Art And The Artists

Art and the Artists What is the meaning of Art? Why am I even asking this question? Well, the definition is not that obvious and it deserves some attention, because Art could be a word as well as an object! Art is made everywhere, an object maybe yes but just not any kind of object. Art can be qualified as one “aesthetic” object. It is meant to be looked at and appreciated for its own value. Its special qualities set Art apart, so it was always placed away from every day life, in caves, museums and churches. Now, there is another word to define: What does “aesthetic” means? By common sense, “aesthetic” is what concerns the “beautiful”. But what can we define as” beautiful”? Of course, not all Art can be considered as beautiful to each person’s eyes, but it is Art nevertheless! Aesthetic is strictly speaking a branch of Philosophy which has occupied thinkers from Plato in Ancient Greece to the present day, Bergson, Heideger. Like all philosophical matter, aesthetic is subject to debate and during the last century, aesthetic has become a field of psychology. On one hand, people all over the world make the same fundamental judgements. Our brains and nervous systems are globally the same, because according to recent theories, everyone is descending from one woman who lived in Africa, a quarter of a million years ago. On the other hand, our ”taste” is conditioned solely by our culture which is so varied that it is impossible to reduce this mental concept to a simple set of precepts (something that one can be learn, like maths or physics). In fact, we all dream. This is “imagination” at work. To imagine, simply means to make an image-a picture-in our mind. Imagination is one of our most mysterious facets. It can be regarded as the connector between the conscious and the sub-conscious, where most of our brain activity takes place. It is the very glue that olds our personality, intellect and spirituality together. We must not forget that:”feeling”, “order” and “imagination” are present in every work of art. Without imagination, art would be deadly dull. Without some degree of order it would be chaotic, without feeling, it would leave us unmoved.

In a larger sense, Art is like Science and Religion, it fulfils humanity’s urge to comprehend itself and the Universe. Art has the power to penetrate to the core of our beings which recognizes itself in the creative act. Like writing, we become gods in becoming creators ourselves. “Originality” is what ultimately distinguishes Art from Craft (while this opinion could be contradicted!).Is talent confused with aptitude? Some artists reach a creative peak early in their careers and go dry while others, after a slow and uncompromising start, may achieve original work in middle age or even later. Most beginning artists start out on the level of craft by imitating other works of art, then, gradually absorb the artistic tradition. No one, after all can be taught the notions of creating. What the apprentice or art student learns, are skills and techniques, established ways of drawing, painting, carving, designing-established ways of ”seeing”. Why do people create Art? Art, in many ways, enables us to communicate our understanding in ways that cannot be expressed otherwise. We must think of Art not in terms of everyday language (another concept that could be opposed by a category of artists), but of poetry, which is free to rearrange conventional vocabulary and syntax in order to convey new and often multiple meanings and moods. Like a poem, the value of Art lies equally in what it says and how it says it. For the African Americans and following WWII, Black artists began to attend art schools in growing numbers at the very time when “Abstract Art” and “Expressionism” marked the coming of American art. The Civil Rights movement helped them to establish their artistic identities and find styles to express them. The turning point was the assassination of Martin Luther King and Malcom X and it provoqued an outpouring of African American art. Since then, Black Art in America was following a different direction, seeking to find a personal aesthetique, saying that there was not such a thing as Black art, but only good art. They were denounced by activist artists who were motivated by social consciousness and often political ideology.

Degenerate Art This chapter is dedicated to a certain time in History of Art and Humanity, when political and art worlds collided. Submission of artists to politics has largely increased since centralisation of power. During the 15th-16th, at the time of the Renaissance, artists who were chased by one of the local States or men of power ( Florence, Rome, Milan ) could easily take refuge under the protection of other princes like the Sforzas or the Medicis. In 1934, while in Moscow, André Malraux, a French writer and Minister of Culture has declared in a conference: But a conquest of what? Could it be over feelings and ways to express them? Are the artists be subjected to have their feelings censured, controlled or even suppressed by any power? Michelangelo, wrote on the base of his sculpture The Night: If it is to see tyranny, do not wake up. As anyone should think to this: Any Civilization implies the respect of the other! I have chosen this to introduce a time in our history when artists were considered as degenerates, dangerous to the nation and whose works had to be eradicated. It was a time when every artist, philosophers or journalists had to confront a state or be demised, fired, jailed and even executed if they did not comply and participate in one way or another in the propaganda. I have selected the 20th century, Germany, the National Socialism and the arts. What is the responsibility of an artist in times of dictature or under political repression? The Nazis and Germany of 1930 is an excellent example because it reached every sector of creation, literature, music, theatre, cinema, architecture. The order was: Propaganda and submission… or else. Goebbels, was the man who instituted the nazification of the Culture. The nazification of the cultural life took place immediately after Hitler’s access to the Chancellery. To prepare the masses to the great national tasks and favorise a revolution, spiritual and cultural defined since 1925 Hitler could not solely use force and terror. He needed a real consensus. The government decided to create a new Ministry properly ”National Socialist”, the Ministry of the Popular Information and Propaganda, which was given to Joseph Goebbels, one of the most important figures of the Nazi Party. Violently anti capitalist and anti bourgeois, the most extremist, Goebbels was the son of a catholic family. Intellectual, without a job, he was in favour of a radical socialism, declaring that it was far better to choose Catastrophe with the Bolshevism than perpetual slavery with Capitalism.

Goebbels was an aviation hero during the First World War of 1914-1918 and became President of the Reichstag (the German Parliament). He rose to Minister of Aviation and Interior of Prussia in 1933 and was chosen as Hitler’s successor. In 1945, he committed suicide with all his family during the Nuremberg trial. From November 1933, registering to the Chamber of Culture became mandatory to be able to work. Each application was revised and had to be approved after investigation by police. Every artist, journalist, painter, movie and theatre actor, directors and writers, including postcards had to register. Any artist having been refused was forced into complete inactivity, not one of his works being played, exposed or heard in the whole Reich. Even the Jazz, considered as degenerate music was forbidden. The most eminent personalities on cultural level were expulsed or arrested. Were particularly targeted Jews, Communists, Democrats, Pacifists and all whose works have been considered “Judeo-Marxists”? If many were already out of Germany at that time, those who were still inside, like Thomas Mann, Fritz Lang, Zweig, Steinberg, Marlene Dietrich or Lubitch, decided to leave immediately or later on. Some were arrested and sent to concentration camps. Bertold Brecht like several others, were stripped of their German nationality or struck out of all sectors of the Culture as enemies of the National Socialism. It included many journalists, architects, painters, sculptors and university teachers, members of the world of Music, Cinema and theatre. The Directors of Berlin Philharmonic like Otto Kemperer, Bruno Walter were refused the position while composers of Modern Music were expelled from the Academy of Music. Von Karajan was a special case and benefited from Hitler’s admiration and was chosen to replace those who had to leave. Special case he was, because he was not a Jew. In the case of literature, black lists have been dressed, under the strict orders of Goebbels. In every city of Germany, libraries were requested to get rid of all malignant books or foreign to German spirit. Thousands of books were loaded into trucks at dawn, sprinkled with petrol and burnt by the S.A. students with fanfares and songs by fanatical crowds. So, 20’000 books of Jewish writers, communists or simply democrats were burnt in public place, in front of the Berlin Opera. The National Socialism of Adolf Hitler refused all modern artistic movements and particularly the Expressionism. Such an attitude was born from his personal hatred towards Modern Art and other ideological and political consideration. In 1936 all exhibitions of Expressionist Art were forbidden and most of the artists have no more permission to produce works of this style. Some artists commit suicide while most of them decide to emigrate. Under Goebbels authority, German museums were submitted to purges and paintings of Picasso, Chagall, Gauguin, Matisse, Braque, Van Gogh, Koloshka, Kandinsky and Klee were disappearing from public view. However, many of these paintings enriched Goebbels private collection or were offered and sold to European museums. Paintings without buyers were burnt at Berlin Fire Brigade Headquarters.

If one takes a look at the list of artists who were victims of the Nazis or the Stalinism, there are so many names that represent the most famous figures of the artistic world of the 20th century. In Germany, there were the musicians, composers and orchestra conductors: Gustav Malher, Schönberg, Isaac Stern, Willem Kemps and Otto Kemperer, Kurt Weil, Horowitz, Stravinsky and Rachmaninov (all Jewish). Painters like Hans Hartung, Emil Nolde, George Grosz and Beckam, Smidt-Rotluff, Feiningen, all fled for the USA or Hans Bellmar who was imprisoned in France with Max Ernst. Some of them decided to stay behind but had to hide their work. For instance, the sculptor Barlach had a large number of his work destroyed together with a total of 4’800 other sculptures, water-colours and paintings. It has to be said that a very large number of artists, writers and painters, musicians, actors and directors, stayed in Germany but refused to exhibit or left their teaching position. Others simply accepted to bow to the law like Von Karajan, the great director of the Berlin Orchestra. Many of these were members of the Nazi Party, kept their jobs and escaped the programme of ”denazification” set in place by the Allied and the new German government at the end of the War. Otto Dix (1891-1969) - German painter and graphic artist, he became apprentice as a decorative painter and studied and taught at the Dresden Academy. Forbidden to paint or exhibit is works, Dix was dismissed from the Prussian Art Academy for political reasons. Is paintings were confiscated as degenerate art. Arrested in 1939 for suspected participation in the assassination attempt on Hitler, his paintings were burned. In 1945, called up in the army, he was taken prisoner in France. He is today an honorary member of the Academy Delle Arte of Florence. Immediately after WWI, Dix and Grosz with other artists funded the “Neue Sachlichkeit” meaning new objectivity. This school practiced a powerful painting, satirical and sour. They exposed the political and social life, chaos and hypocrisy of the contemporary life, in a revendicative way. Max Ernst (1891-1976) - German painter, graphic artist and sculptor founded the Dadaist group with Hans Arp, George Grosz and Otto Dix, Max Ernst and Picabia. They were the founding member of this nihilist and anti-war movement born in 1916. Ernst was also the co-founder of the Surrealist movement. In 1939, Arp was interned in France and immigrated to the USA in 1941. Otto Freundlich (1878-19439) - German painter and sculptor, Freundlich studied History of Arts in Berlin, Florence, Munich and studied sculpture. His paintings were inspired by Picasso and the Cubists. In 1934, he founded the Academy of Painting, Drawing, Sculpture and Engraving. In 1937 his work” the new Man” appeared in the catalogue of the Degenerate Art in Munich. The same year his works were confiscated from German museums. He was interned in 1939, escaped to France, deported to concentration camp in Poland where was murdered.

Ernst Kirchner (1880-1938) – A German painter and graphic artist he studied Architecture at Dresden where he founded the movement “Die Bruck”. His works, classified as degenerate and 639 works were confiscated from public collections. He was probably the most important painter and artist among the German Expressionists. He took his life in 1938. Emil Nolde (1867-1956) - German painter and graphic artist, Nolde started an apprenticeship as designer and wood-carver. He worked in a furniture factory in Munich and Berlin. He took a teaching job at the Karlsruhe School of Arts and Crafts. He was the co-founder of the New Secession and met Karl Munch. He was a Member of the Prussian Art Academy. Nolde travelled to New-Guinea, Japan and China via Moscow. Over 1’000 of his works were seized and forbidden to paint by the Nazis. In 1945, like Pechstein, his studio was completely destroyed during an air raid over Berlin. In Architecture, the best architects left Germany to work in the USA. Among them, one would find nearly all the members and creators of the Bauhaus national school like its director Walter Gropius, Louis Khan, Mies Van Der Rohe and Richard Neutra, this group was including Kandinsky and Mendelsohn, the leaders of modern architecture and the theoricians of functionalism and rationalism that opened the way to the International Style of Philip Johnson, Richard Meier and Richard Foster. Photography was not immune of the repressive actions. Gisele Freund and August Saunders were amongst the many great photographers who had to suffer the Nazism. Saunders, born in 1876, as a boy, he worked on a dump in his home town before being employed by a photographer as his assistant. He attended the Dresden Academy of Painting where he was awarded the gold medal and special honours at an exhibition in Paris in 1904. When his publications were taken out of circulation by the Nazis, he found a safe place for his photographs but his apartment was destroyed in 1945 by a bombing air raid. In 1954, Saunders participated to the exhibition “Family of Man” at the Museum of Modern Art in New-York. If we take a good look into other countries and other times, this was truly the harshest and the most violent time. However, one should consider the situation that occurred nearly everywhere in the world. In literature, the great Italian writer Dante Alighieri died in exile in 1321. The 16th saw Jewish poets, painters and artists taking refuge in Amsterdam while in 1800, the Spanish painter Francisco Goya had to leave his country for Italy and was exiled in France, the musician Federico Garcia Llorca was arrested and died in jail. In 1870, the famous French writer Victor Hugo was exiled to the Isle of Re where he died in solitary. The Chilean and revolutionary poet Pablo Neruda was exiled to a near deserted island off the coast of Sicily. In Italy, Renato Birolli, a painter and art critic had contacts with the Surrealists in Paris. He was arrested and imprisoned for anti-fascist activities and went underground after his release.

The list is terribly long and one can remember that in 1950, even in a great democratic country like the USA, being close or supposedly close to communists could put actors, movie directors and writers like Elia Kazan on the black list of the Anti-American Activities and force them to leave their own country or loose their jobs. On the other political side, the Stalinism stopped all artistic manifestations that were not totally to the service of the Communist Party. Even Ballet was subjected to submission and the great dancer Noureev choose the West and fled Russia for France. Between 1930 and 1940, the German cinema lost an enormous number of its best actors and directors who fled to the USA: Marlene Dietrich, Roman Polanski, Erich Von Stroheim, Otto Preminger, Max Ophuls, Fritz Lang, and Billy Wilder. Since the rise of Hitler to power, Photography was left in the hands of a personal friend of the Furher. In Russia, photo-montage was systematically used for propaganda. Writers like Pasternak, Soljenytsine and the poet Evtouchenko were victims of Stalinist repression, were deported to Siberia or sent to psychiatric hospitals. Pilniak, a famous Russian writer of the October Revolution and the Russian realism, disappeared during the Stalinist purges. Painters like Chagall, Soutine and Rothko left for France. Russian photo-journalist Chaldeï Yevgeni took front line photography of WWII and the invasion of Soviet Union, the retreat from Bulgaria and Rumania by the German troops. He was dismissed from the Pravda, the Russian national newspaper editorial staff for being Jewish. Malevitch (1878-1938) - Born in Leningrad, he was a Russian painter and began studying at the Kiev School of Arts. Impressionist then Cubist, he started the Russian School of Art after the Revolution. In 1921, the new political system led to a crack down on his new art and his paintings were hung in the Moscow Museum, but a different room as a cautionary example of subversive and revolutionary art. In South America, David Siqueiros (1886-1974) a Mexican painter and friend of Ribeira, who studied at the Academy of Arts of Mexico and received a scholarship to work in Paris and Barcelona was banished for political reason and officially exiled in 1932. Siqueiros took part in the Spanish Civil War, visited Russia and Poland. He was sentenced to 8 years in jail. In 1964, he was awarded the Mexican National Prize for Arts. Along with his friends Ribeira and Orozco, he is regarded as one of the greatest Mexican frescoes painter. In 1956, the political situation was such in Eastern Europe that million of people left Poland, Czechoslovakia, Rumania, Hungary and Russia. In Russia, photo-montage was systematically used for propaganda. Writers like Pasternak, Soljenytsine and the poet Evtouchenko were victims of Stalinist repression and were deported to Siberia or sent to psychiatric hospitals. Pilniak, a famous Russian writer of the October Revolution and the Russian realism, disappeared during the Stalinist purges. Painters like Chagall, Soutine, and Rothko took refuge in France. Finaly, we can take a look into the South-African situation during the Apartheid regime that one can consider as one as the most repressive system against reactionary movements particularly in journalism, literature and poetry. The struggle of Black writers was long and hard.

Almost all of the early poems were never published. Black poetry was on trial. Along with White, Indian and Coloured artists, poets, writers and journalists, immediately come to my mind the names of Alan Paton, Breiten Breitenbach, Nadine Gordimer, J.M.Cotzee and Andre Brink.

The Modern Movement This artistic movement was created for a short period of time, from 1940 to 1945. The wave of Abstract Art started silently, in the intellectual underground of exiled artists. Stalinist repression, Nazi persecution and in a lesser degree under Italian fascist regime have degraded art to an instrument of State propaganda. In Italy, the interruption of artistic development was not so grave because Mussolini not only understood nothing about “Art Brut” and even admitted his failing. It is an astonishing fact, showing how art is dependant on liberty that many decades of Stalinism and Fascist tyranny, despite immense support, produced not a single painting or sculpture that has remained in the awareness of the Western World. German art between 1933 and 1945 was produced in exile. Paintings of many artists were produced under the protection of courageous friends and out of the public eye. Art that was officially tolerated during the Third Reich falls under the category of kitsch while the works of the persecuted and suppressed are now hanging on every museum, all over the world. As an example, in the Fascist Spain, even the dictator Franco did not bother to intervene in the development of artistic movements. Picasso, who painted his Guernica in response to the bombing of civilians by the Spanish anti republican forces, was not only anti-Franco, but a member of the French Communist Party also but his work was never condemned, confiscated or even forbidden to exhibit. Picasso was like several artists of the 20th century, a funding member of the cubist movement, one of the three main artistic movements between the two World Wars. Expression with Matisse, Kandinsky, the German Die Brucke group with Koloshka or Nolde, stresses emotional attitude towards oneself and the world. Abstraction with Picasso, Braque, Mondrian and Leger, focuses on the formal structure of the work of art. Fantasy with De Chirico, Chagall, Duchamps, Max Ernst, Salvador Dali, Magritte, Mirò and Klee, explores the realism of imagination especially its spontaneous, irrational qualities.

Islam and Art No History of Art and Culture can ignore Islam and its enormous part in the world cultural heritage. Islam is one of the great religious traditions, together with Christian, Jewish and Hindu religions. It is a world religion and cultural power. Literally, Islam means” devotion to Allah, the One God. It is another religion of the Book: the Koran, like the Bible for Christians or the Thora for the Jews, is the Holy Book that unites Muslims through the world. The Kaaba, a grey stone building is the main shrine of Islam. It contains the Sacred Black Stone which, according to tradition was brought down to earth by Angel Gabriel. In truth, it was a meteorite! According to their religious duties, every Muslim must do the pilgrimage to Mecca, at least once in his life. The majority of Muslims (88 to 90 %) describe themselves as Sunnis. However, the rise of the Shias falls into the period of dispute over the legitimate succession of the Prophet Mohamed. The Shiat Ali (party of Ali) defended the principle that the sole legitimate successor was the prophet’s cousin and son in law. The Shia has always been the spiritual home of apocalyptic socio-revolutionary and enthusiastically mystical in opposition to traditional orthodoxy. A positive cult of martyrdom is linked to the death of the third Imam, Ali’s son Hussain at Kerbala in October 680. They see themselves as permanently subjected to persecution. For the Muslim faith, art is a falsehood and artistic representation of life was seen as idolatry and even considered as sinful by most theologians. According to many traditions, artists would be expected at the day of the Last Judgement, to put life into their creation and to be tossed into the fire of Hell when failing to do so. This position affected Islamic Art in several ways.

Mainly faith itself could not be expressed through images and had to be shown in different ways such as calligraphy, promoted as sacred art form. A favourite theme was Paradise, with gardens, fountains and pavilions. While the prohibition of images was observed in the decoration of the Mosques, like the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, no restrictions were placed at the palaces.

Trade and trading routes, a meeting link to Arabia and the Muslim world. A strong commercial activity grew from the Arabian Peninsula. Incense and gold led Muslim traders from Morocco and Tripoli (Libya), across the Saharans desert to Timbuktu and Goa on the west coast of India. Commercial centres like Kilwa on the Red Sea, with Zanzibar and Malindi or Mogadishu in Somalia, supplied the Muslim world with gold, slaves, ivory, rare woods and precious stones. Baghdad was not just the political centre but was also the economic heart of the Muslim empire. It was there that the sea routes from China and Korea converged via the city of Basra, bringing goods from India and South-Asia. They traded with silver and gold, carpets and spices, silk and indigo, ebony wood and lead from India as well as paper from China. From Northern countries, they traded furs and slaves with the Vikings, amber from Poland and the Baltic Sea, swords made in Central Europe that were transported to Baghdad down the Russian rivers. The Silk Road, from China and Japan drew Muslim merchants to the Baltic, meeting the Rus Traders. It was connecting the Muslim roads to the Mediterranean Sea, Venice, Genoa in Italy, Messina in Sicily, Marseille in France and Cordoba in Spain. The Muslim position of superiority over the Christian West, enjoyed by the Arab, was based on this global trading network. For many centuries, the Middle East controlled the flow of goods from Europe. Only when the Portuguese rounded the Cape of Good Hope did the situation changed.