“The conception and reproduction of truth and beauty are the first object of a poet; so should it be with a painter.” - Thomas Cole.

It is easy sometimes to be swept away in the excitement, sensationalism and commercial hype of Modernism and Post-Modernism. Some “Romantics” though have weathered the ascension of these more reactionary movements and will, I feel, prevail as history inevitably runs its course.

Formal aesthetics seek to reveal the spiritual essence of Nature, and in the 19th century artists in America saw the wilderness, nature and beauty as a “Sublime” expression of God. Following the time line briefly outlined in my previous piece, we can see how that perception changed in the 19th and 20th centuries. Gradually, as a result of industrialization, deprivation and war, portrayals of the world - and of the wilderness in particular - became hostile and isolating. This worldview revealed a belief that God, if he existed at all, had abandoned man to his folly - Even Manifest destiny itself, perhaps, was an illusion. As Yeats comments in his poem The Second Coming: “ Things come apart; the center can not hold, mere anarchy is loose on the world”.

The painters of the Hudson River School saw painting as a “Moral” pursuit and, as such, would probably not be surprised to see how society has evolved. “The Loss of Beauty [in art] has precipitated the loss of other absolute values.” Cooper asserts, “The arts are crucial to regaining civic virtue and spirituality”. Aesthetics in this time were equated with religion, not the latest fashionable trend. One could substitute the more varied spiritual beliefs of our current age, I believe, and this sentiment would be no less valid. Art, were it to uplift and inspire, could be of much greater consequence. The power of art lies in its transcendence; it alludes to a something greater and transports the individual away from the trivialities of everyday life.

The subjective art of our day tends to be more inward looking; much of it is, in almost any terms, lacking in beauty. A concession perhaps to the belief that beauty is nothing more than a “bourgeois fetish” and that artists who paint beautiful scenes are simply pandering to the tastes of the day.

Modernism, at its beginning, didn’t set out with a pessimistic agenda. The works of Matisse, Mondrian and Monet were filled with beauty, and a playful sense of joy. Although they had certainly moved away from the realism that artists, from the renaissance on, had striven to attain.

Realism has obviously not disappeared, today though, the tone of this genre has changed. "Magic Realism" as it is sometimes called, hints to something more than is apparent on the surface, it creates a scenario that is unusual and, more often than not, unsettling. Unlike the “divine light” of 19th century, an undercurrent hopelessness or a sense of foreboding pervades much of the work.

Ruskin wrote: “If the art of a nation is beautiful it is because the nation is noble; If the arts or ugly it is because the nation is immoral”
The feeling and appearance of art, to the Hudson River School, reveals much about its creators. These were particularly strong words, the deeper argument though - of whether life imitates art, or vise versa - has been going on for a very long time. Perhaps both assertions are partly true.

I recently watched a program about The Scream, a painting by Edvard Munch. A prescient work created prior to WWI, at a time when Matisse and his contemporaries were creating works such as Dinner Table (1987) and Vase of Sunflowers (1898). This very subjective piece of art is, perhaps, the quintessential Expressionistic painting. It was a comment made by one of the artists interviewed that I found most revealing though. A painter who has dedicated her career to exploring the work of Munch, and specifically this theme, said, “It’s like those nights when you wake up screaming”. It's understood, the implication seemed to be, that everyone wakes up at night screaming! Following an exhibition that a friend and I saw in the eighties at one of Toronto’s Yorkville Galleries, he now often speaks jokingly of “Piano Wire Art”. The collection of tortured figures, suspended in mid air on fine black “wire”, said as much about this artist as the Scream did of Edvard Munch. Cathartic art, if you will, could be helpful on occasion to the individual – in the Hudson River School’s theological vernacular, a personal exorcism of demons – but I wonder what the cultural implications are of such darkness and pessimism.

“Light has no place in the Post-Modernist Landscape”, claims Cooper.

Is this phenomenon a reflection of our collective psyche, the ongoing assimilation of a tumultuous 20th century, or is the preponderance of Post -Modernist art somehow responsible for perpetuating a cultural and moral malaise? An illuminating assertion is made in the opening preamble of Coopers’ book: “…The avant-garde assumption [is] that the dismantlements [minimalism, along with it’s corresponding ideology and related art forms] are intellectually justified. But what if they are not? What if the Modernists simply got it wrong? What if they discarded concepts of great value and made themselves often thoroughly miserable, for nothing? – for disillusionment is as sentimental as any illusion could be, with the added handicap of being in error.”

Much of this debate revolves around that age-old argument of whether the world is a place where good naturally predominates, supporting and nurturing man as he pursues his destiny, or is it essentially indifferent to his interests, even malevolent. (This is a subject I'd like to revisit later, as it ties in, perhaps not surprisingly, with the theme of travel that is woven into so much of my work) Last time I looked, rather indirectly, at the concept of truth. An overview of Objective and Subjective knowledge, as expressed in art throughout the evolution of various new art forms. This one subject in itself, Epistemology, is enough to fill endless volumes of text. We can do little more than scratched the surface of any of these concepts, though I would like to continue next time with a little more on the subject of beauty. The Hudson River School’s triumvirate, mentioned at the outset was Beauty, Truth and Goodness. Despite feeling almost completely out of my depth here, for the next update, I’d also like to look at the concept of goodness in art.

- Previous Update -

Two earlier paintings: (Left) "...And the Tide Rises", which found it's new home just last month and seems perfectly matched with another, predominantly turquoise, waterscape - on the panel just to its right. (Right) As there may not be the occasion to have my site updated again before I leave for the Arctic, I thought it would be nice to show the original that is currently displayed on the Index page - A scene from Auyuittuq, Baffin Island. Incidentally, just through the doorway hangs another old favourite, "Algonquin Winter" - A Lynx at Ragged-River falls, just outside Algonquin Park in Central Ontario.