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HIS paper does not deal with all aspects of the funda- It was certainly not an "accident" that Velasquez and Frans
mental antithesis indicated in the title. In the first Hals were "rediscovered"when impressionismbegan to prevail
place, by "art" I mean the fine arts only, more particularlythe as the most influential modern trend; and this rediscoverywas
representationalarts, and chiefly painting. The phrase "funda- made by artists and art historiansat the same time. It was not
mental antithesis" indicates a second major restriction. "Sub- due to technical parallels only, though these are important and
ject-matter"and "form" are not here consideredas two comple- evident. It was also due to the beginningsof a commonlack of
mentary terms distinguishedonly for purposesof philosophical interest in significant and "dignified"subject-matter,rightly or
analysis. My purpose is rather to contrast those works of art wrongly projectedback into the seventeenthcentury. How well
and views on art which emphasizesubject-matteras at least one did Frans Hals seem to fit into the artistic creed of people who
matter of primary interest, with others which emphasize form claimed that it was just as meritoriousto paint a head of cab-
almost to the exclusion of matter. This implies a third restric- bage as a Madonna, providedit was paintedwell! Here was a
tion, and it is that my concern is with the meaning of the prob- man whose subjectswere portraitsof ordinarypeople and genre
lem of subject-matterand form to our time. To the people of scenes of everyday life. How beautifully did Hals' practice
the Middle Ages or even of the Renaissanceand the Baroque seem to exemplify the theories dear to the impressionists!
period, it would have seemed more or less absurd to speak of (However, the naivete of this view, at least as far as the por-
actual contrasts between subject-matter and form. What we traits are concerned, is now evident to us: The fact that the
still call representationalart was then naturally and necessarily sitters of Frans Hals were no longer of any interest to the im-
representational, although by no means to the exclusion of pressionisticpainters and writers, does not imply that they did
formal beauty and the appreciationof it. Not until the period not interest Frans Hals).
around 1900 was there any doubt as to the fundamentallyrep-
resentationalcharacterof painting and sculpture nor was there When the glory of impressionismfaded away and expressionism
any tendency to judge the art of any other time by standards came into being at least in some parts of Europe, new faces
which do not take into account its representationalnature as a emerged from the still inexhaustible hunting-grounds of art
matter of primaryinterest. However, when the problemof ab- history. First came El Greco (ca. 1900), and he was immedi-
stract art began to command the attention of everyone con- ately followed by Gruinewald. Medieval works which seemedto
cerned with art, it became a custom to look at works of art of lend validity to the newest theories, such as Ravenna mosaics,
the past with eyes sympathetic to their merely formal quality Reichenau book illuminations, and the Gothic vesper images of
and apathetic to their subject-matter. the fourteenth century, were labelled expressionisticand were
widely publicized. It is easy to see that the new emphasison
The parallel just drawn between recent creative art and recent these works was closely related to the work of the German
art history will be another major concern of mine. For this artists of the "Briicke", such as Schmitt-Rottluff, Heckel, and
there is ample justification. Artists and art historians are not Kirchner, of Nolde and Franz Marc whose immediate prede-
always on good terms with one another. Most artists are likely cessors had been van Gogh, Hodler, and Munch. Artists of
to look upon an art historian as did the former king of Saxony, immense spiritual scope like Diirer, Michelangelo, and Rem-
who, when a gentleman of that profession was introduced to brandt were now viewed from different angles, and one aspect
him, hesitated a moment and then remarked in his famous dia- of their art was rediscoveredand extolled at the cost of others
lect, "Well, I suppose there must be some reason for their exist- equally important. A noteworthy case is the neglect and even
ence"--which is perhaps more than some modern artists will condemnationof Duirer's Renaissance period and the extrava-
concede. One of the major faults usually laid by artists at the gant praise of his Gothic-expressionisticearly works, such as the
doors of art historians is their alleged lack of interest in the Revelation of St. John. Subject-matter was highly valued
problems of modern art; to which the art historian may well again for some time-at least hectic subject-matterwas.
retort that modern artists care far too little for the great works
of the past. Whatever the truth-or the rrrajortruth-may be, The contempt for subject-matterwhich marks the last thirty
I wish to point to the fact that in regard to our main problem years or so of modernart-as far as it has been characteristically
artists and art historians have, curiously enough, taken an iden- modern art-is clearly reflected in the art history of the same
tical stand during the last few generations. 'In fact I cannot period. Picasso and Braque painted their first experimentsin
see how research in art history can possibly fail to reflect the abstractart-to be exact, of cubist art, which was the immediate
main movements of living art if it is carried out by people with forerunner of purely abstract art-around 1910; that is, prac-
some feeling for art. Art history, after all, is not an exact sci- tically at the time of the climax of expressionism.A few years
ence, but one of the most complicated-and, to an exact scien- later, German expressionism,in one of the strangest metamor-
tist, one of the most hybrid-compromises between science and phosesin the history of art, collapsedinto similarly abstractpat-
artistic intuition that can possibly be imagined. terns in the later works of Franz Marc and Wassily Kandinsky.
PAGE 104
PAGE 105
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SUBJECTMATTERAND
FORMIN ART by NIERENDORF
Wolfgang Stechow 18 East 57th Street, New York
PAINTINGS (Continued from page 106)
PAGE 122