Instinct is often spoken about by artists but it is not the same kind of animal instinct that allows birds to fly backwards and forwards across the globe or any other instinctive behaviour of animals. Artists’ instincts are largely composed of memories of art, or of life itself. We all have memories of life, whether we are artists or not, it is this allows communication to take place. An artist’s instinct is cultural rather than genuinely instinctive. It seems instinctive only in the sense that it is learnt through vision not through rational, verbal communication. Much of the judgement made by artists under the banner of ‘instinct’ is built-in cultural preference.
Where this instinct comes in for artists is the use of the 5000 year old language of form, which is mainly inherited and cannot be sensibly expanded without cause. Artists often speak of standing on the shoulders of masters, that is because we have a history, not remotely that art historians convey. Art history for artists should be taught by artists. The art historians version is for consumers and mostly like Rembrandt scholarship, grossly misleading. Considering I pointed out the failures in my article in The Burlington Feb.1977. One has to be extra generous to overlook the criminal mis-information that is still taught in high places.
I have written a lot about the alternative tradition because on the whole it is neglected. It is based on Roman geometry, which developed as a result of making copies of terracotta portraits or Greek sculpture. It is a three dimensional geometry, developed from a measuring boss on the sculpture itself that leads the mind of the artist towards the Platonic solids, resulting in a more accurate description of the visible world. It is present in the major works of Masaccio, Mantegna, Holbein, Rembrandt, Degas, Giacometti and many lesser names. Rome has had a bad press since Wincklemann but if you understand my point about these artists you will see that the bad press is horribly undeserved. My discovery that the most revered works on The Parthenon are in fact Roman restorations adds considerable weight to this argument. See link to A Sculptor’s Perspective.
The two traditions of form, the Greek and the Roman have dominated western art. The modern obsession with originality, that is in truth no more than novelty, is actually undermining the time-honoured visual language, which was used for telling religious stories also to the illiterate. The arts of drama and dance contribute alongside sculpture, painting and drawing to the refinement of that language. It was universally comprehensible because it was the same body-language that teaches us to navigate life itself. Art cannot tell valuable stories without the human body. “History Painting” as it was called, was once regarded as the highest form of art and should remain so; the rest is decorative, life-enhancing maybe but not central to human cooperative existence.
What I am saying is that all these arts had a beneficial effect on human communication that has been neglected by the modern preference for abstraction in the arts. This has done incalculable damage to inter-human understanding. Our universal, non-verbal communication is obviously in steep decline.
Prepare for the massive changes in art history that will result from recent discoveries
by studying with Nigel Konstam at Verrocchio
Instinct is often spoken about by artists but it is not the same kind of animal instinct that allows birds to fly backwards and forwards across the globe or any other instinctive behaviour of animals. Artists’ instincts are largely composed of memories of art, or of life itself. We all have memories of life, whether we are artists or not, it is this allows communication to take place. An artist’s instinct is cultural rather than genuinely instinctive. It seems instinctive only in the sense that it is learnt through vision not through rational, verbal communication. Much of the judgement made by artists under the banner of ‘instinct’ is built-in cultural preference.
Where this instinct comes in for artists is the use of the 5000 year old language of form, which is mainly inherited and cannot be sensibly expanded without cause. Artists often speak of standing on the shoulders of masters, that is because we have a history, not remotely that art historians convey. Art history for artists should be taught by artists. The art historians version is for consumers and mostly like Rembrandt scholarship, grossly misleading. Considering I pointed out the failures in my article in The Burlington Feb.1977. One has to be extra generous to overlook the criminal mis-information that is still taught in high places.
I have written a lot about the alternative tradition because on the whole it is neglected. It is based on Roman geometry, which developed as a result of making copies of terracotta portraits or Greek sculpture. It is a three dimensional geometry, developed from a measuring boss on the sculpture itself that leads the mind of the artist towards the Platonic solids, resulting in a more accurate description of the visible world. It is present in the major works of Masaccio, Mantegna, Holbein, Rembrandt, Degas, Giacometti and many lesser names. Rome has had a bad press since Wincklemann but if you understand my point about these artists you will see that the bad press is horribly undeserved. My discovery that the most revered works on The Parthenon are in fact Roman restorations adds considerable weight to this argument. See link to A Sculptor’s Perspective.
The two traditions of form, the Greek and the Roman have dominated western art. The modern obsession with originality, that is in truth no more than novelty, is actually undermining the time-honoured visual language, which was used for telling religious stories also to the illiterate. The arts of drama and dance contribute alongside sculpture, painting and drawing to the refinement of that language. It was universally comprehensible because it was the same body-language that teaches us to navigate life itself. Art cannot tell valuable stories without the human body. “History Painting” as it was called, was once regarded as the highest form of art and should remain so; the rest is decorative, life-enhancing maybe but not central to human cooperative existence.
What I am saying is that all these arts had a beneficial effect on human communication that has been neglected by the modern preference for abstraction in the arts. This has done incalculable damage to inter-human understanding. Our universal, non-verbal communication is obviously in steep decline.
Prepare for the massive changes in art history that will result from recent discoveries
by studying with Nigel Konstam at Verrocchio