In Brooke Davis Anderson’s wall text for Dargerism: Contemporary Artists and Henry Darger,” she writes “By leaning into the boundaries of the Western canon, 'Dargerism' illustrates how one self-taught master has spawned a new movement, a wholly new ‘ism.’” Other wall text contradicts this spawning - Justine Kurland, for example, was photographing her nomadic waifs before she ever knew of Darger. And there are just too many artists not in this show who have been doing similar work for Darger alone to carry the weight of an “ism.” There is something that extends beyond him and into the fields nearby: In a broader Hegelian manner genre painting is making its appearance in contemporary art.
When Hegel writes about the period that he calls Romanticism, which for him emerges with what he refers to as “so-called genre,” it is the period in which Classical beauty is no longer appropriate to art. Spirit withdraws from nature in order to be intimate with itself, and at this time “the human being, as actual subjectivity, must be made the principle, and thereby alone...does the anthropomorphic reach its consummation.”* Jan Van Eyck’s Ghent Altarpiece, 1426, marks a turn towards Christ as a particular individual, and subjectivity is now at home in the world. Idealism gives way to contingency - “romantic art leaves externality to go its own way again for its part freely and independently, and in this respect allows any and every material, down to flowers, trees and the commonest household gear, to enter the representation without hindrance even in its contingent natural existence.” In its capriciousness painting falls apart from the unity of classical sculpture and becomes divided among genre painting, landscape, still life and portaiture. One can even pick up on national differences - whereas German genre paintings can only reveal “snarling and vicious people,” Dutch paintings leave one in a jovial mood.***
Robert Campin’s Merode Altarpiece,1425-1428, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is an excellent example of what Hegel means by being at home in the world. In the Annunciation God appears to Mary as a teeny cross-bearing figure, barely visible as compared to the gleaming copper pot in the background. This rather insignificant figure has flown through the window of the home where this particular man loves this particular woman, and in this love “everything else which by way of interests, circumstances and aims belongs otherwise to actual being and life, [is elevated] into an adornment of this emotion; it tugs everything into this sphere and assigns a value to it only in its relation thereto.”****
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In Delia Brown's Autumn Morning, 2008, a fictitious child sits in the window of a well appointed home, a pile of Care Bears filling up the space of a roomy arm chair. In the exhibition "Precious,"false portraits of overly sweet mothers and daughters oozing with silk, pearls and flushing cheeks are staged fantasies caught in the impossible desires of women who never had children. The small scale of the paintings and the exaggerated plushness of being at home in the world is meant as a critique of painting's gendered terms, in which being too precious in one's work is never as serious as masculine austerity and scale. Similarly, Amy Cutler's miniature paintings of nomadic women from elsewhere- pictured above - carry their worlds upon their backs, with no ground below them or heaven above. Carrying their children and households with them as they go, contingent necessity is an adornment in an exotic world without men. Homeless genre enters the more conceptual strategy of Joy Garnett who retrieves images that grab her from the public domain and files them until she can no longer remember their context. Underscoring their placelessness she paints from these digital images in "one go," marking the gap in time and place with the spontaneity of painting.
Stephen Bann wrote that Pop Art was a return to genre as a “generic challenge to personal expression,”***** and it is also true that Gerhard Richter’s self-proclaimed banality was a response to Neo Expressionism. But in the New York ‘80s, also responding to Neo-Expressionism, there was not so much an interest in genre as there was in style - painters such as Sherrie Levine, Ross Bleckner and Philip Taafe, choosing from the work of Bridget Riley or Paul Feeley whose reception marked the problem of style, appropriated their motifs as their own. When genre occurred it was also in the sense of detaching oneself from its conventions and appropriating the style of another. Emphasizing culture above nature, April Gornik evokes Rockwell Kent in Pulling Moon, and in Light Before Heat, also from 1983, it is Fitz Hugh Lane. Genre painting in contemporary art existed, but at this time it had a relation to style that is no longer relevant in the same way.
It is perhaps symptomatic of this general mood that Jennifer Reeves creates characters out of painterly styles, appearing as though in the shift to the genre scene - as here in "Which way to the real deal?".
Currently at the Neuberger Museum of Art is “Future Tense,” the last of several genre exhibitions curated by Dede Young. Holding the recent work of 60 artists it is a landscape painting show, with the exception of a handful of artists working in other media. Striking is how very recent and varied these paintings are - many if not most are here by the courtesy of a gallery. Here is a brief interview excerpted from email exchanges:
CS: How do you find that your exhibitions of still life and landscape painting have informed an understanding of postmodern art? What is the role of genre for our time?
DY: The show supports the adaptability of traditional media to engage immediately relevant issues such as the environment, politics, over population and our use of non-renewable fossil fuel, the war over oil. The show pushes the tradition of landscape forward and reflects our time--all the work is post 9/11, and it demonstrates anxiety levels in this decade.
CS: I take your response to mean that there is nothing special about having a stake in genre, per se, that it exists, and reflects our time, but also that the shows that interested you during your research had nothing to do with genre, but environmental issues at large.
DY: You are correct: historic / traditional genres are a taproot that feed artists---the past is simply information upon which artists can draw. Genres are not relevant, per se, but are great fodder for artists to adapt and adopt. I am looking at how artists move forward and deflect the past. Today's artists cannot claim 'landscape' as a new idea, so how do they infuse it with contemporary relevance? The exhibition explores this, and today 'everything is environment.'
By this account, genre is an empty form for content, losing all its priveleges. For the purposes of "Future Tense" that is enough , but that there was so much to select from is really quite something. I don't need to list what has been visible, enough of it is around, enough to know that still life has been disqualified as sculpture and that history painting at this time has no identity as such unless it is bound to style. But there is now a genre painting in which the sense of being at home in the world has disappeared, and artists were drawn to Darger because of it. What I have gathered is by no means a summing up or an answer and the question still stands: What is the role of genre for our time?
By Catherine Spaeth
*Aesthetics, Lectures on Fine Art, by G.W.F. Hegel, T.M. Knox, trans., Volume II, Oxford University Press, c. 1975, p. 519. First published posthumously in 1835 - Hegel died in 1830.
**Ibid., p. 527.
***Ibid., V. I, p. 169.
****Ibid., V I p. 563
*****Stephen Bann, “Pop Art and Genre,” New Literary History, Vol. 24, No. 1, Culture and Everyday Life (Winter 1993) pp. 115-124.
Image credits: Amy Cutler, Dwelling, 2005,Gouache on paper,22 x 30 inches,Copyright Amy Cutler, 2005, Collection of the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Courtesy Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects; Robert Campin, Merode Altarpiece, 1425-1428, Met, courtesy of the world wide web; Delia Brown, Autumn Morning, 2008, 11x14”, oil on wood, Courtesy od D’Amelio-Terras Gallery; Joy Garnett, Harbor,2007,Oil on canvas,60" x 70",Private Collection. Image courtesy of the artist and Winkleman Gallery, New York; April Gornik, Pulling Moon, 1983, oil on canvas, 76x80”, Courtesy of Danese Gallery; Jennifer Reeves, Which way to the real deal?, 2005, Gouache on paper, 11 x 14 inches, courtesy of Ramis Barquet; Tomory Dodge, Salton Sargasso, 2005, oil on canvas, 90 X 85 inches, Courtesy of CRG Gallery; April Gornik, Light Before Heat, 1983, oil on canvas, 66 x 132 inches, courtesy of Danese Gallery, New York.
8 comments:
I’m sorry CS, but I found it a little difficult to follow this post. I’ve read it several times, carefully. ‘Contemporary genre’ is clear enough, but Hegel’s views seem peculiar to say the least and as art history, frankly doubtful.
To me, genre means a certain class of content, or a consistent group of objects used in pictures. It’s more like iconography, while style mainly denotes various treatments of these. Genre, by itself, I don’t think is usually thought of as style. In 18th century aesthetics, such as Reynolds’ Discourses, it’s common to invoke a hierarchy of genres, starting from still lives at the bottom to landscapes then portraits then Istoria or history painting at the top (this of course not merely scenes from history but illustration of classic or biblical text or myth).
This conveniently ignores scenes of contemporary domestic life in 17th century Dutch painting, which are unhelpfully also called ‘genre’ pictures in many books. Although, which genre is never indicated. From Reynolds’ distinction, I think they fall into history painting, especially given the subtle symbolism and anecdote often used. But these are only the most basic distinctions to content. Each may be sub-divided in many ways. Still lives for example may also contain elaborate symbolism, so strictly they too then qualify as history painting. Similarly, allusions in landscape and portrait (particularly in Reynolds’ work) also lift many examples from the strictly literal ‘views’ implied by the hierarchy. So as a hierarchy, differences in genres were always pretty problematic.
But even without the hierarchy, genres serve to channel form or style, are a starting point to expand content, revise genres.
Now, in contemporary painting I think artists are not so much returning to 18th or 19th century ideals, but pointing out how certain iconography pervades all kinds of pictures, from private photography or other means, to ads, TV, movies and the web. So the paintings now pick up on say fashions and poses, sometimes lighting and décor – but they’re not interested in specific photographic attributes – they’re interested in what painterly ones the content still allows.
Your Delia Brown example does this for a kind of ‘lavishing toys on children’ genre, which could be based on ads, TV series, illustrations, movies etc. But I think we quickly recognize ‘the scene’ (perhaps a sub set of ‘wealthy indulgent (possibly fantasy) lifestyles’) and this attention to genre is true of Brown’s earlier works with ‘celebrity parties’ or ‘status celebration’ as well.
I think Currin and Yuskavage also deal in genres, using very different means – or styles – as does Tuymans, Essenhigh, Cotton, Loeb and even Saville. This gives some idea of the scope or variety. I think the reason painting now returns to these categories is complex and I address some strands to it in my own blog, but I won’t go into that here.
To answer your question though – ‘What is the role of genre?’ – In pictures generally, it is a powerful theme upon which to generate variation and sub or additional categories. It is the engine room for meaning, in that sense. In painting in particular, it is now not so much for categories that have always been applied to painting, but more generally all pictures that now pervade our lives, albeit often unnoticed.
The role of painting in detecting these genres is to allow us to see them more clearly, experience our world differently, by it.
Hi, CAP, I am in a bit of a rush bit wanted to say two things:
First, Hegels views are always peculiar -
and second, if these views, as art history, are doubtful, that means you must have a lot of security about what art history IS. And this is partially
what divides iconographers from the formalists.
Also, I am making a distinction between genre and style, Gornik appropriates style, Brown, Cutler and Garnett are fleshing it out as a commitment from within their own practice. Further scale plays a role here too - it does not surprise me that Kilimnik, Brown, Cutler and Peyton are painting small.
Hegel is writing as a philospher, describing a history but also a system of thought - so this notion of the things of the world making their appearance in a certain way, the anthropomorphism of the world's dividedness into genres, makes them something more than empty containers for history. They involve subjecivity more deeply than that.
O.K., sorry about the rush earlier, it felt urgent to me.
What makes Hegel interesting and relevant to me is that he had something quite significant to say about genre painting, not of history painting but of all the lesser, more popular forms. It was from his perspective a world historical event. So to compare what I think I see in genre to Hegel’s first writing of it seems like an obvious thing to do.
Further, it was not just “world historical” but regional - the world no longer consists of the unified ideal democracy of classical Greece, but includes snarling and vicious Germans beside happy-go-lucky Dutch. In a way Hegel is arguing for painting’s medium-specificity as having emerged from this context - in hegel’s time sculpture was still bound to heroes gods and goddesses, but painting responded to the caprices and contingencies of daily lived experience. The origins of Modernism is in genre, and there is a sense of being at home in the world as also restless, capricious, divided, a world torn asunder in its divisions. This tarrying with the particular is for hegel’s day not unlike our more recent worries over “art in general.”
His inclusion of genre (so-called) into genre is a challenge to the authority of the academy and its definitions, genre is not imposed but has appeared in the world of its own accord and as a manifestation of thought, an expression of individualism without the special claims of any individual (Darger) behind it. Some have confused this with zeitgeist. Really curious about Hegel here, too, is that for him art is free of teleology, described as a limiting form of thought that hauls the freedom of particulars into its own conformity. Most people think of Hegel as inventing teleology.
I like your answer to the question, what is the role of genre:
“It is the engine room for meaning, in that sense. In painting in particular, it is now not so much for categories that have always been applied to painting, but more generally all pictures that now pervade our lives, albeit often unnoticed.
The role of painting in detecting these genres is to allow us to see them more clearly, experience our world differently, by it.”
One thing that is notedly peculiar - and you are right to say this - in my description of Hegel here is how it plays off gender, and I have taken advantage of the heteronormative patriarchy of his modernity as “being at home in the world” to raise questions about gender and identity at large.
Just to explain my doubts on Hegel’s grasp of the facts of art history – that is, what occurs in which works and when –
I don’t believe his claims for Van Eyck are in any way supported by a thorough knowledge of 14th and 15th century painting. Van Eyck’s Ghent Alterpiece is no more individualistic than many other International Gothic works, by painters such as Van Der Weyden, Pisanello, Fabriano, Zevio. Broederlam, or Hesdin. Nor are such works any more subjective than preceding or succeeding styles, nor do they introduce new attention to natural surroundings. Works such as The Duke of Berry’s manuscript – The Book of Very Fine Hours (1411-16) already offer scenes of peasant life according to season and agriculture; attention to trees and flowers, interiors and costume, distinct from biblical illustration. Classical ideals are propelled into nature – not discarded by it – and ‘spirit’ – faith, attitude – is not reserved for the figure, for only the prominent or literary. None of Hegel’s claims for art history here are substantiated by the facts.
Hegel’s claims for Romanticism are similarly too broad, too lazy -
“romantic art leaves externality to go its own way again for its part freely and independently, and in this respect allows any and every material, down to flowers, trees and the commonest household gear, to enter the representation without hindrance even in its contingent natural existence.” In its capriciousness painting falls apart from the unity of classical sculpture and becomes divided among genre painting, landscape, still life and portaiture.
Hegal (1770-1831) can find only capriciousness in the difference between painting and sculpture in Romanticism, but differences there in subjects, in the use of landscape, still life and complex combinations with figures, had been underway since the 15th century – the High Renaissance. They are not a feature of Romanticism. The hierarchy of genres is really the work of 17th century theorists and historians, which is where Reynolds inherits it.
As for Hegel’s taste for collective ‘spirit’ and national stereotypes – a short step from racism (or sexism) – I can find little to recommend revisiting such thinking. It dogs much of German art history in the 19th century, is usefully documented by Gombrich in the opening chapter to Art and Illusion and is best seen, like German Idealism, as a bold and necessary step to better things.
Hegel is not admired for art historical accuracy or judgment, it’s true. For the reasosn you say, however, he does seem tot hink Modernism began in the 15thc. His interest in art is probably regarded by most as a peculiar curiousity. At the same time, there has been enough strong writing by the likes of Zizek and Nancy that you simply can’t walk away because of a few paragraphs that Gombrich wrote. It would only have to be because it makes little here, and the “research” has only begun.
I do think that there is a return to genre that feels very different in its relation to convention than previous attitudes, and it’s worthwhile to explore. There is so much of it that I‘m intrigued by the active question of what genre might actually be, even though there is a risk of providing an unwanted architecture for it. Even my question, what is the “role” of genre, is a little off.
Can we say for starters that to choose to paint genre today is to have made a decision to move around in what had historically become “the second tier,” and ask whether this involves the contempt for painting that Craig Owens worried about in the ‘80s? Is “wearing” landscape or portraiture, as one might a style, just another pose? For some painters yes, for some painters no?
I don't really understand what you mean by 'the second tier' - my sense is that the 'genre' turn in painting, may even be drawing to a close, or slowly changing into something else (or perhaps only genres I don't really recognise).
But agreed - 'genre' I think is the right way to go about understanding what happens in figurative painting after Neo-Ex and the mid 80s.
As for - Art & Illusion - see pp 3-25
A little unfair to dismiss this as 'a few paragraphs' (esp pp 12 - 25) when Gombrish is ideally placed to trace the influence from Hegal (explicitly) through Fiedler, Hildebrand, Burckhardt, Wölfflin, Riegl, Wickhoff, Sedlmayer, Worringer, Dvořák, Loewy, Schlosser, Warburg, and Kris, taking in Ruskin, Berenson, Malraux, Arnheim and various schools of psychology (behavioral,
cognitive and gestalt) and mid 20th century philosophy as well.
Actually I find it a quiet tour de force - very underrated and amongst the more formidable chapters in this seminal book of aesthetics.
On second tier:
These are artists who have had a career of some sort, a life-time of work behind them, but there will never be a retrospective, although there may be the occasional piece in a museum collection, rarely shown. The book on my Amazon widget, Painting Professionals, is a a history of women who were professionally trained in Europe, but when they arrived back home the became "second tier," and had to make their living in portraiture, for example. So the claim is that genre painting became gendered, and while having a market of some consistency, lesser - increasingly so with the advent of Modernism.
It is also relevant of course to abstraction - you can think of the show at the Academy, High Times Hard Times, as exhibiting work that became "second tier," and that is now being reconsidered, such as the inclusion of Jack Whitten's painting in the current contemporary show at the Modern.
Both Cutler and Garnett are currently in a museum - currently Joy Garnett hangs next to Nancy Spero at PS1. I don't think genre is on the second tier any more, although that is a "time will tell" sort of issue. But the achievement is to have reached into genre and investigated its mannerism's and histories, placing them in a contemporary context that redefines the way they will count in the world.
Thanks for that. I haven’t read the book so I can’t really comment on the gender issue there.
But the canon or rankings for genres seem to be in permanent dispute - and a good thing! Even Reynolds was ‘forced’ to paint portraits to earn a living. He argued for the superiority of history painting (as a genre) but there really was little market for that in England. So he had to make do with slipping classical allusion and allegory into his society portraits. He wasn’t even a pioneer there, the French had resorted to it for much the same reasons.
So, plenty of artists were compromised by the 17th century canon in the 18th century. I suppose this is the main impetus for change, trying to reconcile a version of history with changed circumstances, trying to redefine genres and their rankings.
I think this is an interesting way of looking at 19th century Realism.
But even in abstraction there are factions and fashions. I think we can probably treat abstraction as a genre these days – although it strictly has no content, in the sense I outline above - I think null-content (or non-objective painting, as abstraction also used to be known as) is still a genre. But it’s one that’s sort of slipping away now, like illustrating Ovid or the Bible, in the 18th century. They were ripe for more Romantic literature and myth then, now it seems absolutes of color or line, pigment or application are being exchanged for more relative and pluralistic measures.
But this is a big subject for a comment!
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