Review

Author(s): William Sener Rusk

Review by: William Sener Rusk
Source: Art Journal, Vol. 29, No. 3 (Spring, 1970), pp. 388+390
Published by: College Art Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/775478
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Alan Fern/Editor

book reviews
Erwin Panofsky
Idea, A Concept in Art Theory, 253 pp., 7
ill. Columbia, South Carolina: University of
South Carolina Press, 1968. $7.50 (Also available in paper in Harper Torchbook Series).
The study before us was published originally in 1924 as Idea: Ein Beitrag zur Begriffsgeschichte der aelteren Kunsttheorie (Studien
der Bibliothek Warburg, Nr. 5) by B. Teubner Verlag, Leipzig. The present translation
is from a second edition, 1960, Verlag Bruno
Hessling, Berlin. The translator is Joseph
J. S. Peake. The Forewords to both the first
and second editions in German by Panofsky
himself are given. In the 1924 statement we
are told that a lecture by Ernst Cassirer,
"The Idea of the Beautiful in Plato's Dialogues," scheduled to appear in the Warburg
series, was the initiating stimulus. Panofsky
says he was concerned with tracing the same
concept as it moved toward its historic destiny. In the 1960 statement, dated at Princeton in 1959, Panofsky, with characteristic
breadth of scholarship, indicates the profits
and losses of the thirty-five years' interval
between the two editions in terms of aesthetic studies. (The decade which has passed
since his second edition must now also be
given consideration.) Panofsky frankly points
out the large amount of pertinent study
which has taken place since 1924, and even
his own change of mental attitudes. He
might, of course, have written a new book, but
did not choose to do so. Instead, he gives a considerable list of writings on Platonic and
post-Platonic aesthetics and a number of
references to supplement his chapters on the
Middle Ages and since. Fortunately he includes his own Studies in Iconology (1949)
and Albrecht Duerer, third edition, 1948.
After an introductory chapter, the text
traces the Platonic idea of art in later antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance,
"Mannerism", Classicism, and in the works
of Michelangelo and Duerer. Appendices provide reprints of G. P. Lomazzo's "Chapter on
the Beautiful Proportions," Marsiglio Ficino's
"Commentary on the Symposium," and G. P.
Bellori's "The Idea of the Painter, Sculptor
and Architect, Superior to Nature by Selection from Natural Beauties," all three in
both Italian and English, Victor A. Velen,
translator. (Throughout the text the quotations are given bilingually). Abundant and
informative notes, to be expected of a thorough scholar, as well as a useful index,
follow. Before leaving the Contents one may
note the quotation marks used for the chapter title, "Mannerism," and the use of the

term, Classicism, for the later Seventeenth

and Eighteenth Centuries-doubtless, bits of
zeitgeistism.
In the Introduction Panofsky presents
Plato's concept of art as either mimetic or
fantastic, in both cases stopping far short of
truth at the level of ideas. Philosophy leads
to the realm of knowledge, while art stops
with image. Two notions of art, however
contradictory, were held in Antiquity: art is
inferior to nature because it is imitative, and
is superior, because "art independently confronts nature with a newly created image of
beauty." Art is thus both copy and rival of
nature. It was Aristotle who replaced the
antitheses of Idea and Appearance with the
synthetic interaction between form and matter, not in the psychological, subjective sense
of modern thinking, but rather in the sense
that "whatsoever is formed by nature or
hand of man is no longer formed as the
imitation of a definite Idea by a definite
appearance, but by the entrance of a definite
form into a definite substance." The form of
works of art is in the mind of man before it
enters into matter; the creations of nature
are not. Cicero in The Orator finds a compromise between Plato and Aristotle. In the
resulting alternatives inherent in the compromise, namely the denial of the higher
perfection to the Idea, or the justification of
the perfection metaphysically, Panofsky says
Seneca chose the first, the neo-Platonists, the
second.
Aesthetic thought in the Middle Ages is
essentially Aristotelian as developed by Aquinas, though Augustine finds the beautiful
things conceived and revealed by the artist
derivative from a transcendent Beauty, in
rather Platonic accents. Also, Meister Eckhardt asserted that God had antecedent
images of created ideas, basically one, and
that He can conceive the created things only
by means of these antecedent images. For
Aquinas ideas rest with God, while man
operates on the level of quasi-ideas. Dante
is said to summarize the mediaeval view of
art "in a single, lapidary sentence": "Art is
found on three levels: in the mind of the
artist, in the tool, and in the material that
receives its form from art."
The Renaissance urged truth to Nature
and to a selectivity involving both correctness and beauty above nature; the art theory
called for the removal of the art object from
the inner world of the artist's imagination
to a place in the outer world. The artist
must observe and then choose. Marsiglio
Ficino of the Platonic Academy speaks of
ideas as true substances, immanent in the
mind of God, from which the human being
receives impressions. Alberti and Leonardo
seldom or never use the term, idea, while
Raphael in 1516 distinguishes idea and expression in his letter to Castiglioni, to the
disadvantage of idea. Vasari, with Mannerist

premonitions, also demeans the importance

of ideas in contrast to expression; they do
not pre-exist in the mind of the artist, but
"are engendered on the basis of experience."
The "role of the idea is no longer that of a
competitor with, much less that of an archetype for, the reality perceived by the senses,
but rather that of derivative of reality." The
idea "arises," Panofsky says; it does not "preexist." The redefinition of idea in High
Renaissance art theory which especially concerns Panofsky is the clarification of the
subject-object problem. While the answer
occurs only in the next, or "Mannerist"
period, progress is made in the early Sixteenth Century. For example, Vasari asserted
that a whole can be recognized from a part;
Raphael reported that because he lacked
sufficiently beautiful models he made use of
ideas. To both Alberti and Raphael idea
meant beauty surpassing nature; to Vasari,
any image conceived in the mind of the artist. Panofsky concludes, ". . . the concept of
Idea as reinterpreted in the Renaissance . . .
secured freedom to the artistic mind and at
the same time limited this freedom vis-a-vis
the claims of reality."
If the Renaissance tried to harmonize opposites in art theory, the "Mannerist" period,
Panofsky thinks, was simultaneously revolutionary and traditional, attempting to surpass and to continue the Renaissance thinking, as indicated in the works of Raphael,
Correggio and the more concretely manneristic
painters, who outdo the classical forms by
"modifying and regrouping the plastic forms
as such," further complicated by the naturalism of a Caravaggio. Even perspective was
maligned. The dualistic tensions of such
problems as those of Genius and Rule, Mind
and Nature, Subject and Object were now
consciously accepted as contradictions in art
theory, no longer in balance, "with simultaneous arrogance and insecurity." "Idea"
was reinterpreted in "Mannerist" theory
metaphysically, being given a unity which
transcended subject and object. By 1607 Federico Zuccari was tending to an Aristotelian
Thomism; "Without contesting the necessity
of sensory perception, the Idea was reinvested
with its a priori and metaphysical character
by deriving the ideational faculty of the
human mind directly from divine knowledge." While Zuccari was concerned with the
formative problem, that of beauty found neoPlatonic explanations by Giovanni Paolo
Lomazzo. Panofsky concludes the chapter in
these words: "At odds with nature, the
human mind fled to God in that mood at
once triumphant and insecure which is reflected in the sad yet proud faces and gestures of Mannerist portraits-and for which
the Counter-Reformation, too, is only one
expression among others."
In the Classicism chapter "Idealism" stands
opposed to both "Mannerism" and "Natural-

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ism." Giovanni Pietro Bellori from 1664 on

states the contemporary view of the concept
of Idea in a way which was acceptable to the
academic community of western Europe; the
Idea becoming "Purified Nature: the Beau
Ideal." "Summarizing, we may say, then, that
classistic theory was the first to develop the
theory of Idea into a normative, law-giving
aesthetics. ..." In a supplementary chapter
Michelangelo's poetry is found to be Aristotelian, while Duerer is shown to reveal both
classical and romantic tendencies.
Within the specified limitations of topic
and period Idea has clearly presented a section of the history of art theory in definitive
fashion. But what of the meaning of "Idea"
since 1924? Perhaps, Panofsky's own Studies
in Iconology, 1939, and Meaning in the Visual Arts, 1955, provide partial answers.
Though obviously too generalized for a close
argument, one might say that art theory is
metaphysical in classical thought, theological
in mediaeval, and psychological in modern.
Can the Idea which Cassirer discussed in
Plato and Panofsky from Plato to the Nineteenth Century be fruitfully continued into
the present? Panofsky himself says, "In so far
as the formation of ideas was connected in
Renaissance art theory with observation of
nature, it was placed into a realm that,
while not yet that of individual psychology,
was, nevertheless, no longer that of metaphysics." And twice in the text of Idea he
is tempted to carry his analogies to the "most
recent times." "For quite consistently alongside modern Impressionism there was an art
theory that tried to establish on the one
hand the physiology of artistic 'vision,' on
the other, the psychology of artistic thinking.
And Expressionism-in more than one respect
related to Mannerism-was accompanied by a
peculiar kind of speculation that, often using
such psychological terms as Ausdruck (expression) or Erlebnis (experience), actually
led back to the tracks followed by the art
theorists of the later sixteenth century; the
tracks of a metaphysics of art that seeks to
derive the phenomenon of artistic creation
from a suprasensory and absolute-in today's
And again:
language, 'cosmic'-principle."
"Thus the opposition between 'idealism' and
'naturalism' that ruled the philosophy of art
until the end of the nineteenth century and
under multifarious disguises-Expressionism
and Impressionism, Abstraction and Empathy-retained its place in the twentieth,
must in the final analysis appear as a dialectical antinomy." Can one speculate whether
current theories do not tend to transcend the
antinomy by involving more factors than
those of Mind, whether human or divine?
Panofsky, then, stresses Idea. but Goethe,
feeling. Cassirer, with symbolic-logical preferences, in the work of a follower, Suzanne
Langer, has initiated an essay, in three
volumes, entitled, Mind: An Essay in Human

Feeling. The range she will cover include

biological data, with genetic and neurological
evidence, psychological data, with sociological
evidence, and economic data. And Walter
Abell in his Collective Dream in Art says
"art is a symbolical projection of collective
psychic tensions." (His projected Cycle and
Psyche, to be "a study of successive forms
of art in different cultures", was never completed.) One may ask what is the relation of
Idea to the archetype of Jung, the subconscious of Freud, the concept-percept complex
of gestalt psychology, or to the freedom of
existentialism (Arthur Fallico says "art is the
mainspring of human spontaneity, freedom,
and emotional fulfillment")? To answer these
questions the reader must recall or research
the ideas of those already mentioned, as well
as Gyorgy Kepes, Moholy-Nagy, Rudolph
Arnheim, Gabo, Herbert Read, Giedion, Alfred H. Barr, Maritain, among others. One
may even suggest that at Teilhard de Chardin's Omega Point, art theory will have
swept beyond Psyche and Icon, to Psyche
and Psalm, on to Psyche and Sacrament.
WILLIAMSENERRUSK
Aurora, New York
John Russell and Suzi Gablik
Pop Art Redefined, 240 pp., 143 ill. (17 in
color). New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1969.
$4.95.
This book arises directly out of the late
1968 exhibition of Pop Art organized by the
Arts Council of Great Britain. However, it
is not (merely) another exhibition catalogue.
In addition to two introductory pieces by
John Russell and Suzi Gablik, there are
reprints of critical statements by Lawrence
Alloway and John McHale (from Cambridge
Opinion, 17, 1959) which make interesting,
and otherwise difficult to obtain, contributions to the paleo-history of Pop Art. Also of
interest is Robert Rosenblum's "Pop Art and
Non-Pop Art" (from Art and Literature, 5,
1964).
The greater part of the text, however, is
given over to documentation, by the artists
themselves, of the different aspects and directions of the movement. The contributors
form a veritable Pop-Hall-of-Fame: Jim
Dine, Oyvind Fahlstr6m, Richard Hamilton,
David Hockney, Richard Smith, Larry Rivers,
Robert Indiana, Jasper Johns, Lichtenstein,
Rauschenberg, Oldenburg, Warhol, Wesselmann, etc., etc. The most amusing pieceand one which therefore, perhaps, rises to a
higher Pop-Truth-is
Joe Brainard's "Extracts from a Diary"; for example: "August
7-Today I went to the Metropolitan Museum
of Art to look at the real treasures of yesterday. Their major treasures are quite exciting.
I found their minor treasures rather unexciting." and "August 15-Today I am truly
horribly upset because Marilyn Monroe died,

so I went to a matinee B-movie and ate

Kingkorn popcorn. I decided never ever to
paint again. The Movie, Tarzan Gets Married, I had seen before at an earlier age; but
I couldn't remember who he married. (Jane)"
The Brainard extracts tell, in an eloquently oblique manner, of the themes of the
Pop mentality: the flat non-committal magic
of mass euphoria; the problem of the consumer consumed; the estrangement from traditional aesthetic evaluations, and-quite
poignantly-the debasement and dislocation
of sentiment. The fact that this so closely
parallels what the Pop artist attempts to do
visually merely underlines the essentially
"literary"-as prosaic lyric-tendencies of Pop.
As such, having the artists' statements and
their works gathered together does make for
a complementary situation (of interest, for
such comparisons: Hershel Chipp, "A Method
for Studying the Documents of Modern Art,"
ART JOURNAL,
Summer, 1967). So I have the
about accepting Suzi
reservations
greatest
Gablik's statement that "the authentic Pop
image exists independent of any interpretations."
I hope not to give the impression that this
collection is just a hodge-podge catchall; it
is operating from a point of view which
"sees Pop in terms of formal ideas and not
in terms of the jokey, gregarious, eupeptic
and loosely organized . . . our intention [is]
to re-define Pop Art as having a more direct
relation to Minimal and Hard-Edged abstract
than is frequently admitted."
Further on, Mr. Russell makes the necessary comment-as this point is so often misunderstood-that "Pop is not, as so many
people have supposed, a satirical art: it is an
affirmative art, and affection plays a great
part in it." That Pop is very much concerned with its matter is demonstrated by the
arrangement of the accompanying illustrations which are categorized by their subject
or 'genre': household objects, movie images,
mass media and advertising, food, clothing,
historical referand-most
interesting-art
ences-or artists on 'Art' through art. Such a
hierarchy is, of course, quite the reverse of
the academic hieratic series, as Pop is, above
all, concerned with what should be rightly
labeled as 'genre studies.'
Particularly interesting, to this reviewer,
are the distinctions drawn between English
and American approaches to the Pop problematic. It should not be forgotten that Pop
is a British product which can be said to
date from the formation of the Independent
Group (IG), in 1952, and certainly, from the
1956 "This Is Tomorrow" exhibit at the
Whitechapel Gallery which clearly marked
the emergence of Pop iconography. Whereas,
in America, Pop was, for the most part, a
cultural continuum, in Britain, as Mr. Russell points out, "Pop was a resistance movement: a classless commando which was di-

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