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Some time ago a number of people involved in the art education of young people put the following question to me: How can we point our students in the right direction and teach them a view of, say, modern art without imposing our own opinions on them and talking them into accepting a number of norms which they do not really believe? One of the difficulties in bringing art to students lies in the fact that they expect a very definite guidance from the teacher, a positive choice of position, which leads to definite pronouncements: this is ugly and that is beautiful; this is bad and that is good.
This problem is the more acute as today’s art is often very problematic and does not seem to be beautiful, neither from traditional nor from contemporary points of view. Sometimes the ugly is even a conscious goal. The famous statement by Schierbeek that in our time beauty has burnt her face is true not only from the point of view of the observer but also from that of the artist. In former times, roughly before 1910, art that was not beautiful was considered as unimportant. Today the problem is rather that art which tries to be beautiful hardly receives serious attention, whereas the horrible things of the old and new Dadaists are considered of great importance by most art critics. In short, we live in a time when art is extremely manneristic and in many ways expresses a sense of crisis, of the end of all norms, of decline, a shaking of the pillars on which civilization in former times depended. Over the period of a hundred years the situation has completely altered: a hundred years ago the academicians were ‘in’ while the young revolutionaries received no attention; today the revolutionaries are ‘in’ and those who are faithful to tradition or in some way try to make ‘normal’ art are neglected . So much so that when we visit large exhibitions we sometimes wonder whether we are actually looking at the ‘salon’ of today, just as dismal, and unimportant as the Salon of the academicians a hundred years ago.
The problem of our time
What we have said so far raises more questions than it answers. But that is precisely the difficulty of our time. It is a problem for everyone who has to talk to people who are not yet ‘in’, who have not yet ‘accepted’ the extensive brainwashing of contemporary art propaganda, which aims at undermining any notion of normativity and the certainty that in some way there should be beauty in art. Modern art has an esoteric quality, apparently only understood and appreciated by a relatively small group of initiated. The majority of people, whether they are unartistic folk, students, intellectuals, or simply ‘not modern’ artists, have questions and are tempted to discard the whole of modern art as a misunderstanding or a kind of spiritual charlatanry or even a conscious deceit. If the number of those who appreciate modern art – the avant-garde art, that is – should increase, we may ask ourselves whether we have not lost something and whether a positive resistance has not been broken down by continual propaganda. The trouble is that this again is a too simple and one-sided a way of posing the problem because the leading modern artists are undeniably serious and honest people with talent – in the sense that in their art they seek to express the truth. The question therefore becomes: Are talent, seriousness and honesty enough? An anarchist can have talent, seriousness and honesty in his endeavours, yet we do not follow him.
Perhaps this is an indication, for who still dares to condemn a work by De Sade or dares to interfere with gangs of young people who consciously want to disturb order? Who dares to denounce these people as ‘wrong’ and not to be taken seriously? Questions like this lead us into the heart of the problems that this article wants to address. Why do we no longer dare to judge? Is it perhaps because we no longer have any norms, or maybe no longer dare to apply them? Or, as educators, no longer dare place them before our children as certainties? Is it because we are afraid that in teaching them thus they may become bourgeois? Are we afraid to give them firm certainties? We realize that these problems are not easy. And if we want to speak meaningfully, we should not avoid the real questions. That is why we want to begin to look deeper into the situation. There must be an answer to the question of why it is so difficult to establish fixed norms. In first instance we will only try to describe.
To avoid misunderstanding we should point out that in some places in this article we have treated modern art rather negatively. It should be clear that we do not want to generalize and denounce all twentiethcentury art. The works of Rouault, Feininger, the young Matisse, some works of Picasso, Maillol, Mascherini, Moore and others we will mention later, can be appreciated and sometimes even admired. But in writing this article we concentrate on and have in mind the most extreme modern art, because this is the kind of modern art that calls up the questions and brings our students to sometimes very passionate rejection. So we think of Schwitters, Magritte, Guston, Tobey, Rauschenberg, Fontana, Saura, Bacon, Dubuffet and the like. It is by no means our intention to denounce them as charlatans or dishonest people. On the contrary, with all those who are deeply engaged in this study of modern art, we recognize their talents and their individual greatness. But we do not want to close our eyes to the problems their works raise, especially for those who are teachers and who cannot escape dealing with them.
Norms for art
Why is itso difficult to point out which norms are valid for art? Most likely theeighteenth-century movement which ratherconceitedly called itself the Enlightenment is to be blamed. Now light would bebrought to the world by human beings, humans with their rational-moral souls. Alllaws, norms and insights spring from humanity, and all humans are equal. Nopersons have the right to impose their insights and norms on others. Allopinions are equal.137 This starting point robs every norm of its power. Afterall, a norm is fixed and valid, even if some people do not want it. But in thissystem a norm can be at most an agreement to which all voluntarily subjectthemselves; or a norm could be a rule that immediattely and undoubtedly followsfrom our humanity itself, thus finding its root in human being, in the subject.Philosophers like Kant have made attempts to formulate the general validity ofcertain rules in this way, but basically their efforts have been in vain. Afterall, even if there are only a couple of people who think differently, thevalidity of the rule is affected and essentially ought to be discarded asworthless. At the time the results of such thinking were not yet fully felt.
Much wasstill considered as self-evident, many traditions were not yet questioned orwere doubted only by the intellectual avant-garde, if at all. But in thetwentieth century the results of these ideas have become fully visible,although even today such thinking is still opposed by many. It turned out notto be so easy to overthrow the whole world order and introduce a new subjectiveorder based on human reason. By the way, later on, reason itself was questionedtoo. People search for solid ground. They want certainty, and truth. Hence allthat is considered to be merely subjective, all that has no general validity,loses its power. Therefore people started to look for certainty in somethinghigher than subjectivity, something that would be inescapably true. This wasfound in nature, in what is simply given and not open to discussion. Of coursethere is such a thing as optic delusion and therefore things must beinvestigated to establish them as indisputable. Thus this certainty came to bebased on the natural sciences, and in the course of the years also on thosefields of the humanities that operate on the basis of the scientific methodestablished in the natural sciences (economics, sociology, etc.) Thispositivism, with its one-sided interest in natural laws – of vital interest forpeople who looked to these for solidground – was very succesful because it propagated itself with the ‘wonders oftechnology’. Its success was so great that today it makes sense to talk oftechnocracy. With peculiar side-effects. We have already mentioned that naturalscience did not restrict itself to physical or biological nature. It alsoexamined the phenomenon humankind, and found many rules governing it. So many,in fact, that more and more the basic assumption (that all things are equal)seemed to be true. After all, everything is governed by natural law, and onthis level humans are essentially thesame as stones or animals. One tried to prove this by means of the evolutiontheory. Human being is only a very complicated mechanism that has developedfrom matter by a long process of evolution. It is nothing more than otherthings to be found in nature and as such determined by laws of nature.Inevitably people revolted against this statement as they did not want to losetheir freedom (for, curiously enough, the right to freedom was also a slogan ofthe Enlightenment). Gauguin puts it rather poetically when he speaks of the effectof this positivism on art, namely increased naturalism: Primitive art proceedsfrom the spirit and uses nature. So-called refined art proceeds from the sensesand serves nature. Nature is the housemaid of the former and the mistress ofthe latter, but the housemaid cannot forget her origin and degrades the spiritby allowing him to adore her. This now is how we have fallen into theabominable error of naturalism. Where would humankind now be able to find theirhumanity? And their freedom? For people know, and their experience tells themso, that they are free, not determined by the laws of nature, and they are morethan what the natural sciences can record about them. One thing is certain:what is essential and ‘higher’ to being human should not be scientificallyapproachable. For science would inevitably rationalize it, dehumanize and killit by scientific statistics. That is why people in the twentieth century haveattempted to find the essence of human being, our humanity, in an existentialexperience, in ‘something higher’, something that cannot be explainedrationalistically. It is a kind of mysticism that remains strictly subjective,strictly individual, not to be captured in words, for as soon as that were thecase, psychology or some other science would again incorporate it in thescientifically known rational reality. Thus alongside technocracy an irrationalmysticism (which is dialectically related to it) arises, in which humankindfind a deeper experience of their humanity. The expression of this, therevelation of what is higher, deeper and more essential, becomes pre-eminentlythe task of art. It must be human, which means opposed to technocracy,positivism, and rationalism. That is why much modern art is technically bad onpurpose, because thus it is clear that it is not of the same order as productslike cars and washing machines. It also should not be understandable. For thenit would fall within the province of reason again, in which case the dangerwould be immense. It must give a free ‘polyinterpretable’ (that is, for all tobe interpreted in their own way) meaning to the human or the natural. In anycase, norms should not be mentioned. For that would bring us right back intorationalism. Art is purely subjective and it reveals the truth of human being,which lies deeper and is therefore irrational. It is not in any way related tonormal reality. It goes beyond that. It is that which is higher. Or, to put itdifferently, its relation to reality is dialectical,that is, it interprets reality by denying it, or by refusing to attribute anymeaning to it, by unmasking it as being inhuman and degrading. Therefore, why still talk about norms? Whytalk about art? Art and beauty . . . no! . . . don’t talk about that. Beautifulthings? Why? Art is religion, mysticism; and the artist is a prophet. Artreveals the real reality, human reality. Reality is not the meaningless worldthe natural sciences deal with. To be sure, science has discovered the truthabout a part of reality, yet in doing so it has robbed humankind of theirhumanity and thus evoked meaninglessness. So modern art is at one and the sametime a denial of positivism – there is no essential truth and certainty to befound in it – and an affirmation of it – that which is human can only be foundelsewhere, for what science teaches us is correct and inescapable. Thisdialectic is an essential feature of our culture. The effect of it is, andtherein lies our difficulty, not only that art cannot be judged according tonorms but also that art cannot be regarded as art anymore. Art has becomesomething different: it is religion, expression, art that reveals andphilosophizes. Therefore, do not talk about beautiful things. An automobile canbe beautiful. Art? Art must be authentic, honest, and based on deep existentialexperience, which at the same time exposes the meaninglessness of thetechnocratic reality. Have we overstated our case? It is possible that not allavant-garde art is like this, at least not completely. But read such journalsas Quadrum and Le Vingtième Siècle, written by those involved inmodern art who know it closely and translate the ideas into words.
Beyondwords and proof
We wouldlike to mention another difficulty that we face when speaking about norms,particularly for those of us who have to teach. The difficulty lies in the factthat aesthetic norms are valid and are known, but essentially cannot be putinto words. They cannot be proved either, if by proved one means asserting themto be scientific and mathematical certainties.For what is typical of norms is that they do apply but that the subject, who stands under the norm and forwhom it is valid, can neverthelessneglect it. A norm for example states that one should not steal, yet thousands steal in a brutal orsomewhat more refined fashion and this does not immediately threaten theirexistence. With natural laws, for instance technologically applied, this is notthe case. One can prove that a car engine needs gasoline and not water. Try itwith water and the thing will not work. But if you make a painting that sets atnaught all aesthetic norms the result is nevertheless a painting, though not abeautiful one. And if some want to think it beautiful, important, interestingor in some other way have a positive reaction to it, no one can stop them or forbidthem to do so. Discussion about taste is certainly possible, but individualscan deliberately go against the grain. One can talk about aesthetic andartistic matters in words. For this purpose a great number of words have beendeveloped in the course of years, terms like pictorial and linear, conceptssuch as tension, rhythm, classical, expressive, and so on. These words expressparticular aesthetic and artistic qualities and characteristics: a functioningunder the norm in a particular manner. However, while analysing one will hitcertain boundaries. Sometimes one can only point out that a certain passage is beautifulor another part inferior. If the persons addressed are open to look andunderstand, they will experience the same thing – or perhaps contradict it ifthe speaker is wrong – but to put it into words is not possible, let alone toprove it. One has reached the boundaryof the sense of beauty, which cannot befurther related to something else. Art does refer to the outside world and these references can be put intowords: boisterous or frugal refer toaesthetic economy, fierce and intense or restrained and quiet refer to emotional qualities. Butbeauty is in essence a norm and apossibility which is given us, beyond which no questions can be raised and no words used; one isdealing with the very core of the aesthetic aspect itself. At most one canattempt to say something by otheraesthetic means, for instance by poetical comparisons. But this does notcontradict the existence of the norm, even if it reaches beyond our proof andwords. It is also not irrational or arbitrary – a matter of taste – even thoughit is not rational. Beauty is a province of human possibilities and experiencesthat is peculiar to itself. It is not determined intellectually, noremotionally or symbolically: it exists in its own way. Not only that which wecan grasp with our reason is real. Also what we can experience consciously isreal. It is a fallacy that all that cannot be put into words is therefore bynecessity unconscious.
We alluse norms
If therewere no norms, it would be meaningless to talk of art or beauty. Consequently,it is only human that young people ask for certainty and for positivestatements, because the knowledge and use of norms is an essential element ofour humanity. Students want no vague talk about art: look, it is veryimportant, but you don’t have to think it beautiful. Time and again we foundthat they are dissatisfied with the assertion that modern art is really art butthat one should not enquire after beauty or ugliness. What they see, they findugly and they want to know whether they are right or not. They are open andwant to learn. And if they are wrong they want to know the reason why, or atleast a way to transcend the situation in which all they can say is strictlysubjective. They ask for certainties. And perhaps there are many young peoplewho, as a result of their ‘aesthetic education’, have turned their backs on allart: it is only a lot of talk anyway and no one can say anything sensible aboutit. They are right if art criticism is nothing more than a strictly individualreaction to a work of art; then it is poor and not worthwhile to engage oneselfin it. And if all talk about art were a strictly individual expression of astrictly individual emotion, why should we trouble someone else with ouremotions? In whichever way we look at it, there will be only a few people, ifthey exist at all, who really accept the consequences of such a normless point ofview. We must not forget that every exhibition is the result of choices andjudgments and that each museum presents a selection out of thousands andthousands of high quality works. The choice was made by the museum director andhis or her staff. If they choose to show us clumsy works, paintings of notalent or taste, then we critisize them violently. Rightly so. And they cannotafford to keep on doing that, because if they do they will be sent away on thegrounds that they are not up to the task. In short, when we talk about art weall use norms, otherwise we would not even know what art was and thedistinction between a work of art and any other human or natural thing wouldfall away. Why then is it so difficult to make clear what these norms are,apart from the difficulty we already mentioned? We want to point out a number ofaspects of this problem.
Historicism
In thecourse of the nineteenth century historicism came into existence. Historicismis one of the most influential and generally accepted philosophical trends ofthe twentieth century. It has influenced existentialism and other philosophicalschools. In the Anglo-Saxon world historicism has been much less prominent thanon the European continent. However, that does not mean that its basic ideaswere not active there as well. Historicism teaches that all human ideas,insights, norms and values are historically conditioned and are valid only in aparticular period of history. Each period has its own system of norms. In artwe call that style. In fact, one wonders whether anything meaningful can stillbe said about the past. This is especially important for the art critic, whohas to pass judgment on the art of earlier times. It is clear that historicismcan easily lead to an extreme relativism, for from a historical point of viewour judgment is necessarily relative and determined by the time in which welive. From this point of view we can say nothing meaningful about art that wasmade during an earlier period. Unless we take the point of view of Malraux whoargues that we must accept this position positively, so that the work of art,regardless of what it meant in the time it was created, means what it means tous now. Moreover, we all know that in any given period a variety of trendsoften exist side by side, eachreflecting its own values and system of norms. Who will say who is right? Historicism leadsinevitably to relativism because itrecognizes no fixed norms but regards each norm as historically determined and belonging to a specific group.Stated like this, there is indeed littlesense in talking about norms. Every time and every group has its own truth. And though one can speakabout norms within one’s own circle, onehas forfeited the right to talk others into accepting them, let alone to impose them on others. Historicismdoes try to take into account the situation as it really exists, but it drawsthe wrong conclusions. First of all, it is clear that we must be careful in ourevaluation of art from the past. People of that time often understood theseartworks in a different and more direct and refined way, simply because theyknew the situation out of which the works stemmed far better than we do.Moreover, the artist of a former period uses a different artistic ‘language’that we must learn to understand. We all know how difficult it can be to make students approacha painting of the seventeenth century in a correct way and to teach them how to‘read’ the visual elements. Just as we, when we want to read Chaucer, have toacquire some knowledge about Middle English, otherwise we will for instancetake a word to be vulgar which at that time was not vulgar at all. The same istrue when we look at a miniature from that period. Here we run into the realityof the norm positivization. Each period has realized the norm in its own way bygiving it a positive form or content. But that does not mean that the normitself is determined by time. For example, in all times it has been wrong tosteal. But the punishment will be different in each period and the seriousnessof the crime can only be understood within the context of the whole culture of thattime. But stealing remains stealing, even if contempories would find no faultwith it. In this way we can also form an opinion about the art of an earliertime. We have to be careful that we ‘read’ a work correctly and take intoaccount the stylistic features peculiar to that time, but if we do, we can cometo a right pronouncement about it. If this were not true we might as well stopall art history. We would not even know what were the relevant works of artduring a given period in the past. Or, to put it less extremely, we would notbe able to understand why a particular work of art met with great admirationand why such a highly esteemed work exerted such a great influence. But whoeverstands in front of a Michelangelounderstands, even today, why he is so great. Michelangelo’s work is artistically excellent and he isconsidered great, even today. Similar statements can be made about art that isfurther removed from us in time and geography. We can find beauty in Chineselandscapes of the twelfth century, though we have to add that many detailsprobably escape our attention, as our knowledge of the world from which they stemis very limited and we consequently cannot estimate all their stylistic peculiarities to their full value.All this is not contradicted by the fact that we can make mistakes. We alwayshave to guard against pronouncing an anachronistic judgment. Whoever judgesRomanesque art from the point of view of the Renaissance will find nothing butstiff and clumsily formed puppets instead of masterworks which are still famous.The fact that we often go wrong in our judgment of works of art of the pastshould not discourage us. Besides, the fact that the use of norms with regardto modern art calls up many difficulties, makes clear that the problems liemuch deeper. In short, we can say that the people of former times were justlike us in that they lived in the same world we live in, even though they spokea different language and had a different style. In other words, theypositivized the norms in another way or gave another positive form to the samenorms.
Subjectivism
Peopleoften say, on the basis of a typical Expressionist art theory, that art ispurely subjective expression. Then it is very difficult to judge a work, becausein fact we then are not judging a work of art but a person – one (according tothis view) who has, as artist, in her or his own peculiar manner, givenexpression to her or his feelings or thoughts, a person who actually withdrawsfrom our judgment as non-artists. By the way, if this were true all discourseabout art would indeed be senseless unless the critic were as great an artistas the one being judged. Especially those who hold the thesis that art isprophecy have in fact silenced themselves. We cannot judge anymore because wemay only listen respectfully. But we know that different artists contradicteach other: only if one maintains an extreme relativism can one hold the thesisthat artists reveal the truth. It is obvious that in this way any mention ofnorms with regard to art becomes difficult. We certainly do not want to denythe personal element in each work of art – or at least in many great works ofart. But a work of art is more than a purely individual expression of a purely individualemotion. Artists speak as human beings about human affairs, in an artisticmanner, within a normative realm that transcends their individuality, regulatestheir work and makes it possible at all. Only those who conform themselves tothe laws of language can communicate verbally with others. In the same wayartists can only create art that others can experience as art if they createart, that is, if they conform themselves to the rules for artistic structuresand to aesthetic norms. How could we otherwise distinguish artistic expressionsfrom other personality expressions? People who get red in the face because theyare angry also give expression to their feelings, but that does not make them artists,and the possible result, a slanging match, is not a work of art.
Aestheticism
Art issometimes referred to as autonomous, as being a law unto itself – art for art’ssake. If that were true, and actually were realized, then art would only makesense to professionals. The general public would walk past it and perceivethemselves as uninitiated and redundant. Indeed, if a work of art might only bejudged by its own norms, then it would in fact be a phenomenon standing outsideof reality. By the way, it is remarkable that historically ‘l’art pour l’art’was not proclaimed in order to make art that would have artisticcharacteristics only – namely non-figurative art – but to create art that didnot conform to ethically and morally accepted norms. However, almostparadoxically, people have often felt the need to appoint a high function andtask to art, starting precisely from the premise that art is autonomous. Itshould be prophetic, an eye-opener, an expression of personality, the highestspiritual achievement of human being, and so on. It appears as if the furtherart is removed from, or is in fact separated from, daily life, the more itsmeaning is exalted. Because of this it becomes even harder for the public tojudge art. What is remarkable is that in order to defend art, one appoints aplace and task for it which is in actual fact not artistic. Which criteria arethen valid? If a work of art is prophetic, how must it be judged? By theprophetic calibre or by the artistic qualities? Can only works of aestheticallyhigh quality be prophetic? Do I not then actually judge a work by other norms thanthe supposedly autonomous aesthetic criteria? We could briefly formulate oursolution for this problem as follows: the aesthetic or artistic has its ownplace and meaning that cannot be fulfilled in any other way than through art.Music, sculpture, literature, do not require any other justification than thatthey are art; they are meaningful as such, and as such have their own task andplace in human life. A painting or a novel serves no other end than to be apainting or a novel. They are definitely not required to be prophetic,didactic, moralistic, or whatever, in order to be meaningful. They have theirown meaning, and they may also hold or reveal morals or other values, but the realtask of art in general is not described by this. One does not solve the problemby claiming the work of art to be autonomous, since one then severs the diverseconnections that link a work of art to reality. In the same way, for instance,the state has, as a given structure, its own meaning within the existing socialorder. But if one absolutizes the state and attempts to declare it autonomous,one either makes the state a meaningless entity without contact with andmeaning for social life or one is compelled to make everything state-centredand to let everything within the state that has its own structure fall by thewayside – which is indeed attempted in totalitarian states to the detriment ofmuch human activity – think, for example, of the position of art. Art has itsown meaning, but only when it is willing to take its own position within human life and does not sever the thousands ofconnections that link it to reality. Otherwise it becomes sterile andmeaningless. There is art that is exalted, that fits in the church; there isalso art that wants to portray obnoxious things. How do we react towards pederasticart, or cursing art? If we say that its interplay of lines is so very beautiful,it can be true, but then we have probably missed the true meaning, because theartist wanted to say something by those means. It could even be hurtful to theartist to ignore the contents of the work. If you should object that we are nowexpressing moral or religious judgments, we will not deny this, but one has torealize that the work of art was approached in its aesthetic-artistic nature,and not separately from it. These are difficult problems, we are certainlyaware of that.
The fearof the future generations
We want tobriefly mention a peculiar phenomenon. How often do we not hear at anexhibition of modern art: ‘Watch out that you do not condemn too quickly. Ourforefathers didn’t honour van Gogh, and look at how foolish they were!’ Themoral of the story is that if you judge negatively you are just as foolish asyour forefathers were, and your descendants will laugh at you. This inferioritycomplex with respect to our descendants is a poor counsellor. It can only makesnobs of those who believe in it. In the first place it is debatable whetherthe example of van Gogh is properly dealt with. But the moral is certainlydestructive. It means that we must accept the most contemporary/avant-gardeart, or that which is presented as such, regardless of what the content,meaning or quality of it is. If art is a facet of cultural life, then by itsnature it is embedded in today’s cultural struggle. Then we cannot accept itjust as it is. To state this with a wordplay: they who accept Karel Appel are co-responsiblefor the future generations. If they are ‘appelized’ (spiritually speaking), andwe evaluate this negatively, we have lost the right to speak. If we hold to thevalues that Appel represents in an artistic manner, we must be in favour ofthese ideas and consequently accept our responsibilities as living andcooperating individuals; if the opposite is true, we also need to say so. Itcould be that the accelerated revolution we are experiencing in life is alsocaused by people neglecting to think along critically, or to fight at thecultural level, while they relativistically accept everything that is new asvaluable simply because it is new. Let us not forget that art belongs tocultural life and is sometimes a powerful factor in the cultural struggle for valuesand truths.
Art isdifficult
Aremarkable facet of present-day art life is that people want to apply norms andthat they demand that works of art be beautiful. They go to the museum trustingthat ‘of course beautiful things will be hanging there.’ They enter the firstroom and do not discover anything beautiful. Perhaps unjustly, because theyhave not learned to understand the new norm-positivization. Perhapsjustifiably, because they see works in which ‘beauty has burnt her face’. Inany case, because they do not experience any beauty they conclude: I do notunderstand it; modern art is too difficult for me; come on, let’s leave. Theoccasional cynic could then reply that we should let them go; life’s revolutionwill take place anyway, without them, a crowd that doesn’t know the law. Othersmay reply, just as cynically, that it is fine that they leave this art; atleast it does not have any influence. In this manner some people think they canmake modern art ineffective. But it is exactly this unrecognized danger that ispernicious. If modern art remains uncomprehended it can, in subtle forms and alongdevious paths, have an even deeper influence. In short, those who take today’sculture seriously must attempt to speak normatively about modern art, in orderto take a responsible position in the face of the many phenomena. The positionthat they choose depends on their own spiritual attitude, and on their owncultural ideals. Nevertheless, they have to adhere to norms, with wisdom andinsight and knowledge. It doesn’t seem necessary to us to denounce the opinionhere that modern art is actually just charlatanry, that is, not art at all andtherefore not worth talking about. However, that is the most dangerous opinionthat one can have about modern art. And also the most uncompassionate.
Thestructure of a work of art
We willlimit ourselves here, just as we did in the above, mainly to paintings. Not because other arts would inprinciple be any different, but toexclude all sorts of secondary problems. Art has structure, or rather, art isdetermined by a structural law. Without this structure we would not know whatart is. This structural law is a norm and, to a certain extent, simultaneouslya fact. A norm, in the sense that its being a work of art is recognized andidentified by us, even though we think – rightfully or not – that the specificpiece is horrible, ugly, imperfect, clumsy, or whatever. It is therefore notonly successful works of art that may be called works of art. This would leadto total subjectivism, and lead us intomany irrelevant problems. Imagine thatan artist who usually creates good works also, for whatever reason, displays a horrible piece under his orher name. Would he or she then suddenlyhave stopped being an artist? And is it not true that the statement ‘it is a horrible piece’ is possibleonly through testing by a norm that isvalid for the work of art? How could I otherwise state meaningfully that it is horrible? If it could not be calleda work of art anymore, at that samemoment I would no longer understand why it would be horrible. What would itthen be? A canvas with paint on it? Obviously, because a good piece of art isalso that. But we perceive painted canvases differently if they are not worksof art. For instance, we have, and rightly so, different requirements forwallpaper, and therefore we have other norms for judging it. Yes, also that itshould be beautiful, but then still in a different manner from a painting. Analysingthe structure of a painting falls outside our scope here. It is sufficient thatwe observe that there must be a physical carrier – say, oilpaint on canvas –that makes the colours and lines visible to us in a specific configuration.These colours and lines have an iconic character and reveal a harmoniouslybeautiful cohesion. The iconic is just as the aesthetic not reducible to thepsychical, just as we already mentioned with regard to the latter. With theiconic we mean the remarkable characteristic of lines and colours to present,represent and mean something. Draw a line on a piece of paper and someone willsay: hey, that is the face of so and so. The relationship between that line andthat face is iconic – it is meaningless to speak of imitation or copy, for whatis the correlation between the face of the person and the line on this piece ofpaper? In the same way, colour indicates something, makes something clear. Wecan require a painting to be iconically clear, to express what it wants to say,to speak to us. We will not have to explain any further that the iconic, justas the aesthetic, is a possibility that needs to be positivized, so thatdifferent visual languages are possible, all of which can be clear in their ownway. The state of affairs in this is similar to that of the aesthetic norm, ofwhich we spoke previously. The mutual relationship of the things represented incolour and line should be a beautiful, harmonious one. It is questionablewhether it makes sense to speak of colour harmony and the beautiful interplay oflines apart from, or while ignoring the matter that is iconically represented.We think that such is possible as a thought experiment, but is hardly realizable in practice. If wesee a piece in front of us, we immediately notice a head, a character, a tree,and we recognize their mutual relationship. It is very difficult to abstractfrom the representation, and we alsoseldom do it; by which we do not want to say that colour and line configuration as suchshould not be beautiful together. Obviously,the work of art forms an entity. It is certainly true that in one work thesubject matter, or rather the representation, plays a larger role than in theother, and is more serious in content and meaning. But also in thelight-hearted sketch of, say, a tree, the fact that the drawing is a tree playsa role in our judgment. We know of course that there is an a-iconic art, i.e.an art in which no recognizable representation is given. In such a case theexpression is brought about in an aesthetic manner only, although we need to ask ourselveswhether the interplay between colour and line does not iconically expresssomething, even in an abstract manner, though it does not designate or show anyobject in reality? Does a ‘wild’ line on an Appel or a Pollock not also speakand express something, say something? We spoke very candidly about beauty andharmony. We believe that even in our time it still makes sense to talk aboutthese things. We will go even further: if it is said that in our time beautyhas burnt her face, then we can only understand this by acknowledging that weare in fact dealing here with a remarkably negative relationship with beauty. Otherwiseit would be incomprehensible. If the message of the work of art is that beautyis depraved, destroyed, or ought to be destroyed, that can – almostparadoxically – only happen in the manner of the work of art itself, through astrong expression in the iconic sense and through a direct relationship to thenorms of beauty. Furthermore, it is remarkable that even in the work of thosewho claim not to care for beauty, one can often discover much beauty in thecolour, lines, composition, or whatever, nearly against the will of the maker.However it may be, the dilemma that is mentioned here forms a complication, butdoes not contradict the above.
Art andworldview
That peoplehave a world view is inescapable. People have a certain way of understandingand seeing reality. Seeing spiritually obviously has everything to do withseeing visually, for depending on what they consider essential, people willnotice certain facets and disregard other elements as unimportant. This willalso leave its mark on their art. And if ‘their’ movement, the group of whichthey are members, which perhaps even determines the Zeitgeist, has theopportunity to be creative in the formation of a style, then their way ofseeing will also influence the visual language and style. As much as we areinclined to attribute great importance to world view, nevertheless we have tostate clearly that its influence will always be relative. After all, it remains a view ofreality, the same reality that is viewed by all artists. This is most clear inlandscapes. That is precisely why landscape art reveals so well what a specificmovement found important and how it viewed reality, sometimes to such an extentthat the landscape is practically absent, when the natural environment was judgedas not having much consequence. We should never forget that art will always aimto represent what is considered relevant, significant and worth portraying.Especially in the case of landscapes it is clear that the manner of portrayalis very important and can speak volumes. It can make the time-bound humanunderstanding of reality visible. manners of expression can change, accents canbe shifted, and yet it will be reality itself in which people live, about whichthey think, which they experience, and which they portray visually in theirart. After all, no one is able to withdraw from existence itself within ourhuman reality. And with ‘reality’ we are referring not only to trees and peopleand love and hate but also to God, angels and devils, as well as dogmas, ideasand values – therefore to much more than what can be seen by the eye. And toour fantasy as well. Only in exceptional cases, as in the art of the third quarterof the nineteenth century, do artists as human beings know only the realitythat they can see and experience physically – with which we note that this wasalso a worldview. Reality plays as it were a role in a plurality of ways. Asliving space, a natural given; as human-spiritual world in which ideals, faithand experiences play a role; and as norm, in particular in art as norm for art,the norm that as tradition (positive norm) is known and understood – and thatone sometimes, gradually, under the influence of new concepts, will start tochange or renew. In short, reality will be present in the work of art as agiven, a point of departure, and as norm on the one hand, and as vision, ideal,faith and insight on the other. Or to put it in yet another way, reality comesto us in a work of art as norm and fact, and as vision and insight. In short,as seeing, understood in two ways.
Realityis not static
In theprevious section we spoke about the relationship between the work of art andreality, a very important relationship for our understanding of the work andfor the possibility to judge it. Therefore we would like to think further aboutreality. We just considered the landscape as an example. That is onlyrelatively static, in terms of being the same at all times. Our landscape, orour ‘countryside’, is different from that of our distant forefathers. Homes, bridges,afforestation and deforestation, roads and paths belong to the phenotypiclandscape, which is altered in history – it is only the jungle and theinaccessible, high mountains that are in a certain sense free from this. Andour city environment changes even more distinctly and markedly. The social and‘spiritual’ reality changes more deeply still. Also here we have to do withhuman design and norm positivization in history, with vision and insights,which are realized, at least to a certain extent, in human cultural labour. Howthen can we ever understand old art, if its language and style change and thereality with which it was concerned changes and can be even radicallydifferent? What if reality itself is no invariable? Here it applies again thatpeople can do nothing but work and act within the given cosmos. We cannot do aswe like. We can only act within the given possibilities, structures and norms,so that we do not have to be afraid of the historical unintelligibility of thepast. Style, form, vision, accent, power, insight, positive law, all can changebut reality as such remains the same; it changes its appearance only, no matterhow far-reaching this may seem to us. By way of illustration, people are peopleat all times. Naturally medieval persons expressed their anger in a differentmanner from sixteenth-century people ormoderns, just as Japanese will do it differently from Dutch, and they againdifferently from Italians. It can also be that anger is aroused by totallydifferent matters. But anger remains anger, and if we are people we canunderstand anger as anger. Even if we may need to learn to understand itslanguage and manner of expression and the cause of the anger, in all itsnuances: anger can mean regretting a lost chance, dissatisfaction with the workof another, irritability out of an exaggerated sense of self-worth, distressbecause of an assault on those things which were esteemed holy and high, and soon. Love, fear, greed, joy, sorrow, and all else that is typically human withregard to feelings, are timeless, no matter how different the manner ofexpression may be. The same applies if we start talking about law, state,trade, traffic, celebration and mourning, and so forth. Reality is not static;its appearance changes but reality itself remains the human living space for alltimes and all people, as given, as possibility, as inescapable reality.
Judgingart
Ourjudgment of art is in direct correlation with our understanding of that art. Ifwe do not understand it, then it is better not to judge it. We are in aposition to distinguish clearly what is pornography in our own Western world,since we know the positivized norms with regard to morality and sexuality, butwhether a specific work from a distant culture was or is such we can onlydetermine if we ‘know more about it’ and therefore have learned to understandwhat was the positivized norm there. Not that it is always easy. Even in ourtime norm positivization, values and morals shift so quickly that it oftenproves difficult. The situation is seldom without ambiguities. Obviouslysomewhat schematically, and certainly not exhaustively, we would now like toindicate the factors that determine our judgment of a work of art. To take themost complex situation, if we read a review by someone else of a specific workof art, then, in order to judge both the work of art as well as the review, wewill have to take at least six factors into consideration: the reality, theworld view and the personality of the artist, the situation in which the workcame into being, the work of art itself, and finally the viewer. Six unknowns!How will we ever be able to make a sensible judgment? Now there is a rule inmathematics that one must have just as many equations as unknowns if one wantsto solve the unknowns. A problem such as ‘a cyclist drives from A to B, amotorist from B to A – how long will it take for them to meet each other?’ isunsolvable. If I specify how fast the cyclist is riding, how fast the car isdriving and how far the distance is between A and B, then I can solve theproblem. Three givens along with three unknowns make it possible to solve theproblem. Algebraically, if there are two unknowns, x and y, one must make two equations,e.g. x + y = 4; x - y = 2. Then one can solve x and y. And in a similar way onecan judge a work of art, since we have six factors, which are each unknown, butalong with it also six ‘equations’, six relationships. There is the reality towhich the work of art is related; there is also the relationship between theworld view and the work of art (and reality). If we know nothing about theartist in question – if he is, for example, a medieval anonymous – then hestill expresses himself in the work of art and thereby is in a relationshipwith the Zeitgeist or the world view of a group. Sometimes we have even morethan six ‘equations’, through which we have possibilities to verify. The mostdifficult will sometimes be the setting. Was this work an altarpiece, or acabinet piece, was it made for political propaganda or as a satire? Suchquestions can sometimes only be answered through a thorough historicalknowledge. Fortunately the number of possible settings are in general limited,so that in many cases a subtler judgment with knowledge of the setting willbring very little change. We will now briefly investigate each of our‘unknowns’ individually. We know reality from our human experience, enlarged byour being culture bearers in a specific world. If it concerns a work from thepast, then our knowledge and historical experience will also play a role. Asexample we will take van Eyck’s Eve from the Altar of the Lamb of God inGhent. The question that is often asked is: Is this Eve pregnant? Where doesthe remarkable bodily shape come from? Is it a pure life study, or an idealizedimage, for example van Eyck’s representationof the ideal woman, and/or that of his contemporaries? We understand that the figure is painted veryprecisely – perhaps it is exactly thisthat raises these questions. Here our knowledge about reality, our insight into the fashion ideals of thetime around 1430 (think of the woman in the double portrait of Portinari andhis wife by van Eyck, in which the woman also has a stout abdomen and yet wesense that she presents a very fashionable appearance) and our understanding ofthe style of van Eyck plays a role (i.e. in the relationship between the workof art and reality). It is true that it remains a difficult problem to give aclear judgment here, but our own being human, added to our experience andhistorical knowledge, makes a solution possible, at least not necessarilyimpossible. The second point concerns the world view. In the first place wemust again start from our own humanity and our experience (possibly increasedby historical knowledge). It is only a very shallow and ignorant viewer whowould say that the Venus of Giorgione, the Danae of Rembrandt andthe Olympiaof Manet are the same. That the artists’ views of reality aretotally different becomes clear to us through observation. The reality as seenby the first, who in fact is painting an allegory of love and beauty, isdifferent from that of Manet, who no longer knows such general human ideals.Our judgment of the content of works of art is coloured by our experience – weunderstand, as human beings and as art viewers, that these works of art havesomething different to say. And so one could lay a Jan van Goyen next to aBoth, from the same period, but so totally different in perception and content.One could then place a Monet next to them. Three worlds, which we do notdistinguish only by tracing sources and reading further about what moved thesepeople – in this case, not that easy – but which we experience from the worksof art themselves. Thirdly we consider the artist’s personality and talent.Also here our own humanity plays a role, our experience, our knowledge of humannature, and also our reflections about these things. How do we know somethingabout Jan van Eyck? We know that he possessed amazing talent, had a tremendousintellect, could make sharp observations, was obsessed by reality as naturalreality, and so forth. We know this only from the works themselves. The sourcesare silent at these points; his contemporaries tell us little or nothing. Doesone really need to know Karel Appel and Corneille personally to be able to saysomething about the difference in their characters and talents? What if we aredealing with artists from an earlier period? Take Picasso and Braque duringtheir collaboration between 1907 and 1911 – their works speak a language thatcan be experienced by everyone who wants to look. Because we too are humanbeings who know people and can understand their actions. Next there is the workof art itself as it is built up with lines and colours on a surface through aspecific composition; it speaks iconically and has aesthetic qualities. We cananalyse and understand this in relation to the aspects mentioned, but also inrelation to the structural norm of the work of art, which makes judgmentpossible. That Kirchner did not paint a blue woman but a woman, blue, we ‘see’and understand by observation. Kirchner does not need to have written aboutthat himself. Ultimately this understanding rests in our humanity, our existencein this world, undoubtedly coloured by and more fully formed by our being aculture bearer in this Western world. If we abstract from these givens, yes,then it becomes difficult. But also unreal. Finally we consider the viewer. Weget to know the viewer from her or his observations in relation to the work ofart, which has a specific relation to the mentioned givens. Winckelmann,Berenson, Wölfflin, Gombrich, and the art critic whose review we read in thenewspaper last night, we understand their judgment, we judge along with it,learn from it or feel we have to contradict it because we know what they aretalking about and because we recognize and understand their basic assumptions andrelationship to the work of art. This is possible because we ourselves knowwhat it is to judge, what it means to think about a work of art, because weourselves are human and have experience. It can be that persons judgeincorrectly because they did not know or did not judge the setting in which thework originated, the commission, correctly. If one happens to know better, onecan understand where and why they mademistakes. The setting is sometimes the hardest to understand and always takesthe most study. Why do the Expressionists paint with such bright colours andsuch ‘crude’ forms? Without doubt in hefty reaction to nineteenth-centurynaturalism! They are against a hollow tradition, against shallow,expressionless art that expresses a knowledge only of the ‘surface’. Inconclusion we can say that a work of art can be judged, because we as peopleand as art viewers are truly human and are involved in life as culture bearers.A review of a painting by Raphael, Giotto, van Goyen or an unknown artist isnot a wild guess, even though there are no written sources to refer to. We cansee the things. Here too we can see in two ways. If there are sources, thenthat would only mean that we were dealing with the judgments of an art viewerthat was contemporary with the artist whose judgment we also have to weigh. Notan impossible task. Indeed, such a viewer can initiate us further into thesetting. And that is of great importance. To know whether something is a sketchor a complete work of art can alter our judgment. Think in this respect of deepand lengthy discussion about the 'unfinished' work of Michelangelo. Whether itwas one or the other changes our insight into his accomplishment and our viewof the works. And they who say that that makes no difference because they findit beautiful either way, are shallow and satisfied with too general a judgment.They make it too easy for themselves, and therefore they will fail to noticemany subtle facets of the works of art.
Conclusions
In short,our conclusion from the preceding discussions is that we must judge as humanbeings, not as an abstract homo aestheticus, or as art historians, or asartists, but with our full human being. Just as art can only be meaningful whenit is integrated fully into life and, no matter how ‘beautiful’, loses itssignificance when it attempts to lead its own life in higher spheres. We alsosaid ‘or as artists’, because art really should not be made just for artists.If only artists were capable of judging, art would have little meaning,certainly no fraction beyond the borders of the art world. But everyone may andcan judge art. The difference comes between a practiced judgment, based onexperience, and the judgment of someone who is just beginning to look. Thelatter must still learn a lot – in the first place, to see. And that is exactlythe situation of our students. We also need to teach them to look as humanbeings. All of education is concerned with the humanity of young people. Thepoint of departure is their humanity, their young and inexperienced humanity.They need to develop competence in judging, they need to gain experience and insight.They will have to do that themselves. It is all too subtle and too richlymulti-coloured for us to be able to teach it to them as one teaches a mathssum. But we will have to show them the way. Help them. Pass on something of ourexperience and our knowledge by which they at least can be guarded from themost obvious misconceptions and dead ends. That means, taking a stance. Theperson who does not know how to say more about a painting than ‘it is of goodquality’, or ‘the composition is quite beautiful’, has in fact revealed his orher lack of real interest. And she or he who finds art so interesting and socultural, says in fact that art is not important and is removed from life. If art is important and holds real value insociety and in human life, then, in thefirst place, it may demand our personal commitment. After all, the artist did not create the workto be coldly judged by us as to itsfashionable requirements, competence and ‘cultural’ interest. Some works were born staking someone’s wholelife on it, painted from the depth ofthe heart, with all fortitude and from deep inner conviction. If artworks are not that, they areroutine works, competent and interestingmaybe, but in actual fact not worthy of our continuous attention and energy. The student expects thatyou will judge as a human being. He or she does not expect you to be a nobodybut to be a person with conviction, a point of view, a person with a warm heartwho can get angry and can also say why you were so moved or became soenthusiastic, can explain why something had such an impact on you. We may talkabout works of art, preferably close to the works of art themselves. As long asit is not an argument for argument’s sake – so interesting and so cultural – aslong as the real commitment is to find the truth, to say the right thing, in orderto do justice to the artist, the work in question, and to the students andourselves as well. Besides, we can be sure that our work is never perfect. Butit certainly can be meaningful. It is possible to work and deal with art and withstudents in this way. If it were impossible, it would be better never to speakabout art again, no, even stronger, to never look at it again. After all, thework proves to be humanly impossible to approach and does not really requireour reaction, the input of our personality. Basically these things are aboutlove for our neighbour and for the truth, because only these can make us freeand make our work meaningful. Our mathematical example above, of the multipleequations, as many as there were unknowns, would that also apply to modern art?Or is the problem different there? To begin with, if modern art is art, we maytreat it as art. If it is not art, then it is interesting but we can leave itto the sociologist, the philosopher of religion or the politician. But is theelement of ‘reality’ not very small in modern art? Sometimes, indeed, it isvery small because the world view relates itself in such a negative manner toreality that it becomes almost totally distorted. But the reference to realityis still always there, in spite of this; it has to be there, because it wasmade by living human beings. It may be that modern art wants to show up theproblems too much, wants to be too intellectual, too ‘prophetical’ as a resultof which its art-ness is affected. People say that beauty’s face has beenburnt. This is not true. Our concept of beauty, our experience of beauty, ourperception of beauty, is mutilated. Ours? Or only that of a specific group,those people whom we as to their philosophy ought to call gnostics; namelythose who claim that reality as such is bad and wrong and thereforemeaningless, in the same way as some contemporary philosophers claim thatdeath, in essence meaningless, is yet the only meaning-giver in life. But eventhen we cannot remain indifferent. We must know ‘what lies behind it’, why itwas done like this, to what extent the work of art is indeed worth looking atand worth discussing, to what extent it betrays talent, intelligence andinsight, artistry and content. We can on occasion, maybe more than once, beforced to arrive at a paradoxical judgment: this work has tremendous weight andis made with great talent and insight – and for this reason is so appalling. Insuch cases it is still so that the better we understand it, and the deeper wecan empathize with it, the stronger our experience, the deeper will be ourdisgust, simultaneously with our admiration that someone knows how to expressall of this. This peculiar situation is in the deepest sense the result of the brokennessof this world. And where in our time everything is turned upside down, allvalues are questioned, everything is thoroughly thought through and the utmostconsequences are drawn, everything is expressed more intensely. If our fellowhuman beings, intensely passionate and with much intelligence, attempt to speakthe truth or to find it, even though this would mean that the senselessnessitself must be admitted and the beauty must be burnt, then we may not standnext to it and say ‘how interesting’. They are deeply involved. And thatrequires our response, our reaction. Therefore our answer to the problem thatwas the departure point of this article – what are the norms and what will wetell our students – can, basically bevery simply this: you, as lecturer, must involve your full personality. If you find that essentialvalues are being attacked, a world viewis being unjustly demolished, a false and unworthy ‘gospel’ is being preached, art is being created thatis essentially not art, then say so.Prove it. Let it be seen. Let them think along with you, look with you, understand with you, experience what yousee and experience. If along with theultramodern artist you find that present and former values no longer count, and need to be abandoned,that reality is really meaningless, thatit is a good thing that the last leftovers of Christianity are being blown up, then go for it, fight forit, preach it, honour your predecessors.Be accountable for it. Maybe you will discover in the process that there is meaning in your workagain, no matter how paradoxical thismay seem. In short, be yourself, be human, and fight for the truth.
Originally published in Dutch in Correspondentiebladen van de Vereniging voor Calvinistische Wijsbegeerte 31, 1, 1967.
Published in English in M. Hengelaar-Rookmaaker (ed.): H.R. Rookmaaker: The Complete Works 2, Piquant – Carlisle, 2003. Also obtainable as a CD-Rom.
