What do most Mozart music, rococo paintings, and Jane Austen novels have in common? They exhibit Burke’s concept beauty. What do Mahler’s music, most abstract art, and Moby Dick have in common? They are sublime.
According to Kenneth Burke*, the characteristics of beauty are:
First, to be comparatively small. Secondly, to be smooth. Thirdly, to have a variety in the direction of the parts; but, fourthly, to have those parts not angular, but melted as it were into each other. Fifthly, to be of a delicate frame, without any remarkable appearance of strength. Sixthly, to have its colours clear and bright, but not very strong and glaring. Seventhly, or if it should have any glaring colour, to have it diversified with others.
He certainly describes what I think of when I think of Mozart or Austen. Fine, smooth, intricate, delicate, bright, dainty, elegant, without any remarkable appearance of strength . .
Sublimity, on the other hand:
For sublime objects are vast in their dimensions . . . the great [is] rugged and negligent . . . the great in many cases loves the right line, and when it deviates it often makes a strong deviation . . . the great ought to be dark and gloomy . . . the great ought to be solid, and even massive.
Dark, strong, rugged . . . guess which approach to art I prefer.**
Consider this painting:
Return of the Bucentoro to the Molo on Ascension Day
This is an excellent example of the beautiful: lots of small intricate details, photo-realism, elegant colors, and everything in perfect clarity, but this painting transmits no real emotional or imaginative impact. The painting communicates that its subject are in a rather ordinary emotional state and perhaps a bit frustrated even (look at the guy in the middle of the foremost boat). The demeanor of the subjects is intellectually stimulating considering the picture represents activity on the feast day of Ascension, but the style of the painting itself does not stimulate an emotional or imaginative response from the observer. The painter gives the observer no emotional tie to the subjects or even any indication one is needed. His artistry lies mainly in the this skill with which he paints small accurate details; it produces admiration, but not love or fear or warmth or coldness. It is lukewarm.
By way of comparison, these paintings by Boccioni are some of my favorite paintings.
States of Mind I: The Farewells
States of Mind II: Those Who Leave
States of Mind III: Those Who Stay
These paintings, which describing partings at a train station, conform more to Burke’s notion of the sublime. They transmit emotion without sacrificing intellectual interest. The first one visually depicts the emotions of saying goodbye combined with the hectic activity of making the train and the physical aspects of the train’s smoke and noise.
The second painting uses horizontal lines to convey the movement of those whisked away by the train. There is sadness, but also light (the squareness of the yellow squares suggests light entering through train windows, no?). Though the composition suggests pensive qualities (there’s not much to do in a train car but think), these people are going somewhere and doing something, in contrast with those who are left behind.
The third painting portrays, through the heavy horizontal lines, the sadness that presses down on those who are left behind. They shuffle quietly home from the station to a life that seems drab either after the excitement of a visit from friends or in disappointment over not being able to go somewhere with others.
The marriage of emotion with visual elements creates a deeper artistic experience. The undefined nature of the pictures stimulates imagination and thus emotional response as it draws the observer in, forcing him to create a interpretation around himself rather than merely viewing someone else’s clearly defined interpretation.
Burke defines discusses the difference between the emotional effects of clarity and obscurity:
It is one thing to make an idea clear, and another to make it affecting to the imagination. If I make a drawing of a palace, or a temple, or a landscape, I present a very clear idea of those objects; but then (allowing for the effect of imitation, which is something) my picture can at most affect only as the palace, temple, or landscape would have affected in the reality . . .
[Non-pictoral descriptions] raise obscure and imperfect idea[s] of such objects; but then it is in my power to raise a stronger emotion by the description than I could do by the best [photo realistic] painting.
Burke is actually comparing paintings in general (abstract and non representational paintings not having been introduced by that time) with verbal descriptions, but the same principle applies to the difference between clarity and obscurity within the genre of paintings as well.
Tolstoy said, “Art is a human activity consisting in this, that one man consciously, by means of certain external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and that other people are infected by these feelings and also experience them.”
His definition may be simplified, but certainly bears much truth.
One might ask if emotion is a large part of art, why would one prefer art which emits horror, tragedy, sorrow, or fear? Burke posits that emotions based on pain are necessarily stronger than those based on pleasure. I am not so sure of his theory, but I find that I am generally a happy person who finds life on a whole quite enjoyable. A painting then that is only happy or bright or cheerful does nothing to move me from where I am. If art does not move a person more strongly than ordinary life, then what is the point of it being art? Besides, the happiest things benefit from proximity with darker things. A novel which starts, progresses, and ends happily is less moving and memorable than a novel with much sadness and suffering that overcomes the darkness and ends up happy.
I am not altogether unappreciative of photo-realistic paintings. For instance, this one appeals to me very much.
Abendstummung in der Campagna
While photo-realistic in style, the painting contains several aspects of the sublime. The clouds are brooding and onimous, and the landscape is vast and ruinous. Its conveyance of emotion is less direct than Boccioni’s paintings, but the picture produces a strong sense of atmosphere.
*Thinks he has rambled long enough* I am sure many people have extremely different opinions, but I think this fairly accurately describes what I enjoy in the visual arts.
*The entire text of Burke’s work on aesthetics can be found here.
** Disclaimer: I know nothing about art and the following is to be taken as my opinion and personal approach, not as objective truth.
