Hollingsworth - Art in World History 2 Vols

ART IN WORLD

HISTORY

MARY HOLLINGSWORTH

Introduction by

GIULIO CARLO ARGAN

VOLUME 1

CONTENTS

__________

__________

__________

__________

Giulio Carlo Argan

I N EVERY ERA, in every culture, there has always been a desire to do art: groups of artists organized themselves with rules and by-laws; public institutions promoted production, and care was taken to collect and conserve artworks in public museums. We could never write a full history of any era or civilization without including the history of its art that, like science, was a necessary and essential component of the system. The relationships between cities, regions, states, and continents would not have been as frequent, intense, reciprocal, and fertile if art had not served as a powerful factor of communication and exchange. In the ancient religions, art gave form to the gods and goddesses; and the prestige of the states would have been less if art had not given monumental form to their institutions, depicting the facts of their history as exemplary and portraying their heroes. The cities would have been mere places to live or work if art had not given them character and rendered their traditions visible and real. Without the images of art, there would not have been a cult of the dead. Nature itself would not have become a subject of knowledge but merely a cause of disordered, confused feelings if it had not been described using the terms of art: line, shape, color.

Because of its constant relationship with universal values, art seemed like a divine revelation and the artists were considered inspired beings, demiurges, creatures between heaven and earth. In reality, art is the product of human work and techniques that may be more refined but not fundamentally different from those of the crafts. And over the centuries art was the direct or indirect model for handicrafts.

Production was like a pyramid: at the base maximum quantity with minimum quality, at the top, the maximum quality with minimum quantity. Art was pure quality, without quantity: its products were unique and irreproducible. They presupposed the culture and techniques of the times, but in the sense of greater inventiveness, not technical progress. Throughout history, art has represented the metaphysical moment of human endeavor, its ideal goal. Artists have always been the interpreters and spokespeople of a community, and if their works were destined for the few who had the greatest powers, they were considered delegates of a superior, divine power. Therefore, throughout its history, art has been the link between the sphere of power and of labor and thus contributed to the homogeneity of the social body. Through art, in other words, the world of labor participated in power.

Only with the Italian Renaissance and its spread through Europe did art move from the mechanical to the liberal and artists from the rank of craftspeople to that of intellectuals and hence became part of the governing class. Even earlier, however, artists were never mere makers: power was not content with their work, it needed their inventive and planning skills. Two examples from an infinity of choices will suffice: Pericles commissioned an artist, Phidias, to build the Parthenonwhich was to be the visible fulcrum of Hellenic unityand decorate it with sculptures; the papacy entrusted artists (Bramante, Raphael, Sangallo, Michelangelo, and later, Bernini) to build St. Peters Basilica which, in an era of bitter religious conflict, was not supposed to represent, but rather materialize, the doctrine of the Visible Church in its structure. Those artists, like many who came before and after them, were not asked to create a verbal celebration of power and its rituals, or a picturesque framework, but a visualization of its doctrinal essence. Nor was it supposed to be an illustration of written texts: on the contrary, visual art conveyed something that could not be communicated with words. The visual experience has a direct relationship with imagination: an entire chapter in the history of civilization has been built on and from imagination and does not contradict, but rather coincides with the chapter built on rational thought and scientific research. Visual arts are communication through images, as poetry is communication through words and music communication through sounds. It has always been something specific to see, which necessarily assumed an experience more intense than the seen. Art of all times and places is related to the organic association of perception and imagination: artists from different cultures have given visible form to non-visible things, like symbols or symbolic meanings to visible forms. But on what does the power of visual communication depend? Why, in all countries of the world, has religious and political power used visual communication through the work of its artists?