The sentimental picture
The sentimental picture is a monograph by the art historian Werner Busch published in 1993 . Its subtitle, The Crisis of Art in the Eighteenth Century and the Birth of Modernity , contains a programmatic statement. In line with Schiller's famous treatise On Naive and Sentimental Poetry , Busch states that the tradition of access to original naturalness, which has been binding on the visual arts for centuries, has been lost and can only be regained through reflection.
Busch the onset of crisis in 1750 decrypts the traditional understanding of art in detail at five genres: history painting , genre painting , landscape , portrait , caricature . He develops his argument preferably with examples from English painting ( James Thornhill , William Hogarth , Thomas Gainsborough , Joshua Reynolds , Alexander Cozens ) and with works by Francisco de Goya .
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In the short introduction, Busch presents his main thesis: In the 18th century the old, traditional and binding imagery comes to an end and leads to the birth of "what we call the modern image". The following five chapters are devoted to the analysis of the changes in the above-mentioned picture genres.
The first chapter - history - Busch opens with the explication of a “theory of the classical image”. Accordingly, the hero or a main group had to form the center of the picture, whereby the additional part was not allowed to distract from the center, but had to be directed towards the center. The “Hero's Crisis” is then presented in three detailed sub-chapters based on many image analyzes.
In the second chapter - Genre - Busch first noted the upgrading of genre painting, which was low-ranking in the classical pictorial tradition, to a genre with a claim to history, already advocated by Diderot . Busch then analyzes, primarily using William Hogarth's graphic cycles, how new content is transferred to traditional pictorial formulas.
Starting with classically composed landscape paintings by Nicolas Poussin and Claude Lorrain , Busch examines in the third chapter - landscape - the break with the classical tradition of this pictorial genre in works by Alexander Cozens, Thomas Jones , Philipp Hackert and Thomas Gainsborough.
The fourth chapter - Portrait - discusses the departure from the postulates of classical portrait painting, which wanted to see similarity ennobled by beauty, using the different conceptions and modes of representation of Gainsborough and Reynolds. A rigorous departure from classic pictorial laws is documented by the analysis of Goya's pictorial language that concludes this chapter.
With the short fifth chapter - caricature - and the concluding remarks of a few pages , the extensive (537 pages) and substantial book closes. The caricature conveys most clearly what applies to all types of images: art no longer provides “generally understandable and binding images of reality [...] but develops forms of revealing the abysses of reality. [...] the true is no longer that Beautiful, and the beautiful not necessarily the real anymore. "
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- Werner Busch: The sentimental picture. The crisis of art in the 18th century and the birth of modernity. CH Beck, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-406-37554-5 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Werner Busch: The sentimental picture. The crisis of art in the 18th century and the birth of modernity. CH Beck, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-406-37554-5 , p. 10.
- ↑ Werner Busch: The sentimental picture. The crisis of art in the 18th century and the birth of modernity. CH Beck, Munich 1993, p. 19.
- ↑ Werner Busch: The sentimental picture. The crisis of art in the 18th century and the birth of modernity. CH Beck, Munich 1993, p. 476.