Art – Page 6 – Achilles & Aristotle

Powerpoint like an Egyptian

Why did ancient Egyptians have two left feet? Ernst Gombrich provides a fascinating answer in ‘The Story of Art’ – to make sure you had two good feet in the afterlife.

The art of the Pharoahs’ is in some senses very realistic. But lack of perspective and ‘side on’ angles can make it seem flat and naive to modern eyes. But that’s because it was governed by very formal rules of representation, scale and geometric placement.

A brief ‘naturalistic’ period, under Tutankhamen’s sun worshipping father, shows Egyptian artists absolutely could do portraiture. But once sun worship was banished, it was back to the formal rules of representation and proportion which lasted for 3000 years.

And why? Because the Egyptian artist was capturing the ‘ideal type’, the ‘essence’ or essential attributes of the person, duck, fish, foot or god portrayed. Thus key features for the afterlife – a full eye and two shoulders or the plumage of a wild fowl – were shifted, twisted, rotated or brought forward to ensure their ‘ideal attributes’ were clearly represented and hence captured and assured – in the version of the person or fowl which persisted into the afterlife.

Egyptian tomb art was more like designing a powerpoint slide than painting a picture. Placement, the right relative scale and the mix of images, words and sidebars to tell a story were the point. And a bit like ‘cutting and pasting’ onto a powerpoint slide, if necessary, images of birds or fish were ‘pasted’ on top of backgrounds to make sure their key attributes were visible and preserved.

The reason, then, for two left feet is that the ‘arches’ of the foot are more ‘essential’ than the outside – hence two ‘ideal’ feet are portrayed – arches facing out.

I’d have been laughing in ancient Egypt with my love of powerpoint. But what would the Egyptians have made of clip art? Surely sacrilege. Then as now.

Aristotle, Art, Life

Art and Artists

I’ve started E.H. Gombrich’s ‘The Story of Art’ which was recommended by one friend and came up in conversation with another today. Gombrich says there is really no ‘Art’, only artists and what they create.

A lot of what what ‘Art’ is actually about, is nothing to do with experts, critics, audiences or patrons – it’s about the artist and their personal effort to produce something of intrinsic value. The painting above from ‘The Story of Art’ simply and powerfully captures not only the passion of Christ, but also the passion of the unknown 12th Century artist.

I pointed out today that this connects with one of my dictums for social media – if you like what you’ve done that’s good enough, don’t worry about anyone else. I think social media is largely about forgetting the ‘audience’ and simply writing or posting something you personally care about, are interested in or want to say. It then finds an audience through chance and serendipity.

At this point in our conversation today I was forced to bring in Aristotle – and we had a laugh about it. Aristotle is knockout reference once you buy into him. There’s often nothing more to say once you’ve heard what Aristotle said on a subject.

So, drawing on Aristotle’s ‘Poetics’, my definition of the job of the artist – and bloggers too, I reckon – is to forget about ‘Art’ or ‘audience’ and simply:

Say, write, paint or sculpt something transcendent and universal about the human condition in no more and no less words, notes, chisel blows or brush-strokes than are needed.

If it’s good it will find appreciation – if only from the person who matters most, the artist.

Aristotle, Art, Life, Poetry

Lost in Translation

As I read and write more, I come to enjoy the turns of phrase of past times. I’m not arguing for Chaucer in the original – life’s too short. But the thundering prose of the King James Bible or a decent translation of Aristotle, for example.

Having learnt that ‘plot’ is everything in poetry, I largely fell for Aristotle’s Poetics based on one line:

The getting-up of the spectacle is more a matter for the costumier than the poet.

I’ve quoted this at work a few times to point out the job at hand – substance not spin. And I found myself quoting it to the missus last night having watched ‘The Immortals’, which I found a big disappointment.

I do enjoy a good ‘sword and sandals’ epic, and I really wanted to like it. But ‘The Immortals’ managed to make very little of the ‘plot’ of Theseus, whilst expending far too much effort on the costumes and CGI. They even ripped off Maximus’s helmet from ‘Gladiator’ for an all too boyish Zeus (see above).

Ridley Scott knows, as Aristotle said, that: the first essential – the life and soul of Tragedy – is the Plot. I fear the Director of last night’s disappointing fayre, was reading the more leaden modern translation of my favourite ‘Poetics’ quote, from the duff version I bought on my Kindle:

The production of spectacular effects depends more on the art of the stage machinist than on that of the poet.*

Too much stage-machinist and not enough poet in ‘The Immortals’ for me. Had Aristotle seen it, he’d be gently shaking his head – more in sadness than in anger. Theseus, the founding myth of Ancient Greece, was very much lost in translation.

*So if you’re buying Aristotle’s Poetics, I’d buy Ingram Bywater’s 1920 OUP translation, which you can get for free on dailylit.com.

Art, Life, Odysseus, Science

Daubing

I read a while ago that physicists were arguing over the wisdom of analysing the complete dataset from the latest probe which is measuring the cosmic microwave background radiation.

Why? Because from it we will soon have all the data it is possible for us to have on the origins of the universe. And if we analyse it all, we will have closed the book of history on our ultimate origins – there will be nothing more for future generations of physicists to know.

I was reminded of this by a lively conversation on the history of Western Art the other day. I’ve recently bought myself a primer which takes you from cave paintings to cubism and contemporary modern art.

In the early pages, just how small the sliver is, of what survives from antiquity, becomes obvious. There are no paintings, often no original statues and incredibly few fragments from entire cities, kingdoms and civilisations. The ‘cosmic background radiation’ of western culture is largely mapped. What we have is probably all there is.

But although only a fragment, it has been a treasure trove down the centuries. In the writings of Montaigne, his many references to Plutarch, Seneca, Horace et al were the ‘classical education’ which in his time (or in fact slightly before it as he lamented) were the gold standard. A Renaissance man who knew his ‘Greats’, knew everything that was worth knowing.

Paraphrasing Wikipedia, perhaps there is still something to be said for ‘Philo’s Rule’ of ‘classical education’: preserving those words and ideas which impart intellectual and aesthetic appreciation of “the best, which has been thought and said in the world”.

For the polymath, history is the easiest framework on which to hang intellectual curiosity. The past is finite. But, unlike the cosmic background radiation, the arrow of time for the living is forwards – at least for a few decades.

So, I think there’s a balance to strike between a good investment in “the best” that has been thought, said and painted, and keeping abreast of the ephemera of today. History has winnowed and filtered, but it has also carelessly and randomly mulched, ignored and forgotten.

Time marches on. And who knows which of today’s ‘cave paintings’ will be remembered 10,000 years from now. Daubing is as important as appreciating the daubing of others.

Art, Life

Own Goal

I’m having a jolly football weekend with old friends. But I’m still haunted by Andrew Graham-Dixon’s excellent and dark ‘Art of Germany‘ which I watched in the week. The image of the two bleak works of Caspar David Friedrich he presented stick with me. They sit side by side in Berlin: ‘The abbey in the oak forest’ and ‘The monk by the sea’.

Friedrich was seeking a more ‘primal’ and ‘elemental’ God than the one the church then offered. These two pictures suggest he found that search lonely and difficult.

His skies and landscapes are sometimes more hopeful, but these two suggest the crushing difficulty of finding God, on your own, at the turn of the 19th century in Northern Europe. Kierkegaard was on the same intellectual quest at around the same time.

It seems to me you’ll drive yourself mad if you go down this route. Humans ‘huddle’ and if you look for meaning all on your own, you’re lost. People, ‘relevant complexity’ and the here-and-now are what it’s about.

Football and a few beers with friends are a good investment in staying well away from ‘The abbey in the oak forest’.