Classical art

Classical art is, in the narrowest sense of art history, the art of Greek classicism , i.e. the entirety of Greek art production between 480 BC. And the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC. Chr. Qualities do not go into this narrow definition, but different authors name with great agreement as main characteristics of classical art the relevance or timelessness, the harmony and nature similarity.

Due to the ideal conception of the classical term, its time limitation has always come under pressure. There was a tendency to expand the era of classical art to include all of the art of ancient Greece, the Roman Empire , the Renaissance and finally to the works of outstanding premodern artists such as Rodin or Cézanne .

term

In the 2nd century AD, the grammarian Aulus Gellius transferred the term classis from the original civis classicus , the Roman taxpayer first class, to a scriptor classicus , a first class writer. With this, Gellius expanded the class to a term that could now denote everything relevant. The old problem had to flow into this expansion, in which the decisive factor lies: rather in a decided tradition or rather in the foundations of all traditions that do not belong to any exclusive epoch. In the latter sense, for example, Schütz uses the concept of classical music in his preface to “Spiritual Choral Music” (1648): “In particular, I want to refer all and each / to the Italians and others / Old and Newe Classicos Autores, canonized by all the most distinguished composers”. .

J. and W. Grimm summarize the development:

"Classical was initially only called the exemplary poets and writers of Roman and Greek antiquity, as well as everything that relates to them or to the old art or to the 'old' in general: the classical poets, the classical historiography, the classical literature, classical antiquity, classical art [...] the term has expanded into exemplary in general, artistically perfect, suitable as a model ”. At the same time as this generalization, the concept of the classic is developing as a counter-concept to the modern, because: “in the art world”, the Grimms continued, “one needs classic as an opposition to romantic or naturalistic and similar. like. "

And Goethe says about "most of the new":

“I call the classic the healthy, and the romantic the sick. And the Nibelungen are as classic as Homer, because both are healthy and efficient. Most of the newer is not romantic because it is new, but because it is weak, sickly and sick, and the old is not classic because it is old but because it is strong, fresh, happy and healthy. If we distinguish between the classical and the romantic according to such qualities, we will soon be pure. "

Goethe himself seems to prefer a synthesis elsewhere to this party. His conception of world literature and the demand for “incommensurability” of art (in the sense of: inexhaustible like nature) are an expression of an effort to expand the concept of the classical to include the romantic element without even having to use it. Hegel defines classical art as “what true art is according to its concept”. The point on which Hegel is concerned is overcoming the symbolic:

"Because classical beauty has a free, independent meaning for its interior, that is, not a meaning of anything, but that which is self-important". For Schiller , "[only] in throwing away the accidental and in the pure expression of the necessary [...] lies the great style."

Aesthetic theory

That the Classical style neither actually nor isolated period of art is, is before Hegel, Jacob Burckhardt and Heinrich Wolfflin starting point Baumgarten and Winckelmann . Where the concept of the classical is still missing in them, general beauty (Baumgarten), the ideal , the perfect , the beautiful (Winckelmann) appears in a pre-formed way :

"The aim of art is its selective and instructive function in view of the perfection of ideal beauty."

This is how the achievements of all eras and artists can be measured. In this sense, Michelangelo already commented on "Italian painting":

“Only the works that you create in Italy can be called true painting. And that's why we also call real painting Italian, just as we would name it after another country if it were done so well there. […] So not every painting made in Italy is called Italian painting , but every painting that has been done well and with knowledge. [...] Because this noble art does not belong to any country, but comes from heaven. "

Winckelmann develops his art-critical program parallel to a timeless classical term in the sense of teaching:

"The history of ancient art, which I undertook to write, is not a mere narration of the sequence of times and the changes in it [...] my intention is to provide an attempt at a teaching building."

Following on from positions of French classicism of the early 18th century. such as Jean-Baptiste Dubos , Shaftesbury , Richardson, Winckelmann himself soon became exemplary. Like his work, Goethe's color theory wants to be a timeless teaching structure. What success the theories of Vitruvius , Alberti , Leonardo da Vinci , Dürer , Winckelmann, Goethe, etc. could always have, is decisive here what they presupposed and in whose name they were undertaken.

Criticism and expansion

The criticism of academism and its conception of classical foundations has been an integral part of authoritative criticism at least since Romanticism and Realism . In the academic understanding of schools, the “preservation of the beautiful” takes the place of the open outcome of art. Courbet, for example, criticizes the academy as an example:

“You have to work your way through the tradition of how a good swimmer swims a stream. The academics are drowning in it. "

Cézanne argues similarly :

“In the end, the abstract craft leads to withering under its screwed rhetoric, in which it is exhausted. [...] You should never follow an idea where you need a feeling. [...] The clichés are the plague of art. "

The use of the 20th century solidified the term classical art as an antithesis to modernity . The principle of learnability and perfection takes on a new meaning. Because with modern art movements such as Expressionism , Dadaism or Surrealism , such radically new ideas of the concept of a work of art appear for the first time that learnability and perfection have been completely removed from their self-image. If classical art has been understood as a restrictive system of rules, which with these rules also gives a measure by which progress can be judged, then with these rules, the handles that are supposed to prevent development only in the width is possible. Picasso exemplifies this danger for the modern age:

“The painters no longer live within tradition. [...] No criterion can be applied to him a priori, because we no longer believe in strict standards. […] In a certain sense this is a liberation […] But if you are no longer able to submit to an order, it is basically a dangerous disadvantage. "

Modern concepts

Leon Battista Alberti : Three books on painting. 1435
Albrecht Dürer : Underweysung the measurement. Nuremberg 1525 ( Wikisource )
Charles Batteux : Limitation of the fine arts to a single principle ("Les beaux-arts réduits à un même principe"). Weidmann, Leipzig 1751 ( digitized version )
Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten : Aesthetica. Two volumes. Kleyb, Frankfurt an der Oder (Traiecti Cis Viadrum) 1750–1758 ( Volume 1 , Volume 2 )
Johann Joachim Winckelmann : Thoughts on the imitation of Greek works in painting and sculpture. 1755; History of ancient art. Walther, Dresden 1763, therein: Preface. On the essence of art ( digitized version ).
Edmund Burke : A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful with Several Other Additions. 1757 ( online ); German edition: Philosophical investigation into the origin of our ideas of the sublime and the beautiful. Published by Werner Strube. Second edition. Hamburg 1989
Friedrich Schiller : About Citizen's Poems (1791). In: All works. Volume 4. Cotta, Stuttgart 1879, pp. 752-762 ( online ); About the sublime (1790s). In: All works. Volume 4. Cotta, Stuttgart 1879, pp. 726-738 ( online )
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel : Lectures on the aesthetics. Berlin 1820-1821

literature

Heinrich Wölfflin: The classical art. An Introduction to the Italian Renaissance. Bruckmann, Munich 1899 ( digitized version ).
Heinrich Wölfflin: Basic concepts of art history. Bruckmann, Munich 1915 ( digitized version ).
Heinrich Wölfflin: Concinnitas. Contributions to the problem of the classical. Dedicated to Heinrich Wölfflin for his eightieth birthday on June 21, 1944. Schwabe, Basel 1944.
Werner Jaeger (ed.): The problem of the classical and the ancient. Eight lectures given at the symposium on classical antiquity in Naumburg 1930. BG Teubner, Berlin / Leipzig 1931.
Hans Rose : Classics as an artistic way of thinking in the West. CH Beck, Munich 1937.
Paul Cézanne : About art. Conversations with Gasquet and letters. Rowohlt, Hamburg 1957.
Heinz Otto Burger (Hrsg.): Definition of the classic and the classic. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1972.
Wolfgang Kemp : Disegno. Contributions to the history of the term between 1547 and 1607. In: Marburger Jahrbuch für Kunstwissenschaft. Volume 19, 1974, pp. 219-240 ( PDF ).
Michael Hauskeller (Ed.): What is beautiful. Classical texts from Plato to Adorno. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 1994.