Esplund Lance - Contemporary Art in the Light of History

by

ERWIN ROSENTHAL

Introduction by Lance Esplund
A Biographical Note by Julia Rosenthal

Copyright 1971 by Erwin Rosenthal, Lugano, Switzerland;

copyright 2013 by Estate of Erwin Rosenthal

Introduction 2013 by Lance Esplund

Biographical note copyright 2012 by Julia Rosenthal

Originally published in 1971 by Lund Humphries in London and George

Wittenborn in New York.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

ISBN: 978-1-61145-755-1

Printed in China

This collection of three essays is aimed at throwing some light upon the controversial field of modern art.

The first essay attempts to provide an element of historical perspective, which gives the necessary detachment and objectivity, and helps avoid a great many pernicious misconceptions about modern art. In the mid sixties, abstract art reached a definite stage in its development, and 1964 could be called the year of crisis. The following study is to be understood from this viewpoint.

The second chapter approaches the subject somewhat more directly by exploring the relationship between art and technology. The importance of optical and kinetic elements for contemporary art could not be clearly determined around the mid century. Only in 1966/67 was it possible fully to appreciate their significance; therefore this study is to be seen from the perspective of those years.

The third study, Art Theories and Manifestos, gives a broad survey of the history of aesthetics from antiquity to the middle of the twentieth century. It endeavours to leave the reader with a theoretical framework by tracing the development of aesthetic and critical theories which led to contemporary trends in art.

These studies do not try to set up axiomatic historical rules; rather they attempt to envisage the history of art in terms of perpetual principles. As a sort of modest guide this small book, stressing the same creative impulses for ancient as well as contemporary art, may help to overcome the widespread bewilderment about modern art. The mystery of the growth and change of styles is deeply embedded in the history and mind of man. All the different and even contradictory expressions and achievements in the figurative arts are but reflections of the eternal problem of transferring aesthetic sensibilities into images, forms, colours, or pure symbols. Thus these reflections could be understood as studies in continuity.

E. R.

Erwin Rosenthals book Contemporary Art in the Light of History is as relevant and important today as it was when it was first published more than forty years ago. One might ask how Rosenthals textwritten before the advent of the Internet and social media; before the Culture Wars and the persecution of the Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei; before the fall of the Berlin Wall and the attacks of 9/11could have any real bearing on art in our contemporary world. The answer is that Rosenthal, who is as engaged here with what artists make as he is with artists motivations, has anticipated not our historical milestones and technological advances but, rather, our ongoing desire to understand what drives artists individually and our culture collectively.

As in Arnold Hausers large multivolume The Social History of Art, Rosenthals compact text considers art in relation to other fieldsliterature, science, technology, music, philosophy, psychology, politics, and spirituality. He takes into account the importance of intellect and emotion; Romantic and Classical tendencies; mimesis and fantasia; insanity, reason, rebellion, shock, and the grotesque; the dual poles of representation and abstraction; and the metaphysical origins of art.

Rosenthal sees art not as progressing but, rather, as always relevant, no matter when or where it was made. In the Foreword to Contemporary Art in the Light of History, he writes that his studies attempt to envisage the history of art in terms of perpetual principles. As a sort of modest guide this small book, stressing the same creative impulses for ancient as well as contemporary art, may help to overcome the widespread bewilderment about modern art.

To that end, Rosenthal is concerned with putting contemporary art in the context of the art of the past. Writing in clear, limber prose, he makes leaps through history and across disciplines. His great range is underscored by the simplicity of his language and the matter-of-factness of his conclusions. To read this book is to participate with the author as he wrestles with challenging ideas, paradoxes, and matters of spirit. When Rosenthal, discussing the necessary tension between Apollonian and Dionysian tendencies, writes that the interaction of theory and free inspiration is one of the ultimate secrets of the artist, we are brought closer to art through the acceptance of its mystery.

Interested not in influence but in analogy, which Rosenthal refers to as related psychological climates, the author lays out art-historical links in a chain. He draws connections and parallels among artists attitudes and styles in ancient Egypt, antiquity, the Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, and Modern eras. All the different and even contradictory expressions and achievements in the figurative arts, Rosenthal writes, are but reflections of the eternal problem of transferring aesthetic sensibilities into images, forms, colours, or pure symbols.

Rosenthal begins with the art of his present. He recognizes that Mannerism, Romanticism, Surrealism, and Abstract Expressionismstill somewhat dominant in 1971all have their roots in the anti-classical tradition of antiquity, in the oriental occultists and mysticsin whose work Orphic dogma, Hebrew philosophy, and the rites and cults of Ancient Egypt lingered on. Rosenthal connects the objectivity, purity and depersonalizationthe Cartesian spiritof Fra Angelico to analogous aspects in Piero della Francesca, Raphael, Poussin, Czanne, Mondrian, and the Op Art movement. Paying close attention, for example, to the Op Artist Bridget Riley, he aligns her and other contemporary artists work with the perceptually based science and art of Leonardo, the philosophy of Blaise Pascal, moving sculptures in Renaissance gardens, the free line of Art Nouveau and Kandinsky, the geometry of Naum Gabo, Jean Arp, and Constantin Brancusi, and the colour clavicembaloa keyboard instrument which could be combined with optical effectsinvented by the 16th-century Italian painter Arcimboldo.