naive and sentimental art

These are two works of European Gothic architecture that epitomize the charm of the middle ages.

Bonafatius Bridge, Bruges

Chimères on the roof of Notre Dame de Paris

The Chimères were made and placed on Notre Dame in the 1800s. The Bonafatius Bridge was designed and erected in 1905. There are, of course, thousands of other examples of Romanesque and Gothic art and architecture from all over the world that were built between 1820 and 1950. Big Ben, Yale University, the National Cathedral in Washington, and the Cinderella Castle in Walt Disney World are famous examples. But most people presumably realize that an American cathedral was not actually built in the middle ages. The examples shown above are notable because they can easily fool viewers; one could almost call them “counterfeit Gothic.”

I used to regard authenticity as a high value, and I would dismiss a Victorian Gothic structure while admiring even a rather crude work genuinely made before 1200. If that preference is defensible, I think the underlying principle is some version of Schiller’s idea of naive and sentimental art. Naive artists do what they think is right or best. They don’t see themselves as having a “style” but as making objects that are beautiful and true. In contrast, sentimental artists imitate the styles of other times, admiring their authenticity. After sentimental art arises, naive art becomes impossible.

Thus nineteenth-century European and American architecture is almost all “revivalist” (neogothic, neoclassical, neo-Egyptian, etc.), with the exception of structures that were perceived as functional, such as railway stations and bridges. We see those functional buildings as naive but impressive; we recognize that the Gare du Nord has a style even though its builders just thought they were covering railway tracks. As for the neogothic works, we reject them as sentimental fakes–especially when they infiltrate genuinely medieval places like Bruges or Notre Dame. They may be OK in Orlando, but not in Paris.

But that judgment is contestable. Schiller’s distinction between naive and sentimental art is itself a product of a certain time. Placing a high value on authenticity (as he did) is characteristic of Romanticism. One could instead see Victorian Gothic art as very fine, at its best. One could celebrate the spirit of play that sometimes animates it. And one could recognize an authentic impulse in the devout attempt to replicate a defunct culture.

I write all this now because I am reflecting on my visit to the Palácio Nacional da Pena, near Sintra, Portugal, which appears Moorish/Gothic but was really built in 1842-1854. Crowning a steep mountain, it overlooks a real Moorish castle that was itself heavily reconstructed in the same period (deliberately to look like a Romantic ruin).

Pena is fun. Because it was meant for play, everything is designed for maximum entertainment, not for any serious purpose. For instance, there are fortifications meant simply to be walked on for the view; they have no defensive purposes. Inside, concrete walls are painted to look like wood. Even the trees on the mountain’s slopes were carefully planted by a monarch of German extraction, to resemble a Teutonic forest.

This kind of example exposes the decadent currents in revivalism, the real pitfalls of inauthenticity. Play is fine; we are homo ludens. Gothic woodcarvers engaged in play when they depicted magical beasts on misericords. But when you tax people to build expensive seats of government, you had better be at least somewhat serious. Pena is furnished in a cluttered, Edwardian style, just as the last royal family of Portugal left it when they fled republican rebels. They deserved to be kicked out of a place so frivolous and so costly. I thought the parts of Pena that remain from a medieval monastery (namely, a small chapel and a cloister) were far more satisfying that the pseudo-Gothic additions, not because the craftsmanship was better in the former, but because excellence requires a degree of seriousness.

My bottom line: fine art needs an authentic motivation, but imitating another culture can be done with authenticity.

young voters in Kentucky

Two belated notes about the Kentucky Senate primary from someone who studies youth voting. First, Rand Paul did well among young Republican voters. They were his strongest constituency, backing him by 61%-19%. His second-strongest constituency was the generation of retirement age; he barely won the adults between age 35 and 64.

According to Hubert Humphrey, “It was once said that the moral test of Government is how that Government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.” It would seem that the first two groups have a special fondness for libertarians or paleoconservatives who would cut funding for the services that they receive. But of course, the sample of Republican primary voters in Kentucky doesn’t represent the state’s population, let alone the nation’s. This result simply illustrates that there are pools of libertarian and other non-mainstream young voters (e.g., strong environmentalists) who matter when the total number of votes is low.

Second, I happen to know the guy whom Paul defeated, Trey Grayson, because he has been a strong leader for civic education and youth civic engagement. He focused on that topic in graduate school and then worked hard on it as Kentucky’s Secretary of State. I think Democrats are better off with Paul on the ballot in November, although it’s a risky business. For proponents of youth engagement, Grayson would have made a great Senator. Ironically, young people from his own party helped deny him that opportunity.

three Europes

1. A steep and crooked alley, armspan’s width, cobbled; a tiny car squeezed between walls of stone or stucco that are studded with iron grilles, draping flowerpots, drying towels, and sleeping cats.

2. A soccer field reached by a pedestrian bridge that spans four lanes of traffic; giant billboards at the roundabout; terraces of apartment blocks rising on the hills opposite with anarchist graffiti on their lower walls and satellite dishes on their roofs.

3. Long, cool corridors, subdued indirect lighting, brushed steel and blond wood; panini, quiche, and bagels at the cafe; quadrilingual instructions on the assorted recycling bins.

I know there are many more Europes; these are the three that stick in my mind on my first day back in the US.

rethinking the humanities

(Lisbon, Portugal) I am here for a conference on the humanities. A major question was whether they are “in crisis”–because of falling budgets and enrollments, or deep epistemological and cultural discontents, or technology and pop culture, or all of the above. My own talk was a precis of my book, Reforming the Humanities. Some highlights from the other speakers ….

In the course of his wide-ranging talk, David Damrosch interpreted several texts that happened to be hip-hop (or, in one case, “hip-pop”) videos by singers/entrepreneurs who have migrated across cultural lines, e.g., from Beirut to Paris to Montreal. In the 20th century, a particular conception prevailed of the humanities as purely textual, professional, and located within specific cultures. For example, English professors wrote sole-authored books about novels written by Anglophone authors. Even as they took opposite positions regarding interpretation and authorship, Jacques Derrida and Northrop Frye both wrote dense, unillustrated texts about other texts, for professional colleagues. The future, however, lies with mashups and multimedia and with artists and interpreters who create businesses or other organizations. That was also the case in our past. The typical condition of the arts and humanities is to mix up written text, image, and orality–and cultural products typically cross national lines. Humanists’ specific skills of interpretation and selection remain essential.

Antonio Souza Ribeira gave a penetrating talk about the role of the humanities, virtually free of jargon yet deeply informed by serious thinkers from Goethe to Habermas. My favorite quote (paraphrased): “A friend of mine, an engineering professor whom I have no reason to doubt is intelligent, said to me, ‘What a privilege to be paid to read novels!'” Prof. Souza’s argument: the role of the humanities is to challenge instrumental, means/ends rationality and the divisions among the economy, politics, and society/culture that cause people to think as this engineer does. The humanities have a “reconstructive” task, concerned with the present and the future and not merely understanding the past.

Richard Wolin gave an erudite but also passionate defense of a tradition that began with Renaissance humanism, matured with the Republic of Letters in the Enlightenment, and received a full theoretical justification with Kant. This tradition (as I would summarize it) involves developing moral autonomy, good judgment, and civic skills and ethics through the close and collaborative reading of challenging texts. Part of the reason for its decline–Wolin suggested, and I agree–is that humanists themselves doubt this tradition’s value. He specifically cited post-structuralism as an attack on the tradition from within.

As we spoke, apparently the budgets of Portuguese faculties of arts and letters were under review. There is a financial crisis today even if not a philosophical one.