Good art

I'm determined to post at least two positive pieces for each negative one. So here's something positive. I recently saw some ceramic art by Stephen Bowers and was impressed by how beautiful it was - so unusual for modern artwork. The pictures below don't really do justice to seeing the ceramics in real life. The vases are large - roughly hip height (you can click on them for a better view):

So the question is why Stephen Bowers should be producing such fine art, going against modern trends. Well, the short answer is that he doesn't think the role of the artist is to shock the public, nor is it to break down artistic forms and traditions. He doesn't see artistic traditions as static, but he does draw inspiration from them:

The artist states that a central part of his practice consists of “reaffirming the position, role and presence of painting within the ceramic tradition.” A parallel interest in period illustration, particularly 18th and 19th century copper plate book illustration, continues to provide inspiration.

There is also a local identity at work in his ceramics:

...the regular appearance of motifs (such as the Sydney Harbour Bridge) that are not only unmistakably Australian but also reference a sense of independent cultural identity in a globalised world. As one writer has suggested, “Bowers is an instigator of a new consciousness in Australian pottery, thrusting our native flora and fauna into the limelight as a legitimate form of decoration. He skirts the edge of kitschness while investing authenticity into the use of Australian symbols in the hope of developing our native visual language.”

I think he succeeds in doing this. It's unusual as an Australian to see fine ceramic art decorated with Australian motifs. He has contributed in an original way to an existing tradition - built on it or added to it rather than seeking to entirely deconstruct its forms. The result is something that strikes you as being of enduring worth.

John Dickson Batten

Here's a painting by a British artist, John Dickson Batten, titled The Family (1886) (hat tip: Happy Acres)

 

Roundhay Lake

Another John Atkinson Grimshaw painting, this one titled Roundhay Lake.

Portrait of a fairy

This was painted by an English artist, Sophie Anderson, in 1869.

A painting best left hidden?

Several paintings lost in the aftermath of WWII have been found hidden in an apartment in Munich. One of them is interesting for the wrong reasons. Painted by the German Otto Dix it is a reminder of how corrupt European high art was in the early 1900s. It is meant to be a portrait of a woman:



Portrait of a woman by Otto Dix


Otto Dix is one of the better known painters of the era, and the painting above is estimated to be worth about ten million dollars.

Dix was part of an art movement called the "Neue Sachlichkeit" or "New Objectivity." He belonged to the "verists" subgroup of this movement:

The verists' vehement form of realism emphasized the ugly and sordid. Their art was raw, provocative, and harshly satirical. George Grosz and Otto Dix are considered the most important of the verists.

The problem is that the other competing art movements, at least in Central Europe, were equally unappealing. You had the Dada movement, which took the nihilist line of destroying everything in the belief that something better would appear afterwards:

This dissolution was the ultimate in everything that Dada represented, philosophically and morally; everything must be pulled apart, not a screw left in it customary place, the screw-holes wrenched out of shape, the screw, like man himself, set on its way towards new functions which could only be known after the total negation of everything that had existed before. Until then: riot destruction, defiance, confusion. The role of chance, not as an extension of the scope of art, but as a principle of dissolution and anarchy. In art, anti-art.

Note the aim of "the total negation of everything that had existed before" - this I take to be an expression of nihilism.

And then you had futurism, which was also committed to destroying traditional Europe, particularly "closed and predetermined forms" (which suggests a belief in the autonomous, self-determining individual "liberated" from whatever is predetermined):

The Futurist programme was based on the refusal of all closed and predetermined forms, on the exigency of a constant renewal of the arts, and the affirmation of the individual’s creative mind above all social hierarchy.

In their manifestos of 1909 to 1913 the Futurists celebrated the dynamism of great cities, the energy and destructive force of modern inventions. The hectic, deafening chaos of a mechanized world would destroy the old morality, the old society, the outmoded human product. They saw the cycle of death and rebirth repeated in men's entanglement with the machine, with electric power and kinetic force.

I've written recently about how liberal modernity bases itself, in part, on a certain understanding of human individuality, namely a belief that the creative unfolding of self is best achieved when the individual is detached from natural forms of human community such as the family, ethny and nation. It is possible that this was part of the futurists' "affirmation of individual's creative mind above all social hierarchy."

There were Australian artists who looked on in dismay at what was happening in the Old World. Australian art was still in a golden age, particularly when it came to landscapes:

Hans Heysen, Droving into the light

Finally, back to Otto Dix. It is sometimes said that the paintings of Otto Dix were the product of his traumatic experiences in the First World War. But there is evidence that Dix was a certain kind of nihilist prior to this. His thought shows the influence of both realist and vitalist forms of nihilism. Eugene Rose described realist nihilism this way:

He is the believer, in a word, in the "nothing-but," in the reduction of everything men have considered "higher," the things of the mind and spirit, to the lower or "basic": matter, sensation, the physical...the Realist world-view seems perfectly clear...in place of vague "higher values" naked materialism and self-interest.

Dix claimed later in life that he volunteered for service in WWI because he wanted to experience violence and death close at hand, because "I have to experience all the ghastly, bottomless depths of life for myself." We learn that:

Dix himself took a perverse pleasure in the events unfolding around him. Olaf Peter relates how Dix would often appal his friends by providing a “detailed description of the pleasurable sensation to be had when bayoneting an enemy to death.”

For a time, too, it seems that Dix was influenced by a vitalist nihilism:

Dix's worldview was deeply influenced by Nietzsche and the vitalism in life's 'will to power'. He, like the majority of his contemporaries, saw World War I as an opportunity to achieve both personal and national greatness through struggle and battle. In this spirit Dix intentionally signed-up with the German Army to fight, to experience life and action as it happened.

But the war was not transforming in the way that "struggle and battle" was supposed to achieve:

He was embittered and disappointed that the war, in which he and many others of his generation had placed such great hopes of vital change, had altered neither men nor their environment.

I've set all this out because when you look at the timing of European decline it becomes clear that a certain nihilism amongst the intelligentsia was prominent even before WWI (it may even have been part of the push toward war).

Have a look at the Otto Dix painting again. That is the disfigured soul of Otto Dix looking at you, a man charged with the cultural leadership of Europe in the early decades of the 1900s.

Undine

Arthur Rackham was a well-known English illustrator of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Below is his picture Undine (a water sprite):

The Shepherd

Below is a painting by the Frenchman Claude Lorrain titled "Le Berger" (The Shepherd). Lorrain lived in the seventeenth century and is best known for his landscapes.

Wordsworth's pedlar

What makes human life feel blessed? For William Wordsworth the experience of being deeply connected to nature brought about such a feeling. This experience was open to all, even to those of humble rank. The following lines are from the poem The Pedlar and the Ruined Cottage:

Claude Lorrain

From early childhood, even, as I have said,
From his sixth year, he had been sent abroad
In summer, to tend herds: such was his task
Henceforward till the later day of youth.
Oh! then what soul was his when on the tops
Of the high mountains he beheld the sun
Rise up, and bathe the world in light. He looked;
The ocean and the earth beneath him lay
In gladness and deep joy. The clouds were touched
And in their silent faces did he read
Unutterable love. Sound needed none,
Nor any voice of joy; his spirit drank
The spectacle; sensation, soul, and form
All melted into him; they swallowed up
His animal being: in them did he live,
And by them did he live: they were his life.
In such access of mind, in such high hour
Of visitation from the living God,
Thought was not. In enjoyment it expired.
No thanks he breathed, he proffered no request;
Rapt into still communion that transcends
The imperfect offices of prayer and praise,
His mind was a thanksgiving to the Power
That made him: it was blessedness and love.
A Herdsman on the lonely mountain tops,
Such intercourse was his, and in this sort
Was his existence oftentimes possessed.
Oh! then how beautiful, how bright appeared
The written Promise! He had early learned
To reverence the Volume which displays
The mystery, the life which cannot die:
But in the mountains did he feel his faith.
There did he see the writing. All things there
Breathed immortality, revolving life,
And greatness still revolving: infinite.
There littleness was not; the least of things
Seemed infinite, and there his spirit shaped
Her prospects, nor did he believe - he saw.
What wonder if his being thus became
Sublime and comprehensive! Low desires,
Low thoughts had there no place, yet was his mind
Lowly; for he was meek in gratitude
Oft as he called to mind those ecstasies
And whence they flowed, and from them he acquired
Wisdom which works through patience; thence he learned
In many a calmer hour of sober thought
To look on nature with an humble heart
Self-questioned where it did not understand
And with a superstitious eye of love.

Grimshaw: In the golden olden time

Another work by John Atkinson Grimshaw, from about 1870 (click for the best view):

In The Golden Olden Time

Autumn Gold

I've spent some time working on my booklet today, so instead of a post here are some more paintings by John Atkinson Grimshaw to enjoy (click for a better view).

Reflection on the Thames, Westminster, 1880

Autumn Gold

Golden Light

I'm becoming increasingly convinced that John Atkinson Grimshaw is one of the most underrated painters. I've posted some of his work previously here. The painting below is titled Golden Light and was painted in 1893 when the artist was 57 (it looks even better if you click on it). I'll be posting some more of his paintings in coming weeks.

Charles Sims

Charles Sims was born in Islington, London, in 1873. He became successful as an artist quite early in life, from 1896 onwards. He seems to have been particularly inspired by the beauty of well-dressed women, but also by nature, family and classical mythology.

His life became troubled during the First World War. He lost one of his young sons and he found it difficult to cope with what he witnessed as a war artist.

Here are some of his earlier works, painted prior to the war:

The Kite

Untitled, 1898

The Little Faun 1906

Exaltation of a flower 1906

In Elysium

Artist's wife and son on the dunes at Etretat, Normandy

An Australian anthem

David Ward has written a patriotic Australian anthem called Land of my Heart. Here is one of the verses:

God of the nations, our shield and our light,
Defend this our homeland, with justice and might;
Let not the tyrant, encroach on our shores,
And gently exhort us, to follow your laws;
Within your arms safely, our nation enfold;
Through light and through darkness, your people uphold

Frank Owen Salisbury

Kidist Paulos Asrat has a post up at her site Reclaiming Beauty which showcases a portrait by Frank Owen Salisbury.

I'd never heard of the artist before so I looked him up. He was born in 1874 in Hertfordshire, England, to a family of modest means (his father was a plumber). He became an apprentice in a stained glass business, showed talent, won a scholarship to art school and rose to become a society painter.

It's surprising that he's not better known now as he painted the portraits of six American presidents, 25 members of the royal family, a pope and many other prominent figures of his time.

Here's a work painted by Salisbury in 1933 titled The Bridal Train:

This is a portrait of a bishop of London, Arthur Foley Winnington-Ingram, painted in 1918:

I would like to have a better quality version of the image below. It's St George defeating the dragon:

 

 

Finally, here's one titled The Fair Lady:

Leonora

Laura Wood received an interesting letter from a young woman named Leonora, who studies and teaches literature at an American college.

The part of the letter that interested me most was Leonora's reaction to the poetry of Gottfried Benn. Benn was a nihilist/Nietzschean poet of the early twentieth century. He had a very interesting view of how the Enlightenment had brought on the nihilist epoch (which I'll quote in a future post): his nihilism was therefore not directed at the churches or at traditional culture but at the liberal Enlightenment. Even so, it was a nihilism which portrayed human life in the most desolate terms.

Leonora was forced to endure this desolate, nihilistic view of life in her literature class. It caused her a degree of distress, as she wishes to cultivate her more sensitive feminine qualities:

Sitting in that class yesterday was painful and felt like torture. I was fighting tears of anger and hurt feelings, just looked down and could not say a single word the whole entire time. I felt even worse when I realized how all the others were laughing and thought it was funny. I could not find a tiny bit of amusement in someone presenting human beings like that and talking about women in such a trashy way. I just wanted to get out of there – as far away as possible – as the again male professor kept repeating those lines over and over again, pronouncing them worse and more disgusting every time he recited them again.

My own strong emotions and reaction made me wonder if there is something wrong with me! Why did this make me so upset and angry while everyone else seemed to enjoy it? As I reflected on it later that night in bed, I realized how God has been tearing down many walls in and around my heart throughout the past six months. He has made me much more sensitive towards other people and also towards sin and things that are just wrong. He has revealed to me what it means to be a woman and how I as a woman should be caring, loving and nurturing. I am to have a soft and tender heart, feel with others and make this world a much more beautiful place. And that’s what I want with all my heart. I want to be captivating, beautiful, inviting and loving. But with a heart soft like that I can’t handle situations like the one in class yesterday.

I told a male class mate about my feelings after class and his response was, “Well, Benn wrote that to make people think and to cause exactly these controversial reactions. You shouldn’t take it personally, just think about the issues he is trying to raise.” I know I could easily try to let this not get to me, build up some walls around my heart again and not care and laugh like everyone else. But that would be at the risk of my heart, my soul, my purity, and in a way even my womanhood. Why do they expect me to do that? How can I even survive as a woman in such an environment that will constantly cause me pain without manning up?
 

Leonora is trying to maintain her feminine integrity in a hostile environment. It's interesting to hear this from a woman, as I think men have a corresponding sense both of the value of the feminine qualities Leonora describes and also of their relative fragility.

Larsson's Spring

Laura Wood had a painting by the Swedish artist Carl Larsson at The Thinking Housewife recently, so I had another look at some of his work and found this piece, titled Spring:

Scott by Raeburn

Here's a portrait I like of the Scottish poet and novelist Sir Walter Scott:

Sir Walter Scott by Sir Henry Raeburn

It was painted by Sir Henry Raeburn, a man who was orphaned as a child and supported by his brother. Although self-taught, he became a celebrated artist of his time.

Signorelli and Salingaros on modernist art

From an article on modernist art by Mark Anthony Signorelli and Nikos A. Salingaros:

[M]odern art embodies and manifests all the worst features of modern thought — the despair, the irrationality, the hostility to tradition, the confusion of scientia with techne, or wisdom with power, the misunderstanding of freedom as liberation from essence rather than perfection of essence. In short, artistic modernism is the nihilism of our epoch made incarnate.

It's always encouraging to read writers who have broken decisively with liberalism. And Signorelli and Salingaros do that when they define freedom as a perfection of essence rather than a liberation from it. That represents a principled opposition to liberal modernity.

Quote via Mild Colonial Boy.

Droving into the light

The ideas behind art matter a great deal. For instance, here is a comment by the art reviewer for the Melbourne Age newspaper, Stephanie Holt:

The potential to shock, challenge and provoke is crucial to art's claims for significance. (08/08/2012)

If that is what you think is crucial, then it's hardly surprising that modern art is so focused on transgression.

But artists haven't always taken the modernist view. One of my favourite Australian painters, Hans Heysen, explained himself this way:

I cannot help feeling that my heart lies with these men who see intense and almost religious beauty in simple Nature that surrounds us in the beauty of the skies and the mystery of the earth.

Again, it is no surprise that Heysen created a painting like the following:

Droving into the light, 1914-1921

Heysen also produced tranquil scenes of domestic life that simply wouldn't fit into the modernist idea of art as transgression:

Sewing (the artist's wife) 1913

Why did school authorities want this mural painted over?

A reader sent me a link to the following story. Liz Bierendy is a 17-year-old student at a school in Rhode Island in the U.S. She painted a mural for her school depicting the progression of a boy from childhood to adulthood. Have a look at the mural below:

Pilgrim High School mural, Warwick Rhode Island, by Liz Bierendy

It seems that school authorities saw the mural and felt it to be offensive. They ordered that part of the mural should be painted over.

Can you guess why? Here's a clue: the "offensive" part of the mural is the bit at the end.

The authorities did not like Liz Bierendy's portrayal of the family. According to Liz Bierendy she was told that portraying a man getting married to a woman and forming a family,

may be offensive to some people because it is not how society views a family anymore because some people may not grow up with a mother and the whole marriage type thing may be a religious symbol.

I am tempted here to write "Really?" about a thousand times. But I should know better. I have explained in detail myself why liberals have issues with the standard traditional family. I shouldn't be surprised if liberals treat seemingly innocent depictions of the family as being too suspicious to be rendered into art.

The mural was only saved when a higher official, a school superintendent, stepped in and used his authority to allow the mural to stand in its current form:

The section of the mural featuring the family was ordered painted over by school officials. Bierendy said she was notified prior but she was still "pretty upset." The Superintendent of Warwick Schools Peter Horoschak has since stepped in and asked that the student be allowed to finish the mural however she sees fit.

Bierendy says she is going to take the weekend to “think about this,” and on Monday she will decide how to finish the mural.

In a statement released by Superintendent Peter Horoschak he said "some of the members of the Pilgrim High School community suggested that the depiction of a young man’s development from boyhood through adulthood as displayed may not represent the life experiences of many of the students at Pilgrim High School."

Update: I've just read some comments in a local newspaper about the issue. Most readers are supportive of the mural, but those few that are against really do believe that the mural is an attempt to impose religion or "religious values" in public schools.

Is the American left really going to go down this path and view the family as a "religious symbol" that must be kept out of public life?

It's a serious development as a society needs a stable culture of family life to prosper, but public authorities will not be able to promote such a culture if it is deemed to be a "religious value" that cannot be favoured within public settings.