essentialists, Danto maintains that art is definable and that every artwork embodies a specific meaning. For Danto, there is an accurate and an inaccurate interpretation of every artwork that is informed by the historical and critical environment in which it was created and identified as art. For philosophers of art like Shusterman, the fixed meaning of art is universal and does not change with historical perspective. In a recent article about their similar approach to an artwork and art history, Peg and Myles Brand state that "surface interpretation" is defensible.53 Surface interpretation is what a critic practices when she conducts inferential art criticism or interpretive seeing. The critic uses the formal clues and references of the artwork and references the discourse of reasons to better situate the status and function of the artwork at hand.54 The Brands also respond to Tom Leddy's critique of Danto's surface interpretation. Leddy 52 Richard Shusterman, "The End o f Aesthetic Experience," The Journal o f Aesthetics and Art Criticism 55 (Winter, 1997): 29-41. 53 Peg and Myles Brand, " Surface Interpretation: Reply to Leddy," The Journal o f Aesthetics and Art Criticism 57.4 (Fall, 1999): 464-465. 54 The discourse o f reasons as defined in the introduction is the framework for the criteria used by the members of the art world to measure the " "arthood"" of a symbolic expression. The discourse o f reasons enfranchises art into the art world, chronologically and theoretically, through the dialogue that occurs between the various members o f the art world. claims that Danto's interpretive seeing does not enable an "understanding" of a work of art because Danto has not solved the epistemological problems about the artist's or the interpreter's intentions.53 However, as Peg and Myles Brand show, Danto's claim is not dependent upon proving that. Arthur Danto explicitly states that he "believes" that there is a truth in the object. In other words, he realizes that solving the epistemological problem regarding the artist's or interpreter's intentions is an impossibility and he works from within a system that accepts the unknown variables in art interpretation. Thus, Danto works from an environment in which the artist's or interpreter's intention cannot be proven, but at the same time in which the interpretation of a work of art can be made more or less accurately. Contextualist response to Danto's discourse of reasons Contextualists take issue with Danto's position that art has a fixed meaning which is more or less accessible to an audience based on their knowledge of the discourse of reasons. Danto and his peers often use the discourse of reasons synonymously with the terms art history, historical narrative or linear narrative. Sondra Bacharach contests Danto's claim that art history came to an end with Andy Warhol's Brillo Box (1964).56 Bacharach contests his claim on the basis of three assumptions. Her first assumption is that the diversity of the contemporary art world does not indicate the end of the history of art; rather, it indicates another phase of art history. Second, both she and Noel Carroll 55 The notion o f "understanding" a work o f art, addressed in the introduction, refers to Danto's conception o f the artwork as a symbolic expression which embodies its meaning and can be "understood" or "interstood." 56 Sondra Bacharach, "Can Art Really End?" The Journal o f Aesthetics and Art Criticism 60.1 (Winter, 2002): 57-66. 33 argue that Danto's thesis is infallible merely on the basis that it is circular. In conclusion, Bacharach states that Danto used his end-of-art thesis in order to solidify his essentialist theory of art that is no longer applicable. Her article concludes that one cannot prove that art history came to an end in the manner that Danto proposes. However, Bacharach misses Danto's thesis in the "end-of-art" argument; he did not say artwork or art history ended. Rather he said that a Western perspective of art history and definition of art ended, but a world of opportunities opened for artists and members of the art world. That is, the end of the Eurocentric Western history of art opened up the discourse of reasons to multiple cultures. Noel Carroll disagrees with Danto's claim that visual perception changes across a significant human population simultaneously.57 Carroll assumes that Danto is referring to a visual form of natural selection; he believes that this claim is central to how Danto conceived of the end of art. Therefore, he takes issue with Danto's claim that art ended based on a visual form of natural selection. However, Carroll misunderstands Danto's claim that a perception of the standards of art in a theoretical manner washed over the experts of the art world. Carroll questions Danto's explanation of the changes in the discourse of reasons from before the era of art to the Vasarian linear narrative, or from the Vasarian linear narrative to the Greenbergian linear narrative and from the co Greenbergian linear narrative to the posthistorical plural narrative.1' Carroll agrees that Noel Carroll, "Modernity and the Plasticity o f Perception," The Journal o f Aesthetics and Art Criticism 59.1 (Winter, 2001): 11-17. The Vasarian narrative is the era o f art history in which mimetic recreation of nature and beauty constituted the criteria for an artwork. The Greenbergian narrative was the era of art history in which expression through the media became the standard by which an artwork was titled, valued and judged. Finally posthistorical pluralism is the current era o f art history in which a multitude o f perspectives makes for artistic diversity never seen before. In this era, it is important to measure the artwork as a symbolic expression. the definition of art, the standards of art and the history of art transforms over time. Yet, he questions Danto's proposal that the shift from Vasarian to modern perception was due to natural selection. Carroll argues that if this were true, then the process would take much longer and it would include a few generations. However, Danto does not claim that natural selection caused the shift from one discourse of reasons to another. Rather, he refers to a consensus among experts recognizing that a shift in art's definability and standards has occurred. Peter Gyorgy chronicles the debate, between essentialism and institutionalism. Gyorgy asserts that the era for which Danto's essentialism was a productive form of art criticism spanned the time from the Vasarian narrative to Danto.59 According to Gyorgy, the collapse of essentialism coincided with the collapse of the difference between high and low art in the discourse of reasons. In other words, essentialism was appropriate when philosophy thought that art embodied universal truth. Peter Gyorgy asserts that Danto's discourse of reasons is applicable to the entire era of art from Vasari to Warhol. Gyorgy's claim that essentialism is no longer applicable in the postmodern doesn't consider Danto's unique combination of formalism with contextual conditions. In other words, Danto practices essentialism, but interpretation of the object's meaning is dependent upon contextual information. For Danto's essentialism, the meaning of the artwork constitutes the truth in the artwork, but our knowledge of the context in which it was created determines our ability to validly interpret it. Jason Gaiger's review of Danto's After the End o f Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale o f History misunderstood basic concepts within Danto's thesis regarding the "death" $9 Peter Gyorgy, "Between and After Essentialism and Institutionalism," The Journal o f Aesthetics and Art Criticism 57.4 (Fall, 1999): 421-437. of art.60 Gaiger claims that Danto erroneously summarized the Vasarian narrative (1300­1880) when Danto described it as having the overriding goal of "optical fidelity." Gaiger criticizes how Danto outlines the Greenbergian narrative because modernism may not be summed up in a similar manner. He warns writers and art historians against the creation of metanarratives because they fail to address features of the objects of study that might deny the validity of Danto's position. Gaiger's criticism is important and should be remembered when applying Danto's methods of identification, interpretation and evaluation. Nonetheless, the character of the metanarratives Danto describes is determined by an overarching rule of perception: for example, the Vasarian is primarily concerned with "optical fidelity." In a more specific example, Danto discusses Giotto's The Raising o f Lazarus (c. 1305) within the context of what Gaiger terms the Vasarian metanarrative in that the over-arching goal of an artist in Giotto's time period was naturalistic "optical fidelity." Danto addresses how a dedicated representation of reality would depict all of the figures in the painting holding their noses to avoid the stench of Lazarus' flesh. However, Danto addresses how Giotto chose to depict a few members of the scene plugging their noses; thus, Giotto was true to the biblical text and not strictly to naturalistic "optical fidelity." Thus, Danto's metanarrative informs a more accurate perspective on the art and artist, but Danto does not use the metanarrative to gloss over defining characteristics. Thus, Danto's metanarratives seem to over-generalize, but he uses them as a backdrop to describe the specific section of the discourse of reasons and the art world which inform the artwork he is interpretting. 35 George Dickie, "Art: Function or Procedure-Nature or Culture?" The Journal o f Aesthetics and Art Criticism 55 (Winter, 1997): 19-28. 36 Jane Forsey addresses Danto's arguments in After the End o f Art and The Philosophical Disenfranchisement o f Art!31 She summarizes Danto's arguments well, stating that the Philosophical Disenfranchisement o f Art archeologized the philosophical attempts to disenfranchise art. In other words, Danto summarized how philosophers worked to extract art from its society over the centuries with different arguments and for different reasons. In After the End o f Art, Danto applies Hegel's model for art history in which art history comes to an end upon the realization of its spirit, its "philosophical self consciousness." Forsey's point is that these two seemingly separate papers are actually partners. One must understand that art's philosophical disenfranchisement, started by Plato, begins the process by which art will gradually gain freedom from the authority of linear philosophy and history until it achieves complete liberation in Hegelian self­consciousness. Forsey's excellent observation is combined with a substantial criticism of Danto's work and that is that Danto's end-of-art thesis is the most aggressive disenfranchising theory yet. Danto would take issue with this because Danto is trying to show how art must be enfranchised to be recognized as art. Also, Danto claims that art's definability is dependent upon art being enfranchised by art history and theory. Finally, Danto shows how the philosophical disenfranchisement of art is no longer possible when the discourse of reasons or art history is plural instead of linear. In other words, postmodern history is no longer viewed as a linear progression which marginalizes differing perspectives. Instead, the posthistorical or postmodern discourse of reasons or narrative considers diverse multicultural perspectives. In doing so, less art is disenfranchised or marginalized. Jane Forsey, "Philosophical Disenfranchisement in Danto's ‘The End o f Art'," The Journal o f Aesthetics and A r t Criticism 59.4 (Fall, 2001): 403-9. 37 Panto's methodology of indiscernibles Several philosophers found Danto's methodology of indiscernibles problematic. Danto used the methodology of similarities to compare two seemingly identical objects like the "real Brillo Box" and Andy Warhol's Brillo Box (1964) to illustrate the essential difference(s) between them, thus showing that art and a "mere real thing" may look identical or similar, but are considered in two completely different categories of things. Danto uses Descartes' example of the difference between dreaming and waking experience. As Descartes points out, they are distinctly different categories of consciousness, but they seem almost identical in certain situations.62 Margolis claims that Danto's application of the methodology of indiscernibles to aesthetics causes him to conclude that there is no art. However, Margolis greatly misunderstands how the methodology applies to Danto's entire argument. Danto shows in The Art World Revisited how his methodology of indiscernibles functions to identify what is in works of art like Andy Warhol's Brillo Box (1964) that distinguish them from every day objects like the real, grocery store, Brillo cartons. Thus, he attempts to show that the distinguishing characteristic of the artwork, Brillo Box (1964), is not something that can be described physically. In contrast to Margolis' criticism, the methodology of indiscernibles considers more objects for the category of art than other methods of art criticism. Danto does concede, however, that the scientific and the aesthetic application 62 " it is the task o f philosophy to draw the boundary lines which divide the universe into the most fundamental kinds o f things that exi st . . . in any case, a familiar test o f where such a line is located may be performed by finding two things which are felt to belong to radically, even momentously different orders of being, but which in fact resemble one another minutely. One standard example is the distinction between actual experience and dreamed experience, where there is no mark internal to the experience on the basis of which one can tell whether it is dream or truth. The example is due to Descartes, in his ruthless quest for the few ultimate differences that must be acknowledged in dividing the universe up (he believed) into two (or three) ultimate sorts." Arthur Danto, "The Art World Revisited," in Beyond the Brillo Box (Canada: Harper Collins Ltd, 1992), 6. / 38 of the methodology of indiscernibles may not be compatible and might not always work for art history or criticism. Christopher Janaway criticizes how Danto's methodology of indiscernibles works. He illustrates how two experiments concerning duplicate artworks have conflicting results.63 Janaway claims that the causal history of a work of art does not have the authority of fixing the identity of that work. However, Janaway neglects the assumptions on which Danto's methodology of indiscernibles works. Using Danto's discussion of Andy Warhol's Brillo Box (1964) as an example, it is clear that Danto does not use two similar looking objects to pose philosophical questions. Rather, Danto uses two objects that for all intents and purposes are identical, for which only the essence could determine the difference: It is important to the understanding of the problem that objects outwardly similar should be conceived of as so similar that it is impossible, or nearly impossible, to effect the difference on the basis of looks.64 Janaway's criticism of Danto's methodology of indiscernibles is his misapplication and misunderstanding of what constitutes indiscernible. Janaway does not reduce the two objects under question to the total visible similitude that Danto finds to be valuable for posing philosophical questions. There is a faint border between contextualist and essentialists stances towards Danto's multidimensional construct. Yet, it is difficult to summarize the debate because Danto uses theories that align with both the essentialists and contextualists out of Christopher Janaway, "Two Kinds o f Artistic Duplication," The British Journal o f Aesthetics 37 (Jan, 1997): 1-14. 64 Arthur Danto, "The Art World Revisited," in Beyond the Brillo Box (Canada: Harper Collins Ltd, 1992), 6. necessity. Danto's subjects, the artwork and subsequently the art world, are not easily handled by a purely contextualist or essentialist approach. Therefore, we find the debate meandering over every subject from the basic assumptions of his argument, like the definability of an artwork, to the details, like his use of the methodology of indiscernible to set the stage for a fruitful philosophical argument. CH A PT ER 2 MICHAEL JACOBS' DEFINITION OF THE GOING-AWAY ARTIST COLONIES AND BOHEMIA The going-away and Worpswede An understanding of the artist colony's importance was not evident until Michael Jacobs defined it as the going-away. He defines the going-away as the nineteenth century tradition for a temporary geographic and slightly ideological relocation. In different disciplines, bohemia predated the going-away or was simultaneous to it. In art history the going-away and bohemia overlap slightly, but it can still be argued that the going-away was bohemia's forebear.65 In the going-away, artists separated themselves geographically from society. This evolved into the bohemian mental, social and spiritual separation from mainstream modern culture in urban centers. Art historical literature regarding the going-away and bohemia is limited. Understandably, the critical implications of the going-aM>ay, and the boundary it drew between artist and academy or art and nonart, have not been specifically addressed. This oversight is understandable because that separation was not integral to identifying or evaluating art in the nineteenth or the early twentieth century when the going-away first surfaced and developed into The Nazarenes are a good example of an artistic going away that predates an artistic bohemia. bohemia. In retrospect, one can pinpoint critics and theorists that interpreted the art of the going-away and bohemia more accurately because they recognized the separation between artist and academy. In step with the evolution of the going-away into bohemia, the definition and the standards of art transformed. Through the nineteenth century, the academies required the artist to record and idealize the real world. One could trace the images on the canvas back to an identifiable subject from history or object within the real world. Naturalism and classicism were endorsed and taught by the all of the academies. In step with a naturalistic classical approach to art, the academies supported historical and allegorical subject matter in painting. Neither naturalism nor classicism refer to a particular style. Rather, they are overarching approaches to representing the subject matter of art. These two approaches were dominant throughout the Vasarian narrative of art history. Naturalism and classicism even spilled over into the Modern era. Realists took the naturalistic approach to the world one step further by discarding the academy prescribed heroic-history paintings for the subject matter of rural landscapes and peasants. The heroic-history paintings represented famous battle scenes from history and mythology in order to glorify the French government or the Roman Catholic empire. The French revolution fueled the Realist rebellion against the academic standards of past regimes. The Realists rejected academic subject matter for subject matter contemporary to them and relevant to them. For instance, Realist painters depicted revolutionary compatriots or concurrent landscapes. The desire to paint contemporary scenes of the city or the country required studies to be collected outside of the artist's studio. Although the Realists collected studies outdoors, they still returned to their studios to organize their sketches into an academically ordered composition. This began the Realists' rebellion of painting outdoors, but the Impressionists followed through with it in greater numbers. The Impressionists, steeped in scientific, philosophical and literary breakthroughs regarding human perception and epistemology, began to paint a different reality. They were interested in depicting the instantaneous impressions that the artist saw. Impressionists abandoned the academic, idealized, freeze frame of an historic battle. Thus, Impressionists often painted their entire painting outdoors, in contrast to the Realists who gathered studies to bring back to their studios. Impressionists were interested in contemporary subject matter and the immediate effect that the real world impressed upon the artist's senses. Artists that painted en plein air, both the Realists and the Impressionists, began the going-away by taking their easel out of the urban studio or by taking their studio out of the academic center. Painting en plein air rebelled against academic standards for a finished painting that required, among other things, planning and lighting the composition indoors. The rebellion continued further when the postimpressionists redirected the geographical retreat of the going-away to an inward, introspective retreat. Theories of art like symbolism and expressionism motivated by introspection rejected Naturalism and Realism for self-expression. According to symbolist and expressionist theorists, the painting originated in the mind or the soul of the artist. Artists sought inward for subject matter and began to separate themselves from mainstream urban society. Thus, the geographic retreat evolved into a mental retreat kept within the boundaries of the urban center. The symbolist ideology, paired with an increased attempt to understand the primitive artifacts from Imperial settlements, set the stage for the transition from the late 42 43 nineteenth century going-away to the early twentieth century bohemia 66 Artists like Paula Modersohn-Becker reevaluated the academy standards for classical naturalism. She rebelled against academic standards by creating art and she rejected academic subject matter. Her intellectual and geographic rebellion was further emphasized by her interaction with "primitive" artifacts, either from German society or from Imperial spoils.67 The manifesto marks the transition that occurred between the late nineteenth century going-away and the early twentieth century bohemia. The late nineteenth century artists that participated in the going-away kept memoirs, but did not announce their purposes in official documents. The early modern artists, however, felt it necessary to announce their purpose and their predominant significance. In other words, early modern artists had to explain their separation from mainstream culture because it was central to the power of their art. The modernist movements sought introspectively for a relevant response to the overwhelming forces of modernization, urbanization and war. Additionally, the manifesto records how the movements of the early twentieth century overlapped, argued and contended with one another for the title of The Modern Movement. In a sense, it pinpoints the inward retreat in which early modem movements 66 Imperial colonization influenced art in Europe in a few ways. First, the Europeans were exposed to equally advanced cultures that they labeled "primitive" because they were different. For example, Chinese and Japanese artifacts were often considered "primitive" despite their equally developed society. Nonetheless, Japanese prints played a pivotal role in early modern art. Second, colonized, underdeveloped countries were promoted as paradise to encourage settlement. Finally, the frenzy of nationalism led European nations to celebrate their own "primitive" traits and heritage. For example, the Germans celebrated their medieval artifacts and also romanticized the German volk or peasants. 6^ For instance, Imperial spoils from the Napoleonic campaign through Egypt built a substantial ethnographic museum which influenced artists from the going-away and from bohemia. It is possible that Germany and France were inspired to celebrate their own "primitive" heritage and villages because of their exposure to the ethnographic collections. searched for the "modern" art. Without the manifesto, the introspective retreat from the harsh modern environment might have been less recognizable. Returning to the late nineteenth century going-away, it is highly possible that German national fervor set the stage for the rebellion against the state sanctioned academic standards. In January of 1871, the Prussian King was crowned German emperor. This concluded Bizmark's campaign to unite German speaking countries under German rule. In contrast to Paris, the cultural life was still divided between Berlin, Dusseldorf, Hamburg, Dresden and Munich. Dusseldorf, throughout most of the 1800s, was the artistic center of Germany. The Dusseldorf Academy of Art used strict academic principles and exclusively sanctioned historical and mythological painting. Even after the Parisian academies and salons accepted the increasingly fashionable landscape and genre scenes, Dusseldorf maintained strict policies restricting genre painting because it rebelled against academic standards. In the 1870s, Munich became the center for German Realist painters. Wilhelm Lieble of the Lieble circle was largely influenced by the art of Jean-Francois Millet (1814-1875) and Gustave Courbet (1819-1877).68 Courbet invited Lieble to Paris and Lieble brought the Realist idea of the going-away back to Munich. In response to the growing artistic rebellion of the going-away, Kaiser Wilhelm II gave a series of public lectures urging artists to stop painting genre scenes and to return to the German academic tradition of history paintings. Despite the attempts of the Dusseldorf Academy and the Kaiser, artists continued to participate in the going-away and Realist painting. As a result, the academic standards were discarded for Realism and the going-away gained credibility with artists. 68 Michael Jacobs, The Good and Simple Life: Artist Colonies in Europe and America (Oxford: Phaidon, 1985). Ironically, the vogue for the German going-away was fed by German nationalism, but it was not the only reason that the going-away became fashionable in artistic circles. The support for German colonies and the going-away stemmed from several cultural trends that were already highly influential in German art. From the 1850s through the early twentieth century, writers like Charles-Pierre Baudelaire (1821-1867) and Julius Langbehn (1851-1907) expressed concern about the degeneration of European culture in the face of modernization.69 However, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) was the most important thinker for the German going-away and bohemia. Nietzsche's following or the cult of Nietzschean rejuvenation espoused the need for a rebellion that would separate the artist from outdated and irrelevant societal norms. Numerous artists that participated in the German going-away and bohemia justified their rebellion with quotes directly from Nietzsche's books like Thus Sprach Zarathustra (1896.,) The German Jugendstil, or youth movement, reacted to the modernist mass production of culture and the subsequent concerns over a loss of craft.70 The German youth movement was its strongest at the turn of the century. The youth movement reinforced the importance of the going-away and later bohemia by referring to pivotal thinkers like Baudelaire, Langbehn and Nietzsche. Influenced and fueled by the British craft movement, the Jugendstil called for a return to a simpler life. Journals like Pan, Jugend and Simplizissmus promoted the importance of the return to nature. The growing liberal middle class in Germany sympathized with the concerns about Modern German culture. The new liberal middle class related to the rebellious art of the German going-away and bohemia because it echoed their own anxieties over modernization. The Jugendstil and the growing liberal 69 Dennis Crockett, Schwarzweiss (Walla Walla, WA: Whitman College Gallery, 1997). 70 Ibid. 45 middle class related to Nietzsche's call for cultural rejuvenation. All of these elements combined to strengthen the German trend for the going-away and later German bohemia like Worpswede and Die Brucke. At Worpswede's height, it was not as large as many other German artist colonies, but the fame of its members reserves its spot in the history books. Like other artists of the going-away and figures of bohemia, the original members of Worpswede were extremely inspired by Julius Langbehn's "Rembrandt as Teacher."71 Langbehn's book stated that the new German art will have to base itself on the Peasantry. Under the ubiquitous influence of Nietzsche and Langbehn, the Worpswede artists grew increasingly opposed to the rigid academic principles of the Dusseldorf Academy. Initially, they summered in Worpswede to escape the heat and filth of summers in the urban centers of Germany. However, it was not long until they were permanent residents of Worpswede. As part of the critique of modernist culture, the Worpswede artists believed that a return to a simpler way of life could purify their art and modern culture. The idealism and utopianism involved in their return to nature extolled the virtues of the "primitive." The German volk or the German peasant was associated with a pure, simple and youthful culture. The Nietzschean cult that called for a return to nature rebelled against urbanization and, subsequently, the consequences of materialism. The tendencies towards the early modern bohemia were present at Worpswede because of Rilke's international political connections and Paula Modersohn Becker's international artistic connections. Their political ideals and artistic transformation foreshadow the urban going-away of bohemia. Paula Modersohn Becker rebelled against the German academic 71 The original members o f W orpswede were Fritz Mackenson, Hans am Ende, Otto Modersohn, Carl Vinen, Fritz Overbeck, and Heinrich Vogeler. policy banning female artists from study. She was an artist long before other German women were admitted into art circles because of her participation in the artist colony, Worpswede. Like her peers at Woipswede, she painted in a Realist tradition by painting the rural landscapes and peasants. However, later in her short career she was influenced by French artists that stressed the importance of self-expression. She met and was greatly influenced by Paul Cezanne (1839-1906.) While she was in Paris, she also met Henri Matisse (1869-1954) and Paul Gauguin (1848-1903). Modersohn-Becker grew increasingly confident in a style for which she was criticized. Her depictions of the earth mother were reinforced by general cultural currents and the theories of other artists. Her relocation was a nineteenth century transition, but she opened the door for the early twentieth century artists to find new forms of self-expression of and refuge from modernization in art. Bohemia and Die Briicke Clement Greenberg's description of bohemia introduced it to a modern American audience. Other descriptions of bohemia are more obscure than Greenberg's because they are sentimental caricatures rather than historical explorations. These essays on bohemia can be divided into two categories. The first category consists of writers contemporary to the form of bohemia that they explain. The second category encompasses a broader scope of current writers and theorists that address the character of bohemia historically and socially. Greenberg could be put in both categories because his exploration of bohemia discussed both past and present incarnations of bohemia. Henri Murger is the prototype for the first category in that he was a French bohemian 48 explaining Parisian bohemia. The first category of literature regarding bohemia reached a limited audience because it was written by bohemians for bohemians in alienated potential audiences. Thus, the initial outline of bohemia was faint and became more focused as more writers introduced it to broader audiences. In La Vie Boheme, written by Murger in 1850, the definition of bohemia was specific to Paris, to youth, to writers and to artists. The latter category of literature is too large to adequately summarize, but a cursory outline of contemporary explorations of bohemia will delineate its salient characteristics. Thus, the term bohemia progressed from a vague idea into a more specific term. Henri Murger's The Bohemians o f the Latin Quarter (1850) defended the new ranks of bohemia by stressing the illustrious heritage of bohemia within Western culture.72 He began with Homer whom he considered to be the first and model bohemian, because he lived as a vagabond and dedicated his life to his art. Murger followed the bohemian tradition from the minstrels of the Middle Ages through to Salvatore Rosa of the Baroque to the German Romantics. Murger stressed that membership in bohemia was "a stage in artistic life" and it was "the preface to the Academy, the Hotel Dieu or the Morgue."73 In Murger's romanticized description of the Latin Quarter, the social phenomenon of bohemia had a rich history, but it was unique to modern Paris. Murger's essay on bohemia was almost a manifesto for the bohemians of the late nineteenth century and late twentieth century. Murger's description is more of a 72 Henri Murger was a bohemian who wrote specifically about bohemia. His writing differed drastically from writers like Langbehn, Nietzsche and Baudelaire from the turn o f century because they did not directly address bohemia. Regardless, all o f these authors set the stage for bohemia to exist within European culture. 73 Murger, Henri, "The Bohemians o f the Latin Quarter." in On Bohemia: The Code o f the Self-Exiled, ed. Cesar and Marigay Grana (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1990). tribute to bohemia than a historical or critical explanation because he was writing about bohemia from within French bohemia. In contrast to Murger's obscure essay about bohemia, Cesar Grana and George Plekhanov present the social roots of this phenomenon. Grana and Plekhanov propose that bohemia is the result of a surplus population. For example, the baby-boomers in the United States created a surplus population constituted the most notable American bohemians, the hippies. According to Grana and Plekhanov, the displaced Parisian aristocrats of the nineteenth century constituted the prerequisite surplus population for the bohemia. In other words, the displaced aristocratic and fringe citizens displaced by revolution and urbanization formed a counterculture to the bourgeois class. Within the context that Grana describes, previously wealthy members of society were displaced into lower ranks of society. Rather than admit this social demotion, many displaced aristocrats pretended to be a voluntary member of bohemia. In other words, rather than be considered a "declassed" aristocrat, the bohemians posed as artists, writers and ' rebels.74 Grana explains that the artists and writers of bohemia were the workers while there were pretenders that simply dropped out of society and passed time in bohemian counterculture. Rebels of bohemia rioted and protested against a variety of unsatisfactory governments and their institutions. For instance, the artist used the paint brush or the pen to rebel against government sanctioned academies. Most members of bohemian Paris, dressed in wildly, grew unconventional hair, encouraged radical thought and focused on the "sublime romance" of overwhelming subject matter like suicides, 74 George Plekhanov "Art and Society," in On Bohemia: The Code o f the Se lf Exiled, ed., Cesar and Marigay Grana (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1990). natural disasters and atrocities of war.75 The main characters of bohemian imagery were the bandits, pirates, street performers and prostitutes.76 Plekhanov describes the causes and characteristics of bohemia in more specific terms. Like Greenberg, Plekhanov recognized that bohemian art was an art for art's sake. Plekhanov answers the question, How does bohemia and its art come into being in society: "They come into being whenever there is "discord between the artist and his social environment."77 Grana and Plekanov described the context from which bohemia separated in an attempt to understand how it came into being. Grana and Plekanov discuss the social causes of it, but they do not describe it. In contrast, Ephraim Mizruchi and Alfred Werner's definition of bohemia provides the essential qualities of bohemia, whereas Greenberg discusses its cause and addresses its characteristics historically. Mizruchi lists seven contingent characteristics of a bohemian lifestyle. First, bohemians value youth and consider it the salvation of * • • • • 78 society. Bohemians place faith in the youth to save the spiritually deficient society. Second, the artist's individual expression is tantamount to a proper human existence. In other words, the only purpose of human existence is individual expression, whether that is manifested as an artful life or an artistic career.79 Third, the bohemian is labeled a pagan because they appear to operate against the Western Christian tradition. 7 5 George Plekhanov "Art and Society" in On Bohemia: the Code o f the S e lf Exiled, ed. Cesar and Marigay Grana (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1990). 76 ibid. 77 Ibid. 7^ The value placed in youth and many other characteristics that Mizruchi outlines as bohemian values echoe the values o f the nineteenth century artistic going-away o f W o r p sw e d e and the Jugendstil that propelled it into being. 7^ Yet again the student o f the going-away is reminded o fth e influence o f the Nietzschean cult of rejuvination which called on artists to save modem culture through brave individual self-expression. Sometimes this title is self-proclaimed and accurate and other times it is a sensationalized misnomer. Fourth, many bohemians feel that life is to be lived spontaneously in the moment. The bohemians ask, Why plan for your twilight years when you won't be able to enjoy them? This celebration of the present fueled the backlash against Academic history painting because the bohemians wanted to celebrate Parisian modernity and not Parisian heritage. Fifth, revolutionary liberty is important because it is closely linked with self expression and living for the moment. Sixth, female equality is advanced within bohemian circles in comparison to its counterpart, mainstream middle class society. Seventh, bohemians psychologically adjust to simplify their life within the urban envi* ronment or they relocate to a si. mpler, more "pri.mi.tive." e.nvi ronment. 8Q The seven principles present themselves in different combinations within different incarnations of bohemia. Alfred Werner's description of the bohemian shows how Mizruchi's seven characteristics would combine to establish the bohemian character of an artist or a group of artists. Werner states that the members of bohemia led unconventional lives, were free from the norms of society and adopted manners that were in opposition to Western morals. In other words, they ignored societal norms as a protest of bourgeois society. The artists and intellectuals of bohemia simultaneously glorified modernity and criticized its sinister social implications like the commodification and alienation of urban life. Werner claims that bohemia emerged from a population of creative minds alienated by modern mass culture. Due to a lack of church and aristocratic support for the arts, artists had to find new ways to make a living. Both the critic and the dealer earned larger roles 80 Jacobs also mentions the need to relocate geographically or psychologically in the rural manifestation of and predecessor of bohemia, the going-away. within the modem art market as traditional patrons faded away. Without the strict commissions and guidelines like those of previous art patrons, the artist was liberated to create his own self expressions, but the loss of aristocratic and church patron networks also contributed to the existence of the "starving artist." The first generation of artists stranded without patrons attempted to function within the bourgeois market. Werner shows how the Impressionists separated from bourgeois culture but still depended on the bourgeois patrons for their livelihood. For Werner, the second generation of bohemians were able to completely break from bourgeois society. Postimpressionist artists such as Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) were prime examples of the assertion of bohemian values. Van Gogh practiced the "psychological adjustment" that Mizruchi outlined by spending most of his life outside of the city and away from art institutions, in Arles. Paul Gauguin exaggerated the seven traits of bohemia by traveling to distant locations that were romanticized as a "primitive" garden of eden. When he was in Paris, he dressed the part of the bohemian in garish clothing. For both Van Gogh and Gauguin, art and life became counterculture expressions. The examples of bohemians in their time period are many, but the characteristics remain the same in that they separated themselves from their context in some way. The manifestos of early modern artists show the transition from the geographical going-away to its urban counterpart, bohemia. From 1900-1914 or the onset of modernization to the outbreak of the first world war, artists became increasingly interested in creating a "new" art to express the modern condition. Artists, under the influence of philosophers like Friedrich Nietzsche, sought this authentic experience in 53 marginalized and neglected places of society. Additionally, the existence and structure of Marx's manifesto gave artists a model from which they could work. Marx's manifesto was widely read and its form was adopted by artists interested in presenting their "new" art as "The Modern Movement." It had to be different from previous expressions in that it had to distinguish itself from its predecessors with a "new" style and meaning. Expression was central to the concept of a new art. The new art, based on models from Gauguin, van Gogh and Modersohn-Becker, was evaluated upon the authenticity of the self expression. Central to this "new" art was the notion of the artist as an individual, as a man, as a creator, as genius and as a translator of deeper universal truths. In particular, the manifestos of the early twentieth century point to the new psychological going-aM>ay inherent within the urban versions of the nineteenth century tradition for geographical relocation. The manifesto of Die Briicke indicates how they separated themselves from the institutions o f modernization's in order to create their version of "The Modern Movement." The German speaking world established avant-garde centers for the "new" art in Berlin, Munich, Dresden and Vienna. The expressive and subjective were strongly linked to German philosophical cultural traditions established by the cult of Nietzschean rejuvenation.81 There were three responses to the modern: one was profound pessimism, another was hysterical exhilaration and the final one was to seek the cause for the modern German Expressionism and Italian Futurism mark different facets o f a European avant-garde's reception o f the modem into an established artistic tradition whose example was predominantly French. Against the technical constraints obtaining within that tradition - a preoccupation with surface and with the consequences o f loosening color and structure from depiction - there was room for the underlying point: that the modern was not yet ‘total' and as such could be measured and its meaning assessed against that which it was not. Across Europe, the sharply felt experience o f the modern could still be silhouetted against a sense o f tradition, o f values rooted in the relatively unchanging conditions o f a life lived by the soils and the seasons. Charles Harrison and Paul Wood, Art in Theory, 1900-1990; An Anthology o f Changing Ideas (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 1995). condition.82 It is within the modern framework, a nearly binary system, in which one side is compelled to create an art that does reform modern corruption or the other side attempts to transform itself to keep up with and celebrate the modern. The members of the German Expressionist group, Die Brucke participated in a bohemian rebellion against the Wilhelminian social mores because they thought that those norms were out of touch with modernism. At the same time that they tried to create art to keep up with and celebrate modernism, they also criticized the materialism in German urban centers. They attempted to espouse a purer, Nietzschean way of existence through their manifesto, art and bohemian way of life. In protest against Wilhelminian stifling sexual norms and the corrupting aspects of modernity, Die Brucke sought to create the expressive and the primitive "new" art of modernism. Like the bridge in Zarathustra, after which they named their group, they hoped to live a Dionysian existence and hoped to offer a bridge from the old to the new world of human nature. It is in their manifesto and art like Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's (1880-1938) Striding Into the Sea, (1906) that their psychological retreat to urban bohemia is best exemplified. In the 100 years between Murger's La Vie Boheme and Greenberg's "Avant- Garde and Kitsch," individual definitions of bohemia emerged. Recent essays refine the definition of bohemia and crystalize its relationship to Greenberg's avant-garde and Danto's art world. The essence of bohemia as described by past and present scholars most clearly shares traits with Greenberg's avant-garde. Both bohemia and the avant-garde pointed to the critical and historical atmosphere of artistic creation long before For different movements the modern condition was considered to be a negative or a postive force. For example, the Italian futurists celebrated industrialization while the German Expressionists worried about rampant materialism. Danto delineated the art world. Yet, the most distant relative of Danto's art world, Greenberg's avant-garde and Murger's bohemia, existed in the early nineteenth century in the form of artist colonies and communities. 55 CH A PT ER 3 CLEMENT GREENBERG'S AVANT-GARDE Clement Greenberg devised his configuration of the terms avant-garde and kitsch to explain how something that looked like art could be nonart. The defining characteristics o f modern art no longer fit into the somewhat dominant Vasarian historical definition of art. The Vasarian historical definition of art identified art as idealized naturalistic paintings, sculpture and drawings that mimicked the world. Additionally, Vasarian art was evaluated on how well it appeared to be a subject from the real world. In other words, if the painting could fool the viewer into believing it was real, then it was considered an excellent painting. Modern art was still identifiable and evaluated in visual terms. Consequently, modern art still seemed to fit within some boundaries of the Vasarian definition. However, modern art was no longer concerned with "optical fidelity" to reality and this rendered the Vasarian historical definition of art obsolete for identifying and evaluating art. Thus, Greenberg proposed that in order to define art, one must look at the separation between artists and art institutions. Additionally, the impetus for the separation from traditional art needed to be explained. Greenberg outlined the modernist avant-garde from a historical perspective in order to distinguish high art from general culture. He did not address the role of the avant-garde in art criticism as specifically as Arthur Danto will, but he utilized his own knowledge of the avant-garde in his pertinent evaluation of Jackson Pollock's art. According to Greenberg, two options for artistic creation were available to artists in the modernist period. The first option paves the path to academicism, Alexandrianism and kitsch. Academicism, Alexandrianism and kitsch are similar except the first two occurred in a culture wherein the capabilities for mass production and consumption did not exist. Academicism and Alexandrianism used and reused the remaining relevant symbols with a currency in their culture and this created a stagnant culture. Kitsch was propagated a step further due to the onset of the industrial and scientific revolution. The industrial revolution urbanized the masses and established universal literacy. Universal literacy was sufficient for work, but not for the cultivated appreciation of art. In other words, the urban masses could read, but they were not afforded the leisure required to cultivate and appreciate fine art. Before universal literacy, formal and folk culture were distinguished by the education of the audience. If universal literacy is one condition for kitsch, then the availability of a fully matured cultural tradition is the other. The products of past matured cultures is made available for appropriation and becomes the subject matter of present-day kitsch. Kitsch used the language, raw material and academicism of previous cultures to convey its effects, which Greenberg claims are strictly emotional. In contrast, the other option, the avant-garde, was grounded in an historical criticism. The avant-garde's criticism evaluated society historically to expose that the bourgeois social order was part of a succession of social orders instead of an eternal, natural condition of life. Greenberg claims that the avant-garde offered an historical criticism instead of utopian alternatives to bourgeois society. Like kitsch, the birth of the avant-garde coincided with the scientific revolution. According to Greenberg, bohemia and the avant-garde are identical in that through revolutionary thought, they isolated the concept of the bourgeois to define what they were not. Migrating from bourgeois society, the avant-garde severed ties with their last remaining art-patrons from the traditional academic system. The avant-garde risked loss of patrons in their search for a higher level of art because they attempted to narrow and raise their expression to an absolute. In place of the truths of past societies, no longer relevant within modernism, the avant-garde found truth in the medium. In other words, the universal truth that they sought was art for arts sake. For the avant-garde, paintings about painting accessed universal truths more successfully than paintings with subject matter or recognizable content. The avant-garde preferred abstract and nonobjective art because it eliminated relative forms and was not dependent upon bankrupt symbols. The abstract painting was considered valid on its own terms. As Clement Greenberg explained, an abstract painting was valid on its own terms as a landscape, not a painting of a landscape, was valid on its own terms. In order to express an absolute, the artist was required to obediently adhere to the constraints and disciplines of art. In the imitation of imitating, the constraints and disciplines of art become the subject matter. Reducing the artistic experience to expression for the sake of expression matters more than what is being expressed. The avant-garde estranged many patrons by creating art for art's sake. The patrons were not equipped with the modernist historical definition of art to identify or evaluate the avant-garde's art. In other words, in place of representing a landscape in art, the artist worked to explore the canvas, the paint, 58 the color, the texture and the form. While art for arts sake was considered the path to the universal in art, it was also dangerous because it alienated its bourgeois audience. Greenberg equated the avant-garde with its precursor, bohemia, because both were willing to divorce bourgeois society to produce higher truth in culture. Avant-garde culture was contingent upon one trait, that it imitated the means of imitation. From Greenberg's elitist perspective, the dichotomy of avant-garde and kitsch reinstated the division between the culture of the elite and the culture of the masses. Regardless, Greenberg's configuration outlined the separation inherent within this progression and began to explore its evaluative capabilities. He mentioned how the avant-garde's separation indicated art from nonart or kitsch. In addition to clearly articulating the character of the avant-garde, Greenberg also refined the description of bohemia. His explanation of bohemia was clearer than previous descriptions because he examined it historically. Although it was not as deliberate as his historical exploration of the avant-garde and subsequently bohemia, Greenberg also examined the terms theoretically. Clement Greenberg's evaluation of Jackson Pollock's painting exemplifies that an art critic with knowledge of the avant-garde will recognize and interpret significant, concurrent art relevantly. Greenberg pinpointed groundbreaking works of art within his time using different philosophical, historical and critical methods. However, he applied his knowledge of the avant-garde and was better equipped to evaluate current, substantial art appropriately. Greenberg's criticism was based in Kantian formalism, thus he did not stress the historical context of Pollock's art. The Kantian approach was an appropriate form of criticism for the modernist historical moment. He was both ahead of his time and a product of his time. Greenberg was ahead of his time because he recognized the 59 60 "general historical" foundation of modernism as a motivation to philosophically and self-critically define painting.83 He was a product of his time because he offered his particular definition of painting like artists offered their definitions in their manifestos. Greenberg was immersed in the Abstract Expressionist's historical moment and so did not have the historical retrospect for art historical hindsight. Regardless, his analysis of paintings by Jackson Pollock exhibited an uncanny ability to see what was relevant about the art of modernism. Greenberg's sense of the overarching historical and critical perspective in which modernist art was created informed his pertinent evaluation of Pollock. In other words, Greenberg was aware of the modernist historical definition of art before many critics were. His understanding of the standards of modernist art stemmed from his understanding of the avant-garde. Clement Greenberg's historical vision enabled him to interpret contemporary art relevantly.84 His ability to see what was modem art and what was good modern art was ahead of his time. In contrast to many American critics who were unable to explain, understand or tolerate the art of the Abstract Expressionists, Greenberg had a powerful 85 historical vision. Thus, he was able to appropriately translate Pollock's art. The academic standards, from the Vasarian historical definition of art, were not applicable to modernist culture or art. In a time when many did not realize that the standards of art had shifted due to a change in the historical definition of art, Greenberg did. In other words, Greenberg realized that representational standards of the Vasarian definition of art had shifted to the expressive standards of the modernist definition of art: Historical moment is Danto's term for the zeitgesit that forms and influences the art world's perspective. 84 [n this section, contemporary art refers to art o f Greenberg ‘s time and not a period o f art. Arthur Danto, "Clement Greenberg," in After the End o f Art: The Pale o f Art History (Princeton: Princeton University, 1987), 45. 61 Realistic, naturalistic art has dissembled the medium, using art to conceal art. Modernism used art to call attention to art. The limitations that constitute the medium of painting-the flat surface, the shape of the support, the properties of the pigment-were treated by the old masters as negative factors that could be acknowledged only implicitly or indirectly. Under Modernism these same limitations came to be regarded as positive factors, and were acknowledged openly. Manet's became the first Modernist picture by virtue of the frankness with which they declared the flat surfaces on which they were painted. The Impressionists, in Manet's wake abjured under painting and glazes, to leave the eye under no doubt as to the fact that the colors they used were made of paint that came from tubes or pots. Cezanne sacrificed verisimilitude or correctness, in order to fit his drawing and design more explicitly to the rectangular shape of the canvas.86 Modernist art was measured by its capacity to discover its own philosophical essence. In other words, the value of art was not determined by how well it represented a landscape, ♦ R7 * but on how well it defined its discipline and medium. Greenberg realized that modernist painting was about expressing what is essential to modernist painting as "a general historical truth," and he also formulated that definition. Greenberg was a product of his time period because, along with the modernist artistic manifestos, he offers his own definition of pure painting. Thus, his historical vision of the overarching modernist paradigm was ahead of his time, but his participation in a manifesto-like definition of modernist art illustrates how he was also a product of his time. His attention to the broad historical and theoretical context was not required in formalist art criticism. However, much of Greenberg's most famous essays dedicate a considerable amount to the topic of the historical and critical perspective which fueled what he defined as "pure art." Clement Greenberg, "Modernist Paintings," in The Collected Essays and Criticism, 4:85. 87 Represented refers to a paradigm o f art making started in the early Renaissance and chronicled by Vasari which used the standards o f mimesis to gage art. In other words, the better the artist could make the painting appear to be a window into the real world, the better the painting. For example, this progression is exemplified by the narrative reaching from Giotto to Michelangelo. Clement Greenberg explained that the modernist critical perspective was dictated by Immanuel Kant because he criticized the means of criticism. In other words, Kant is the father of modernism, according to Greenberg, because he introduced the self-critical tendency. Specifically, Greenberg refers to the self-critical tendency used by the . . . . . . . . . . . QO . "characteristic methods of a discipline to criticize the d i s c i p l i n e.Gr eenberg applied Kant's notion of pure reason to his definition of pure art, in that Greenberg denounced