Summary In 1765 the Dutch philosopher Frans Hemsterhuis (1721-1790) finished a manuscript known as the Lettre sur la sculpture (Letter on sculpture), which was dedicated to the Amsterdam collector Theodoor de Smeth. In this booklet...
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In 1765 the Dutch philosopher Frans Hemsterhuis (1721-1790) finished a manuscript known as the Lettre sur la sculpture (Letter on sculpture), which was dedicated to the Amsterdam collector Theodoor de Smeth. In this booklet Hemsterhuis developed an original and powerful theory on beauty which he related to the essence and history of the three-dimensional art-object. It was published in 1769. The main questions in this thesis are why such a philosophical theory on sculpture could suddenly come into existence in this period; secondly in what way Hemsterhuis established the relation between ideas on beauty and their realisation; thirdly how we can interpret his visionary theory, and, finally, what impact his theorising had on the view on art in general, and, more specific, on the arrival of the idea of modern art. Although this latter notion is rather vague, it can not be denied that the meaning and significance of art changed radically around 1800 and finally became modern. The cover of a recent French re-edition of Hemsterhuis’s Letter, on which a photograph of a moving sculpture – at full speed – by Jean Tinguely (1990) is displayed, suggests this relation. This is a challenging point of view, for it means firstly that Hemsterhuis’s theory is not outmoded, and secondly that his theory is about ideas and visual speed.
What can be easily suggested by the directness of a simple photographic statement, however, is not easy to demonstrate in written language. It is one of the objectives of this thesis to perform this enterprise. There is yet also another important reason for doing this: Hemsterhuis’s writing itself. For it is one of the few philosophical texts on beauty that is directly accompanied by author-made illustrations, which display in an exceptional way the awareness of the special relation between text and image. For Hemsterhuis’s drawings were not only meant as mere adornments of his book, but were also allocated with a special, autonomous function. Although aesthetics, which was invented as a philosophical branch in the eighteenth century, produced many writings on (visual) beauty, they never visually showed a realistic or idealistic picture of how beauty could be realised. Hemsterhuis’s book does, what makes it quite extraordinary. It even becomes more special, however, when one realises in what period of time he undertook his writing and drawing. For he developed his visualised theory in an era in which visualisation of the artistic concept became more and more minimised, not to say suspect. Neo-classicism, superclassicism, or to use a more recent term, the (philosophical) art of concept, strove for a visual reduction of the art-object because it explicitly favoured the artistic concept before its realisation. Hemsterhuis’s view, however, was not opposed to this. On the contrary, his aesthetics ideas form the ultimate expression of the striving towards the combination of visual simplicity with the condensation of ideas, that would eventually become one of the jumping-off places of modern art. Hemsterhuis’s book provides us with a unique insight in the characteristics of the very ideas that shaped neo-classicism. On the other hand it shows how philosophy became more and more interested in (visual) art. Art and philosophy became related in such a way that they became intertwined. Because it was sculpture that played a major part in his theorising my thesis is called ‘Sculptural thinking’.
Part I (Sculpture) shows that Hemsterhuis’s theory in the Letter on sculpture was totally new in the Netherlands. It no longer resembled traditional philological studies, but showed a modern aesthetic attitude. His philosophical forerunner Baruch de Spinoza never had had much interest in the concepts of art and beauty, although his philosophy, despite himself, gained much attention in artistic and philosophical circles around 1800. Hemsterhuis’s writing is related to this in two ways. His correspondence with his disciple Princess Amalia von Gallitzin shows that Hemsterhuis considered De Smeth as a spinozist. It was one of his intentions to demonstrate by his letter that Spinoza was wrong in relating mathematical reasoning to ontology. Only applied geometry was able to establish this connection. Hemsterhuis’s experiments with art-forms and his geometrical explanation is directly connected with this and must be viewed as an aesthetic rejection of Spinoza. This explains also why, in the eighties, he hesitated to give again his views on Spinoza, who had become the central concern of some German scholars like Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi and Lessing.
One of the most remarkable outcomes of Hemsterhuis’s book is his definition of beauty. His thesis is that the human soul desires to receive as many ideas possible in the shortest possible amount of time. This idea was not the result of an abstract axiom but was derived from visual experiments with different forms of works of art. Only with their help, and especially with sculptures (like vases), the human longing for beauty could be unveiled and explained. Natural beauty disappeared from the stage. When we experience nature as beautiful we only perceive it that way because of our artistic perception. Hemsterhuis’s experimental approach was new in the field of art and beauty. For the first time in history art-objects were used as object within an experiment to investigate the feeling for beauty. The use of the experiment was made possible by the axiom of the priority of sense-perception that had become central in the empirical natural sciences (Newton, ’s Gravesande). Hemsterhuis transferred this means to research the inner field of the human mind, especially man’s longing for beauty. This connection was new and for a long time exceptional. Only in the late nineteenth century the experimental-aesthetic, psychological attitude would return (Fechner).
Although Hemsterhuis developed his ideas on beauty within the framework of the classic notion of mimesis, it turns out that he psychologised the notion. Imitation and surpassing of nature are related to the perceiving observer. The aspect of surpassing for instance begins with a description of how children perceive and draw natural objects. In his further analysis he discovered that the amount of time that is needed to view an art-work plays a significant role in our experience of beauty. Concentrated and well circumscribed forms (with a fluent and easy outline) are preferred by man, because it takes less time to observe them well. Baroque forms are more difficult or even impossible to view in a short time. This aspect of visual reduction lead to his notion (also demonstrated by visual experiments) that the soul detests empirical time and longs for eternal durée. The soul longs for immediacy. In order to discover what happens in the human mind when viewing art-objects Hemsterhuis analysed the aspect of production as well. He works this out by describing a fictional design by Rafael of a Venus. The main object of an artist is to reproduce in his art-work the immediacy of the inner image. It must speak instantaneously to the observing soul. Eroticizing sculptures like the Venus de’ Medici are only capable of arousing the attention of the body. An important element of his analysis is that he psychologizes artistic practice as well. For Hemsterhuis practice is very important with regard to plain theory. In order to teach how students could produce the representation of a pure and good inner idea, he suggested for instance to use a blindfold when drawing their first idea.
Hemsterhuis’s explanation of his definition of beauty is formulated in mathematical terms. Unlike contemporary German aesthetics he did not base the aesthetic experience on numbers (Leibniz), however, but he used geometry only to quantify aroused feeling. His use of two different drawings of vases to investigate the sense of beauty by showing them to an educated and uneducated audience, became the basis of any binary, stylistic approach within the field of art-history. Wölfflin’s so-called principles of art-history, for example, can be related to Hemsterhuis’s dual groundwork. Besides time he also paid attention to the quantity of ideas. Time and intensity of ideas became closely related. In his analysis of the effects of his drawn vases, he makes a distinction between the visible line as an optical datum and as a representative sign. By means of this the art-object became abstracted and objectified in an unprecedented way. His conclusion that we prefer an art-object that shows a minimum of form and a maximum of ideas lead to his metaphysical conviction that man in general desires to receive as much ideas as possible in the shortest amount of time. This general principle helped him to explain in a original way different phenomenons such as the difference between Italian and Dutch history-painting, the essence of the sketch and the usage of ornaments. With regard to the two last examples my analysis not only makes clear that his notions clarify current developments in art, but also that his remarks foreshadow philosophical statements later made by Kant and Moritz. To show this I did not only analyse his text but also his vignettes, that accompanied the text in their own way. In contrast with the text they reveal that our sense of beauty is always contaminated by lust. One of Hemsterhuis’s objectives was to make this phenomenon visual noticeable. At the same time, however, he tries to withdraw our attention from sexual commitment in order to examine only pure form. ‘His discovery’ was an important contribution in making it possible to regard art-objects as pure, abstract form. That is why outline or contour became a constantly recurring, meaningful point of attention in his writings and his drawings. This also accounts for his lifelong interest in (using) vase-models. They represented for him an a-sexual form but they were at the same time, in his own words, the most naked forms that could arouse our feeling for beauty. Not a geometrical form consequently but works of art. His fascination for vases can also be related to contemporary developments like the first industrial made art-objects (Wedgwood), especially vases.
Part two (Form) is concerned with the question how art (sculpture) and philosophy became closely connected. Hemsterhuis considered sculpture as the most enlightened art-form. Since he is the first philosopher to pay attention to sculpture systematically it is necessary to describe in detail how both domains became related. My analysis does not start abstract but takes some of his executed designs of artworks as starting-point. A golden coin that he designed for a special occasion shows for example how his view on simple beauty was meant to be realised. The fine, simple, fluent and (more than) classical outline of a woman’s head is contrasted with and enhanced by a baroque, allegorical surrounding. The visual statement of uttermost simplicity is further intensified by the sharp contrast with the words circling around the head. Words and images were in Hemsterhuis’s view not allowed to interfere with each other. The coin can be viewed as the concrete realisation of his rather abstract formulated definition of beauty. His design follows his ideas.
In Hemsterhuis’s view tactile imitation precedes historically and psychologically visual imitation. Tact relates man directly to life itself. Sculptural tact was therefore a necessary step to develop the very idea of (abstract) contour. The basic importance he addresses to sculpture can also be found in his rejection of the classical but in his time anew actualised myth of the invention of drawing by Dibutades (Plinius). The wall at which the shadow of the profile of the leaving warrior was traditionally projected (in text and paintings) was to his mind an anachronism, because architecture could only come into existence after sculpture and drawing were developed. His criticism of this popular myth shows his rejection of the illusory basis of painting and the too important place given to the eye. His views on architecture show further that he developed original ideas about its origin and also about its function. By regarding the basic function of architecture as a skin he foreshadows the only later in the nineteenth century developed idea of the difference between structure and ornament. His dissatisfaction with the general explanations of the origin of architectural ornament gave way to a relativisation of their eternal value. The basic classical orders became, however, the pillars of his general philosophical view. Doric became the symbol of history, Ionic the symbol of philosophy and, finally, the most perfect and celebrated form, Corinthian, became the perfect symbol of poetry. The poetic way of reasoning, which Hemsterhuis strongly associated with feeling, was the summit of human activity.
Hemsterhuis’s realisation of his aesthetic ideas in concrete designs like the aforementioned coin, points at the importance he gives to (artistic) practice. In order to learn princes Gallitzin to draw his beloved essentialist line, he even developed different drawing-methods by which simple outline could be made. These ideas show that his way of drawing was essentially tactile. To analyse and contextualise the meaning of tact or tactile sense his ideas on sense-perception are broadly discussed (the ‘Problem of Molyneux’, Herder’s view on tactile experience of sculptures, et cetera) My analysis does not only show that his ideas on the human senses fit well into general empirical epistemology, but also that some of his ideas were rather divergent and aesthetically important. His artistic use of his own so-called synesthetic (coloured) sensations, for instance, makes clear that a new subjective experience of bodily events comes to the fore. This kind of self-observations give his seemingly fitting ideas a special aesthetic connotation.
Besides this, Hemsterhuis pays a lot of attention to the relation between tact and sculpture in his other writings (Simon ou des facultés de l’âme). The meaning of tact is not only discussed in its role for making sculptures but also in relation to the concrete experience of them. He shows that visual and tactile sensation are complementary. Their corresponding feature is the contour. In our experience of sculpture both senses are activated. This leads to his conviction that sculpture is an intensified and more complete way of seeing. Its visuality is the summit of all (visual) art. Sculpture is therefore the art of being and not of seeming. As a result of his stressing the perceptual qualities of sculpture the attention for its subject-matter becomes increasingly less important. Form becomes the essence of art and sculpture provides the model for philosophy.
Hemsterhuis’s ideas on optics are traditional (Newton) but also display a more modern viewpoint. He stresses the importance of the role of the mind in completing the raw optical matter that comes into our eyes, an aspect he also stressed in his very positive evaluation of the sketch. Without the correcting and additional qualities of the soul we would not be able to see things correctly. His experiments with this spontaneous synthetic quality of the soul break with the idea that the soul is only a passive camera obscura, uninhabited by man himself. His wish to get a multifaceted view of the outer-world instead of the two-dimensional pictorial view corresponds with his ideas on the three-dimensional sculptural experience. The important notion of ‘rapports’, well-known through Diderot, becomes in his theory a purely subject-related idea.
Hemsterhuis’s design of the coin is called neo-classical. It can be related to different stylistic developments known as linear purism (David, Humbert de Superville, Cozens). His ideas on purity of line, which he thought of to be essentially sculptural, led to his influential idea that Greek culture as a whole was in essence sculptural and modern times were pictorial. (Schlegel) By a comparison of his design with Cozens’ Simple Beauty it becomes clear that Hemsterhuis’s basic aesthetic ideas are the most condensed and essential definitions of the artistic tendencies of his age. Schlegel’s use of Hemsterhuis’s ideas to elucidate Flaxman’s graphical abstractions are very clear at this point as well. Only by referring to Hemsterhuis’s Letter Schlegel was able to explain the unprecedented, ultimate reduction and abstractness of those visual forms.
The second chapter of part two focuses at the biggest thread of the fluent and fine outline: passions. Hemsterhuis’s (negative) evaluation of the famous group of Laocoön makes this all too apparent. This sculpture lacks in his view visual unity because of its abundance of passion. Passion distorts clear outline and belongs therefore to the art of painting. By stating this Hemsterhuis makes a tripartite division between the two visual arts and poetry. Pure sculpture is concerned with form and is passionless and pure poetry is related to passions and actions. Painting, however, is impure because it mixes aspects of the other two. Hemsterhuis’s formal attitude differs from Winckelmann and Lessing, who both adored the statue especially because they were mainly concerned with its literary content or subject-matter. The moral aspect of the Laocoön was in Hemsterhuis’s eyes, however, a matter of form. Morality and (tactile and visual) form become related. Hemsterhuis unveiled by his evaluation of the Laocoön the hidden pictorial view on sculpture. Von Ramdohr’s reference to Hemsterhuis makes clear that his message was taken seriously.
Hemsterhuis’s critique of the use of passions is related to his general view on psychology and his critique on the artificial society. In his Simon ou des facultés de l’âme he demonstrates (by taking a fictitious sculpture as starting-point of the dialogue) that bodily expressed passions were no more reliable. Only in images of a child the inner self is expressed in a trustworthy way. His view on signs, developed in the Lettre sur l’homme, show that natural signs have become enveloped by art. Words and gestures are no longer the immediate effect of the ideas that originally represented them. Signs of passions can therefore be corrupt. Sculpture must find its own language and was not allowed anymore to express uncertain signs. The meaning of his analysis of Diderot’s imagination (discussed in Part one) becomes completely clear here. Diderot’s unquiet body comes to rest at the moment that Hemsterhuis convinced him of his sign-theory. Diderot became ‘sculpterised’ so to speak by Hemsterhuis’s reasoning. It comes as no surprise that Hemsterhuis also criticised the popular ‘science’ of physiognomy. His analysis of Lavater’s book shows that in his view certain inner qualities of individuals do not appear constantly, i.e. fixated, at the exterior of the body. An analysis of (French) art-theory in the eighteenth century, in which the expression of the passions became an important issue, makes clear that the expression of passions becomes more and more problematic during the age. The neo-classicist painter David, for instance, finally refused to express anymore the complex inner states of individuals. He sought for a new pictorial language instead. Although Lessing and Winckelmann are related to this development it can be justified to point more at Hemsterhuis who was the most clear theorist of simplicity in form and the suppression of unreadable passion. David’s famous modern dead hero Marat, in which modern ideas and classical form are mingled, can be theoretically justified by Hemsterhuis’s ideas. For he maintained that only the innocent child and the body of a just deceased show truthful relations between the inner self and its external appearance. As a consequence of silencing the passions in art and theory the abstract, modern sign-system was made possible (Humbert de Superville).
Chapter three of part two concentrates on the fact that Hemsterhuis’s idea of beauty is based on the idea of unity in diversity. This also accounts for his ideas on desire and the idea of the sublime. By an analysis of a published letter by Hemsterhuis about his trip to German art-collections his practical use of his theory is demonstrated. It becomes clear that his ideas on desire play an important part. This is illustrated by the counterpart of the Letter on sculpture, the Lettre sur les désirs. Hemsterhuis makes a distinction between two means to unify oneself with the other: a bodily and a spiritual one. Also the difference with Spinoza’s image of God comes to light. Whereas Spinoza saw God as the beginning of his system Hemsterhuis places man to the foreground. In this context the work of art becomes again important because it can, despite its materiality, show the immaterial aspect of the soul. Hemsterhuis’s view on the sublime differs from for instance Burke and Kant. He regards the sublime as the ultimate form of beauty. All kinds of sublime experiences are reduced by him to his definition of beauty. The sublime is therefore never horrible. It must be felt and is incomprehensible. Since feeling is, however, the ultimate form of reasoning both fields are connected. In his Letter this aspect was symbolised by the tactile quality of the unified sculpture.
Chapter four of part two gives attention to his system of the arts. His inconsistent use of the term ‘beaux arts’ and ‘liberal arts’ point at the existence of tradition and newness. His refusal to make a distinction between art and science is at odds with the general development of the system of the arts. Analysis makes visible that he uses old terms within a new context. His modern view was the important role of poetry or poetical thinking for art and science as well. Progression was impossible without this special faculty. His explanation of the origin of the arts is original, because he points at the coital root. Human souls are driven by a unbridled desire to be constantly fertilised, it is the tyranny of the drive. The different sorts of arts are its result, which can be named either Dionysian or Apollonian. To prevent ‘bad art’ suitable subject matter must be provided. This idea coincides with the general striving to improve the arts by given themes in advance to artists, like Goethe did.
The art-object itself is in Hemsterhuis’s view a ambiguous entity, because it is imperfect in comparison with the perfection of the natural object. Because of its imperfection it is, however, capable in showing man’s inner desires. Pygmalion’s choice to prefer a living goddess instead of becoming himself a stone statue directs in the same direction. The philosophical status of the artwork is hereby installed. Because of its duality the work of art becomes so important and therefore Hemsterhuis demands of a sculpture to become unequivocal.
Part three (Development) focuses on the future of art. In the first chapter the concept of space is discussed in order to get a better understanding of Hemsterhuis’s view on the essence of sculpture. Again his formalistic view becomes clear, for he demanded of a sculpture that it should give more pleasure seen from a distance than perceived from nearby. This idea consequently leads to a concentration on form instead of subject-matter. This element is enforced by his stress on the three-dimensionality of sculpture, which deserves special attention for Hemsterhuis relates an ideal form to sculpture, viz. a serpentine structure. With this quality he refers to a continuous form in space that provides perception with the experience of diversity within unity. The preference for multilateral quality of sculpture, or its multifocality, expressed by this form, was shared by William Hogarth. Both he and Hemsterhuis can be regarded as the founding fathers of a strict formalistic view on art, in which serpentine form became the exclusive form for expressing multifocality.
The aspect of distance returns in the nineteenth century as an important aspect of the influential theory of Hildebrand. Both he and Hemsterhuis relate the distanced view to the idea of greater unity. The main difference, besides their historical views, is their point of artistic reference. Hildebrand focuses on the relief and Hemsterhuis on the ‘real’ three-dimensional statue. Hemsterhuis’s view on art – a combination of desire and serpentine form – is perfectly symbolised by Canova’s Amor and Psyche.
In chapter two of part three Hemsterhuis’s view on (historical) time is discussed. His influential comparison of the Greek sculptural spirit of time with the pictorial modern time looks like other eighteenth-century ‘paralèlle’-s. It is, however, the final phase of this concept, because Hemsterhuis uses the old concept to create a new one: a future synthesis of both cultures. To get this step clear it is necessary to view his ideas on historical development of the human spirit. Hemsterhuis does not make use of the traditional cyclical model, but introduces an alternative view. He uses an elliptical model, that he derived from Keplerian cosmology. It turns out that the Greek (moral) and modern (scientific) times ‘circled’ around perfection, but that they both shared an one-sidedness. Greek culture could never return, however, and modern culture lacked sculptural unity. Unlike Winckelmann Hemsterhuis did not mourn about this loss, for he projects the solution not in the past but in the future. His dialectal view on history differs also from the other influential art-theorist, Count de Caylus.
Hemsterhuis’s view on the future of art is discussed in the final chapter. His design of the so-called Boerhaave-monument in Leiden shows how he viewed the relation between Greek and modern culture. It symbolises his basic view on philosophy: the modern philosophy of nature had to become part of the philosophy of mind. The Socratic philosophy of morality is the basis of modern science. In other words, the pictorial modern times is imbedded within an all-embracing sculptural way of thinking.
His view on morality or feeling returns also in his ideas on The Golden Age. The recovery of a moral culture was not possible by a return to the past, but only through development of culture in the future. The Golden Age is not over but it still has to come. This idea appears from his Alexis, ou de l’âge d’or. His ideal of a synthesis of feeling and reason is, however, already implied in his description of the ideal sculpture: it is the visionary model of a higher synthesis of reason and feeling. When this state of mind (or culture) is reached, there is no more need for art. Art and beauty vanish because of total harmony.
Man’s dual character also comes forward in Hemsterhuis’s view on the relation between men and women. In his eyes the soul of both sexes is in essence hermaphrodite. His history of the role of women in history shows this clearly. Sexual neutrality is also visible in his aforementioned description of the ideal sculpture. This explains also his use of ‘neutral’ vases. Hemsterhuis’s idea that man in general longs for a full unification with his (or her) desired object is at odds with Herder’s view. The latter saw Hemsterhuis’s idea on desires resulting in the loss of self. Hemsterhuis does not accept the idea of difference but proclaims man’s equality and sameness. His ideal is the ideal of the same. History causes differences, but the philosophical mind must unveil its underlying likeness. Hemsterhuis’s sexual and aesthetic neutrality will put an end to difference. It points at an endless development within the same. Art and philosophy are each others companions till the world has become factual poetry and therefore without any duality.
In the epilogue is shown that Hemsterhuis’s aesthetics has had a great influence on his general philosophical ideas and vice versa. The Letter on sculpture functions as a sketch of his whole philosophical system. His philosophy belongs to the old epistème and to the new human order as well. His ideas on the role of (perceptual) time, i.e. the desired minimisation of empirical time in aesthetic perception, can even be related to the modernist concept of instantaneity. This last concept could only have become imaginable or possible when (perceptual) time as an aesthetic factor was established. Hemsterhuis’s aesthetics therefore throws a special light on the origin of modern art and times. That both Spinoza’s and Hemsterhuis’s theory would play an important part in this development is symbolic for the confusion of the modern, romantic soul that originated at the same time.