07 – Schemata and Style

SCHEMATA – THE ELEMENTS OF A STYLE

We have seen how Hogarth sought to find out the basic grammar of representational art. His method was to memorise and combine parts. These included simple solids, like spheres and cones, and also combinations of these solids, making up heads, hands, and bodies and other objects. These elements and combinations are what the art historian E H Gombrich called, “schemata”. These may be brought together rather as we combine sounds to make words, and words to make sentences, eventually perhaps memorising whole speeches.

As with any language, the language of art develops as people use it. It is impossible to think outside the language of the day. A playwright cannot write perfectly in the language of Shakespeare, no matter how hard he or she may try. Elizabethan language will never be as natural to him or her as it was to an Elizabethan. Sickert attempted to characterise the artistic language of 1910. He wrote that it was concerned with pastes of colour, (deriving from Courbet and the Impressionists), with far less emphasis on transparency of paint and variety of surface than had been the case in a previous century. Sickert’s was concentrating on artists who were at the forefront of style. He was not thinking of the many artists of his day who were following older approaches, such as making under-paintings and glazing them. A language develops almost of its own accord in self-selected groups of artists and their viewers. ‘These things are done in gangs’, Sickert wrote.

IMPRESSIONISTS WHO CHANGED THEIR STYLE

Camille Pissarro (1830 – 1903)
Fox Hill, Upper Norwood 1870

This is painted in the pure French Impressionist manner, with simple separated brush-strokes which record the colour and tone precisely.

Styles develop and evolve and can sometimes reach a point at which evolution stops. This happened with the Impressionist style. Its major proponents or inventors (Monet, Renoir, and Pissarro), moved off in other directions, but the style was kept alive by others, such as Sisley, and it has persisted to this day. When a style stops developing, the only way in which to generate novelty is by taking on new subjects. So, the Impressionist style was applied to more and more different types of landscape. We see American impressionism, Australian impressionism, Italian impressionism and so on, all basically versions of the original French style, but applied to different terrains. All these different exponents show minor variations in style, rather as different people have different handwriting, while all saying the same thing.

Meanwhile the major Impressionists themselves were confronting new challenges. Pissarro tried all sorts of variations, including the dots of pointillism; Renoir returned to placing more emphasis on a firm outline; while Monet exaggerated the way in which the image-in-the-viewfinder may be reduced to patches of colour. He developed a style which Sickert dubbed, “Doctrinaire Impressionism”.

DEVELOPMENTS OF THE IMPRESSIONIST APPROACH

Most periods have shared a common style – a common vocabulary of form and colour. Individual variations could be made on this basis of this language. Such coherence of style tended to break down during the 19th C, as the period of patrons gave way to a more disparate market of dealers and collectors. In Painting Methods of the Impressionists(1983), Bernard Dunstan wrote of the 19th C that: “… we should avoid any attempt to construct orderly patterns out of such an essentially untidy period – the first in the history of art in which every painter was free to follow his own approach to nature and develop his own technical means.” p156 Dunstan

THE INDIVIDUAL ARTIST AND PERIOD STYLE

The artist has to make the best of the period he finds himself born into. He will be attracted to certain painters and, willy-nilly, will begin to adopt their language, finding how best to use his own particular strengths in order to make some variation which is eye-catching and satisfying to the viewer. As Dunstan implies, the audience today is as much self-selected as the artist. As Renoir put it, the artist depends on the art-lover. And the lover of representational painting is not necessarily to be found in the cultural institutions which dominate public art, such as the Arts Council of Great Britain, the Tate Modern, and the Royal Academy. Such institutions have made themselves largely irrelevant to artistic endeavour of a representational kind. As a language develops its vocabulary must change. The human mind can retain only a limited number of words. As some words enter the common vocabulary, others must leave. So even a seemingly archaic style will have more in common with its contemporaries than is apparent at first sight. Consider, for example, the 1956 portrait of the Queen by Pietro Annigoni (1910-1988). The style of this painting seemed anachronistic to many at the time, whereas now it looks completely in keeping with its period. For better or worse, an individual cannot help being in tune with the times at some level. Similarly the forgeries of Han van Meegeren (1889-1947) looked convincing to many of his contemporaries (though not all). He had wisely chosen to imitate the early style of Vermeer, rather than that of the later paintings, which were far better known. Many at the time responded enthusiastically, but, with the benefit of hindsight, most people can see that the forgeries look strikingly like movie stills of the 1930s, the period during which he was painting. Probably one is less aware of the style of a period when one is living through it.

LACK OF AWARENESS OF THE STYLE OF THE TIMES

The viewer of new work will, like the artist, be interested in comparing the picture he sees in front of him or her with what he or she might have expected. He or she will be on the look-out for little surprises. The artist may work entirely intuitively – “like a cork” (as Renoir described himself), bobbing on the waters which flow with the currents of thought of the time. So it is not necessary for the artist or the viewer consciously to seek these surprises, as long as, at some level, he or she has some expectation. In his formative years, Renoir said little to his fellow students about theory, but he did make sure that he was sitting in the right cafés so that he could hear their discussions. Athough Renoir denied ever working to a theory, he had absorbed all the new theories of the day. This comes out very clearly in the comments which his son recorded in the classic biography, “Renoir, my father”.

DELIBERATELY CONSTRUCTING A STYLE

We have seen how Hogarth sought to find out the basic grammar of representational art. His method was to memorise and combine parts. These included simple solids, like spheres and cones, and also combinations of these solids, making up heads, hands, and bodies and other objects. These elements and combinations are what the art historian E H Gombrich called, “schemata”. These may be brought together rather as we combine sounds to make words, and words to make sentences, eventually perhaps memorising whole speeches.

As with any language, the language of art develops as people use it. It is impossible to think outside the language of the day. A playwright cannot write perfectly in the language of Shakespeare, no matter how hard he or she may try. Elizabethan language will never be as natural to him or her as it was to an Elizabethan. Sickert attempted to characterise the artistic language of 1910. He wrote that it was concerned with pastes of colour, (deriving from Courbet and the Impressionists), with far less emphasis on transparency of paint and variety of surface than had been the case in a previous century. Sickert’s was concentrating on artists who were at the forefront of style. He was not thinking of the many Styles develop and evolve and can sometimes reach a point at which evolution stops. This happened with the Impressionist style. Its major proponents or inventors (Monet, Renoir, and Pissarro), moved off in other directions, but the style was kept alive by others, such as Sisley, and it has persisted to this day. When a style stops developing, the only way in which to generate novelty is by taking on new subjects. So, the Impressionist style was applied to more and more different types of landscape. We see American impressionism, Australian impressionism, Italian impressionism and so on, all basically versions of the original French style, but applied to different terrains. All these different exponents show minor variations in style, rather as different people have different handwriting, while all saying the same thing.

Meanwhile the major Impressionists themselves were confronting new challenges. Pissarro tried all sorts of variations, including the dots of pointillism; Renoir returned to placing more emphasis on a firm outline; while Monet exaggerated the way in which the image-in-the-viewfinder may be reduced to patches of colour. He developed a style which Sickert dubbed, “Doctrinaire Impressionism”.

Most periods have shared a common style – a common vocabulary of form and colour. Individual variations could be made on this basis of this language. Such coherence of style tended to break down during the 19th C, as the period of patrons gave way to a more disparate market of dealers and collectors. In Painting Methods of the Impressionists(1983), Bernard Dunstan wrote of the 19th C that: “… we should avoid any attempt to construct orderly patterns out of such an essentially untidy period – the first in the history of art in which every painter was free to follow his own approach to nature and develop his own technical means.” p156 Dunstan.

The artist has to make the best of the period he finds himself born into. He will be attracted to certain painters and, willy-nilly, will begin to adopt their language, finding how best to use his own particular strengths in order to make some variation which is eye-catching and satisfying to the viewer. As Dunstan implies, the audience today is as much self-selected as the artist. As Renoir put it, the artist depends on the art-lover. And the lover of representational painting is not necessarily to be found in the cultural institutions which dominate public art, such as the Arts Council of Great Britain, the Tate Modern, and the Royal Academy. Such institutions have made themselves largely irrelevant to artistic endeavour of a representational kind. As a language develops its vocabulary must change. The human mind can retain only a limited number of words. As some words enter the common vocabulary, others must leave. So even a seemingly archaic style will have more in common with its contemporaries than is apparent at first sight. Consider, for example, the 1956 portrait of the Queen by Pietro Annigoni (1910-1988). The style of this painting seemed anachronistic to many at the time, whereas now it looks completely in keeping with its period. For better or worse, an individual cannot help being in tune with the times at some level. Similarly the forgeries of Han van Meegeren (1889-1947) looked convincing to many of his contemporaries (though not all). He had wisely chosen to imitate the early style of Vermeer, rather than that of the later paintings, which were far better known. Many at the time responded enthusiastically, but, with the benefit of hindsight, most people can see that the forgeries look strikingly like movie stills of the 1930s, the period during which he was painting. Probably one is less aware of the style of a period when one is living through it.

The viewer of new work will, like the artist, be interested in comparing the picture he sees in front of him or her with what he or she might have expected. He or she will be on the look-out for little surprises. The artist may work entirely intuitively – “like a cork” (as Renoir described himself), bobbing on the waters which flow with the currents of thought of the time. So it is not necessary for the artist or the viewer consciously to seek these surprises, as long as, at some level, he or she has some expectation. In his formative years, Renoir said little to his fellow students about theory, but he did make sure that he was sitting in the right cafés so that he could hear their discussions. Athough Renoir denied ever working to a theory, he had absorbed all the new theories of the day. This comes out very clearly in the comments which his son recorded in the classic biography, “Renoir, my father”.
On the other hand, some artists do seem to have taken thought very consciously. Degas was one example. He suggested that his colleagues (such as Monet, Renoir, and Pissarro) should look for novelty in line and form.

Degas:
I always tried to urge my colleagues to seek for new combinations along the path of draftsmanship, which I consider a more fruitful field than that of color. But they wouldn’t listen to me and have gone the other way.

(Recorded in WALTER SICKERT by Robert Emmons, Faber & Faber Ltd., London, 1941)

Van Gogh (1853-90) is often portrayed as if dominated by emotion, yet his letters show that he thought very analytically about what he was doing. He made careful calculations about what was required in order to bring something new into the world. When he began painting he adopted the Dutch naturalistic style of Mauve – with its thick paint. Then he incorporated the colour of the Impressionists, but while retaining the thick paint of Mauve. Van Gogh went on to place a Japanese emphasis on outline and arbitrary colouring. His colour schemes were planned and laid out in advance – often shown in tiny diagrams in his letters (see letter 705 for example)– so that executing the work was the result of just as much planning and deliberation as a composition by an academic like Gérôme (1824 – 1904) – though the time-frame in which Van Gogh worked for his relatively simple paintings was usually compressed into a day or so, rather than into the month or year which Gérôme might take for one of his complicated paintings.

So, to summarise, a great deal of what viewers experience depends on what they expect; on their intelligence, sensitivity and knowledge. One viewer may be surprised by something which to another might appear quite mundane. An insensitive viewer may not even notice what an artist has done that is new. For example, if a viewer of portraits looks only for likeness, or for a feeling of the character of the person depicted, he or she may miss all the elements that go to make up an individual style – the unique use of line, form, tone and colour. For them the entire collection of the National Portrait Gallery may as well have been painted or photographed by one person. Someone with an ‘ill-taught taste’ (in Reynolds’s words) will rarely appreciate novelty in representation.

For a brief history of style turn to chapter XXX.

LETTER: VINCENT TO THEO VAN GOGH. 16 OCTOBER 1888.

Van Gogh explained the careful and deliberate plans he made before executing a painting. This letter is typical of many which van Gogh wrote to his brother.
http://www.vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let705/letter.htmlLetter 705 (Br. 1990: 710 | CL: 554)

Arles, 16 October 1888

My dear Theo, At last I can send you a little sketch to give you at least an idea of the way the work is shaping up. For today I am all right again. My eyes are still tired but then I had a new idea in my head and here is the sketch of it. Another size 30 canvas.* This time it’s just simply my bedroom, only here colour is to do everything, and giving by its simplification a grander style to things, is to be suggestive here of rest or of sleep in general. In a word, looking at the picture ought to rest the brain, or rather the imagination.

The walls are pale violet.

The floor is of red tiles.

The wood of the bed and chairs is the yellow of fresh butter, the sheets and pillows very light greenish-citron.

The coverlet scarlet.

The window green.

The toilet table orange, the basin blue.

The doors lilac.

And that is all – there is nothing in this room with its closed shutters.

The squareness of the furniture again must express inviolable rest.

Portraits on the walls, and a mirror and a towel and some clothes.

The frame – as there is no white in the picture – will be white.

This by way of revenge for the enforced rest I was obliged to take. I shall work on it again all day, but you see how simple the conception is.

The shadows and the cast shadows are suppressed; it is painted in free flat tints like the Japanese prints. It is going to be a contrast to, for instance, the Tarascon diligence and the night café.

I am not writing you a long letter, because tomorrow very early I am going to begin in the cool morning light, so as to finish my canvas.

How are the pains – don’t forget to tell me about them.

I know that you will write one of these days. I will make you sketches of the other rooms too someday.

With a good handshake.
Ever yours, Vincent_______________________

*The French standard canvas-size 30 (Figure) is 92 × 73 cm, although the size of The Bedroom is catalogued as 72 × 90 cm.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_standard_sizes_for_oil_paintings