From: Lukas Werth (lukas.werth@rz.hu-berlin.de)
Date: 09/20/00-07:48:28 AM Z
At 21:09 18.09.00 +0100, you wrote:
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Lukas Werth" <lukas.werth@rz.hu-berlin.de>
>To: <alt-photo-process-l@skyway.usask.ca>
>The main verve, however, was religious.
>
>You have to tread carefully here. The Quattrocento, and even more the
>Cinquecento, are times when Humanism as a codified movement came into
>being. The Church was none too happy with the idea, but nevertheless, as
>far as secular artistic patronage is concerned, it made huge strides, and by
>the end of the Cinquecento we see many major public works being commissioned
>with no religious context at all. (Bear in mind that we are discussing Italy
>here.)
>
I have allways regarded as another centre of the spirit the Netherlands,
witness Erasmus of Rotterdam. No doubt the most manifold and dynamic
development was in Italy, but the rennaissance was a European movement, and
to restrict the view to Italy is somewhat arbitrary. That is true also for
art (in Germany Granach and Grünewald may be mentioned, or the Altdorfer
and the Danube School - I hope that is the name in English).
You have a point concerning the works without religious context; I suppose
you refer to the feudal one, however: I may really be wrong here, but I
skipped through the literature available to me, and I have not seen
finished works in the Rennaissance period of naked women pure and simple,
other than Botticelli, representations of Adam and Eve, Maria Magdalena
just covered by her hair, or Maria-like women nursing a Jesus-like child.
Yes, I have seen a pencil-study of the body a young, naked women in
Baxandall, beautiful, and, for all I can see, really drawn from a woman.
This was, however, obviously only meant as a study for the artist.
>
>Significantly, in
>> the Netherlands, Breughel and Bosch were not much concerned with the naked
>> body, indeed with body studies at all (for Bosch, nudity meant sin).
>
>Again, care is required here. For a start, Bosch was a typically Medieval
>rather than a Renaissance artist. He is obsessed with Hell's mouths and
>other very Medieval themes, and in particular his drawing of the human
>figure is conditioned by an earlier tradition. Breughel (or rather the
>Breughels, father and son) are a part of the post-Renaissance era. But, and
>it is a big but, they had not the exposure to Classical art that Italian
>artists had.......At that time Europe was a very big place.
Here we disagree. Bosch's work incorporates so many new visions and ideas,
and explores perspective, landscape and detail in such new ways, that he
must be seen in the context of the cultural movement which we are used to
call rennaissance. His visions of hell, punishment, and sin (and paradise)
are disquieting and urging, pointing to individual conscience and
responsibility; they point to the religious turmult to come (reformation),
and evoke visions of that new concept of the rennaissance, the conscious
individual. And - I was refering to Peter Breughel the elder - why do you
call him post-rennaissance, even if he is not part of the quattrocento?
Breughel is supposed to have traveled to Italy, by the way, which is
concluded, if I remember correctly, from the Alpine mountains in his
pictures which he must have seen when crossing them for painting them.
Breughel, by the way, has painted some pictures which resemble very much
those of Bosch.
>
>>In the
>> sixteenth century, too, reformation and counterreformation, the Calvinist
>> puritanism in many places probably frequently prevented the occupation
>with
>> the body in nature, although Rubens' women are proverbial.
>
>This is simply not true; 16thC mannerism, which grew from the influences of
>Michelangelo and Raphael, moved seamlessly into 17thC Baroque and Rococo. In
>fact Calvinism is a relatively minor influence here- the great patrons of
>the visual arts at this time are the Royal Houses of Europe, particularly of
>France, which was unrelentingly Catholic. (It is possible that the
>Calvinists had other things to spend their money on..........) The nude has
>hardly been more celebrated than in the baroque and rococo periods.
Well, I may have overdrawn my picture, though Rubens lived in Catholic
Antwerp. I remember a visit at the - marvellous - Rijks(?)museum in
Amsterdam, where I got the impression I outlined, but probably I was a bit
overenthusiastic - Rembrandt also did some nudes, after all.
Be that as it may, the main point I wanted to make, and for which i care,
is that studies of nudes - as other topics - have not remained the same
over the times, and should not just be interpretated by purely esthetical,
'artistic' means. It does no harm to a sophisticated view to take social
and cultural factoers into account, and to see single works in the general
framework of the time. I don't want to critisize here anybody's work: I am
not familiar enough with Sturges to allow myself any opinion here, and I
have other, personal prejudices against Newton - I simply detest his
high-society, glamorous style, his mixing with Lagerfeld and his ilk; I am
too much plebejan for all this. But this is purely personal.
I also think one may well disagree on particular artists, but I generally
think that art has by and large a social responsibility, and a role to play
which necessitates permanent reflection of its own position.
What I find personally interesting in the representation of naked or
half-naked bodies is the possibility, particularly in photography, to
emphasize the human form and condition beyond the immediate restictions of
time and fashion.
I am sorry for the German spelling of 'Baroque'; it happened because I
looked into German literature. But for the seemless transtion: I read -
again a matter for discussion - that in Barque for the fist time women were
(widely?) used as models to draw from.
Lukas
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