An essay on individuslism through art
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The Renaissance was a revival in Europe of the cyclical view of
history in which mainly Greeks and Romans had been popular.
This cyclical interpretation of history was important because it rose
and then fell behind the idea of great civilization. It is pessimism
which had nothing continued improvement. Post modernism
which challenged the accepted structures of historiographical
research has targeted the nature of historical truth and objectivity.
The historical basis of objectivity as a criteria can be brought back
to the Renaissance, where there was the development of
perspective and naturalism.
Prior to the nineteenth century, history writing basically took on
grand scales. It was written from a human progress perspective or
civilization emergence. A variety of thinkers, writers and
commentators had an authority of history. From this period, the
theories of Karl Marx, and Marx Weber and Emile Durkheim for
later, brought influence on the reassessment of history, its forming
into a social science, and not humanities. Early history writing
through any age reflects the mores, beliefs and purposes of
particular societies. In the period up to the Enlightenment, it is
important to understand that religion ruled in people’s ordering
world-view, as well as influencing their beliefs and judgement.
Actually, Enlightenment didn’t manage the secularization of history.
This notion is known as providence which could be divided in the
actions of Man by God’s hand, and have influence on historical
writing in the past.
Marx’s first contribution to the understanding of historical
processes was the development of "dialectical materialism
(dialectic meaning contradiction), which emerged in part from
Marx’s criticism of Hegel’s ideas." (Studying History; J.Black and
D.M.MacRaild, pg.135). Marx’s dialectical materialism which is
also known as historical materialism was the notion that "humans
are social animals, forming societies and maintaining relations
with other men." (pg.136). Marx argued the material requirement
that changed is the factor in the relationship between men. In this
point, history also seemed to change through different stages, and
material life is distinguished. The Ancient, the Feudal, and the
Bourgeois were the essential epochs which Marx defined. Marx
showed a great understanding, which has the connection between
objective force, "the vast, impersonal social and economic
changes, and subjective factors, such as the actions of men and
groups of people, and the implications of social change for
people." (pg.138).
Positivism was brought in the nineteenth century in Europe as well
as empiricism. Positivism rests on the confident assertions made
by social science. The formation of perfect laws of human
development and social change could be lead by the application of
scientific methods. "if Man could understand the laws which
governed social change in the past, he could understand where
the future would bring change." (J.Black and D.M.MacRaild,
Studying History, pg.43). "The Victorian age might have been
characterized by Great Men and administrative political subject
matter, but it was also the time when many other practitioners
began to ply their alternative trade." (J.Black and D.M.MacRaild,
Studying History, pg.52)
The Whig interpretation of history along with a tendencies of
nationalistic and myth-making was essential in the
nineteenth-century phenomenon. Whig history linked with a
political form of history. It embodied the national myth and
Victorians promoted such vigor. Actually, history in this period was
designed to attend a political or polemical purpose. Many uses of
historical examples were made by a writer of parliament,
pamphlet, and newspaper. History at this time also got a major
role in the education of the influential political nation.
The necessity of art to become accountable in the planetary all is
incompatible with aesthetic attitudes and it rested on the
late-modernist assumption that its said art isn’t useful to play in
larger scales. However, the individualistic focus which was away
from the sense of wholeness narrowed down an aesthetic
perspectives as well. Interaction made art move beyond the
aesthetic mode. It was due to non-interaction and
non-relationism. This view which ensured individual freedom and
expression meant freedom from community and obligation to the
society in the world under modernism. "Reenchantment, as I
understand it, means stepping beyond the modern traditions of
mechanism, positivism, empiricism, rationalism, materialism,
secularism – the whole objectifying consciousness of the
Enlightenment – in a way that allows for a return of soul.
Reenhancement implies a release from the affliction of nihilism,
which David Micheal Levin has called our culture’s cancer of the
spirit." (The Reenchanment of Art; Suzi Gablik, Thames and
Hudson, 1991, pg.11).
We see the art of the past in a way in which nobody saw it before.
Here, we perceive it in different way. "The convention of
perspective, which is unique to European art and which was first
established in the early Renaissance, centers everything on the
eye of the beholder." (Ways of Seeing; J, Berger, BBC and
Penguin, 1972, pg.16). Perspective was in itself not a new
development. The evidence of foreshortening and diminishing
scale in relation to the distance from viewer was shown by
classical works. The beholder led to the stages and stations of a
journey and the picture of reality reveals a panoramic survey, not a
one sided unified representation dominated by a single point of
view. There are both conceptually and pictorially subordinate to
the successive unraveling of the work on the viewpoint of single
subject. Every single eye is perspective into the center of the
visible world. Everything is concentrated on to the single eye as to
the vanishing point of infinity. It reflected the growing view of mans
central position as observer of a purely relative pictorial world of
which he is the measure. (see figure 1).
The dominant modes of art condition which is specialized objects,
created to be contemplated and enjoyed for formal pleasure, not
for moral or practical reasons. The concept of aesthetics
becomes emasculated while it is more emphasized on
ideological manipulation and repackaging whereas a work of art is
not autonomous, self-contained, and pure. "Our present idea of
freedom, Wendell Berry writes in The Hidden Wound, is only the
freedom to do as we please: to sell ourselves for a high salary, a
home in the suburbs, and idle weekends." (Gablik, pg. 168). The
cultural ideas in terms of individual freedom and uniqueness were
embodied in the motifs of Romanticism. The most striking
features of the art during thirteen century is the extraordinary
freedom and effortlessness. "The freedoms won by revolution had
been immediately lost either by counter-revolution or by the
revolutionary government falling into the hands of military dictators.
(Civilisation; Kenneth Clarke, Penguin Books, 1969, pg. 216).
An indivisible unity is the Renaissance conception of art, in which
content relies on a radical shift in the respective relationships
between artists, a shift symptomatic of a transformation from the
world of the symbolic to that of the natural. "Naturalism is a
dominant mode in much of the media and there is the related
emphasis on objectivity, e.g. in news and documentary. So it is
important to understand origins of their ideas, their strengthen and
their limitation." (handout). It too has come to be seen as nature.
"It is only a theory, cultural product which has history like
individualism". (handout). I prefer to look at TV which naturalism
emphasized on because it showed each individuals and their
relation very well, specifically at an emotional level although it is
not good at showing the background surrounded and general
context.
The study of Greek and Latin influenced the thinking, style, and
moral judgement of the Florentines and their art who’s influences
consisted of isolated quotation and wasn’t very far-reaching. In the
early fifteenth-century, the discovery of the individual was made.
Alberti who is an early Renaissance man described how he
conquered every weakness, for "a man can do all things if he will".
(Clark, pg.84) which could be the motto of the early Renaissance.
Alberti’s statement seems naïve when one thinks of much of fears
and memories which every individual carries around with him.
According to the Renaissance conception of art, it should embrace
an indivisible unity. "The lively and intelligent individuals who
created Renaissance, bursting with vitality and confidence, were in
a mood to be crushed by antiquity. They meant to absorb it, to
equal it, to master it." (Clark, pg.94). Here, no longer a world of
free and active men, but a world of giants and heros.
In the republican zeal moment, Michelangelo who is one of the
great western man in the history gave Florentine soldiers a
surprise by depicting the nude which is rather discreditable,
conventionalized and first authoritative statement of human body.
(see figure 2) It meant an expression of noble sentiments,
life-giving energy and God-like perfection. On the ceiling, he chose
to illustrate themes which were not simply concentrated on single
figures and were free to depict his thoughts about human
relationships and human destiny. The Sistine Ceiling
passionately asserts the unity of man’s body, mind and spirit. (see
figure 3) Thus, his power of prophetic insight gives the
impression and feeling that he pertains every epoch of the great
Romantics.
In the sixteenth century, one more giant man who is a typical
Renaissance man is Leonardo da Vinci. He belonged to no
epoch although he had certain Renaissance characteristics which
are beauty and graceful movement. The question he asked most
insistently is about man who is not the man Alberti invocated.
Although that man was remarkable as a mechanism, he was not
at all like an immortal god. (see figure 4) The humanist virtues of
intelligence were added the one of the quality of heroic will. He
was cruel and superstitious, and at the same time, feeble
compared to the forces of nature.
Bourgeois capitalism directed a defensive smugness and
sentimental modernity. The philosophy of observation involved a
demand for realism in the most literal sense. Trying to keep
balance between individual genius and the moral in the society is
important in the history of civilization. The development of
individualism began with Renaissance. The cult of individualism
was connected with the rise of capitalism during the beginnings of
the industrial revolution. Individualism which emphasized human
progress may be a valid analysis of the ideology on a particular
historical epoch. In the early stages of capitalism, single
individuals came into the units of production and distribution.
Economic order which emphasized on planning, expediency, and
calculability is reinterpreted into a visual order of logic, order and
harmony. The movement of naturalism was reflected on the
development of a capitalist economy behind an efficient calculated
rationalism. The economic rationalism dominated the whole
intellectual and material life of the time and was expressed
artistically as the unification and standardization of space.
Noam Chomsky continues to re-iterate that however true an
individual working within the media’s intensions may be, the
vested interests, the political and economic forces of the media at
large hardly objective."
(http://media.wmin.ac.uk/htm99/goyder) Media production is
intimately implicated in relations of power and serves to reproduce
the interests of powerful social forces. It is promoting individuals
for resistance and struggle. However, a cultural materialism also
focuses on the material effects of media culture, insisting images,
spectacles, discourses and sign, which has material effects on
audience.
Descartes was the person who wanted to cut away all
preconceptions and get back to the facts of direct experience,
unaffected by custom and convention. His mechanical conception
of nature constituted the most profound attack on the cosmological
assumptions of Renaissance. He conceived his physics as a
rational system which is matter in motion, a system of science.
His transformation of basis was that physical explanations were
constructed using the model of mechanics although Newton
rejected his mechanisms by stating lack of mathematical basis.
Newton stated the classic laws of motion as a cosmology by the
concept of a gravitational force of attraction. The universe was no
longer a web of hidden affinities with man at the centred. Man’s
conception of his place in nature was changed by the scientific
revolution. Towards the art, Descartes preferred cities built by a
single architect, as he put it. "Without fully realizing the
implications of the message about individualism, commerce, and
applied science, he helped tie the success of science to a
commercial and eventually industrial capitalist order. The linkage
was reinforced throughout the economically expansive eighteen
century when new manufacturing technologies seemed only to
confirm the wisdom of seeing the universe as an interlocking
series of pushing and pulling mechanisms." (Telling the Truth
About History; Appleby, J., L. Hunt, M. Jacob, W.W. Norton
Company, 1994, pg.21).
Galileo fortified of sun centred cosmology and contradicting church
dogma and predicated the integrity and authority of the methods of
science, which is based on observation and mathematics could
uncover the secrets of nature. (see figure 5) This can be related
to the development of the printing press and the compass. The
ability to produce high quality maps and the navigational system
reinforced the mercantile economy booming in Renaissance.
In the society, practices of self take for granted that economic
self-interest is a basic one of human nature. If a new kind of self,
which is ecological emerges in the culture, it will have a challenge
of assumption that human beings are motivated by economics,
which involves a conscious revolution as far getting as the
emergence of individualism itself was in the Renaissance.
Objectivity takes away emotion such as feeling and wants just
facts. It serves as a distancing device and offering strengthen
illusion, certainty and control. Objectivism of aestheticism doesn’t
involve care and compassion. While they are the tools of the soul,
they don’t belong to the art which is value-free with practical goals
and aims either.
"For Elton, the historian pursues nothing short of the truth. He
refused critics’ claims that history is subjective by arguing that,
because the past cannot be altered from the present, the truth of
that past must be recoverable in a more perfect from that is the
case with natural science." (Studying History; J.Black and
D.M.MacRaid. pg.164). He was convinced about fixed and singular
nature of historical facts, which he believed history as being only
objective interpretation of the past. E. H. Carr defined objective
historianism into two ways which are "a person who rose above
the limited vision of his or her own day, and one who projects
forward to discover the discrete relations and interconnectedness
of the facts." (J.Black and D.M.MacRaid, pg.164).
However, post-modern critics denied the statement that history is
objective and scientific, don’t have a universal law, and they
assaulted the structure of scientific legitimation that devoted from
the Renaissance, through the Enlightenment to Modernism.
"Postmodernist history, as one might expect, has rejected the faith
in reason and progress which was so central to modernist
historiography." (In Defence of History; Evans, pg.244). Historical
knowledge has been argued because each historian gets a
different interpretation from the past although Elton rejects this
perception by asserting historical knowledge as cumulative.
Post-modernists assert that true lessons of history are in that of
moral lessons, which is similar to Whig’s interpretation of history
as I mentioned above. "And by noticing uniformity in historians’
writing, post-modernists might be accused of colligating the
historians’ world and emplotting their academic lives and works in
a way that does not reflect, but in fact implies reality." (Black J and
MacRaid. D.M, pg.165).
Postmodernism has stated new subjects and ways of research by
debating the great objectivity. "Postmodernism in its more
constructive modes has encouraged historians to look more
closely at documents, to take their surface patina more seriously,
and to think about texts and narratives in new ways. It has forced
historians to interrogate their own methods and procedures as
never before, and in the process has made them more self-critical,
which is all to the good. It has led to a greater emphasis on open
acknowledgement of the historian’s own subjectivity, which can
only help the reader engaged in a critical assessment of historical
work." (Evans, pg.248). In post-modern critic of history, narrative,
which is a constructive device is important because it provide the
main lever. It delivered historians to contrive a sense of order and
coherence in the past.
Evans said in the book, In Defence of History, the key term of
cultural materialism as "the analysis of all forms of signification
within the actual means and conditions of production." (Evans,
pg.42). We have to situate the objects of analysis within the
system of production. A cultural materialist approach did put
stress on importance of the political economy of culture and
system, which constrains what can and what cannot be produced,
which has limitations and possibilities for cultural production.
"Post-modern critics reject claims that history is objective and
scientific, and the application of general or universal theories is
also undermined. History has always had advocates who argue
that it is a science." (J.Black and D.M.MacRaild, pg.164). The
postmodern critique of science knowledge has resulted in system
for understanding and equating the past in particular by objectivity.
The notion of objectivity inherited from the scientific revolution. "We
have redefined historical objectivity as an interactive relationship
between an inquiring subject and an external object. Validation in
this definition comes from persuasion more than proof, but without
proof there is no historical writing of any worth." (Appleby, Hunt and
Jacob; Telling the Truth, pg.261).
Bibliography
Appleby, Hunt & Jacob; Telling the Truth about History, Norton
Press, USA, 1995
J.Berker; Ways of Seeing, BBC and Penguin Books, 1972
J.Black., Donald M. MacRaild; Studying History, Macmillan, 1997,
2000
K. Clarke; Civilisation, London
R.J.Evans; In defence of history, Granta books, London, 1996
Suzi Gablik; The Reenchanment of Arts, Thames and Hudson,
1991
Web page (http://media.wmin.ac.uk/htm99/goyder)
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