WRONG UNITY

Unification of the painting has been an important goal for great talents in the West.  We laude paintings that seek spatial unification, unification of paint with subject, unification of paint with paint, a oneness of paint and canvas, etc.  According to Wölfflin, there was a revolutionary perceptual shift towards unity when the Baroque started.  And it is exactly the wrong unity.

“The unity here lies in the absolutely compelling coherence of movement of the whole.”  p171.

Wölfflin states that the fundamental difference between the Renaissance and the Baroque is holistic unity.  During the Baroque, what was sought was an absolute unity between the subject and background, paint and subject, etc. and etc. In the Cinquecento, this unification was considered a supreme achievement.  And it has fundamentally shaped the trajectory of Western art since then.  Some of the most iconic artists in the West employed this mindset: Rembrandt, Vermeer,  Velasquez, Tineoretto.  In this unity, Baroque art was convinced that it had found truth. 

In the lingo of Transparent Drawing, their prime achievement was the unification of opaque blobs of paint, on a canvas, into an expressive unity. 

“The whole naturalistic, material content of the picture sinks into insignificance beside the realization of a definite notion of beauty which presided over the composition.”  p169.

Yet this Baroque unity is the wrong sort.  We don’t care about the oneness of the painted, overlapping, paint.  We don’t care about the unity that comes from an expression that serves to make things unclear.  This is why all of these iconic works take us in the wrong direction, and why, in these pages, we have been deriding them since day one.  This is the wrong unity.

A powerful, revolutionary and celebrated shift in the perceptions of the West was at the expense of clarity of form.  It is fascinating that this phenomenon explains a significant vector of how we got where we are.

Wölfflin gets full credit for his attempt to provide a system of analysis which works to transcend mere style.  His book is worth a look as it employs 1) Line to Painterly 2)Plane to Recession, 3) Closed Form to Open Form, 4) Multiplicity to Unity, and 5) Absolute Clarity to Relative Clarity as the basic levers of his system of analysis.  This work is considered to be iconic in the history of art.

And let’s ask the big question.  Is there that much difference between Renaissance paint blobs and Baroque paint blobs?  Apparently there is.  Entire books have been written about it.  Expensive college courses preach about it.  Entire rooms in major museums worship the distinction.  So, in the West, there is cultural coalescence at this, what appears to me at least, a minor distinction.

1. Wölfflin, Heinrich.  Principals of Art History.  Dover Publications, Inc.  Originally published 1915.