Italian Renaissance art and culture

¶ … Power and the Changing Social Role of the Artist

The process of artistic creation is often taken for granted as the product of some singularly brilliant talent acting alone in his or her inspiration. However, this notion undermines the importance of art as reflecting certain social or cultural conditions pertinent to the time and place of its creation. This is the premise at the center of the article by Wind (1985), which weighs the relationship between individual will power and artistic creation. Wind's writing offers a compelling and nuanced consideration of the ways in which the artistic processes has changed with the shifting of socioeconomic structures and how, accordingly, the artist's psyche must also change.

Article Summary:

Wind's article describes the considerable difference between producing art in the feudalist eras and today, examining various relationships between prominent artists and project commissioners over history. Largely, this describes a relationship between iconic artistic figures and members of royal families or religious authorities. Wind uses examination of these working relationships to deliver a thorough discussion on how changes in the way that members of the public consume art -- decidedly at a greater distance and in a more passive fashion than those who commissioned paintings during the Renaissance -- are constantly altering the way that the artist must behave in pursuit of his works. In particular, Wind considers the ways in which the artist must temper his own will and ego in order to satisfy consumer interests and desires, particularly now that artists will rarely work under the sometimes rigid terms imposed by commissioned works several centuries ago.

Thematic Approach:

The theme which largely drives Wind's approach is that relating to propositions of the human will. To Wind, the will plays a crucial part in helping humanity to breach new discoveries, to achieve innovations and to render expressions not heretofore uttered or exhibited. This denotes, Wind asserts, that the will is a fundamental instrument in supposing and pursuing as yet unproved hypotheses or concepts for which there is no consensus. Wind applies this notion to all matter of human interaction, describing for instance the crucial role played by will power in the process of scientific discovery. Accordingly, Wind observes that "the scientist acts on a hunch, for which the scientific evidence is incomplete; and his decision to act on that hunch, at the risk of being disappointed, is as certainly an act of the will as is the contrary, and more common decision, namely, not to risk that disappointment, and hence to forego the chance of making a discovery." (Wind, p. 77)

This provides a useful thematic starting point for a discussion on the role played by the will in both the inception and the appreciation of art. Just as with science, Wind indicates, the moment of inspiration by which an artistic endeavor is begun is one that must be stimulated by a surge of will. The very ambition or egoism that would predicate artistic expression must be present in order to goad one forward with the confidence or even the arrogance to make any such statement. However, this is also an area in which Wind provides an extremely compelling discussion on the dividing line between the need for this will and the need to suspend it. Again, as this applied both to those who would create and those who would consume art, acts and demonstrations of the will can be obstructive to creation or appreciation. Just as with science, following the demonstration of will that allows for the initiation of an exploratory endeavor, Wind indicates that there must be a point at which we sublimate our will to the more pressing evidence before us. Where this refers to science, such is to say that there is a destructive and blinding effect upon the actor who's will prevents him from responding to facts and evidences that may refute the theoretical assumptions of the will. Where this applied to the artist, Wind describes a point at which "in the moment of creation his personal will must be suspended; otherwise his work will be contrived and forced -- what the French very fittingly called voulu, which means 'strained' or 'laboured' and is a term of aesthetic censure." (Wind, p. 77)

Rationale for Article:

Above all other things, appreciation of this dynamic between the will and the submission to more sweeping artistic currents seems to be the central rational by which Wind takes his approach to the present examination of art. Thus, we might justify Wind's meditation on art as designed to recast the role of the artist and his personal will within this new context. In other words, the thoughts presented here are largely rationalized by the need to redefine the artists in a modern consumer framework.

Intention of Article:

This is to note that where the rationale for this article is the basic understanding that the artistic process has changed in direct concert with the shifting of socioeconomic structures and cultural mores, the intention of the article is to examine how the artist must adjust his internal and external processes in order to remain relevant. Wind goes to lengths to describe the need for the artist to successful look within himself for ambition and to look to the desires of others for inspiration.

Conclusion:

To my way of thinking, the article by Wind is most significantly centered on the relationship between the artist and the world around him. The notion discussed throughout the article of finding balance between the internalized genius that comes out through the artist's will and the external impulses that are produced by society, culture and economic imperative characterizes in relative simplicity the rather complex struggle that must be a part of any artist's creative process. Indeed, what emerges as perhaps Wind's most important assertion is that which decries the relative irrelevance of work created merely to satisfy the artist's own will. In approaching work this way, Wind warns, one risks the imposition of a 'tyrannical' sort of egoism which can ultimately obscure the work's greater value behind superficial purposes of self-interest. Finding ways to buffet this inherently necessary self-interest with something of greater importance to the eventual beholder stands as the central problem in Wind's conceptual analysis.

Quite to this point, Wind examines the evolving modern relationship between the artist and the consumer as being something quite distinct from the Renaissance processes by which painters were commissioned through courts and sculptors commissioned by clergy. Instead, the public, Wind indicates, consumes art as channeled through the impulse of the artist, his dealers, his gallery and his retinue. This is quite a distinct market from that which existed several hundred years ago and thus alters, Wind asserts, the basic dynamics effecting the artist's balance of will with the desires of those who would consume his output. On this point, Wind indicates that "in the eighteenth century a lively exchange between the artist and his public was still taken for granted. Hogarth laughed at poets who lived in garrets and pursued their fancies; he ridiculed musicians enraged by the popular music of the streets. The true artist was in contact with the public." (Wind, p. 79)