Theory Position Paper
W?lfflin’s Principles of Art History
Is the development of art history goal-driven according to W?lfflin?
Every painter paint with its own aura and that is how we can distinguish them in the first place. That is how the individual masterpieces were created. Some will see curves, full, flesh and some will find the same figure to be slenderer and thinner. If we are no longer limited by the boundaries of nature, these individual marks become more apparent. This is the temperament of the artists. Even though the reality is one, the artists still manage to extract their own temperament from that reality of nature. We must look to reveal the connection between the parts to the whole and only then we would be able to define individual styles and not only in design but also in light and colour. Certain conception of form is bound to certain tonality that resonated with the individual style that comes from individual temperament. On this basis W?lfflin develops his theory of the 'double root of style', referring on the one hand to the artistic sensibility, seen within a historical context, and on the other to something deeper and more philosophical. For W?lfflin, the style of the expressed individual temperament, and paintings expressed the style of a movement. W?lfflin also assumed that works of art expressed the style of 'the country, the race', and together, these 'expressions' (temperament, movement, country, race) constituted one of the 'double roots of style’. '. W?lfflin's definition of the other, second root, to be found in 'the most general representational forms', which he consistently characterised as 'optical'. It is possible to imagine a developmental history of occidental seeing for which differences of individual and national character are no longer of great significance'.
W?lfflin suggested five properties of art which are linear versus painterly, plain versus recession, closed versus open, multiplicity versus unity and absolute versus relative clarity. These properties are often dependent on each other meaning that if a painting is linear, it should also be plain, closed, multiplicity and absolute (W?lfflin, 1932). These attributions cannot be separated as well as they cannot be defined with the temperament of the artist. Linear vision is permanently bound up with a certain idea of beauty and so is the painterly vision. So anytime there is new representation it is not only because of a new possibility but also because of a new beauty as well. W?lfflin gives a stone as an example. We can roll a stone down a hill and the motions it will take is determined by aspects of the ground like softness, steepness, etc., but all these aspects are still under the law of gravity. So, in human psychology as well there are certain developments, but they are also subject to natural laws and its aspects can be observed within the process (Bullock, 1953). A systematic history of art was built upon the foundations of the psychology of perception; secondly, that artworks have their own formal language, which is made up of a set of oppositions, called pairs that structure the art of all ages. The history of spirit trumps the development of 'seeing', and the impulse to abrupt reversal must be external to art itself. W?lfflin argued that form must pass from hand to hand and occupy the imagination long enough 'to make it yield up its baroque possibilities'. He immediately notes, however, that this cannot mean that the Baroque style is not expressive. He also signifies the concept of decorations by opposing decoration to imitation, associating first with a sense of beauty, the second with a sense of truth. He identified 'decoration' closely with his 'forms of representation', to the degree that 'the history of painting is not by chance, but essentially, a history of decoration'. That is why, W?lfflin says, paintings have more to do with earlier paintings than with the appearances they imitate. All artistic intuition is bound to certain decorative schema and visibility is crystallized for the eye under certain forms. But in every new form of crystallization, a new aspect of the world's content also comes to light (Podro, 1972). The decoration was not only geometric, but also stereometric, or three-dimensional. 'The content of the world does not crystallize to an unchanging form and it is not just a mirror but a living power of apprehension which has its own inner history and has passed through many stages. W?lfflin does not describe these stages, but however many there might be, for W?lfflin there were only two 'crystals', or perhaps one, its growth defined by his five polar categories. He thought there might be more but could not find them (W?lfflin, 1964).
With all due respect of the developments contributed by W?lfflin, I would like to suggest another scholar within the field of art and explain this opposition with regards to him. Alois Riegl, the Austrian art historian famous for his work Stillfragen (Problems of Style, 1893).
Riegl’s concern was about various historical manifestations of what he called the human “will to art”. He suggested three distinct types of aesthetic principles governing three distinct historical manifestations of this will to art. The common goal was representing external objects as clear material entities. The objects of the external world tend to appear to us in a chaotic mixture. According to him, the ancients found optically perceived objects to be confusing. In attempts represent an object truly objective, individuality and experience was compromised. In order to grasp the entire object, one must combine an act of subjective consciousness and think. The vision is useful for determining the height and weight, but it is simply not enough, one also needs knowledge of material and stability which can be achieved by touch. For Riegl, an image is the scientific configuration of a material according to the rules of visual grammar. This grammar includes a set of polarities (haptic vs. optic, objective vs subjective) and a trifocal vision (close vs normal vs distant view)' Each artefact is a configuration of these polarities. The will to art, therefore, relates to formal regularities within visual regime perceivable in any human creation in an image whose goal is purely aesthetic or ornament or where the aesthetic is adherent to other goals such as art industry. Riegl’s theory consist his conception of an image as the configuration of different ideal points including the formal qualities as well as the position of the viewer, the purpose of the artefact and the culture it was created in (Herrmann, 1984). Not only did Riegl believe that ‘all human will is directed towards a satisfactory shaping of man’s relationship with the world’, but also that two forms of artistic desire negotiate this relationship. Plastic arts is seen to regulate man’s relationship with the perceptible appearance of objects and poetic desire is an expression of the way man wants to imagine things. This connection between art and worldview is the idea that the world is created by tangible (plastic) self-contained individual forms (Riegl, 1984). He argued, unlike W?lfflin, that art could have different objectives at different times and did not operate in the confines of development, high point and degeneration. Essentially, material and technical requirements help stylistic changes and that it is internal rather than being bound to external circumstances and this internals are supported by motifs developed by the notion of artistic desire or the will to create art. It should not be disregarded that changes in style are the changes in the psychology of vision and therefore the will to create art or artistic desire is a dynamic drive, an artistic order of the perceptual world. The style and the subjects grasp the objective world as a vision of art (Michael, 2005).
W?lfflin explains the origin of style as urgency of periodicity and the mystery of temperament. He considered styles to be a developmental cycle that retreated through the history of art. However, there is a need for a theory of style that is adequate to the psychological and historical problems along with a deeper understanding and knowledge of the principles of form construction and expression. These understanding of psychological and historical problems, principles of form, expression creates a unified theory, but the processes of social life and emotional behaviour has to be compromised. The form is the act of artistic process that reflects the labour of creation and it cannot be measured as purely formalist ways like W?lfflin’s five principles. The scholar’s responsibility in this development is simply constructing ways of viewing the world which is hard because the will to art is subjective to culture and individual and much of the invariability is lost but the objectivity in that is the awareness of that loss.
What we feel might not always correspond to what we measure and expressiveness, as well as existential force to create, is the objectification of essence and this internal movement of the work is the rhythm of style. There are different ways of a work has been received from the moment of its creation through different periods of time which makes them both historically significant as well as relatively stable. Which they later alter in appearance and grows according to the movement and the individual. Therefore, the history of art cannot be definite but constantly changing and improving.
Bibliography
Alois Riegl, Late Roman Art Industry, trans. by Rolf Winkes, Rome: Giorgio Bretschneider, 1984
Gubser, Michael. “Time and History in Alois Riegl's Theory of Perception.” Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 66, no. 3, 2005, pp. 451–474.
Wolfgang Herrmann, Gottfried Semper: In Search of Architecture, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1984.
Michael Bullock, Abstraction and Empathy: A Contribution to the Psychology of Style, New York: International Universities Press, 1953.
Michael Podro, The Manifold in Perception: Theories of Art from Kant to Hildebrand, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972.
Heinrich W?lfflin, Renaissance and Baroque, trans. by Kathrin Simon, London: Collins, 1964.
Heinrich W?lfflin, Principles of Art History: The Problem of the Development of Style in Later Art, trans. by M. D. Hottinger, London: Bell, 1932
Henri Focillon, The Life of Forms in Art, 2nd English edition, New York: Wittenborn, 1948.
Thomas Munro, Evolution in the Arts and Other Theories of Culture History, Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1963.
Zupnick, Irving L. “The Iconology of Style (Or W?lfflin Reconsidered).” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 19, no. 3, 1961, pp. 263–273.