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| Savonorola by Fra Bartolomeo (1498 |
Be sure to keep your eyes open if you visit the convent of San Marco in Florence where the fearsome Dominican friar, Girolamo Savonarola (1452-1498) launched his fiery tirades against modern art.
Savonarola, one of the earliest art critics, lived in a small cell which has been preserved complete with his famous chair.
Savonarola preached contempt for the world (contemptu mundi) which was a sordid place of adultery, sodomy, murder, and envy. One of its worst culprits was modern art which focused on humanistic subjects, luring people away from proper religious subjects. Such art was a "vanity" which deserved to be burned in bonfires in the Florence public square, along with books, mirrors and other sinful, unauthorized objects.
Savonorola proclaimed that "crude scenes that make people laugh shall not be painted" (which would essentially put this blog out of business). He said that art should be viewed through "spectacles of death" to keep us focused on our mortality, and he railed against art with "indecent figures." No one, he wrote, should be permitted to paint "unless they... paint honest things."
The convent knew that the world had its distractions, such as blue skies, green grass and singing birds. To help protect the friars from temptation, the convent windows were boarded up, leaving only a small opening.
The beauty of nature could only be countenanced in limited doses.
As I stood in Savonorola's cell, thinking of the man whose eloquence caused the burning of Botticelli's paintings, I noted a tiny imperfection on the bars of his window. I walked over, took a closer look, and was startled to discover a small devil's head looking back at me.
I checked with an official at the convent and yes, Savonarola had instructed that a devil's head be affixed to his bars in case he was ever tempted to linger too long looking out at nature.
I was just there a few weeks ago, and the Fra Angelico frescoes (particularly the Annunciation) show the generative side of the religious impulse, contrasting dramatically with Savonarola's destructive fanaticism.
ReplyDeleteEven as an agnostic, I found them quite moving!
Yes yes yes, those frescoes are exquisite. My favorite angel ever is on that Annunciation fresco; I had a postcard of a close up of her face (pre-restoration, which I liked better) on my wall throughout school. We should all be grateful that the Annunciation was a religious subject, and so escaped the wrath of Savonorola.
ReplyDeleteYour comment makes an excellent point. There are two sides to all of these forces.
So Botticelli is 'Modern Art' now? You stretch more than a yogi.
ReplyDeleteYou're making a hash of history to try to score a political point; and the comparison doesn't fit anyway. People don't like Modern Art because it's pretentious and boring. Not because it flies in the face of God or some ancient lunatic's obsessive take on propriety. Everybody knows it was the modernists who were the zealots, not their critics.
~ FV
FV-- Calm down, you're still hyperventilating from the previous post. There's no political agenda here. The burgeoning Renaissance shifted artistic focus from the next world to the secular world-- loving treatment in oil paints of flesh, rich fabric, fruits and vegetables, fine metals. This was "new" or "modern" to Savoronola and he didn't like it one bit.
ReplyDeleteI promise this wasn't my way of slipping in an argument on behalf of Gerhard Richter (although there is a point to be made about anyone's authoritarian standards in art).
I think you are being a touch disingenuous here David. I do not believe your choice of the phrase 'modern art' was entirely unconscious of the implication FV is pointing to.
DeleteThe reply above was by yours truly; "I think you are being a touch disingenuous here David. I do not believe your choice of the phrase 'modern art' was entirely unconscious of the implication FV is pointing to."
DeleteMy apologies for forgetting to hit the my Google Account button before I send.
"was "new" or "modern" to Savoronola..."
DeleteOld, I thought - a return to the pre-Christian. Savonarola was a nut, but there was a return to things some in the church recognised as pagan (eg, Ficino's celestial pantheon and talismanic magic), wasn't there an attempted revival of initiatory cults in some of the academies?
Plenty in the church had a more level-head, and weren't at war with nature, or platonic ideas (seen as pre-Christian revelation, even so far as 'Saint Plato'). Such as many Franciscans, etc.
Savonarola's concept of a Divinity abstracted contra to (his) creation, next to these, looks like it has more in common with the vacuities of modernism.
"There are two sides to all of these forces" - indeed.
Bill
There is always a “Bonfire of the Vanities” burning in every age and among every people, though what we consider worth burning changes, and the methods by which we deem it legitimate to censor works evolve.
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me that anyone who condemns some premodern act of censorship can usually find it in their heart to censor material that, if judged “truly and immediately” dangerous, appears in their own time.
I would argue that where Savonarola went wrong was in his metaphysics, not in his stance on censorship. If pagan sensual paintings really did endanger Florentines with eternal damnation, then we can hardly fault him for trying to save their souls from everlasting torment. The reason we believe him to have been wrong lies in his religion, in his metaphysics. For any Christian who shared his beliefs, refraining from burning those paintings would likely have seemed a weakness of character and a failure of empathy for fellow citizens.
To be genuinely anti-censorship in that time meant believing in your heart that these paintings would send men to hell, yet still opposing their destruction. That is easy to say now, but far harder to live by as a principle. Are any of us willing to allow step-by-step instructions for building biological weapons to be placed on the shelves of a public library? That, I think, would be a comparable case. We are not, perhaps, as freedom-loving in practice as we like to suppose when compared with the medievals.
chris bennett-- I'm baffled by the suggestion that I might have some reason for being "disingenuous" about the word "modern." I've certainly never been shy about my views on modernity nor have I ever hidden from a fight on the topic.
ReplyDeleteWikipedia says, "Various events and historical transitions have been proposed as the start of the early modern period, including the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the start of the Renaissance, the end of the Crusades, the Reformation in Germany giving rise to Protestantism, and the beginning of the Age of Discovery and with it the onset of the first wave of European colonization." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_modern_period ). Many trace the beginning of modernity to Gutenberg's invention of the printing press (which was invented the same time Savonarola was born, and immediately began disrupting the old ways. Many printed books fed Savonorola's bonfires.) The Ringling Art Museum has a thoughtful video lecture entitled "Savonarola and the Early Modern Censorship in Fifteenth-Century Florence." ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sZwjie1OWs ) which you might want to view.
There must be 100 reference works that mention "Savonorola" and "modern." Not one of them has a clandestine agenda to promote Cy Twombly or Jackson Pollock. You can count me as among them.
>>>>>>I'm baffled by the suggestion that I might have some reason for being "disingenuous" about the word "modern."
DeleteNow we're more baffled than you are. Since the phrase in question is "modern art" not "modern."
Since there's no art to comment on in the post - unless you claim the post to be pointless - the post is clearly making a political-social point. The idea that you suddenly chose to offer a history lesson without it containing a lesson is not credible. Not to promote Cy Twombly or Jackson Pollock, but seemingly to compare those who might find their works boring, dumb or inartistic to a raging censorious monster from a bygone age.
~ FV
Even worse, this raging censorious monster from a bygone age is literally referred to as an art criti, which accordung to Wikipedia, is a non-possibility, as art criticism Art criticism as a genre only obtained its modern form in the 18th century!
DeleteThis has political-social points written all over it, and marxist- postmodernism written all under it!
To paraphrase the most pre-eminent American thinker of our age: Imagine dragons!
- - -
Postmodern Anonymouse
>>>>>>>>>>>"This has political-social points written all over it, and marxist- postmodernism written all under it!"
DeleteThe frustrated little radical -- supercilious to the last drop.
~ FV
FV and chris bennett-- whatever your suspicions of a hidden agenda, "modern art" for me means art that's modern, and "modern" is defined as "relating to the present or recent times as opposed to the remote past." For Savanorola, the Renaissance art that he burned "related to present or recent times as opposed to the remote past." It can't get more straightforward than that.
ReplyDeleteFV wrote: "So Botticelli is 'Modern Art' now? You stretch more than a yogi." No, Botticelli is not modern art now, but it was modern art for Savanorola. The quality and objectives of Botticelli have little or nothing to do with the quality and objectives of Twombly. One cannot redeem the other, although both encountered resistance because of their newness. The point is no more complicated or duplicitous than that.
David,
DeleteThe issue here, as far as I see it, is one of purpose. 20th century 'modern art' along with its successor, 'post modern art', are not expressions used by contemporary people to describe 'any art belonging to the same period it was made'. They are the terms widely given to current art forms that embody the deconstructive ideology of 'modernism'.
To think that western culture before, say, 1870 thought of their aesthetic practices as "modern art" is making the same category error as saying that the fugue was the rock and roll of the 17th century.
That small devil’s head is a perfect finishing touch to this self-imposed hell. Resonates with both Weber’s Iron cage and Philip K. Dick’s Black Iron Prison.
ReplyDelete- - -
Postmodern Anonymouse
The obsessively puritanical and obsessively decadent are two sides of the same coin. The former holds nothing to be pure; the latter holds nothing to be sacred. There is a mutual understanding in their arch-enmity; only the one truly understands the desperate mania of the other.
ReplyDeletechris bennett, I don't know what to tell you. When I look up "modern art" on wikipedia to see if I need to clarify how I use those terms in the future, I see that it covers a period from 1860s to 1970s (which pre-dates most of Twombly's career.) I also see that the plain English words "modern" and "art" mean exactly what I said in virtually any reference work you can find. By the way, "modern" is the name of a type face, "modernity" covers a period in philosophy that does not conform precisely to that period in science (which tends to begin with Galileo in the 16th century). Some of the sources I've read about Savanorola also use the phrase "modern art" or "early modern art" which is probably where I picked it up to begin with.
ReplyDeleteOf course, the word "art" has even more definitions / applications than modern, including music and literature; also including technical skill and linguistic cunning. You don't want to start down that road.
If the relevant point is what my "purpose" was, I've told you what my purpose was but some people don't believe it. So perhaps it would be more accurate to say that, like all works of art, it's a matter of the purpose of the creator combined with the suspicions of the viewer.
David, you seem to have misunderstood me. My point about purpose was referring to the intentions embodied by contemporary art which is colloquially known as 'modern art', a phenomena defined by its deconstructionist, relativist agenda as opposed to the function of art pre 1870.
DeleteDictionary definitions of the word 'modern' and 'art' will not be the same as what is meant by putting the two words together in the phrase 'modern art', so I am unable to concede to your current line of argument.
MAGA nazis take your paranoia some other place.
ReplyDeleteRelax, you never crossed our minds.
DeleteBill
But now that this has Bill, I'll offer an explanation about why such people default to this language.
DeleteAcross the West our cultures have been increasingly possessed by a story that took deep existential hold after World War II, the narrative of Multiplicity verses Unity with its rag tag band of allies fighting the oppressive order of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. But there was a secret component within this story, the alliance with communist Russia, the embodiment of extreme multiplicity thereby held together through dictatorship. Which is why Communism and Fascism are two sides of the same coin representing unity and multiplicity, the one and the many. And so began the drift towards the idea that multiplicity is morally superior to unity because it had triumphed over the evil of Fascism.
The truth is that it was the balance between unity and multiplicity that proved the stronger and not one end or the other of the one-and-the-many spectrum. The deluded falsehood that unity is more ethical than multiplicity led to Nazi Germany, but the delusion works the other way around, believing that multiplicity is ethically superior to unity. Which this is where we are now: the post modern ideology of deconstructivism with its suite of societal weaponry; the intersectional snowflake politics of extreme liberalism, critical theory, LLGBTQ+, gender spectrums, DEI and unchecked immigration, to name just a few. And if you question these things you are deemed not only to be headed in the opposite direction towards a degree of unity, which is true, but secretly wanting to continue to its extreme in the form of fascism, and hence you are called 'bigot', 'racist' and 'Nazi'.
This emotional blackmail is used because the ideology of 'progressive' extreme liberalism is fundamentally incoherent (the displacement from reality of gender politics and DEI are vivid examples of this), and up until now the tactic has been very affective. But it is ceasing to work anymore and their emperor is seen to have no clothes, and with it the public eye has been opened to the insanity of Woke.
I forgot to add that the idea I formulated above originates with Johnathan Pageau.
DeleteWell, Plurality requires recognising distinction between things, celebrating their uniqueness, parity in shared fields and autonomy in their own, not running everything through a blender.
DeleteBill
(So, 'yes' / Bill)
Delete>>>>>>"why such people default to this language"
DeleteThey're just obeying their programming, which is deliberately made emotional and easy. They are media sheep not intellectuals or historians. They want to seem smart and moral with minimum sunk cost, intellectually or in terms of time.
~ FV
David: "The quality and objectives of Botticelli have little or nothing to do with the quality and objectives of Twombly. One cannot redeem the other, although both encountered resistance because of their newness"
ReplyDeleteThey encountered resistance for different reasons though. Savonarola's objection to Botticelli is similar to the comic book burnings of the 1940s, carried out because parents thought the content would corrupt the minds of the youth.
People who object to an artist like Twombly usually do so because they feel their intelligence is being insulted by being asked to seriously consider work which looks like a 3 year old did it.
Laurence,
DeleteNot intended as niggling against your points, just to correct the record:
In the late 1940s there was a comic book scare because some kid fell out of a window wearing a superman costume, presumed to be in imitation of the superhero fantasy. The surrounding panic died down without incident.
It was in the 1950s that Frederic Wertham wrote articles about the connection between juvenile delinquency and horror and crime comic book reading in the Ladies Home Journal that resulted in his "Seduction of the Innocent" book, and subsequently: hearings, public shaming, bannings, plummeting sales, the comics code authority, Mad's escape into magazine format, and public parental burnings of piles of comics; which tended to happen in the newer suburban developments.
___
Personally I don't actually "object" to Twombly's work. I'm happy that anybody makes anything creative or fun. I only object to what is claimed about it, or other modernist or postmodern works - and their creators - and what was done to (and claimed about) the competition in order to try to corner the lucrative high-status art market and other types of patronage.
Activist modernists and postmodernists do not come off well when compared to the generosity of Howard Pyle and Harvey Dunn who gave their wisdom freely to many hundreds of students while promoting integrity, imagination, dedication, actual artistic skills, public service, truth, beauty and love.
Dear God, some people are losing it. Here's John Ruskin talking about 'Modern Art', in the 1843-1860. Everything new is modern to the people living at the time when the current art was made.
ReplyDeleteI've had enough stupid for one day.
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/29907
'Modern Painters', multi-volume orbiting Turner, yes. So obvious it didn't need mentioning. The contention above, though, was whether the term was being used in the fixed sense it has had since esp. the rise of non-figurative art in the early 20th century, particularly in the light of recent discussiin here.
DeleteBill
If I had to look at a boarded-up window, I'd pick that one.
ReplyDeleteBill
Gentlemen, David has corrected you multiple times that he intended no such subtext in relating the story of Savonarola or in referencing “modern art” as a defense of the modernists or as a political argument. As good guests on his blog, we should not accuse him of a fib.
ReplyDeleteSince in his subsequent comments he has not offered us an alternative subtextual interpretation, but has merely admonished you men for an overly close reading, we ought to take him at face value. This is simply a jovial departure from the blog’s usual programming into the matter of an unusual Italian fellow.
As such, the correct form of commentary on such a post, I would recommend, is to offer interesting tidbits about Savonarola ourselves.
And so, apropos of nothing other than that he is the current subject of discussion, I would like to add that after his excommunication from the Church he was challenged by local clergy to a trial by fire. If he was not burned, God’s favor upon him would be sufficiently established. On the appointed day the square filled with a restless crowd, the bonfire was built high, and all waited for the moment when his holiness would be tested. Yet just as the fire was to be kindled, the sky darkened and a sudden rain swept over the angry Florentines, quenching the attempt and dispersing the lot of them. I also tell this story without any subtext, and I admonish anyone who attempts to draw out the appearance of subtext as suffering a lapse of character.
«In his A History of the World War (page 212), Captain Liddell Hart reports that a
Deleteplanned offensive by thirteen British divisions, supported by fourteen hundred
artillery pieces, against the German line at Serre-Montauban, scheduled for July 24,
1916, had to be postponed until the morning of the 29th. He comments that
torrential rain caused this delay - which lacked any special significance.»
- The Garden of Forking Paths, Jorge Luis Borges (1941)
In the ecstasy of communication, the production of meaning is unending.
- - -
Postmodern Anonymouse
I viewed Savanorola's window to be a prism through which we could view all sorts of art's (and life's) conflicts. The age old conflict between old and new, obviously, but also the conflict between the religious and the secular, the conflict between temptation and self-denial, the conflict between idealism (which convinces people that the purity of their end justifies the most horrific means) and pragmatism, the conflict between embracing our nature or being so afraid of what that might lead to that we have to scare ourselves away from the window with a little devil symbol, the conflict between the certainty of a beautiful spring day you could reach out and touch and the contingent speculation about perpetual torment if you do.
ReplyDeleteThese are debates which still tear human beings apart, nearly 600 years after Savanarola placed the odd little devil as the sentry on his window. I think there's a lot of truth in Kev Ferrara's point that "The obsessively puritanical and obsessively decadent are two sides of the same coin." In the 1950s, conservatives were screaming that modern art was a tool of communism that would lead to the downfall of western civilization at the same time that the CIA was secretly promoting modern art as a tool for bringing down communism.
In this bounty of interesting and illuminating conflicts, I confess I didn't anticipate, "is David that rascal using Savanarola as a metaphor for insulting those of us who criticize "modern art" developments from 1860 - 1970?"
People are sometimes so suspicious of being dissed that they become quick to take offense. Right now there's a raging debate over the failed $700 million attempt to update the logo for the Cracker Barrel restaurant chain because its traditional customers (who applauded when the chain fired all employees “whose sexual preferences fail to demonstrate normal heterosexual values”) became miffed that updating the logo represented a slight to their traditional values. The same hyper indignant crowd became angry when Taylor Swift began to migrate away from her traditional country music roots, and incensed when Beyonce had the temerity to try to sing in a country music style. They are the same guardians who thought they were being dissed and burned Beatles records when John Lennon said they were more popular than Jesus. So if people are suspicious that this little blog post is disingenuously hiding some insult to their traditional values, I-- like my precursors Taylor Swift, Beyonce and John Lennon-- will just have to be brave and tough it out.
>>>>>”its traditional customers (who applauded when the chain fired all employees “whose sexual preferences fail to demonstrate normal heterosexual values”) became miffed that updating the logo represented a slight to their traditional values.”
DeleteIt's amazing how much you hate traditional values. How'd that happen?
The new Cracker Barrel logo was bland rootless corporate design. What was the point? To make it bland and rootless? Do you like insipid corporate make-overs? Or do you just hate anybody who doesn't share your anti-traditional values and anything that annoys them is good?
The Cracker Barrel firing incident was 34 years ago. There’s no record of any of its customers (who are probably dead by now) “applauding” the move in 1991. In fact the company said that it had over-reacted with respect to the “perceived values of our customers.” Only a few employees were fired, according to the LA Times article from 1991, and many were asked back according to other reports. Wherever do you get your propaganda? You probably still believe that Mathew Shepherd was killed by rednecks for being gay. (No, he was a meth dealer killed by his gay lover over drug money.)
>>>>>>>”The same hyper indignant crowd became angry when Taylor Swift began to migrate away from her traditional country music roots, and incensed when Beyonce had the temerity to try to sing in a country music style.”
Your boomer news sources and their algorithms fed you stories about scary backlashes against Taylor Swift going pop and Beyonce doing a country album because they know you'll click or watch. Frankly almost nobody in real life cares. Politically engaged conservatives were disgusted by Beyonce (with Jay Z) attending Diddy parties, knowing he and his crew were drug peddlers, groomers and pedophiles. Both starlets used their fame to endorse Kamala Harris, a babbling drunk imbecile with no skills for the job propped up by a team of mostly woke activists and Epstein island billionaires. Such endorsements put them on the political radar. That's their fault, not conservatives'.
A lot more normal people cared about a Holly Golightly Twink (Dylan Mulvaney) fronting Bud Light, because, well, that’s weird and disgusting to normal people/the customer base. And it seemed like a deliberate large scale activist provocation, like the queer Last Supper Olympics opening. (It is obvious that queer activists are always on the lookout for big cultural scalps so they can defiantly parade their "perfectly healthy and normal" fisting, gelding and buttplug culture.)
~ FV
"The ‘Cracker' in Cracker Barrel is not primarily a reference to a biscuit."
ReplyDeleteLoved the photos accompanying the article.
I never thought the US would descend into full blown authoritarianism, but if allowing kids to enter middle-school without ever having seen graphic illustrations about how to use a butt plug isn’t fascism then I don’t know what is.
ReplyDeleteYou know who else didn’t teach kids about anal sex? That’s right. Hitler.
AshantiVanBuren
do you have any support for that, is this just another fake Comet Ping Pong story to stir up the crazies?
Delete>You know who else didn’t teach kids about anal sex? That’s right. Hitler.
Delete>>do you have any support for that, is this just another fake Comet Ping Pong story to stir up the crazies?
Uh do you have any evidence that he _did_ teach kids about anal sex?
Make up a rumor about child molesting and every MAGA dumbass grabs a gun like that asshole who shot up Comet Ping Pong. Why don't you sick fucks care what your president did with Jeffrey Epstein?
ReplyDeleteDear genius,
DeleteTrump famously kicked Epstein out of Mar-a-lago when he found him going after a young mark. Everybody knows that, except the democratic dopes like you who still take dictation from bitch basic propaganda sources.
Everybody but your type also knows that E. Jean Carroll was mentally unstable, fantasy prone, and her suit against Trump was bankrolled by Reid Hoffman, who was ACTUALLY an Epstein Island billionaire client. But, for some weird weird reason, this is the first time you're hearing that information. Because you are entirely misinformed and uninformed.
As for the pedophiles, they can't hide and sneak around forever when their protectorate is out of power. When their networks finally come undone, and the top players tumble down from on high, nobody will much care about "comet ping pong" anymore.
~ FV