Visual Arts Research Fall 1989 [antikvár]

Stylistic Trends in British and French Painting: An Evolutionary Explanation Colin Martindale University of Maine Abstract Difficulties with reflectionist theories of art history are discussed. A psychological ap-proach to art history patterned aiong the lines of Darwinian evolution is described. It is ar-gued that the basic trends in the history of art forms arise from artists' continual necessity to produce növel works in order to counter the effects of habituation. This pressure leads to monotonic increases in the arousal potential or impact value of artworks. It indirectiy causes oscillations in content indicative of primordial cognition. These oscillations parallel generally agreed upon oscillations in artistic style. A study of British and French painters born between 1590 and 1929 yielded results sup-portive of the theory. Little consistent support was found for reflectionist theories of art history. It is common for many art educators to take it as axiomatic that art telis us some-thing about the "spirit of the age" in which it was created. Given this, ascribing changes in art to changes in the spirit of the age is natural. it is too seldom real-ized that such a view should be taken as a poorly supported speculation rather than as something that can be safely assumed. As Gombrich (1969) and Podro (1982) have pointed out, ideaiistic reflectionist theorists — whether they admit it or not — can trace their lineage back to Hegel (1835/1920). According to Hegel, art and all other aspects of culture are objectifications of absolute spirit as it realizes itself. It is clear that Hegel meant that everything in culture from economics through art to theology are organicaily related to one another. They have to be, because they are all manifestations of absolute spirit. In fact, it is an empirical question whether all aspects of culture and society are closely related. Sorokin (1937), among others, has provided evi- dence that answers this question in the negative. It is clear that absolute spirit develops or unfolds across time more or less as an acorn develops into an oak tree. Hegel's dialectic provides something of an explanation for why this should be the case. What Hegel meant by absolute spirit is far from clear. Probably because of this, later theorists have con-cretized it into something that Hegel did not really mean. The Zeitgeist or spirit of the age is taken to mean no more than the way individual people tended to think and feel during a given era. A long line of art historians has treated art as reflecting this vaguely defined spirit of the age. Anti-Hegelians from Burck-hardt (1860/1950) through Huizinga (1924) and Panofsky (1951) do so. Wölfflin's (1888/1964) early theory and Riegl's (1901) late theory are explicit in holding that art reflects the world view of its age. Panofsky (1924-25, 1951) explains phe-nomena as diverse as perspective and Gothic architecture as reflecting current world views. Of course, this view is en-demic among those who write textbooks on the history of art. As Hauser (1958/ 1965) and Gombrich (1969) have noted, such theories — having discarded their Hegelian basis — cannot account for why the Zeitgeist changes. Thus, they cannot really explain why art changes. Because changes in art are explained by changes in the Zeitgeist, one has to explain why the latter changes if one wants to provide an ultimate explanation of why the former changes. The problem cannot be referred to specialists in such matters. There are no such specialists among modern historians. One has to be satisfied with explanations such as Spengler's (1926-28): The Zeitgeist changed be-