Romanticism Art Help Roger Fry

¶ … Romanticism Art help Roger Fry develop his Theory of Formalism?

At the root of the Formalist theory, an esthetic vision that conceives the understanding of art work through the pure forms that construct it, we can name Roger Elliot Fry as the main author of this particular approach to the artistic phenomenon.

To begin with a quick overview about the author whose work we're about to discuss, it could be mentioned that he was born in London, in 1866, and was the son of a wealthy family. He later was a student at King's College, in Cambridge, where he became a member of the Cambridge Apostles. His inclinations towards the world of art were clear from the early stage of his life and, in 1891, instead of continuing his scientific studies, he went to Paris to study art and then to Italy where he specialized in landscape painting.

His experience in the painting territory soon brought him to become a specialist in the field and, in 1906 he was curator of paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the city that, during the beginning of the twentieth century, replaced Paris as the world capital of the arts. This gave him a close approach to the contemporary changes. There he discovered Cezanne, which inspired him to drift from the Italian Old Masters of the past to the modern French art and the new tendencies that were taking over the world in the early twentieth century.

In 1910 he organized an exhibition where he invented the term Post-Impressionism, a word he invented to attract people to the show, as he exposed the works of a few less known Impressionistic painters, such as Cezanne, Van Gogh, and Gauguin, all of them following the road towards the later abstract art, a style that fits perfectly into the Formalist ideas, as they concentrate on techniques and result, rather than message.

By the early years of the century Fry was writing many works about art, as an author and critic. His theory developed in a vision of purely analyzing the work of art from the essential point-of-view, which dictated that form was more important than content, and that a work of art must be judged by how it looks more than what it means. Although this ideas were relatively new, a more sophisticated style of Formalism, that appeared later, probably inspired on his writings and concepts, takes the relation between form and content. In Fry's point-of-view, the use of colors, shapes, and figures, was the main value, not as much as the message they confer, not subject to express ideas or match reality. In this point-of-view his esthetic ideas might be compared to the esthetic vision of the late eighteen century Romanticism that was also centered on the method and aspect, the look and feel of the work more than the meaning it brings to the mind of the viewer.

Romanticism was not an artistic movement devoted to love, as the name might indicate. The meaning of the word "romantic," such as we know it today, is not the essential subject for Romantic works of art. Although in some cases love was included in the message, the style spins around other perceptions and feelings, wider in range and more philosophical in essence. This movement lasted from the late eighteenth century and until the mid nineteenth century, changing the vision of the world and affecting future art movements that would follow, such as Simbolism (Romantic Simbolism concerned with the power of figures and their second meaning to express the language of the artists)

This tendency had its major influence in many different manifestations of art, such as painting, music, sculpture and literature. The countries where the style was stronger in literature were England and Germany, later spreading east to Russia and across the ocean towards America. It is hard to establish the exact dates for this period, it is considered to have been in the 1770s and continued until past the first half of the next century (around 1870), longer for American than European culture, and affecting painting, literature and music at different periods.

As representative writers we can name Robert Burns and William Blake in England, Goethe and Schiller in Germany, Victor Hugo in France, among a few.

The romantic period coincided with many revolutions that took place around that era, such as the French Revolution and the American Revolution. To this we can add other kinds of revolutions, not of military or political order, but that greatly affected society and brought a new age of social, economical and political changes that swept the world and transformed the vision and thinking of many countries of that time. This also was the beginning of the industrial revolution that began radical adjustments in the life style of the people and the development of technology.

The relationship between Romanticism and Formalism and the possible link in which the first may have inspired the latter can only be properly seen if we take a close look to the characteristics of the style that affected the esthetic taste of the world for almost a century.

Romanticism was in itself an attempt of revolution. It intended to change the way people perceived art, the theory and practice of the esthetic perception and the vision of the world.

Most of the ideas imposed by this movement even survived into the Twentieth century and affected some of the later inclinations and even remain valid in contemporary art. Imagination took an essential role and greater importance in the artistic creation and became the main property of the mind, opposing the classical ideal of reason being the most important virtue of the human spirit.

Romanticism was a response against Neoclassicism, which proposed a return to the classic style of the old masters. In seeking classic taste, society also returned to the classic thinking that venerated science and knowledge in the creative phenomenon. As to oppose the concepts of the classicist taste, the new Romantic notion concentrated on the inventive side of the human nature.

In the Romantics point-of-view, imagination gave humans the chance to compare themselves to the gods, as it permits them to pass beyond the plain representation of reality and have their own creative powers that the artist can exercise through his works.

Imagination was considered the main capacity required for creating art, and so it was considered to be the most important of all talents in the artistic process. To this was added the suggestion that humans not only perceive the reality they live in, but also form a part of it, and thus contribute to the very creation of the world.

By combining feeling and mind, intellect and intuition, imagination synthesized the dimensions of the world, and allowed the artist to reconcile the differencies around them, which was the main target of the Romantic ideal.

At this point would be opportune to make a comparison with the Formalist point-of-view. Formalism does not concentrate on the pursue of imagination, but, leaning towards the pure forms and the process of creating, follows in some point the Romantic perception of art, as it leans towards the esthetic presentation of the image, more than the realistic description of the subject. The form, not necessarily realistic, but mainly expressive in the romantic conception, plays a major role for the Formalist approach that concentrates on the feel of the piece rather than the meaning of such composition.

Imagination is our connection with nature in the Simbolistic language, and the very perception of this which sends us to the world of forms, as the esthetic theory proposes.

The value of myth in the Romantic idea lies in their capacity to signify different things, and become a wide and diverse language, as a larger richer form of communication. It was a yearning for expressing the inexpressible and to communicate a language that had no defined intellectual meaning.

Great importance was given to intuition and instinct, more than just logic and reason. Art was no longer a mimetic instrument, but a creative key to express feeling. It showed the inner world of the creative mind, more than a mirror that shared what the artist's eyes and reason perceived.

This concept was a precursor of the Impressionistic point-of-view, in which the artist was concerned with showing his own personal perception, rather than the exact imitation of the object. However, the Romantic view appreciated imagination over perception.

While the Impressionistic painter was concerned with illustrating a landscape, not as it really was, in the cold technical context of the exact details of its constructing elements, but as he saw it from his own perspective, the Romantic artist was able to paint a landscape he had never seen, and not caring even if it existed in reality. We can relate this kind of thinking with an even more daring comparison with the surreal style that also represented realities in a very imaginative way. The Romantic point-of-view, of course was less exaggerated in fantasy.

All of the styles inspired by the Romantic current can be clearly traced from the Formalist point-of-view, as they had in common the use of image itself, leaving meaning and content to a secondary design.

In the poetry and literature world, the Romantic period was a chance to explore the inner feelings of the artist, the development of his own soul and thoughts, where the author is the hero of the story, indirectly even, in autobiographical and confessional works. In the world of visual expression, the Romanticism moved the importance from the mimetic perspective to a more expressive characteristic, and the art work was weighed in its capacity to transmit emotions and feelings rather than communicate a messages.

It also promoted the idea that universal human behavior was more interesting than individual human activities. This means that in Romantic literature heroes are very varied and different, the characters presented as heroes are not mere every day personages, and undergo stories that almost touch the edge of magic, as we can see in works from Victor Hugo (The hunchback of Notre Dame) or Goethe (Faust), sometimes the character that the entire action spins around is even impossible or partly unreal, going through adventures and happenings that are not seen in the regular life and go beyond convincing fiction and into the imaginary world. The Romantic ideals gave great importance to the individual, the unique and special, even touching the line of eccentricity.

Among a few Romantic painters we could mention Caspar David Friedrich, who had a special attraction towards the portraying of landscape of a very imaginative nature and explored in his works the complexity of colors, through a game of dramatic contrast between light and shades that display a specific hour of the day and the phenomenon of light, captured in his brush strokes. His work had the capacity of taking the viewer to a fantasy realm where they can share the inner world of the artist. There can be many examples of this kind of work in many different personalities, such as John Constable, William Blake, Baron Antoine Jean Gros with his Portrayals of Napoleon, (the view of a hero in the eyes of the author), Theodore Gericault with Raft of Medusa, and Eugen Delacroix with historical themes, such as Massacre at Chois and Liberty leading the people.

Romanticism art leaned towards rather dark colors, as can be seen in many examples such as the landscapes mentioned above, and a few scenes portraying theatrical settings where we can see a very strong sense of chiaroscuro and depth effect created by the dramatic use of dark colors and accentuated shadows, leaning towards a very deep sculptural vision, opposing the Neoclassical flat tendencies in painting. Among the favorite themes for this kind of art we have the landscape and representation of nature. The use of diffuse lights and contrast of shadows gives a bit of surreal atmosphere to these paintings.

The use of human figures is often presented from a very close view, capturing them into a rather close environment, remind somewhat of the Baroque style that brought the viewer very close to the scene as to include them in it. Other favorites themes for this kind of painting are the use of still nature in pretty simple arrangements. The background is often flat, simple, with very little detail and plays a minor role in the composition. There is little interest in showing or copying the perfect feel of the different materials and mostly the brush strokes are plain and constant, following a steady tension, direction and texture.

In North America, the Romantic Movement was lead by Hudson River School of dramatic landscape painting.

Successors of this movement can be considered the Pre-Raphaelite and the Simbolistic movement.

Formalism refers to art as an expression of pure form, rather than art as an expression of a message and idea clearly stated. In this, the dramatic part of the painting (to use this particular form of art) is about representing the characters as if they are involved in their world, and completely unaware that they are playing a scene in a painting and being observed by the viewer. The characters seem to just present themselves and not deliberately playing for an audience to admire them.

In this idea, the Romantic painting is purely Formalist, as it represents mainly the subject of landscape, on one hand, as one favorite theme, and still nature, on the other, as another preferred subject. These two styles have in common that in such compositions the main characters are elements of nature and objects that simply present themselves as existing for us to admire, without actually seeming aware of their role as decorative images. The importance of the work lies in its final aspect, more than the meaning of the story told by the composing elements.

Romantic art has an emphasized appreciation for beauty and figure, which means putting the form first over the message, sometimes absent, like a form of painting designed exclusively to please and bring emotions into the spectator, not to challenge his rational side with complicated stories. In this case, Romanticism is a style of art that refers mostly to communicate esthetic feelings through form, color, figures and composition, even in the important role that imagination plays in the entire esthetic game.

The Formalist theory considers irrelevant to the esthetic appreciation the representation, the emotion, the ideas. It only admits the expressive tools that in painting would refer to colors, lines, shapes, combinations of planes, and in sculpture is about the shape, size and volume of the figure. A piece will not be good simply because it portrays an object of the real world. Also it is not considered better because it awakes emotions in the viewer, any other than the mere esthetic feeling. The narrative quality is appreciated in arts like literature, but considered irrelevant in art forms like painting, that are aimed purely to please the sense of sight. The esthetic emotion is the response to these elements combined and acting together.

All persons capable of experiencing esthetic emotion in front of paintings (...) are responding when they do so to relations of pure form. -roughly, to ideated volumes in relation, both to one another, and the surface and shape of the canvas rather than to whatever expressiveness the work in question may be held to possess."

In this Formalist statement, we can find some of the Romanticism ideas of the esthetic emotion being awoke by the beauty of the painting, rather than by the understanding of the complex language that other conceptions of art had established.

In Romanticism, the use of colors itself was a very clear game of the senses. We can find in works such as that the accent has been put in the technique, the contrasts and use of lights, figures and composition, rather than the message it intends to express.

In Caspar David Friedrich's many variations of the Evening subject, the main character is a landscape showing a specific phase of the day. The most important element present here is the light and the colors that this light creates in the atmosphere. There is no distinct message in these paintings other than the image presenting itself, and no characters that perform a scene for the viewer to understand. It is only an image meant to induce a feeling of calm and peacefulness and please the eyes by the images presented.

This accent for the image rather than the story agrees very well with the Formalist theory that inspires to analyze the work from a point-of-view that focuses on the methods and purely formal values of the painting.

The properties of painting can be divided into formal and not formal properties"

In literature Romantic artists interpreted the world through their own conception and emotions. In other art forms like painting, they presented the vision of their senses, mixed with their feelings and imagination, which gave a very personal view of the reality they presented. The distance between artist and public was somewhat greater in an era where the artist was giving a part of his soul that could not be shared by the audience. In presenting reality just as it is the artist can give the public a language they can all understand. But as they were dealing with his own inner world and fantasy in his own personal way, the gap began to widen.