Degenerate Art Unearthed

No one can claim, with honesty, that postwar Germany has tried to bury its ignoble record from the Nazi era.  To the contrary, Germans have been assiduous in acknowledging and atoning for their country's misdeeds during the '30s and '40s.  Only recently have they decided (appropriately) that the time is ripe to move on, separated as they are from Hitler by two generations.  But there is still no impulse to bury the past.

Nevertheless, the ground still yields buried secrets from that time.  Recently, while working on a new subway station in Berlin, workers unearthed some sculptures that had been featured in the Nazis' notorious "degenerate art" exhibit.  They had been housed in the home of one Erhard Öwerdieck, and were entombed beneath the rubble of that home when it became a casualty of airstrikes on Berlin.  The full story, from The New York Times, is here.  The sculptures are now on display in the Neues Museum, Berlin's museum of archaeological antiquities.  (This, itself, is a subtle plea by Germans for the right to move on.)

First minor quibble: "How they ended up underground near City Hall is still a mystery; it seems to involve an Oskar Schindler-like hero."  At first, I balked - Schindler saved people, not sculptures - but read on, as it seems that Öwerdieck actually was Schindleresque.

Second minor quibble - the final two paragraphs:

Farther down the block the Deutsches Historisches Museum’s Hitler exhibition, today’s version of a “Degenerate” show, means to warn viewers about succumbing to what present German law declares morally reprehensible. How could any decent German have ever been taken in? the show asks.

That happens to be the question the Nazis’ “Degenerate” show posed about modern art. Many more Germans visited that exhibition than the concurrent one of approved German art. Maybe Oewerdieck was among those who went to the modern show and saw these sculptures in it. In any case, today’s Germany has salvaged them and has organized this display. Redemption sometimes comes late and in small measures. 

Late?  Small measures?  This is rather too begrudging.  One would think the Germans had done nothing to atone between the end of the War and now.

When Art Attacks

From Peter Schjeldahl's latest review in The New Yorker, concerning the artistic atmosphere of the '60s:

Blatant narcissism was in the air, too, but it was typically inflected with self-abasement, particularly in stunts performed soon afterward by Vito Acconci (who bit himself anywhere he could and photographed the tooth marks) and Chris Burden (who had himself shot).

Well! All I can say is, an ear just won't cut it anymore.

"Beauty Is a Minefield"

Ain't that the truth.  Harper's has a thoughtful essay on the nature and history of beauty, prompted by (but not much lingering on) Umberto Eco's new book, History of Beauty.  The essay includes the first sound description I have come across of the distinction between the sublime and the beautiful - a distinction in which I have had a passive interest for some time:

Beauty, for instance, which is characterized by charm, harmony, simplicity, radiance, along with perfection of detail, derives from feelings of pleasure and has a relaxing effect on the "fibers" of the human body. By contrast, the sublime, which derives from feelings of pain, tightens these fibers. Beauty merely invites; the sublime commands.

This distinction comes from Edmund Burke, in his book known (in shorthand) as On the Sublime.  It might be right, it might be wrong - but it's a good starting point, anyway.

I had always thought On the Sublime would be a good place to start my inquiry, and I feel that more so now.  Perhaps I'll pick up a copy.  Or Eco's book, for that matter.

Anatomy of a Meme

"This blended milk and ice drink of mine attracts young males to my front lawn. And thus they proclaim, 'this is superior to thine! Verily, it is superior to thine!'"

Verily.

Some of them betray a false ear for oldey-timey language ("I hath"??). However, I am quite fond of the following, in particular:

• Today I found it unnecessary to make use of my musket - I must say it was a splendid afternoon.
• Do not despise the racketeer - instead despise his sport.
• Male siblings prior to prostitutes.

The Statues of Rome - Part Two

Let's continue our meander through the statue garden of Rome, shall we? Last time, I trudged out some pictures of the city's heroic statues, while making a few observations and dissents from the aesthetic theories of Walter Pater. This time around, I have nothing so heady in mind: while I still have a theme, I have no theoretical axe to grind. Rather, I will merely focus on pictures of sculptures that embody the holy. (Yes, the next installment will focus on the profane.) Pack your Baedeker and let's get going!

The Holy

Halfway down the Piazza Navona sits the resplendently Baroque church of Sant'Agnese in Agone. In one chapel stands this statue of Saint Sebastian - immediately recognizable, of course, by the host of arrows that penetrate his body. I don't know when this statue was created, or by whom, but I was taken by its naturalism, and the striking juxtaposition of calm repose and physical agony captured in the work.

The Ponte Sant'Angelo, originally built by Hadrian, spans the Tiber in the shadow of the Castello Sant'Angelo. Along the rails stand ten Baroque statues of angels, holding instruments of the Passion. This statue - created by Antonio Raggi, a student of Bernini's - appears to be holding a chess piece, but in fact is holding a throne. This statue, and the others on the bridge, are a delight to photograph, out as they are in the clean Roman light.

These three statues are in the Castel Sant'Angelo itself. (The picture in the middle was included in my previous post on Rome's statues.) The marble statue, of the Archangel Michael, is by Rafaello da Montelupo, active in the 16th century; it originally sat at the top of the fortress itself. In 1753, however, after suffering damage, it was replaced by the bronze statue, executed by the Flemish artist Peter Anton von Verschaffelt. The bronze work, I feel, is far more striking and dramatic, and therefore more fitting for its perch - although the calm visage of Rafaello's statue brings to mind Michelangelo's David. It can still be seen in a courtyard in the fortress.

A delightful, multicolored stoup in St. Peter's, near Michelangelo's Pietà.

The Pietà itself. I wish this picture were better, but it is hard to get close to this, perhaps the most famous sculpture in St. Peter's.

A very animated depiction of Saint Veronica, in St. Peter's. This statue is part of the shrine to Saint Veronica. She carries, of course, the shroud that was reputedly used to wipe the face of Christ as he carried the cross through Jerusalem.

This is a very old statue, also in Saint Peter's, of Saint Peter Enthroned, reputedly created in the late 13th century by Arnolfo di Cambio. For centuries, pilgrims have rubbed Peter's left foot as they walk by. In the second picture, I join in this ancient tradition.

The nave of Saint John Lateran, the official cathedral of Rome, is lined with enormous statues of the Apostles, all dating from the early 18th century. This one is Saint Matthew, by Camillo Rusconi. One wonders what he is reading that seems to shock him so.

In a building across the street from Saint John Lateran are the Scala Santa (Holy Steps), said to be the very stairs in Pilate's palace that Christ climbed several times on his way to meet his fate. For centuries, pilgrims (myself included) have climbed the steps on their knees, praying as they go. These three statuary groups can be found at the base of the steps. They depict, in order: Christ's agony in the garden of Gethsemane, Judas' betrayal of Christ, and Pilate presenting Christ before the people of Jerusalem ("Ecce Homo").

The steps are marble but are covered with wooden planks for their protection. At various points, however, holes are left open in the wood; these indicate, it is said, the places where flecks of Christ's blood could be found. I didn't notice any blood as I peered through the little holes.

Filthy, Dirty, Smelly Tourists Are Destroying the Sistine Chapel

Big surprise. Present company (i.e., me) excluded, of course.

The Statues of Rome - Part One

In Studies in the History of the Renaissance, the old Oxford don Walter Pater rejected the notion that the various forms of high art were essentially interchangeable in their expressive capacity. Rather, he theorized that different arts were more appropriately suited for different kinds of expression. While "[a]ll art has a sensuous element," he explained, nevertheless, "one form of art, by the very limitations of its material, may be more adequate than another for the expression of any one phase of its experience." (The experience he was speaking of was the ancient Greek ideal, which Pater felt - with some justification - was most sublimely expressed in sculpture. Then again, no Greek music and precious little Greek painting has survived to our time, so our perspective may be skewed.)

Pater found sculpture to be the art form best suited to a depiction of man that is not self-analytical. I think he means, by this, that sculpture captures the intrinsic beauty of man - the beauty that is not relative, but rather is inherent - better than the other arts. Pater also found that sculpture was a weak medium for expressing situations, or what might be described as a narrative. "In poetry and painting," he declared, "the situation predominates over the character; in sculpture, the character over the situation." He continued:

Excluded by the limitations of its material from the development of exquisite situations, [sculpture] has to choose from a select number of types intrinsically interesting, interesting that is, independently of any special situation into which they may be thrown. Sculpture finds the secret of its power in presenting these types in their broad, central, incisive lines. This it effects not by accumulation of detail, but by abstracting from it. All that is accidental, that distracts the simple effect of the supreme types of humanity, all traces in them of the commonness of the world, it gradually purges away.

What to make of Pater's theory? Let's start with what he is not saying. He is emphatically not saying that there is a hierarchy of the arts - merely that the several arts have different capacities, and in this he is most probably right. He is not saying that sculpture cannot be allegorical or conceptual; and he is certainly right in his observation that the medium - any medium - imposes certain limitations that it would be folly to ignore.

And yet, Pater seems to have examples from ancient Greece too much in mind when he says that sculpture best achieves its purpose not by "accumulation of detail" but by "abstracting from it." One need only look at some of the riotous works of the Baroque to conclude that not everyone at every time took a "less is more" approach to sculpture. While Pater's theory might well describe the aesthetic values that the ancient Greeks ascribed to sculpture, it does not seem to fit so well on the aesthetic values of other places or eras.

More fundamentally, though, I believe Pater may be mistaken when he deprecates the narrative potential of sculpture. Allegorical sculpture can most certainly describe a situation, and, as such works do not depict any specific person, the situation (or at least the concept) predominates over the character. But even when specific characters are shown, the work can depict the "special situation into which they may be thrown," as well - sometimes to brilliant effect.

To put it simply, I suspect that Pater's theory suffers from a lack of universality. While I only read his book after returning from Italy, my still-fresh memories of the sculpture I saw there sprang immediately to mind as refutation. Italy is littered with such refuting sculpture, expressing very clearly the interiority of man and the situations in which he finds himself. Perhaps nowhere is this more true than in Rome, where a wild confusion of styles and periods abounds - in sculpture, certainly, but in all of the plastic arts as well.

What follows is a brief tour of some of the sculptural highlights of my time in Rome. While my favorite sculptures from my Italian tour are actually in Florence, those of Rome are more variegated. And while they do nothing to counter Pater's suggestion that sculpture is the ideal art form for an objective, extrinsic depiction of man (and he may in the end be right on this anyway), they do at least suggest that sculpture's depiction of man can penetrate to his interior life or can capture his relations with the world around him - and can do either very well. Sculpture can, in other words, depict man in a self-analytical way.

More importantly, though, sculpture can be beautiful - and that's the real purpose of this post. This will be the first of several posts treating the sculpture of Rome, and I have decided that we should begin with depictions of the active, the moving - the heroic. Let's get started.

The Heroic

Here are two images of one of the most famous statues in the world: the Apollo of Belvedere.

This statue is a Roman copy of a Greek original from the 4th century BC. It stands in the Vatican Museum. It depicts Apollo, just after he has let fly an arrow that will kill Python, a monstrous serpent that lived near Delphi. (For this reason, it is also known as the Pythian Apollo.) The god is not captured in a moment of tense activity, as one would suspect; rather, he maintains a calm and poised demeanor. Even the folds of his cape, while realistically depicted, are remarkably unruffled. This statue is an exquisite rendition of elegance in action.

Much the same can be said of this work as well - which shows Perseus holding aloft the severed head of Medusa. This statue, also in the Vatican, dates not from antiquity, but from 1801, and is the work of the Venetian sculptor Antonio Canova. Canova's Perseus, like the Apollo before, is gracefully restrained. And once again, the folds of the cape betray only the merest hint of action. But the head of Medusa, by contrast, is a frightful thing. She wears a face not of wrath or hatred, but terror - not unlike, one must imagine, the faces of those unfortunates who caught her eye while she was living. How neatly, by Canova's hand, have the tables been turned on her!

The heroic is not always so confident, as this grouping shows. It flanks the northern edge of the gargantuan, bombastic, and unloved monument to Victor Emmanuel II, first king of a united Italy. Begun in 1911 and completed in 1935, the pompous monument expresses the insecurity of a nation late to statehood and to the imperial game that was then beginning its wretched decline. The central figure, a warrior, brazenly struts, spear in hand and chest thrown forward. (In his arrogance, he seems to have forgotten the purpose of the shield he holds.) He barges before the two other figures, one pensive, the other watchful - action pushing its way to the front. And he brings to mind another Italian of the same era who also liked to puff his chest out.

Let's return to a more credible expression of the heroic - and for that, what could be better than the famous Laocoön, in the Vatican, dating from the first century BC? Laocoön was a Trojan priest who warned his countrymen against accepting the Greeks’ gift of a wooden horse (“beware of Greeks bearing gifts,” he said); they ignored his advice, with dramatic consequences. Spiteful even in victory, Athena, the protector of the Greeks, sent two serpents to kill him and his sons. This sculpture was discovered near Rome in the early 1500s, and Michelangelo was present for its unearthing. It helped to fuel the revival of classical notions of aesthetics in the late Renaissance.

The drama in this sculpture is breathtaking – especially in the sinuous movements of the snakes, which seem to come from everywhere. The fear on the face of the son to the viewer’s right is, I think, especially moving. When I read Pater's statement that, in sculpture, the character predominates over the situation, I immediately objected: "but what about the Laocoön?" Pater must have anticipated this, for a page after making that observation, he noted:

The Laocoön, with all that patient science through which it has triumphed over an almost unmanageable subject, marks a period in which sculpture has begun to aim at effects legitimate only in painting.

It is, he seems to say, the exception that proves the rule - though a remarkable exception, he implicitly concedes. Perhaps he is right; though I would consider any painting that achieves half the level of drama as this sculpture achieves to be a resounding success. Contrary to Pater's suggestion, this work - notwithstanding the limitations inherent in sculpture - does indeed capture an "exquisite situation" - exquisitely terrifying.

Other Peoples' Desperation Is Not Art

Don't try telling this guy, though. He collects the signs of homeless people.

But in the way the signs crystalize their makers' despair and suffering, they are quite moving, shocking even. They have an effect on you, and good art does that too. So maybe I'm wrong.

I'd definitely pass on it as a collecting interest, though. That's for sure. It may be art, but it doesn't have to be a hobby.

Neat Artsy Stuff

Here's a cool collection of posters, imagining 21st-century gadgets in '70s style. I can't wait till people start calling this kind of thing so 2010.

HT: What What!

Words I Didn't Know

On my previous blog, I would occasionally post definitions of new words (new to me, anyway). I'm going to keep that ball rolling on this blog. The first installment is (drum roll):

Pasquinade. (n.) A satire or lampoon, especially one that ridicules a specific person, traditionally written and posted in a public place. (tr. v.) To ridicule with a pasquinade; satirize or lampoon. [From the Free Dictionary.]

The word, it seems, is derived from the nickname - "Pasquino" - for a fragmentary statue in Rome. The statue, shown here, dates from the third century B.C. and was erected in a public

square in Rome in 1501. It supposedly depicts Menelaus holding Patroclus. (For those who slept through your Great Books courses, Menelaus and Patroclus were Greek heroes in the Trojan War.) Since the early sixteenth century, Romans have been in the habit of placing anonymous parodies and lampoons on the base of the statue; they can be seen in the close-up.

I came across this word while reading The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy by the nineteenth century Swiss historian Jacob Burkhardt. Burkhardt was the first eminent scholar to address culture as a proper subject of historical inquiry; thus, in this great work, he describes the intellectual and social life of Renaissance Italy, rather than the great men and great battles of that time. Burkhardt recounts the "unhappy reign" of Pope Adrian VI, who was elected in 1522 but who died within two years. Adrian was a Dutchman - in fact, he was the last non-Italian elected pope until John Paul II - and the people of Rome never forgave him for this infelicity. The poor Adrian was an early target of Pasquino's eloquence.