THE DUALISM OF ART AND SCIENCE CREATION OF ADAM (DETAIL).FRESCO. MICHELANGELO (1475-1564)
DYNAMIC ANATOMY projected motion of the body and dynamic foreshortening of the figure in deep space; celestial mechanics,theories of the interaction of mass,space,and energy in physics,pro- vided weight and solidity of form,and shot through diagonal tensions and thrusts in design structure;the gravitational field of the planetary system put the ground plane into the pic ture(objectively analyzed for the first time in history):interest in natural science produced an awareness of botanical form,correct description of animals,and atmospheric recession in landscape and environment. The revolution in art,concurrent with the revolution in science,was directed oward one overriding aim.The artists of the Renaissance gave visual expression to reason and nature in the birth of human form.Elemental man,his surge and drive,his passion and repose,pulsed and beat in the supernova of the intellect,the transcendent mirror of the age.What made the sixteenth century so remarkable was its departure from the stulti- fied application of static conventions.Its essential idea was an expanding aesthetic concen trated on the observation of man's continuity with the unity of nature.Thus,very shortly,the dynamics of their concepts led them from one discovery to another in their penetration of human experience.Empirical science and natural process became an ongo ing philosophical principle of art. According to the new criteria,the strictures in earlicr Gothic art were held up for close scrutiny and revaluation.The austere iconography dissolved in a proliferation of concrete experiences and physical realities.The human figure was the first to change. Slowly the individual emerged.Cimabue,Giotto,Masaccio felt him-his suffering,his ecstasy,his terror.Anatomy galvanized the wooden forms to life:nerve and sinew writhed with energy:the man of hope,of tumultuous passion and grandeur surged on the scene. The Adm in Michelangelo's Sistine fresco is the appropriate analogue of the time.The seasons,the weather,the time of day;youth and age,manhood and womanhood, birth and death;the growth of things,the cycle of life began to appear in art.Leonardo Raphael,Giorgione,Titian,Tintoretto saw the mysteries of nature,atmosphere and light serenity and tenderness,poignancy and pathos.In the West,the moral principles and eth- ical values in personal behavior prevailed in the van Eycks,van der Weyden,Bosch,Durer Grunewald,Brueghel,and El Greco. The seventeenth century.pressing closely on.took a new leap into the future of the individual in art.A quickening process of scientific research,transitions in society,and new philosophical concepts brought forth the human portrait,individual man in his ordinary environment and specific locale.The baroque era,projecting the great age of portraiture and the landscape in art,realized in visual terms the discoveries of Calileo, Izol
THE DUALISM OF ART AND SCIENCE Kepler,Descartes,and Newton on the mechanics of motion and universal gravitation, intelligence.basing universal law on science.Coincidental with these,the solo instrument, the aria,the recitative proclaimed the individual consciousness in music.In its portrayal of human warmth,baroque art synthesized the pulse of anatomical man with Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood. The baroque was an art of realism,the realism of human personality,the insight into the character of man.In its genre,its grace,its elegance,it had the essential "human touch."In its air and space were the flashes of the daily lives,the activity,the work.But its tour de force was its play and counterplay of light.In its chiaroscuro was revealed the human drama,the moods,the lightning and thunder of the emotions of its people,the living people.In Velazquez,in Rubens were the courtly,the refined,the eas and grace,the joy of life.In Vermeer and de Hooch,the gesture,the tilt of head,the eyes in greeting-in response,in reflection,in repose.In Hals,the laughter of men and women,the cry of children.In Rembrandt,the poor,the lame,the bent,the bemused: the stertorous sounds,the cough,the suspended breath of trailing wonder and doubt; the sustained,pervasive sense of time,the unutterable poignancy of life.And always the landscape-the fields,the clouds,the sky;the locale of house and garden;the things of work and rest. The dualism of art and science,from its inception in the Renaissance,had created a cyclical system of broadening aesthetic dimensions.As the boundaries in scien- tific and human activity widened,so did the boundaries of artistic endeavor.The process of intersection and correlation in religious,social,and human affairs had been an accepted premise in the progress of art for more than two hundred years.Now a stasis began to set in,an imperceptible slowing of the process.With the rise of powerful monarchies in the conflict and consolidation of power,the dualism of art and science began to show a cleavage.What has been called the rococo period in art of the eighteenth century was.in effect,a crisis in the relationship of art to the progress of the individual in his time-a con cept that the baroque era profoundly fulfilled in its awareness of human worth.In Francis Bacon's words summarizing the aspirations of the preceding periods,the works of the Renaissance and the baroque eras stand revealed:"On the observation of nature we shall ouild a system for the general amelioration of mankind." Toward the end of the seventeenth century scientific pursuit had begun to shift from an act of faith in the improvement of mankind to an increase in scope as an activity
DYNAMIC ANATOMY THE VENOUS SYSTEM. FOLLOWER OF TITLAN FROM ANDREAS VESALIUS CORPORIS FABRICA A
THE DUALISM OF ART AND SCIENCE of enterprise and a utility in commerce.Leibniz,philosopher,mathematician,and adviser to Frederick I of Prussia.cxtolled this view with decisive clarity:the role of science is necessary as an instrument of policy in the perpetuation of the state.The dualism of art and science in the early eighteenth century was in tension and transition.Concepts of the figure developed generally along three broad lines of expression.The art of the nobility and aristocracy presented a mixture of thinly disguised,taut contradictions.As spatial vol ume and recession of planes moved deeper,thematic concepts declined into the superfi- cial,the shallow,and the banal.Color and brushwork intensified and became more vivid. while form became fugitive and insubstantial.Rococo art in the aristocratic mode had become a plaything of princes,a decor of palaces,a reflection of opulence.It had become an art of adornment,of miniatures,of preciosity in intimate decoration.It had become an extension of effete and courtly refinement,of mythical-classic concoctions,of fool-the. eye pictures and hallucinosis of vision It was in the middle class,in the growing commercial power of the bourgeois. where the firm note was struck.Here,the aristocratic leadership yielded to the burgeoning prestige of middle-class taste and patronage.In portrait,landscape,and still life were pre sented the substantial new class and its ways.Because it was a section of society mainly con- cerned with mercantile interests,the themes of home,surroundings,and family interest-landscape and still life-gained in importance as subjects of art.Aristocratic efflorescence waned in the sensuous fulminations of Van Dyck,Fragonard,Watteau, Boucher,Tiepolo,and Gainsborough.It surrendered to the less spectacular,more vita products of Constable,Hogarth,Romney,Raeburn,Chardin,and Turner.In America, the broad stream of social movement influenced the orderly art of Copley,Stuart West,and Trumbull. But the dislocations of life in the eighteenth century brought out a third move ment in art,a line of argument,as it were,of satirical criticism and savage social commentary.Investigations of science in new fields in physiology,embryology,and microscopy,as well as observations of phenomena in human affairs,led to liberalism,free thought,and social examination in caustic art and literature.Art became both literary in subiect matter and naturalistic in treatment,in Greuze and Longhi.But emotionalized exaggeration and caricature of the figure was its end product,and its most energeti expositor was William Hogarth. The end of the era gave rise toa series of social shocks that had deep repercus sions on the development of art.Scientific invention produced the Industrial Revolution; social invention produced the American Democracy and the French Republic;artistic