Hierarchy of genres
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A hierarchy of genres is any formalization which ranks different genres in an art form in terms of their prestige and cultural value.
In literature, the epic was considered the highest form, for the reason expressed by Samuel Johnson in his Life of John Milton: "By the general consent of criticks, the first praise of genius is due to the writer of an epick poem, as it requires an assemblage of all the powers which are singly sufficient for other compositions." Below that came lyric poetry, and comic poetry, with a similar ranking for drama. The novel took a long time to establish a firm place in the hierarchy, doing so only as belief in any systematic hierarchy of forms expired in the 19th century.
In music, settings of words were accorded a higher status than merely instrumental works, at least until the Baroque period, and opera retained a superior status for much longer. The status of works also varies with the number of players and singers involved, with those written for large forces, which are certainly more difficult to write and more expensive to perform, given higher status. Any element of comedy reduced the status of a work, though, as in other art forms, often increased its popularity.
The hierarchies in
- History painting, including historically important, religious, mythological, or allegorical subjects
- Portrait painting
- Genre paintingor scenes of everyday life
- Samuel van Hoogstraten)
- Animal painting
- Still life
The hierarchy was based on a distinction between art that made an intellectual effort to "render visible the universal essence of things" (imitare in Italian) and that which merely consisted of "mechanical copying of particular appearances" (ritrarre).
The term is mostly used within the field of painting, and from the
Renaissance art
The hierarchy grew out of the struggle to gain acceptance of painting as one of the
Theorists of the Early and High Renaissance accepted the importance of representing nature closely, at least until the later writings of
During the Renaissance landscape, genre scenes and still lifes hardly existed as established genres, so discussion of the status or importance of different types of painting was mainly concerned with history subjects as against portraits, initially small and unpretentious, and iconic portrait-type religious and mythological subjects. For most artists some commitment to realism was necessary in a portrait; few could take the high-handed approach of Michelangelo, who largely ignored the actual appearance of the
Many portraits were extremely flattering, which could be justified by an appeal to idealism as well as the sitter's vanity; the theorist Armenini[8] claimed in 1587 that "portraits by excellent artists are considered to be painted with better style [maniera] and greater perfection than others, but more often than not they are less good likenesses".[9] On the other hand, numbers of courtly sitters and their parents, suitors or courtiers complained that painters entirely failed to do justice to the reality of the sitter.[10]
The question of decorum in religious art became the focus of intense effort by the Catholic Church after the
17th and 18th century art
The new genres of landscape, genre painting, animal painting and still life came into their own in the 17th century, with the virtual cessation of religious painting in Protestant countries, and the expansion of picture buying to the prosperous middle class. Although similar developments occurred in all advanced European countries, they were most evident in the enormously productive schools of Dutch Golden Age painting and Flemish Baroque painting. However no theorists emerged to champion the new genres, and the relatively small amount of Dutch theoretical writing, by Karel van Mander, Samuel Dirksz van Hoogstraten,[11] Gerard de Lairesse and others, was mostly content to rehash Italian views, so that their writings can seem oddly at variance with the Dutch art actually being produced in their day.[12]
The hierarchy was mostly accepted by artists, and even genre specialists such as
The size of paintings, and very often the prices they realized, increasingly tended to reflect their position in the hierarchy in this period. Until the Romantic period the price and saleability of what were essentially landscapes could be increased by adding small mythological or religious figures, creating a landscape with..., a practice that went back to the beginnings of landscape painting in the Flemish world landscapes of Joachim Patinir in the early 16th century. Flemish Baroque painting was the last school to often paint the lowest genres at a large size, but usually combined with figure subjects.
An influential formulation of 1667 by André Félibien, a historiographer, architect and theoretician of French classicism became the classic statement of the theory for the 18th century:
Celui qui fait parfaitement des païsages est au-dessus d'un autre qui ne fait que des fruits, des fleurs ou des coquilles. Celui qui peint des animaux vivants est plus estimable que ceux qui ne représentent que des choses mortes & sans mouvement ; & comme la figure de l'homme est le plus parfait ouvrage de Dieu sur la Terre, il est certain aussi que celui qui se rend l'imitateur de Dieu en peignant des figures humaines, est beaucoup plus excellent que tous les autres ... un Peintre qui ne fait que des portraits, n'a pas encore cette haute perfection de l'Art, & ne peut prétendre à l'honneur que reçoivent les plus sçavans. Il faut pour cela passer d'une seule figure à la représentation de plusieurs ensemble ; il faut traiter l'histoire & la fable ; il faut représenter de grandes actions comme les historiens, ou des sujets agréables comme les Poëtes ; & montant encore plus haut, il faut par des compositions allégoriques, sçavoir couvrir sous le voile de la fable les vertus des grands hommes, & les mystères les plus relevez.[14]
He who produces perfect landscapes is above another who only produces fruit, flowers or seashells. He who paints living animals is more estimable than those who only represent dead things without movement, and as man is the most perfect work of God on the earth, it is also certain that he who becomes an imitator of God in representing human figures, is much more excellent than all the others ... a painter who only does portraits still does not have the highest perfection of his art, and cannot expect the honour due to the most skilled. For that he must pass from representing a single figure to several together; history and myth must be depicted; great events must be represented as by historians, or like the poets, subjects that will please, and climbing still higher, he must have the skill to cover under the veil of myth the virtues of great men in allegories, and the mysteries they reveal".
Allegorical painting was raised above other types of history painting; together they were the grand genre, including paintings with religious, mythological, historical, literary, or allegorical subjects—they embodied some interpretation of life or conveyed a moral or intellectual message. The gods and goddesses from the ancient mythologies represented different aspects of the human psyche, figures from religions represented different ideas, and history, like the other sources, represented a dialectic or play of ideas. Subjects with several figures ranked higher than single figures. For a long time, especially during the French Revolution, history painting often focused on depiction of the heroic male nude; though this waned in the 19th century.
After history painting came, in order of decreasing worth:
The hierarchy of genres also had a corresponding hierarchy of formats: large format for history paintings, small format for still lifes. This had occasionally been breached in the past, especially in large Flemish works, and the monumental
The use of the pictorial elements of painting such as line and color to convey an ultimate unifying theme or idea was regarded as the highest expression of art, and an idealism was adopted in art, whereby forms seen in nature would be generalized, and in turn subordinated to the unity of the artwork. It aimed at universal truth through the imitation of nature. Later dissenting theorists, such as Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, held that this focus on allegory was faulty and based on a wrong analogy between the plastic arts and poetry rooted in the Horatian dictum ut pictura poesis ("as is painting so is poetry").
The British painter
Though Reynolds agreed with Félibien about the natural order of the genres, he held that an important work from any genre of painting could be produced under the hand of genius: "Whether it is the human figure, an animal, or even inanimate objects, there is nothing, however unpromising in appearance, but may be raised into dignity, convey sentiment, and produce emotion, in the hands of a painter of genius. What was said of Virgil, that he threw even the dung about the ground with an air of dignity, may be applied to Titian; whatever he touched, however naturally mean, and habitually familiar, by a kind of magic he invested with grandeur and importance."
Though European academies usually strictly insisted on this hierarchy, over their reign, many artists were able to invent new genres which raised the lower subjects to the importance of history painting. Reynolds himself achieved this by inventing the portraiture style that was called the
19th century
Until the middle of the 19th century, women were largely unable to paint history paintings as they were not allowed to participate in the final process of artistic training—that of life drawing, in order to protect their modesty. They could work from reliefs, prints, casts and from the Old Masters, but not from the nude model. Instead they were encouraged to participate in the lower painting forms such as portraiture, landscape and genre. These were considered more feminine in that they appealed to the eye rather than the mind.
Toward the end of the 19th century, painters and critics began to rebel against the many rules of the Académie française, including the status accorded to
See also
Notes
- ^ Belton, Robert J. (1996). "The Elements of Art". Art History: A Preliminary Handbook. Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies: UBC's Okanagan Campus. Archived from the original on Aug 6, 2018.
- ^ Bass, 36 Google books
- ^ Blunt, 28, 53-4
- ^ Blunt, 11-12,
- ^ Blunt, 61, 65-74
- ^ Blunt, 140-141 (quote, 141)
- ^ Campbell, 1-2
- ^ Giovanni Battista Armenini (1533-1609) De vera precetti della pittura (1587), " On the True Precepts of the Art of Painting".
- ^ Campbell, 23-24 (quote)
- ^ Campbell, 38-9
- ^ Inleyding tot de Hooge Schoole der Schilderkonst ( Rotterdam 1678), "Introduction to the Academy of Painting".
- ^ Fuchs, 103-104
- ^ Fuchs, 69-77
- ^ Books.google.co.uk, translation
References
- Bass, Laura L.,The Drama of the Portrait: Theater and Visual Culture in Early Modern Spain, Penn State Press, 2008, ISBN 978-0-271-03304-4
- ISBN 0-19-881050-4
- Campbell, Lorne, Renaissance Portraits, European Portrait-Painting in the 14th, 15th and 16th Centuries, Yale, ISBN 0-300-04675-8
- Fuchs, RH; Dutch painting; 1978, Thames and Hudson, London, ISBN 0-500-20167-6
- Lee, Rensselaer W., Ut Pictura Poesis, The Humanistic Theory of Painting, Norton Simon, New York, 1967. Rensselaer W. Lee, Ut Pictura Poesis Online text of book
- Reitlinger, Gerald; The Economics of Taste, Vol I: The Rise and Fall of Picture Prices 1760–1960, Barrie and Rockliffe, London, 1961