Evidence for Theory of Art History?

[~Sophia~]

I found this essay which attempts to explain what Kant thought about this sublime:

By contrast, according to Kant, the sublime is a principle of disorder, of purposivelessness; it is the occurrence of our mind coming into contact with something that it cannot categorize or encompass. It cannot resolve any bounding organizing principle within the object because it finds it impossible to determine the object’s limits. The mind cannot determine the limits of the object because it challenges the imagination’s presentative powers; it is beyond imaginative power to present a sensible form to the understanding, and the powers of understanding are unable to make sense out of nothing. Therefore both the imagination and the understanding fail us when confronted with the sublime; and if this is the case then the sublime represents disorganization. A disorganization that is not simply an external arbitrary disorganization, rather it suggests an internal systemic disorganization, and it is our inability to bring order the perceived object that fosters the sense of disorganization; and this threatens us and our notion of ourselves as ordered and ordering entities.

Kant identifies beauty with a quality, purposiveness, but associates the sublime with an unlimited quantity; beauty is calming, but the sublime perturbs us. Kant describes the purposiveness of the beautiful as “preadaptable to our judgement, and thus constitutes in itself an object of satisfaction.” On the sublime Kant argues that the purposivelessness of the sublime is the opposite as it seems “to violate purpose in respect of the judgment, to be unsuited to our presentative faculty“; he goes on to say that to encounter the sublime “does violence to the imagination.“

Kant argues that pleasure derived from the sublime is a “negative pleasure”; it is a pleasure that does not come from the sublime itself, it is more indirect, but from our feeling of relief upon our realization that this external disorder is not a threat to our internal order. That is, our recognition of an alternative purposiveness, which is identified by reason, and is independent of worldly threats, what Kant calls our “supersensible destination” which is to be good, i.e. moral. When Kant says:

The feeling of the inadequacy of our capacity for the attainment of an idea that is a law for us is respect. Now the idea of the comprehension of every appearance that may be given to us into the intuition of a whole is one enjoined on us by a law of reason, which recognizes no other determinate measure, valid for everyone and inalterable, than the absolute whole.”

he seems to be arguing that an encounter with the unthinkable in the sublime highlights our inadequacies and our need to make ourselves adequate with regard to the notion of the moral law. Therefore, the sublime brings us to an acknowledgement that there is an alternative purpose other than the purpose which is susceptible to the threats of the world, that is, to be moral. With regard to that purpose, if an object can be perceived as posing no threat to us we are able more easily to perceive the object disinterestedly; any pleasure is derived from the knowledge of our inherent safety with regard to the perceived threat, Kant describes this pleasure of the sublime as a sort of joy, “the pleasurableness arising from the cessation of an uneasiness is a state of joy.“

So according to him truly successful art creates inner uneasiness in the observer and then when that uneasiness ceasses - that relief from the uncomfortable is a higher state of joy (because it is a realization of safety?) - higher than the pleasure coming from envisioning your values in a physical object of beauty.

I don't quiet get what he means by what I placed in bold.

Edited July 12, 2008 by ~Sophia~

[William Scott Scherk]

William,

Do you realize that, in removing the hill behind the figures in the Stone Breakers, you've not "corrected" the horizon line but have come very close to revealing it?

Yes, and I should correct the misplaced horizon line in my earlier estimation.

The eye tells where the sealine lies, when the sealine is in view. When we stand on shore, the exact spot where the sea meets the sky is also in our mind's eye, implicit in our parasthetic sense. Where the sealine lies is on the plane of the bow that we stretch out straight from our eye -- we may point to this line with our eyes closed and be reasonably correct.

The problem in rendering this innate facility while viewing any given painting is we must take into account the angle of vision of the painter -- we cannot assume that our angle of view is directly oriented to distant sealine. My painterly eye is on the gleaners, tilted down from the horizontal, not slightly higher at the freighters riding anchor on the line. To illustrate:

OR

In which image are the figures floating and in which are they footling in the sea?

Thanks Jonathan, for pointing out my original error in The Stonebreakers.

[Jonathan13]

I wanted to add to something that William said earlier.

He wrote:

As for The Stone Breakers, your prescription does not hold for all places and all times. Again, one must consider the angle of view to determine the 'correct' placement of the horizon line, and one must consider intervening objects and forms. Your argument brings in the pot lid, as if to insist that the pot is placed on an exact horizontal, resting on an exact horizontal plane, and that the pot lid is also placed on an exact horizontal plane -- the evidence of uneven ground tells me that one can conclude nothing regarding the horizontal plane.

The stone breakers are in a depression, below the level of the earth surface, partially surrounded by sloping quarry walls, thus the horizon line is obscured. Your argument may assert that the "horizon line is . . . in the top right corner," but the evidence does not support the assertion.

I think that probably gets to the heart of the confusion. Perspective is more complex than some people might imagine.

In any scene, there's generally a scene horizon line which represents a sort of universal infinite plane which establishes the context of the image, but there are also other horizon lines for objects which aren't squared up to the scene horizon line, but are instead sitting at varying angles (like the pot and lid in the Stone Breakers that William mentioned).

In general, many of the objects in a scene are likely to have axes whose lines converge at vanishing points on the scene horizon line. But there will also likely be many objects or surfaces whose lines do not converge at vanishing points on the scene horizon line, but whose lines will converge on their own independent horizons. The angled plane of a roof of a typical house is a good example: only one of its vanishing points will be on the scene horizon; its other vanishing point will be higher, which will result in an independent, angled horizon line for that plane.

A hilly landscape, such as that in the Stone Breakers, is made up of many independent planes, most of which, if plotted in 3-point perspective, will have no axis lines leading to the scene horizon line, but will have their own independent horizons.

Now, the interesting thing to me is that Adrock seems to believe that accurate visual representations of the multi-faceted, undulating perspective planes of rough terrain, which naturally do not conform to a scene horizon line, result in a flat, "artificial" look, and he seems to expect artists to eliminate such alleged artifice by using a single plane for the ground (preferably with some sort of parquetry to help clearly establish the plane's perspective) and by populating the plane with objects which have zero pitch, zero roll and zero yaw. In effect, his view seems to be that nature looks most natural when squared up to a patterned, Brunelleschian perspective grid, and it looks "artificial" when not carefully arranged or otherwise tampered with.

J

Edited July 12, 2008 by Jonathan13

[adrock3215]

In a previous post you said that it didn't have a horizon line at all. Now that was hardly something new in painting, as indoor scenes, still lifes and portraits for obvious reasons don't have a horizon line in most cases. Perhaps you meant that the background is very sketchy. But that isn't anything new either, already for centuries portraits often had only sketchy backgrounds. See for example many of Rembrandt's portraits, or compare the Fifer with this painting by Velazquez, which was painted more than 200 years earlier:

Most paintings have a horizon line (defined as the the line representing the viewers eye level, which is where the sky and land/sea would meet in the distance, even if the horizon itself is obscured by buildings or trees), including indoor scenes, still lifes, and portraits. An easy example of the latter would be the Mona Lisa. An example that works in your favor may be Raphael's Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione, although it is actually highly admired for its presentation of space, and its strong chairoscuro elements hint at a horizon line, as they also do in the Valazquez portrait you posted.

Manet obviously drew some inspiration from the study of the likes of Valazquez and Caravaggio, and possibly even Raphael in the above portrait. This can be seen in the 'flatness' of the background. But a major difference can be seen in the depiction of light and its attendant effects. Manet uses very little shadowing (compare the face of the Valazquez portrait with the face of the Fifer). My guess is that the tonal variation in the background of The Fifer may very subtly hint at a horizon line that shows the ground plane tipped up again.

But there is something new going on here with Manet and the other Realists, and it isn't a vague background. It is that Manet and the other Realists are chiefly concerned with the exploration of the flattened surface and its expressive possibilities.

[adrock3215]

Ah. Forgive me, but perhaps without intending it, you insult those who take issue with your artistic erudition -- why would anyone not agree with your conclusions? Because they don't understand the essentials. Because they do not understand the basics of painting, the dunderheads.

I apologize for that. The tone of my conversation has been like that for the entire thread, as I have felt like Jonathon is not here to gain knowledge, but rather to advance his position against the "Objectivist position" (whatever that is). That is why I attempted to present my study of these paintings as "not Objectivist."

Now, the corrections you have posted are interesting, although you moved the horizon of The Gleaners down too far. I think it belongs properly just above the hunched over backs of the two figures on the left. I have found two interesting comparisions to The Stone Breakers and The Gleaners although the viewpoints are slightly different. Either way, I believe they convey a more accurate depiction of spatial illusion. They are Millias' The Blind Girl (comparision: the presentation of a hilly terrain):

and Burchett's View Across the Sundown Bay, Isle of Wight (comparision: a field with people):

Edited July 14, 2008 by adrock3215

[Jonathan13]

The tone of my conversation has been like that for the entire thread, as I have felt like Jonathon is not here to gain knowledge, but rather to advance his position against the "Objectivist position" (whatever that is). That is why I attempted to present my study of these paintings as "not Objectivist."

I haven't used the term "Objectivist position" in this discussion, and, regarding your feelings that I'm not here to gain knowledge, I keep getting the impression in this discussion that so much of what you assert is the exact opposite of reality. As someone who has had about 25 years of almost daily professional experience using very advanced perspective techniques, I can't help but feel that you (who clearly do not have much knowledge of perspective) are here not to gain knowledge but to presume to instruct others.

Having said that, if there's something that I can learn from you, I'm very open to it. If you think that you can plot the Courbet image in proper 3-point perspective and prove that your opinion is accurate about where the scene's horizon line is, I'll be eager to review your work, and, if it holds up to scrutiny, I'll gladly thank you for the new knowledge that I've gained. If you can answer my questions from post #38 about how Courbet's aesthetics were influenced by Kant's, despite directly contradicting them, I'd be very interested in hearing your argument.

I'm very open to changing my views about anything if you can support your opinions with something other than accusations that my arguments are "non-essential," or concrete-bound, or that I'm not understanding how ideas can influence a culture, or that certain artists were "trying to say" something which is the opposite of what they actually did say, or that I should "check the image again" when I tell you that my knowledge of perspective doesn't support your opinion about where a horizon line is, or that I should trust the interpretations of unnamed "art historians" rather than my own eyes and expertise, or that I should simply look at images that you've posted because doing so might "help" me to understand perspective.

J