Bases de Datos

arate truths and establish insulated units within fragments of the universe. The artist, how- ever, like the philosopher, cannot create partial unities but must always resolve his fragments in man’s subjectivity.

Michelangelo himself could not solve the problem and had to substitute the illusion of sensuality for the immediate plastic equivalent of sensuality. By creating the visual likenesses of sensuality, that is, the appearance of muscular and cavorting strength and animality, he effected a substitution that perhaps contented him. We say “perhaps” because the very excess and strain of these illustrations are an indication of how titanic the struggle was to gain that profundity which he did not otherwise know how to achieve.

Leonardo was the first to hint successfully at the solution for the reduction of art again to the subjective, a solution that was accepted by the great painters in Venice and which served as the basis of a unity between the subjective and objective until the turn of this century. This solution survives to this day and functions side by side with methods rediscovered by artists from our contemporary painting scene. Leonardo, in contrast with Michelangelo, was perhaps more artist than scientist, although, like the other Florentines, he practiced both. Yet even his scientific work is characterized by the unrestrained flights of the imagination for the achievement of the then impossible, reflecting in that work a truly mystical preoccupation.

This hint that Leonardo discovered is the subjective quality of light. In short, by means of this method, which he employed in so fragmentary a form, he introduced a plas- tic element that was to constitute the basis of plastic romanticism. That plastic device was to serve for the next five centuries as the basis of the expression of the subjective quality.

Plastically, light impressionism made it possible to push space back further and give tactility to the intervening atmosphere. We must note here that the development of this device was really the product of a new technical advance. Leonardo alone among the great Florentines began to experiment with oil paints, and it was this new medium that made it possible to render the infinite nuances of forms passing from light into darkness, to give tactility to atmosphere, and to introduce a sort of haze or smoke whereby atmos- phere could be achieved.

To clarify, we should make note of the technique of chiaroscuro, which was at that time already in common use. Chiaroscuro is also a method derived from the obser- vation of the action of light on objects. What additions did Leonardo make to these meth- ods? Michelangelo, as well as Signorelli before him and many other Florentine artists, employed this method for indicating the action of light.

Now chiaroscuro was a method which gave relief to individual objects. For instance, by representing the action and interplay of light and shadow on a figure it was

possible to obtain a heightened illusion of relief around the figure, as well as in relation to the individual parts of the figure such as legs or muscles. It was developed because the early Renaissance artist did not fully realize the differences between the nature of painting and sculpture. Since his inspiration originated with examples of Greek sculpture, and since this was his most cogent plastic clue to the Greek unity (and such clues must be given to the artist plastically), he sought to emulate in his paintings the effects of sculpture. Hence relief, as Vasari states in his preamble to the life of Michelangelo, was one of the gifts which God sent to man in his new status.

But Leonardo’s discovery, which was fully developed a half century later in Venice, made it possible to unify the picture tactilely through having all the objects partake of a common enveloping atmosphere, as well as to provide a tactile means for the represen- tation of sensuality. Heretofore chiaroscuro called attention to each particular object and every part of the object with an insistent force which divided rather than unified the com- position. But Leonardo’s method created a permeating tactile medium in whose essence all objects participated. It must be noted here that the Venetians, who so successfully employed light in their paintings, made a complete exploitation of the oil medium.

To make this matter still clearer let us look at it from yet another angle. Starting with the Renaissance, we find an emphasis on the illusory type of art. In fact, we may say that the shared common objective of the Renaissance artists was to give credence to the world of appearances. This was the first preoccupation of the reborn rationality. And it was a logical step if we consider that the Renaissance was not only a reversion to Greek clas - sicism but also a reaction to Christianity, which was in itself a development of Plato’s rejec- tion of the world of appearances because it obscured fundamental essences. And as we have said, it was Plato’s inevitable corollary to place the artist in a very undesirable position in his scheme because the painter had to objectify reality through appearances. He could not foresee the development of the twentieth-century method for the representation of the essence of appearances through the abstraction of both shapes and senses.

The Renaissance masters, therefore, began to study the fundamentals of appear- ances and the laws of vision. Chiaroscuro and perspective were the first to be developed. These enabled the masters to formulate methods for giving the particulars of their paint- ings the illusion of existence. But they could not include within these methods their own sensuality toward these particulars. It was sensuality that they knew would be the ultimate bond for the separate illusions of appearance that they used in their compositions, and it was this that the Venetians developed. Their method allowed them to relate, sensuously, objects which had no ideological unity to bind them together. Once they consciously attained this method, the use of the ancient myths began to die, for the myth never really

32

GENERALIZA

expressed their unity. Rather, it expressed their desire and nostalgia for Greek unity, or for a unity comparable to it. This had the value of all referents to a myth of the past, for in the expression of the admiration for this myth its essence and existence was reaffirmed. We might say, then, that Leonardo and the Venetians developed a method whereby the pic- ture as a whole retained its unity, and made it possible for the artist to make representations of not only illusions of objects, but illusions of tactility itself.

Light, then, is the instrument of the new unity. It is indeed a wonderful instru- ment and was wonderfully suited to the inevitable interests of the next four centuries. During that time men were occupied with the investigation of the world of appearances, and the study of appearances manifests itself in attention to the particulars. Through this instrument the artist could elevate the particular to the plane of generalization through the subjective feelings that light can symbolize.

We can call this new unity, enabled by the plastic use of light, impressionism.* And the word is applicable from this time on not only to the plastic means of art, but to its subject and subject matter, too. For the world of appearances is the world of particulars, and in that sense those arts which have not occupied themselves with some nostalgic myth since the Renaissance are occupied with particulars. That is, the artist tries to impart the char- acter of the general from the particular things that he must now employ as the embodi- ment of his plastic notions. He must enlarge the implications of his impression in the world of appearance. He must enlarge them until they enter the relevance of the human world of sensuality.

And in this endeavor light is the binder, for by its means he can not only make the appearances that stimulate him to participate in a general category of visual observa- tion, but he can find within that category the means to symbolize his feelings about these appearances. For light makes it possible to substitute for the directness of the mythologist’s sensuality a new factor that we can call emotionality.

In essence, it is emotionality which replaced the myth. The common designation for emotionality is mood. And it is the evocation of human mood that frequently served as the anecdote of European painting since the Renaissance. This forms an anecdotal adjunct to the sensuality which the impressionistic plastic method achieves through the partici - pation of all objects in the solidity and sensualism of their textures generated by their par- ticipation in a common light. The quality of this mood is based upon the association of certain specific emotions with the effects of light. In theater productions today this associ- ation finds a clear illustration in the use of different lighting to stimulate the associations of sorrow or joy or other shades of emotion. The dramatic and emotional potential of different colored light, degrees of light and dark and the contrast between highlight and deep shadow, evoke a mood before even a word is spoken or any action is introduced. Of