The Decline and Fall of Western Art

by Brendan Heard

  Hardanger fjord Hans Fredrik Gude 1825–1903 & Composition VII—according to Kandinsky, the most complex piece he ever painted (1913)

  Could it be put any more starkly that we have been swindled?

  The claim that Romanticism is a precursor and relative to Modernism rests in it being an imaginative counter-reaction to Victorian realism, which in truth was itself quite good and not at all like our modern-day paint-by-numbers photo realism.

  But this is the Modernist’s duplicitous reasoning: Romanticism can be defined as somewhat rebellious in its era, therefore because Modernists are the ultimate art rebels due to their squiggles and boxes, these movements are then one and the same, and Romanticism is the first Modernism. All rather laughable, is it not?

  The official Modernist art history timeline from Romanticism then usually ignores or skips over the Pre-Raphaelites and the Jugendstil (Art Nouveau) period, links through briefly with Impressionism and finally leaps headlong into Expressionism (the true root of Modernism), and so forth. This biased Modernist timeline finally terminates in the abysmal Abstract Expressionism, which by its definition may be considered the penultimate movement of Modernism since it is defined by visual abstraction as a rule, existing as a fixed state of ‘rebellion’ but without progression. A permanent state of rebellion quickly becomes something you need to rebel against. Abstract Expressionism is where art goes to die. From the enthronement of Abstract Expressionism onward, all representational art has been characterized as ‘illustration’, fine art being about liberal narrative applied to abstraction or shock value, vindicating human weakness.

  By virtue of the ridiculous claim of Romanticism being an early form of Modernism, most art movements historically intermediate are considered Modernist to academics. This is a woeful miscarriage of history and sullies the reputation of the very fine and classically trained Romantic, Pre-Raphaelite, Impressionist or Jugendstil painters and sculptors, as well as Art Deco architects who would no doubt, should they be raised from their graves, be agape in horror at the culturally suicidal and pathetic monstrosities we now call fine buildings. Associating Romanticism and Impressionism with Expressionism and Cubism, and so forth, is a mistaken and opportunist claim, an act of intellectual hoodwinking that implicates totally abstract movements within the realm of representational works or art with classical values. One is talented and hard-working and the other is a hoax. We must label abstraction and anti-art – and we must call it Modernism. Romanticism was wildly original and also partly a reaction to the industrial revolution. But it was by no means a solid break with tradition and where it wandered into anything resembling the abstract, for lack of a better word (imaginative style is more appropriate), it did so purely within the context of a total mastery of technical skill in representation, imbued with individualistic and exaggerated drama. There was no total abstraction for the sake of shock-value narrative. The same could be said for Impressionism (though a few were Modernists) with its strange but masterful visual illusions. Neither of these movements could be mastered without a firm grasp of classical theory and visual technique.

  This is not necessarily so with Expressionism and those movements that followed. As tracing the lineage is an important step in understanding exactly where we went afoul, we must describe briefly each of the major movements of this period leading up to the unnecessary disaster that was Expressionism.

  1) Romanticism (1780–1850): Noted for imagination and individuality, glorification of nature and myth.

  Wounded Cuirassier Leaving the Field of Battle, 1814, Théodore Géricault.

  “Romanticism had been, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, a revolt against the effects of the Industrial Revolution and bourgeois values, while emphasizing individual, subjective experience, the sublime,and the supremacy of ‘Nature’, as subjects for art, and revolutionary, or radical extensions of expression... The movement validated strong emotion as an authentic source of æsthetic experience ... especially that which is experienced in confronting the sublimity of untamed nature and its picturesque qualities. Romanticism reached beyond the rational and Classicist ideal models to elevate a revived medievalism.”

  – Wikipedia description of Romanticism

  The description skips over any mention of what is obvious to any viewer of Romantic works — that every single artist associated with the movement worked within the framework of classical representational methods. Their works stand out as being masterful, imbued with emotion and imagination but in no way abstract or without beauty values.

  2) The Pre-Raphaelites (1848–1920): Sought a return to the detail and complex colour/compositions of Quattrocento (or pre-Mannerist) Italian art.

  La Belle Dame sans Merci 1893, John William Waterhouse.

  The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was an imaginative, rebellious movement that opposed the dominant trend of industrial Victorian England, disliking its mechanistic approach to classical poses and compositions. They were influenced by the writings of the art critic John Ruskin (1819 to 1900). Regardless of their resistance to classicism, technical skill was in their retinue. What they would have considered stark realism is to us today positively flamboyant compared with the sad, photography inspired realism we see from most of our current realists. The Pre-Raphaelites were certainly not abstractionists but practised externalizing a bohemian beauty that was somewhat Gothic and somewhat Romantic. Their artistic outlook was medieval but they used the full retinue of learned painterly skills available in their day – and were masters. Pre-Raphaelites are not associated with Modernism at all and merely existed in that era between Romanticism and Expressionism.

  3) Impressionism (1865–1885): Capturing or expressing illusions of natural light.

  Claude Monet, Woman with a Parasol - Madame Monet and Her Son (Camille and Jean Monet), 1875. An example of goood Impressionism.

  Impressionism originated with a group of Paris-based artists who were radicals in their time. They constructed their pictures from freely brushed colours that took precedence over lines and contours, following the example of painters such as Eugène Delacroix and J. M. W. Turner (Romanticism). By re-creating the light and colour effect of the subject in the eye, rather than delineating the details as the Form of shape, and by creating their own unique techniques, Impressionism was truly innovative, technical, traditional and interesting. However, academics consider Impressionism a precursor of various painting styles, including Neo-Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Fauvism and Cubism. In the way Impressionism is related to any of them, it is only so in the sense of a vague imitation co-opted and dissipated into nothingness by applied Modernist gimmick and abstraction.

  Impressionists did veer more strongly into what you might call the visually abstract but only through sheer deftness of ability in an effort to portray the subject honestly and uniquely. Sadly, the most famous Impressionist, Van Gogh, is more Modernist than many of his contemporaries, and despite having many fine paintings is largely celebrated for his poorer works in the same exploitative gesture as we are now well accustomed to, and in that sense does not deserve his fame. Overall, Impressionist visual trickery was so clever and intense that it did perhaps invite the embrace of Modernists with their goofy aggrandizing as penultimate visual ‘revolutionaries’, leaving academic opinion ripe for the trickery and opportunism of what followed. The legitimate stylistic successors to Impressionism are Art Nouveau and Art Deco. They were legitimate movements that should have continued to evolve into new styles but were cut short when Modernism swallowed the art world whole.

  Before Art Nouveau appeared, however, we have the inception of the first abstract style, Expressionism.

  4) Expressionism (1900–1935): Abstraction with excuses, typically things like ‘emotion over form’, etc.

  Expressionism’s typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective (solipsism), distorting it to supposedly evoke moods or ideas. Expressionist artists sought to express meaning or emotional experienc
e

  Wassily Kandinsky, 1910, Landscape with Factory Chimney.

  rather than physical reality. This is, in their own words, again pure manipulation by those with high verbal intelligence. Fauvism is another movement associated with Expressionism but is not really worth mentioning, not unless you want to pretend you see a difference between different shapeless, colourful blobs.

  With Expressionism, we find a theme of deeply believed relativism and solipsism that could not have previously entered the human psyche as a serious philosophy. Only in the spreading black soil of post-French Revolution materialist values can Modernism find its nourishment, among the easily directed petty rancor of bourgeois jealousies. To take the first step to accepting splatter painting as high art, or art of any kind, is an enormous and misguided leap into chaos. While the sensibilities involved can seem mysterious, these early Modernist artists were self-centred, purposefully refuting reality, or primal instincts, in favour of false attention won with juvenile audacity. In short, Expressionism was the first movement to wilfully attempt a total discarding of artistic technique in place of a pure emotive shock value. How could they guise their scribblings in mock intellectualism? Initially, by associating themselves parasitically with more honest movements like Romanticism. With the aforementioned trick of association, Expressionists cosied up to artists (posthumously) whose brushes they were not worthy of cleaning. Audacity triumphed over integrity. Most importantly, Romantic, Impressionist and Jugendstil painters who Modernists parasitically absorbed worked within a mental framework of traditionalism, hard work, sacred geometry, visual illusion and emotive naturalism. Meanwhile those lesser Expressionist or Fauvist minds, when confronted with Romantic mild and imaginative abstraction, seemingly assumed, whether by moronic innocence or wilful culpability, that they could skip the laborious efforts of craft and talent and go straight to the abstraction – which even if rendered childishly could be shrouded in a literature of mystery. Their most important weapon was once again volumes of indecipherable Greenbergian Artspeak.

  5) Art Nouveau (1890–1910): inspired by natural forms and structures.

  Art Nouveau artist Eugene Grasset: poster for Grafton Galleries, 1893.

  Art Nouveau or Jugendstil is an interesting and short-lived cross-European style of decorative, architectural and applied arts that can be considered both a ‘total’ art style and a counter-reaction to Modernism and the industrial revolution.

  According to their philosophy, art should be a way of life and should always suggest or emulate nature. The art across all mediums was instantly recognizable as being inspired by natural patterns and structures, languid floral forms and virile flourishes.

  For many well-off Europeans, it was possible to live in a house inspired by and completely fitted with Art Nouveau decor and objects: furniture, silverware, fabrics, crockery, jewellery, cigarette cases, clothing, wallpaper, etc. Artists desired to combine the fine arts and the applied arts, even for utilitarian objects, and for a time succeeded. It was beautiful for as long as it lasted and is mostly discounted today by the establishment, no doubt because it was both æsthetic and idealistic.

  6) Art deco (1920–1940): glamorous industrial Neoclassicism.

  An Art Deco world: The U.S. Navy airship USS Akron (ZRS-4) flying over the southern end of Manhattan, New York, New York, United States, circa 1931-1933.

  Art Deco was sort of the opposite of the languid fluidity of Art Nouveau, being quite starkly Neoclassical in influence and somewhat reductionist, although in a pleasing and even grandiose style. Modernist painting had become popular by this period and there are certain (not all) ‘Art Deco’ paintings that should be considered Modernist as they are dabbling in the abstract and the tendrils of degeneracy were creeping in. However, in terms of architecture and sculpture, particularly, Art Deco proved to be a stimulating example of industrial Neoclassicism. The Modernists try to claim Art Nouveau and Art Deco as Modernist styles due to their historical proximity and their uniqueness. This is, of course, more deceit as they are clearly not abstract, they require no narratives and have traditional precedent. Art Deco architecture in particular is associated with Modernism as it straddles the line between Neoclassicism and Postmodernism, partly due to its success in a more targeted or conservative use of detail, which was purely a taste consideration at the time, and highly æsthetic, but later exploited by primitivists and brutalists to discard detail and decoration completely. The German reductionist architectural movement known as Bauhaus (1919 to 1933) stole much of Art Deco’s streamlined look but exploitatively and mostly incompetently, evolving into the stark and sterile architecture we see today. Art Nouveau and Art Deco are proof to me that we can have totally new styles by following the old rules and seeking new inspiration in the abundance of nature and history. But you must have order and must apply discrimination.

  Impressionism and Art Nouveau had many great artists. Art Nouveau is often considered controversial, even disliked by many traditionalists as too fussy or pretty somehow. It may have had a certain Japanese influence but it was never a rejection of classical geometry, as has been postulated. Quite the opposite, Art Nouveau, in its adulation of nature, has a highly advanced sense of symmetria – so advanced it may not be noticeable at first. As a style, it is quite different from previous movements and could have blossomed into further excellent variation if Modernism and mass-production had not crushed the art world beneath an iron boot.

  Modernism, what is it really?

  Now, to attempt to define the wilfully indefinable, we should examine shortened Wikipedia descriptions of Modernism and Postmodernism. These are the parent terms to all the philosophies I endeavor to ridicule. But these philosophies are also all facets of the same root philosophy, which is no philosophy at all, merely an Artspeak exercise. Modernism and Postmodernism are virtually indistinguishable because their root goal is to present intentional nonsense – and chaos and nonsense is very hard to categorize.

  Taken from a Wikipedia description:

  “Modern art includes artistic works produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s... The term is usually associated with art in which the traditions of the past have been thrown aside in a spirit of experimentation. A tendency toward abstraction is characteristic of much modern art. More recent artistic production is often called Contemporary art or Postmodern art...

  “In art Modernism explicitly rejects the ideology of realism, and makes use of the works of the past, through the application of reprise, incorporation, rewriting, recapitulation, revision and parody in new forms. Modernism also rejects the lingering certainty of Enlightenment thinking... In general, the term Modernism encompasses the activities and output of those who felt the ‘traditional’ forms of art, architecture, literature, and daily life were becoming outdated in the new economic, social, and political conditions of an emerging fully industrialized world... A salient characteristic of Modernism is self-consciousness. This self-consciousness often led to experiments with form and work that draws attention to the processes and materials used (and to the further tendency of abstraction).’”

  At Sotheby’s in 2013, a record auction price ($43.8 million) was achieved for Barnett Newman’s Onement VI, which is nothing more than a canvas painted blue. Not even worth reproducing in this book for the purpose of exhibit, I can merely describe it: it is just blue. $43.8million.

  The above Wikipedia description does not require any embellishment. Modernists take it as a given ‘good’ that smug attacks on tradition or historical standards are the goal. Depending on when you check, the Wikipedia descriptions for Modernism, Conceptualism and Abstract Expressionism change intermittently, adapting and writhing like coiling serpents, evading scrutiny by slightly altering the language of their meaning. At my time of writing, this was the published interpretation. When they do change the descriptions, it is to incorporate newly developed buzzwords that more heavily layer and cloak the true meaning. The confusing strata of terms that r
eference other terms requiring research to decipher are merely deceptive layers of make-up on their evil pig of chaos.

  What is Postmodernism?

  Postmodernism, for all its claim to revolutionary originality is nothing more than Modernism disguised in looser vagaries and non sequiturs. I do not bother to distinguish between them or, as I have mentioned, take seriously their irrational goalposts as to what is Modernist or Postmodernist. Expressionism was the first abstract movement, wherein paintings were intentionally unpolished or graceless, and later undefinable. There is no logical link from other movements of that time into Expressionism, there is simply art before the Expressionist hoax and art after the Expressionist hoax.