The Philosophy of Fine Art, volume 1 · Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
A. THE IDEAL SIMPLY, OR AS SUCH
When thou gazest forth at the stars, my star, Would that I were the heavens and thence on thee Could gaze forth out of a thousand eyes. Conversely we may exclaim that art gives to her forms the dilation of a thousand-eyed Argus, through which the inward life of Spirit at every point breaks into view. And not merely is it the bodily form, the expression of countenance, the attitude and demeanour which thus avails; the same appearance is everywhere visible in actions and events, speech and voice-modulation, in short, under every condition of life through which it passes, and under which it is possible for soul to make itself recognized in its freedom and ideal infinity. (_a_) And, in close connection with this inquiry into the interpenetration through all parts of the animating soul, we may justly ask ourselves, what precisely we understand under this conception of a soul which is throughout visible: or to restrict attention to definite limits we may inquire what are the specific characteristics of the soul whereof art reveals to us the truest manifestation. For in ordinary parlance one refers to the animating principle[271] peculiar to metals, stones, wild animals, to say nothing of that belonging to every kind of human character and its expressions. To natural objects, however, such as stones and plants, the expression "soul" in the complete acceptation of the term above mentioned is not strictly applicable. Such soul as purely natural objects possess is entirely finite, transitory, and rather a specific nature than a soul. The determinate individuality of such existences is consequently completely exposed in their finite existence; and, inasmuch as all that is present there is a positive limit of restriction, such appearance as there may be of a further claim to independence and freedom is only an appearance; ideal characteristics which may indeed be imported into them from without by means of art, but are not in the nature of the objects by themselves.
In the same way the soul of sense-feeling, through which Nature manifests first the Life-principle only betrays a subjective individuality, which still remains shut within itself, unable to assert its reality in the further sense of a return upon itself in a consciousness which shall attach to it the form of infinity. Its content is, therefore, of a restricted nature, and its manifestation in part the unrest, power of motion, sexual impulse, anxiety or fear of the dependent life; and, in part, it is the mere expression of an _inwardness_ capable of overcoming its finitude. The animating life of Spirit (mind) brings us first into contact with the free infinity capable within its own external and determinate existence of remaining constant to the inner principle of unity, and, in the act of expression, still reflected back upon its ideal substance. To Spirit consequently is it alone permitted to impress the hall-mark of its infinity and free self-recurrence on its external expression, even though by such expression it enters the realm of narrow boundaries. At the same time we may observe that Spirit, too, is only free and infinite in so far as it truly apprehends its universality, and deliberately posits for itself and accepts those ends which are adequate to its own notion.
Consequently, in so far as it fails to grasp its own freedom it can only exist in a restricted content, a character that is stunted, a temperament at once crippled and superficial. In combination with nullity of this kind the manifestation of Spirit must perforce remain wholly formal. We shall only find here the abstract crust of self-conscious Spirit, whereof the content contradicts the infinity of its freedom. Only by virtue of a genuine and essentially substantive content through which the restricted and mutable particularity derives its essential self-subsistency--so that definite structure and intrinsic worth, determined limit and substantial content, are realized in one totality--is such existence thereby able, through the very mode of expression which confines it, to proclaim itself also in its universal substance of self-contained soul-life. It is, in short, the province of art to comprehend and enunciate determinate and rational existence in its _truth_, that is to say, in the form adequate to its substance, the truly explicit content. And, consequently, the truth of art cannot consist in a mere conformity such as that to which we restrict the so-called imitation of Nature; external form must express harmoniously an internal content which is in itself harmonious throughout, and consequently can express itself as such.
As already remarked, the Ideal is only truly found when the external presentment is in itself a vehicle of the soul. It is one of our latest fashions to attempt, by means of those so-called "living pictures," an intentional and gratifying imitation of famous masterpieces. In these we find a fair reproduction of general accessories, such as grouping and draping; but, instead of the spiritual expression of the figures, have only too often to put up with faces absolutely commonplace. Such a defect mars the entire reproduction. The Madonnas of Raphael, on the contrary, in every detail of their countenance--whether it be cheeks, eyes, nose, or mouth--exhibit with harmonious consistency one supreme type of sacred joy, the pious, modest love of a devoted mother. We may affirm, if we will, that all women are capable of such emotion; but, at any rate, not every formal shape of feminine countenance is capable of expressing the depth of the same so consummately. (_c_) This reference, then, of all points of external existence to their spiritual significance, so that the external appearance unveils in adequate measure the spirit thereof, is just what constitutes the nature of the Ideal. It is, however, a "carrying back" into inwardness, in which we do not find the universal thus carried back to its extremest limit to the form of abstract _thought_, that is to say, but is rather suffered to rest halfway at the point in which we find the purely external and the purely inward meet together harmoniously.
The Ideal is consequently the reality selected out of the mass of chance particulars, in so far as the inner core in this external totality thus raised in opposition to universality is itself manifested as _living individuality._[272] For the individual subjectivity, which not only carries in itself a substantive content, but permits the same to appear in its own external appearance, stands in this central position, that in it all that is substantially the content is not suffered in its universal aspect to appear as an abstraction of itself, but still remains enclosed within the sphere of individuality, and consequently appears associated with a determinate existence, which now for its part, freed from mere finitude and transitory condition, is gathered up in a free and harmonious expression of most intimate soul-life. Schiller, in his poem "The Ideal and Life," contrasts the reality and its pains and struggles with "the still shadowland of Beauty." Such a land of shadow is the Ideal. The _spirits_ which rise up here have lost in death immediate existence, are released from the hunger of Nature, freed from the claims which fettered them in subjection to external forces and all the changes and confusions which are linked together with finite appearance.
But however much the Ideal treads under foot the mere object of sense and natural form, it draws at the same time the very wealth of it to itself, for it is art that is able to assign the very limits to all that the external appearance required for its self-preservation within which the external thing may appear as the manifestation of spiritual freedom. For this reason it is the Ideal which alone among things envisaged to sense presents a free and self-contained content reposing on its own resources, in complete sensuous enjoyment and satisfaction with itself. The music of this rapture may be heard through every embodiment of the Ideal. However far the external form may be carried the soul of the Ideal is never wholly absorbed in it. And in truth such manifestation is only beautiful in so far as its beauty not merely permeates the whole, but is a subjective unity, by virtue of which the subject-matter of the Ideal must appear emergent from all the fracture of its former individual parts and their respective ends and energies, raised in the Ideal itself to a higher totality and self-subsistence.
However, it is possible also in romantic art, albeit here the representation of suffering and grief penetrates the soul and its emotions more deeply than is the case with antique art, that the delineation may reveal to us a spiritual intimacy, a delight in resignation, a blessedness in pain, a rapture in sorrow, nay, even a voluptuous ecstasy in martyrdom[278]. Not only in painting but in the profoundly religious music of Italian composers, we find this ecstasy and illumination of grief abundantly expressed. We may, as a summary definition in romantic art, call it "the smile through tears." The tears have their origin in affliction, the smile in blithesome serenity, and consequently this smile through weeping indicates, as it were, the point of self-repose in the midst of pain and suffering. It is hardly necessary to add that the smile indicated here is no mere sentimental emotion, no mere vanity of the subject treated or dabbling with beauty[279] over painful effects and insignificant traits of subjective feeling; rather (on its artistic side) it must appear as the firm delineation and freedom of beauty in defiance of all pain, in the spirit of what was said of Ximenes in the romances of the Cid, "how beautiful she was in tears."
In contrast to this emotional abandonment in men is either ugly and repellent, or actually ridiculous. Children, for example, break into tears at the slightest provocation, and we can only laugh at them. The tears, however, in the eyes of a man of earnest and self-contained character, under stress of deep feeling, betray a very different type of emotion. Laughter and tears can, however, very readily fall apart as unrelated, and are, as such, falsely utilized as a vehicle of art in such abstraction; the laughter chorus in Weber's "Freischütz" may be cited as an example. Laughter, after all, is a kind of explosion, which it is impossible to exercise without restraint and preserve the Ideal. Another example of this laughter, which is nothing but laughter, occurs in a duet of Weber's "Oberon," throughout which we are in a continual state of anxiety for the prima donna's throat and lungs. How very differently the inextinguishable laughter of the gods affects us in Homer, a sound which breaks from the blessed repose of divinity, and rather expresses gladsome serenity than abstract and wanton abandonment. Just as little ought weeping, devoid of all restraint, to be introduced into the ideal work of art, of such a kind as that we may hear in all its comfortlessness in another part of the "Freischütz."
And speaking generally, in music singing must take to itself the kind of joy and rapture which we catch from the lark in the open sky. Shrieking, whether of pain or delight, is not music at all. Even in the expression of suffering the sweet tones of the plaint must penetrate and clarify the sorrows, so that it continually may seem to us worth all the suffering to arrive at such sweetness of plaint in its expression. And this is the sweetness of melody, the singing of every kind of art. (_γ_) Regarded in a certain relation to this fundamental axiom of art we may find some justification for the principle of irony in its modern sense; but it must not be overlooked that irony is frequently destitute of all real seriousness, and is particularly prone to expatiate over bad subject-matter; and, in another aspect of it, it is apt to run to seed in the mere yearning of emotion rather than actively participate in practical life, as is proved by the case of Novalis, one of the finer temperaments who have made this point of view their own, and for lack of definite interest, or through shrinking from the real world, are driven up and down, and cajoled into this sort of spiritual consumption. This is the kind of yearning which will not descend to mere practical business and production, because it is afraid of soiling itself with the contact of finite things, although it already secretly feels the defects of such exclusion.
No doubt we find in irony that absolute principle of negativity, in which the subject of consciousness becomes self-centred through the annihilation of definite relations and particulars; but in this case the act of annihilation of definite relations and particulars, as we have already pointed out when discussing the principle, is not, as in comedy, essentially in its right place, simply exposing its own want of substance, but is directed quite as often against everything else excellent in itself and of sterling worth. Whether we regard irony, then, as this art of universal destruction, or as the yearning of which we have spoken in contrast with the true Ideal, it betrays a secret lack of proportion and restraint which is detrimental to the artist. Substantive form is what the Ideal demands, which, owing to the fact that it is clothed in the form and figure of external things, is unquestionably qualified by particularity no less than limitation; but this limitation of its form is at the same time included in such a way that everything merely external in its appearance is annulled and abolished. Only through this negation of mere externality is the determinate form of the Ideal a real exposition of the substantive content which belongs to it in a mode of appearance susceptible to sense-perception and the imagination.
2. The plastic presentment of form, which is as much a constituent feature of the Ideal as it is of the essentially homogeneous character of its content, and the way these two aspects are fused together, render necessary an inquiry into the relation obtaining between the ideal representation of art and Nature. For this external aspect and its embodiment is closely associated with that which we generally call Nature. In this connection we once more come upon that old and ever-renewed and still unsettled dispute, whether the representation of art should follow the objects of Nature as they appear strictly to sense, or should rather ennoble and illumine them. The right of Nature, the rule of beauty, the Ideal and the truth of Nature--with indefinite conceptions such as these arguments for and against may be bandied about for ever. A work of art, we are told, should unquestionably be natural, but there is such a thing as a mean or ugly Nature, we must not of course imitate _that_; on the other hand--and so our disputants wrangle on and never come to a satisfactory conclusion.
In recent times the opposition between the Ideal and Nature has once more been emphasized and received an exceptional significance through the writings of Winckelmann. Winckelmann's enthusiasm, as already pointed out[280], was first awakened by his study of the antique and its ideal forms. This insight into the peculiar excellence of classic art he thoroughly mastered and only ceased from his labours after making all that he had learned through his study of such masterpieces famous throughout Europe. From this recognition, however, originated a kind of craze for ideal representation, which, despite all its belief in the discovery of beauty, was really a relapse into flatness, absence of vitality, and superficiality. It is this kind of emptiness more particularly in the art of painting, which Herr von Rumohr had before him in the polemical writings I have already noticed. The theory of art has to solve this difficulty. As for its interest, on the practical side of art, we shall do well to pass it wholly by. We may formulate principles as we please for mediocrity and the talents that express it, the result is always the same. Whether our theory is a distorted one or unexceptionable all we shall get is something commonplace or weak. At the same time Art and more particularly painting has unquestionably received a stimulus other than that we have deprecated from this very quest of so-called Ideals; and, through the renewed interest thereby excited in old Italian and German painters, has at least made an effort to secure a profounder and more vital content in its work.
The world is quite as tired of hearing the praises of that equally exclusive Ideal in the opposite camp, namely, that of undiluted realism in art. Theatregoers are, to take an example close at hand, heartily sick of the realistic type of domestic drama. The old story over and over again--disputes between husband and wife, sons and daughters, the source of our income, the inventory of our expenses, the servility of ministers and the intrigues of their lackeys and secretaries, down to the question of the last sixpence between the dame of the house and her kitchen-maid, or up to the last gossip of the daughters over their touching love-affairs in the parlour--such tales of woe most of us will prefer to take where, we may at least get them without adulteration--at home. In this opposition between Ideal and Nature writers have been inclined to regard one type of art to the exclusion of others, with an especial predilection, however, for painting, whose subject-matter is the particularity of sense-perception. We will test our problem by putting the question to start with wholly in general terms, thus: "Is art to be prose or poetry?" Now what is truly poetical in art is just that which we have called the Ideal. If the question of difficulty in question is a mere matter of terminology we are quite prepared to call the Ideal something else. But, however called, the question remains what it is which constitutes poetry or prose in art. And although the adherence to what is in itself poetical in the determination of it by certain crafts may lead those arts into confusion, and, indeed, has already done so, it is contended that in so far as any subject has an express affinity with poetry, such has been also the subject of genuine pictorial treatment, genuine for the simple reason that such a content is unquestionably of a true poetical nature.
Well, let us examine a concrete case. The present exhibition of art (1818) contains several pictures, all of which are of one school, the so-called Düsseldorf. Every one of these have borrowed subjects from poetry, and indeed from the emotional side of poetry peculiarly adapted to pictorial representation. The more often and carefully we examine these pictures, the more complete will be our impression of their excessive sweetness and insipidity[281]. In the foregoing contradiction there are present the following general characteristics[282]: (_a_) First, there is the formal ideality of the work of art, that is to say, the element of poetry in its general signification, which is, as the term implies, something composed and brought together by man, which he has taken into his imagination[283] and then actively worked into the artistic composition.
It is quite true that a work of art is not entirely the imaginative concept in its universal aspect, but rather the determinate form of its envisagement. It is for all that bound, emanating as it does from the creative medium and operations of mind, and despite the living resemblance to real things we may find upon it, to permeate the whole with this universal quality. And in this we have that higher ideality of the poetical product as contrasted with the purely formal ideality of the art of production. From this point of view it is the task of a work of art to grasp the object in its universal relations, and in the envisagement it presents to let fall everything which stands in a wholly external or indifferent relation to the content. An artist for this reason will refuse to accept all forms and means of expression offered him by the external world, on the mere ground that he finds them there. His main effort will be, if at least his aim be a real poetical creation, to secure that which will appropriately work in with his own imaginative conception; and, if he looks to Nature for assistance in supplying him with details, or, generally, as material to translate into his work, he will utilize such, not because he finds them so in Nature, but because they fall in their _right_ place as a part of his composition and are rightly made for him. This "right" of the artist is a higher one than the mere right of immediate _fact._
In his representation of the human form, for instance, an artist will not attempt such imitation as we find attempted by those restorers of ancient pictures, who reproduce old cracks, which through the swelling of either paint or varnish have involved all the older parts of the picture in a kind of arabesque, even on the portions restored. The portrait-painter will rather permit the tracery of the flesh, and _a fortiori_ such incidents as freckles, pustules, warts, and so forth, to disappear entirely. In this respect the painter Denner, so famous for his close realization of Nature, is by no means an ideal master. For the same reason indications of muscles and veins may be given, but their distinction and relief should be far slighter than that we observe in Nature. In all such impressions little or nothing of spirit is manifested, and the expression of spirit is what is essential in the human form[286]. I cannot think it therefore wholly a disadvantage that we moderns have less to do with the nude in sculpture than the ancients. On the other hand the general style of our dress in comparison with the ideal drapery of classical times is less artistic and more commonplace. The object in both cases is to cover the form.
The drapery, however, we find in the antique is, taken by itself, a more or less formal smooth surface only so far determinate in its adjustment to the frame by its attachment to the shoulder. In other respects the garment remains entirely formal[287], hanging down simply and freely by virtue of its own immanent weight, or only determined through the position of the body and the pose and motion of the limbs. In the determination thus implied we find the external shape entirely reflecting the mutable expression of the spirit which animates the body. The particular form of the garment, the folds of it, the motion of it either up or down is clothed in the shape dictated direct from the inward impulse, and as each may momentarily appear appropriate to the particular pose or movement--and it is this form of determination which constitutes the ideality of such drapery. In the clothing we have adopted nowadays, on the contrary, the entire material is, from the first, cut out and worked up stiffly into the forms of particular limbs, so that anything approaching spontaneity in its rise and fall is impossible. Even the character of the folds is determined by previous models, and generally both cut and fall are worked out wholly by the technical rules and craftsmanship of the tailor.
It is true, of course, that the configuration of the limbs determines generally the form of such clothing; but in this arrangement of the bodily form we merely have either a perverse imitation, or an enveloping of human limbs according to the convention of fashion and the accidental taste of the times. The cut of our cloth once made is irrevocably made, and neither the position of the body nor the motion of the limbs can appreciably affect it. We may move our arms and legs about as much as we please, the sleeves of our jackets and our trousers remain unalterable. Folds or creases may perhaps appear in them, but even then only on the lines of the original cutting out, as we see them, for example, on the statue of Scharnhorst. Our modern way of clothing is consequently, as an external cover, not sufficiently differentiated from the inner life to appear on its reverse side as the formal expression of that life; instead of this we have a false imitation of the human form stereotyped in the preordained and unalterable cut of our tailor.
Ideas discussed in this chapter
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