Beauty as an Irreducible Quality of Art: A Focus on the Beauty of Gustav Klimts The Kiss - Research Paper Example

Beauty as an Irreducible Quality of Art: A Focus on the Beauty of Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss Figure 1. Gustav Klimt The Kiss (1907-1908) Introduction In developing a discussion of beauty as a irreducible quality of art, several defining concepts must be considered. The concept of beauty must be addressed and in Client Last Name 2 discussing beauty, one must reflect upon the nature of the sublime. In considering social and cultural concepts of the sublime, style and aesthetics come into question, creating a framework that will lead to critiques and judgments that are made, not upon reaction, but upon the implications of those judgments as they relate to cultural aspects of artistic expectation. As the philosophical concept of beauty is considered, the piece of artwork created by Gustav Klimt titled The Kiss (1907-1908) (Figure 1) can be used as a reference to discuss the many ways in which beauty cannot be reduced within the artistic point of view. In discussing the association between art and beauty, the concepts of style, aesthetics, and emotional connectivity must be contemplated. In order to define beauty, it must first be considered what is not beautiful. Finding the illusive definition to a concept that changes through a revolving series of determinations can prove to be difficult and near impossible. However, the philosophical discussions of beauty can help to bring clarity to a concept that both is and is not based upon individual perception. How a thing is termed beautiful will depend on how it is reacted to upon viewing or experiencing it. However, there are also cultural implications that can create social definitions of beauty. One way if discerning the difference is to associate the beautiful with a personal judgment, and the sublime with a social and cultural judgment. The Nature of Beauty Beauty has an irreducible quality that cannot be diminished through interpretation or criticism. When an artist designs a work of art, the intent is to create a moment that has a story that can be interpreted by the viewer. That moment is a collaboration of emotional content and Client Last Name 3 visual revelation of that content. Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe states that others in hearing about his contemporary writing on beauty and the sublime said that “beauty and the sublime (despite their prior histories) are for us eighteenth century concepts defined by assumptions that we no longer share” (1). However, Gilbert-Rolfe disagrees with the concept that beauty and art have parted ways. Art can be considered beautiful based on a series of culturally based judgments and upon the reaction of the viewer to its emotional content. In searching for a way to understand the concept of beauty, philosophical thought has searched for the ways in which to determine the definition. However, this pursuit creates as many questions as it does answers. Gilbert-Rolfe says that “The ‘beautiful’ and the ‘sublime’ are terms that both judge and define” (2). It can be said, then, that to say that something is beautiful is to have judged it as beautiful. Immanuel Kant said that “where the question is whether something is beautiful, we do not want to know, whether we, or anyone else, are, or even could be, concerned in the real existence of the thing, but rather what estimate we form of it on mere contemplation (intuition or reflection)” (32). The discernment that something has value as being beautiful is concerned with a reaction to the way in which a thing has created an effect. The concept of beauty has been a point of ultimate reference for artists for as long as art has been created. The way in which art is defined has as many interpretations as there are people as beauty can only be understood as an experience, rather than interpreted as a definitive parameter of judgment. One way of interpreting beauty can be in finding the absolute moment of emotional perfection as it defines an experience. This can be created within the aspect of connecting loss with the moment of death as easily as the ultimate joy that is discovered at the moment of birth. The Zen interpretation of happiness can be applied to beauty. Zen philosophy Client Last Name 4 says that “If a person can go into his sorrow deeply he will find all sorrow has evaporated. In that evaporation of sorrow is joy, is bliss” (Osho 159). This aspect of sorrow and joy can also be found in a comparison of what is ugly and what is beauty. Therefore, the deeper one delves into the ugliness of something, the easier it is to see the beauty in what is left. The Relationship of the Artist to Beauty One of the most potent aspects of the artistic eye is the capacity for capturing a moment of rare and exquisite beauty that can then be revisited with each viewing of the work. Beauty is primarily considered to be an accumulation of factors that are considered pleasing, however the truth of the concept of beauty is that it can be defined through innumerable aspects of the human experience that is translated by artists and artisans who snatch that instance of emotional content and reinterpret it so that viewers can share in the aspect of the beautiful that was experienced by the artist. As the work communicates heartbreak, joy, life, death, birth and abomination, the emotional context becomes the platform for that which has been interpreted. The way that art is best understood for its accepted beauty is in understanding how the culture in which it was created understood its beauty. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel said that “every work belongs to its age, to its nation, and to its environment, and depends upon particular historical and other ideas and aims” (38). Therefore, how a work is viewed is determined by the context in which it was created. Ergo, a piece of art that survives into a new age, civilization, and aesthetic appreciation, will be viewed from a new set of criteria in which to be critiqued. An example of this can be distinctly seen in ancient sculpture. Ancient Greek statues that have survived through history have long been appreciated for the beauty of the white stone from which Client Last Name 5 they have been carved. However, as Samsone relates, faint pigments and remnants of paint have indicated that the sculptures were once loudly painted in garish colors (52). In this age, this might be considered garish and ugly, however with the number of statues that show signs of this treatment, it is most likely that the Greeks found this to be beautiful. Figure 3. Greek Sculpture digitally enhanced to create an example of original painted figure However, understanding that these pieces of art may not have been displayed the way in which they are currently viewed actually further proves that beauty in art is irreducible. As time wore away the painted surfaces of the stone sculpture, what was left become appreciated for its impact. An example of this can also be found in sculpture that has not been found intact, such as the Venus de Milo which has long been considered a beautiful example of sculpture despite the lack of arms on the piece. The curve of the body and the perfection of the drape across her body has not been diminished by the damage that was caused through the ravages of time. As art comes down through history, the beauty of the captured moment is not diminished through the changes in society or the reinterpretations of the standards of beauty. Client Last Name 6 Figure 3. Venus de Milo. Gustav Klimt, The Kiss As one examines the work by Gustav Klimt titled The Kiss, an aspect of the beauty of an instant can be found that has been captured in the sensual purity of this experience. In viewing The Kiss, the gift that the artist gives to his viewer is the emotional content of a moment as Client Last Name 7 experienced by the subjects of the piece and interpreted by the viewer. As the viewer is brought into this moment, the experience is shared between the artist and the viewer, creating a connection to what has been revealed. The presumed male of the piece is bent over the female as she relaxes into the experience. Contact between the lips is not present, but can be interpreted as eminent. One can assume that either the kiss is on the cheek, or is about to be placed on her lips, but the angle leaves the story open to the interpretation of the audience. The Kiss represents a complexity of emotions when understood in context with Klimt’s other work. According to Néret and Klimt, the work that Klimt had done up to this point had emphasized the conflict between the sexes (57). In creating The Kiss, Klimt appears to have created a painting that depicts the sexes coming together. In considering the painting from a closer examination, there is revealed a tension that does not immediately reveal itself. According to Néret and Klimt, the work displays a woman in a submissive position with the male dominating the space and the action. The woman’s feet and hands are tense, which can be interpreted for a resistance or a sexual excitement. Furthermore, “Do the contrasting elements of ornamentation - based on squares for the man and circles for the woman - complement each other, or is their antagonism between them?” (57). The story of this painting has a multitude of depths that can be interpreted by the viewer for the elements that speak most clearly for the individual. Whether viewed for the subjugation of a woman, or for an impassioned embrace, the concept of the sublime can be attributed to the piece. The piece can be considered beautiful for the way in which it presents itself to the viewer. According to Hegel, “Taste in this sense has to do with arrangement and treatment, the harmony and finish, of what belongs to the external Client Last Name 8 aspect of a work of art” (40). The piece has a pleasing arrangement in its execution. The subtlety with which the two figures are barely discernable, one from the other, creates a symmetry that supports the complexity of the imparted story that can connect to a multitude of viewers from many varying depths of understanding. Goethe, according to Hegel said that “The highest principal of the ancients was the significant, but the highest result of the successful treatment, the beautiful” (44). Whether the story is of union, release, control, or passionate surrender, the way in which the piece is constructed imparts a culturally accepted concept of beauty. According to Hegel, “it remains invariably the case that every man judges works of art, or characters, actions and incidents according to the measure of his insight and his feelings”(40). To describe The Kiss as beautiful is to have made a judgment. Whether this judgment is created upon personal style and taste, cultivated style and taste, or upon the accepted judgments of others is not relevant to the initial way in which this determination would be made. According to Kant, “If we wish to discern whether anything is beautiful or not, we do not refer the representation of it to the object by means of understanding with a view to cognition, but by means of the imagination (acting perhaps in conjunction with understanding) we refer the representation to the subject and its feeling of pleasure or displeasure”(31). How the piece is interpreted as beautiful may not be associated with the emotional context of the intent of the artist, but through the experience of the viewer who interprets what is seen. The Gender of Beauty According to Gilbert-Rolfe, beauty has a gender and it can always be considered within Client Last Name 9 the female aspect (1). In initially considering this concept, the first reaction would be to rebut this concept. Several works of art come to mind when this concept is introduced. The first work that was considered in order to support the idea that beauty was without gender was the sculpture of The Dying Gaul, which shows a man who is lying on the ground, wounded from his encounter with the Greeks, and waiting for his final fall into death. This man has a grace and beauty, that evokes compassion and mercy as one views the work. However, on taking a second look at the piece, it is evident that the attributes that give him his beauty can be assigned as feminine attributes. This is not an attempt to create a diminishment of the female quality, but to Figure 4. Attalos I. The Dying Gaul. (230 B.C. - 220 B. C.) acknowledge that certain attributes are considered feminine, while other attributes are considered masculine. The way in which Edmond Burke described beauty, according to Carolyn Korsmeyer, was to say that the things that are considered beautiful are “small, bounded, curved, gentle in Client Last Name 10 contour, and delicately colored” (43). This description can be associated with the feminine ideals. He suggests that beauty is “extrapolated from the beauty of the female body” (43). Korsmeyer says that Burke suggests that for things to be sublime, they must be “rough, jagged, unbounded, powerful, fearsome and dark; they threaten life rather than suggest its perpetuation” (43). According to this distinction, beauty is feminine, while the sublime is masculine. Cindy Sherman has created a modern commentary on the concept of the feminine. Her work exhibits woman “as embodied object, photographically frozen within gendered positions of vulnerability” (Robinson 503). In looking at the piece, Untitled #153, despite the aspect of the Figure 5. Cindy Sherman Untitled #153. (1985) Client Last Name 11 feminine that is apparent, the work has more an association with the sublime. Despite the obvious female figure and the roundness that is thematically apparent, the harsh topic matter creates the edge from which the sublime may be reached. As the complex emotions of the piece become evoked and the many different stories can be told of the work, the essential beauty within the horror of the moment, becomes intellectually transformed into the sublime. Aesthetics According to Melville and Readings, “The aesthetic account, by contrast, takes it that the term ’art’ picks out an experience and an order of value that is irreducible to the terms of representation in general” (11). Mellville and Readings continue in discussing the process of considering the aesthetics of are in that rather than using a cognitive process, an evaluating process “is proper to the reception of the artwork”(11). In attempting to create a set of principles upon which to properly identify aesthetics, the inconsistency and the conflicts create an indefinable quality that can only be experienced rather than understood cognitively. Kant says that “the aesthetic idea might, I think, be called an inexponible representation of the imagination, the rational idea, on the other hand, the indemonstratable concept of reason“ (160). The conflict of reasoning behind the concept of aesthetics creates a juxtaposition of theories from which to discern taste and judgment. According to Hegel, Kant brought forth the idea that there was a “reconciled contradiction” (88) that guards the principles of aesthetics. Therefore, cultural concepts that form the reactions and intuition that guide the judgment that forms the assessment of how an art piece has successfully accomplished beauty or the sublime, or if it has succeeded in being the Client Last Name 12 antithesis of these concepts, but has retained value for its quality of content are the only principles on which aesthetics can depend. How one comes to the definitions of artistic success is a subjective set of guidelines that are shifting and culturally influenced. It has been shown, however, that beauty, even when transformed and reinterpreted, is intrinsically unchanged as exampled by the ancient statues of Greece. Conclusion According to Hutchens, “In art, the pre-originary life of humanity is expressed in the beautiful, which is not merely a manifestation of themes that can be intelligible to the human mind. The expression of the Other in art cannot be reduced” (125). In creating a sense of the Other, the artist has created a mystery that entrances the viewer. In Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss, the mysterious relationship of the couple who is portrayed whether in passionate embrace or antagonistic conflict, develops a relational quality to the viewer in terms of personal experience. The way in which the piece portrays the aspect of the feminine creates the essential quality of beauty. If beauty is feminine, and the sublime is masculine, this can be seen in the thematic treatment of the rectangular and sharp edges within the male figure, and the round shapes in the female figure. However, the overall treatment of the piece has a roundness, suggesting the dominance of the feminine experience within the work over the dominance of the male representation. The female figure is more defined and more expressive. She has more developed revelations about her intentions, although ambiguously represented. The work has a decidedly feminine quality and focus that would suggest that beauty was a part of the intent. Client Last Name 13 The indefinable quality of beauty and the sublime, combined with the conflicting principles of aesthetics and style, create a difficulty in discerning quality and value. However, in creating a piece of artwork that can be undeniably and irreducibly beautiful, creating a sense of the feminine that connects to an unchanging aspect of human experience will transcend time and culture. Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss is an example of this connectivity to a basic human experience. Whichever story the piece relays to the viewer, the beauty of the feminine quality and the value of the emotional content cannot be diminished. While popular culture may embrace, exalt, and then fade in the way that the piece is received, the qualities that are present will never change. Therefore, beauty is an irreducible quality of art. Client Last Name 14 Works Cited Brand, Peggy Zeglin, and Carolyn Korsmeyer. Feminism and Tradition in Aesthetics. University Park, Pa: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995. Gilbert-Rolfe, Jeremy. Beauty and the Contemporary Sublime. Aesthetics today. New York: School of Visual arts, 1999. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, and J. Glenn Gray. On Art, Religion, and the History of Philosophy: Introductory Lectures. Indianapolis: Hackett Pub, 1997. Hutchens, B. C. Levinas: A Guide for the Perplexed. New York: Continuum, 2004. Kant, Immanuel, James Creed Meredith, and Immanuel Kant. The Critique of Judgment. Kessinger Publishing's rare reprints. [Kila, MT?]: Kessinger Pub, 2004. Korsmeyer, Carolyn. Gender and Aesthetics. New York: Taylor and Francis, 2004. Melville, Stephen W., and Bill Readings. Vision and Textuality. Durham: Duke University Press, 1995. Néret, Gilles, and Gustav Klimt. Gustav Klimt, 1862-1918. Köln: Taschen, 2007. Osho. Tarot in the Spirit of Zen: The Game of Life. New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 2003. Robinson, Hilary. Feminism-Art-Theory: An Anthology, 1968-2000. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers, 2001. Sansone, David. Ancient Greek Civilization. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. Client Last Name 15 List of Illustrations Figure 1. Gustav Klimt. The Kiss ( ) Available at http://images.search.yahoo.co m/images/view?back=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.search.yahoo.com%2Fsearch%2F images%3Fp%3Dklimt%2Bthe%2Bkiss%26fr%3Dyfp-t-501%26toggle%3D1% 26cop%3Dmss%26ei%3DUTF-8&w=282&h=425&imgurl=www.p oster.net%2Fklimt-gustav%2Fklimt-gustav-kiss-9903285.jpg&rurl=http %3A%2F%2Fwww.postershop.fr%2FKlimt-Gustav%2FKlimt-Gustav-Kiss- 9903285.html&size=66k&name=klimt-gustav-kis...&p=klimt+the+kiss&oid =a5c6f433bc26a860&no=5&tt=6519&sigr=12428svmm&sigi=11pr3cqrv&sigb=1 348kfniu Figure 2. Greek Sculpture digitally enhanced to create an example of original painted figure. Available at http://images.search.yahoo.com/images/view?back=http%3A% 2F%2 Fimages.search.yahoo.com%2Fsearch%2Fimages%3Fp%3Dpainted%2Bgreek%2Bsculpt ure%26ei%3DUTF-8%26fr%3Dyfp-t-501%26fr2%3Dtab-web%26xargs%3D0 %26pstart%3D1%26b%3D19%26ni%3D18&w=229&h=250&imgurl=www.arlt.co.uk% 2Fdhtml%2Fimages%2Fflavian_woman_painted.jpg&rurl=http%3A%2F%2Fblog.arlt.co .uk%2Fblog%2F_archives%2F2005%2F2%2F20%2F333278.html&size=8k&name=flavi an_woman_pa...&p=painted+greek+sculpture&oid=710a558761b7aaa8&no=21&tt=163 &b=19&ni=18&sigr=11rt5fn1l&sigi=11ldtrkdc&sigb=144271mv0 Figure 3. Venus de Milo. Available at http://images.search.yahoo.com/images/view?back=http %3A%2F%2Fimages.search.yahoo.com%2Fsearch%2Fimages%3Ffr2%3Dsg- gac%26sado%3D1%26p%3Dvenus%2520de%2520milo%26fr%3Dyfp-t- 501%26ei%3Dutf-8%26x%3Dwrt&w=239&h=595&imgurl=www.all-a rt.org%2Fimages_hist98%2Fvenus_milo.jpg&rurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.all- art.org%2Fhistory52-6.html&size=93k&name=venus_milo.jpg&p=venus +de+milo&oid=d145df041b443c14&no=8&tt=30754&sigr=11743q4av&sigi=11c0nrf2m &sigb=13ehg6eao Figure 4. Attalos I. The Dying Gaul. 230 B.C. - 220 B. C. Available at http://images.search.yahoo.com/images/view? back=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.search.yahoo.com%2Fsearch%2Fimages%3Fp%3 Dthe%2Bdying%2Bgaul%26fr%3Dyfp-t-501%26toggle%3D1%26cop%3D mss%26ei%3DUTF-8&w=655&h=400&imgurl=www.mlahanas.de %2FGreeks%2FArts%2FPergamon%2FDyingGaul.jpg&rurl=http%3A%2F%2Fw ww.mlahanas.de%2FGreeks%2FArts%2FPergamon.htm&size=30k&name=Dyin gGaul.jpg&p=the+dying+gaul&oid=e49e494bb7270fc6&no=1&tt=927&sigr=11f uai6vu&sigi=11im1nefl&sigb=134itm6gi Client Last Name 16 Figure 5. Cindy Sherman Untitled #153. 1985. Available at http://images.search.yahoo. com/images/view?back=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.search.yahoo.com%2Fsearch% 2Fimages%3Fei%3DUTF-8%26p%3Dcindy%2520sherman%2520photography %26fr2%3Dtab-web%26fr%3Dyfp-t-501-s&w=341&h=475&imgurl=masters-of- photography.com%2Fimages%2Ffull%2Fsherman%2Fsherman_untitled_153.jpg &rurl=http%3A%2F%2Fmasters-of-photography.com%2FS%2Fsh erman%2Fsherman_153_full.html&size=58k&name=sherman_untitled...&p=cind y+sherman+photography&oid=f0e47e0bc2129bce&no=5&tt=681&sigr=121bscc mo&sigi=127mfjvgn&sigb=13g9homnm Read More