How Italian Philosopher Umberto Eco Taught Me Everything About Western Art
Umberto Eco’s essay, On Beauty, is an absolutely stunning guide to Western Art
You got to believe me. I am one of those people who say that ‘they know absolutely nothing about art.’
Not only that but I am also certainly one of those people who say ‘that they know absolutely nothing about Western art in particular.’
Growing up in a conservative Muslim household, I never had much exposure to art, apart from calligraphy, an art form that is obsessed with the written word. However, when it came to visual art, for instance, I was as clueless as a pirate wearing two eye patches. Really. Looking at paintings would make me feel dumb as a rock.
But since I had some interest in philosophy, I was naturally drawn to art, for example, I once found out that the famous, The School of Athens painting that we often see on philosophy course slides and blogs were made by Raphael, the Italian Renaissance artist in the 1500s.
But wait a minute. What the fuck is Renaissance art you may ask? Well, I don’t know.
And I don’t wanna give a hastily Googled definition because let’s be honest, that’s pointless if you want to understand the basic spirit behind any art. I believe too many people just like me since our school days had been caught too much into textbook styles details of *facts* and *theories* (What does romanticism mean? When did Renaissance start? Which art style Picasso falls in?) which made many of us bored as fuck and lose interest in art as a result.
So where was I? Oh yes, philosophy and art. It was not until very recently that I came across Umberto Eco’s On Beauty: A History of Western Idea, which took me by the neck and made me take the whole art thing seriously and for once, finally look at it with some genuine interest.
So some ice breakers.
Umberto Eco was an influential Italian writer and critic who wrote about everything, like lots of things from language, to philosophy, to politics, to post-modernism in the form of mind-boggling and exceptionally well-written essays. So there was no way he was going to leave art alone. So he made his own attempt to understand art.
And for a noob like me, it was like a door to a whole new world. Let’s just say, it made me realize what I had been missing out my entire life.
The first most important question that Eco asked in his essay was, ‘what makes something beautiful or worth contemplation?’ And while he gave a lot of ready-made philosophical answers, I think there is more to this question especially for someone who comes from outside.
To begin, I think ‘understanding’ is extremely important if you want to appreciate art. For instance, take the last scene of Titanic, someone who has not watched the whole movie first is not going to ‘get it’ what the last scene means and why is it tragic no matter how many times he or she watches it.
Or let’s take the scene of the crucifixion of Christ, someone who does not know the whole story of Jesus and the circumstances around him, is not going to ‘get’ the significance of the crucifixion scene. It’s not going to have an emotional pull on the person if they do not first understand the whole context and story and events behind it. If I ask you to look at the war scene from Indian epic Mahabharata, you are not going to ‘get it’. Until or unless you understand what’s happening behind it, the tragedy of the scene will be lost on you.
When people say that appreciating art requires hard work, they are absolutely right. You are not going to be able to appreciate David by Michelangelo or Mona Lisa by Da Vinci if you don’t pay attention to ‘where it’s coming from.’ Without understanding, David will just be a nude statue of a guy, and Mona Lisa will just be a woman wearing nice clothes. There won’t be any artistic value or meaning or significance to it.
Take for instance the famous fresco painting by Michelangelo on Sistine Chapel which fascinate me to this day even as an atheist.
The painting is called The Creation of Adam. Note in this painting, Adam is naked but God is wearing clothes. There is a very important reason for that. Nakedness or nudity has been an important tradition in Western art and while it has many meanings, in this particular painting, the nakedness of Adam signifies his transparency in front of God. There are ‘no secrets’ about Adam, he is open and naked, and some would say vulnerable in comparison to God.
Another very important aspect of this painting whose roots go deep in Western philosophy is the idea of Cartesian division, which is the separation of the natural and the supernatural, of matter and mind, of material and consciousness. Both Adam and God come close but their fingers never meet — a succinct depiction of the Cartesian division.
BTW, why is Western Art obsessed with nudity?
As a kid, I always used to wonder that. A good chunk of Western art whether from ancient Greek or the present day is obsessed with the depiction of the naked man or woman. And I always wondered why.
But I think I found the answer in one of Michelangelo’s quote:
“What spirit is so empty and blind, that it cannot recognize the fact that the foot is more noble than the shoe, and skin more beautiful than the garment with which it is clothed?”
In other words, we tend to think that in human society, our ‘natural’ state is a civilized clothed man or woman, but in fact, it’s the exact opposite of that. Our ‘natural’ raw state is indeed our naked self, that at least is our true and eternal human condition.
I think Lucien Freud puts his motivation to draw nude bodies succinctly:
I paint people, not because of what they are like, not exactly in spite of what they are like, but how they happen to be.
‘How they happen to be.’
Let’s look at some of the collections from Umberto’s book arranged in neat chronological order, beginning with ancient times to the present day. What makes Umberto’s analysis absolutely stunning is that he looks at the Big Picture of all the ideas, thoughts and values that constitute Western art which makes it a perfect guide for noobsters.
Nude Feminity (Venus): From Venus of Willendorf discovered in the ancient cave in 3rd century B.C to 1997 Monica Bellucci in Pirelli Calendar magazine.
Nude Masculinity (Adonis): From the statue of Athenian God in sixth century B.C to Arnold Schwarzenegger in 1985 movie Commando.
The aesthetic of the body, of the form and shape, has been at the heart of Western art for at least a thousand years showing up again and again and again in almost every era.
The thing is that it all started in ancient Greece which was obsessed with ‘ideal’ forms thanks to daddy Plato (who had a particular interest in the bodies of beautiful boys) which got translated into ideal forms of bodily beauty for men and women. Let’s just say that a strong and beautiful body was an actual moral virtue alongside the virtues of goodness and smartness. And so it was almost inevitable that this value happened to show in Western art forms so many times.
But here is the thing. Even if Western art took inspiration from ancient Greek values, holding the human body to be at the highest of virtue, that was not all there is to it. The thing about Umberto’s essay is that no matter what kind of art or values you pick, you will find its traces repeating again and again throughout history which makes you wonder why there has always been a tendency to consider these things beautiful or artistic in our consciousness.
If the virtue of the human body was important, so was the virtue of human character. The thing about Mona Lisa for example, and the fact that it’s clothed, points to a deeper human characterization of the painting because the focus is entirely on her face and smile. It’s often said in art books that Mona Lisa is ‘mysterious’ and that she is ‘hiding secrets behind her’ which is related to the fact that she is clothed and not open out there.
While the West has been obsessed with depicting men and women in their honest form, Mona Lisa does the opposite, and probably that’s why it’s so special.
Modest Feminity (Venus Clothed): From Auxerre Lady in seventh centuryB.C to Anita Ekberg in Dolce vita in the 1960s.
Modest Masculinity (Adonis Clothed): From silver male statuette in Aleppo in 2000 B.C to nice guy George Clooney in 2002.
Portrait art is another important feature of Western art, the focus on a human face with all its myriad expressions and emotions and feelings is indeed central to the human character, and hence occupies a significant place in Western art.
Feminity in portrait: From the portrait of Sappho in first century A.D to Twiggy in 1970.
Masculinity in portrait: From Sargon of Akkad in 2500 B.C to Dennis Rodman in 1998.
Divine Art
After coming of Christianity, it’s story, events, and significance has been retold countless times through art. The values of divine art differ from the ancient Greek ethic; For example, the virtue of sacrifice as portrayed in the crucifixion scene is central to Christian art, along with the virtue of life, motherhood and suffering.
Mary (Madonna) and the obsession with the virgin birth
Jesus: From Caputa Treasure of Cathedral in Ninth-tenth century to The Passion of Christ in 2003.
Depictions of Heaven and Hell
Obsession with Opulence
There is no doubt that a good portion of almost every form involves the depiction of aristocracy and wealth, whether its kings, knights, queens or concubines. But what this art signifies is the virtue of opulence even though it does signify virtue of power too.
Kings and Knights
Queens and Princesses
The Natural World
In Western thought, the pondering of the natural world occupies a good amount of past time. The coming of the Newtonian world was not an accident, the idea that the natural world follows precise laws and order has laid deep in the Western consciousness.
Consider the famous painting God The Geometer:
Obsession with Symmetry and Proportions
Obsession with Landscapes and Nature:
It’s interesting to note that even in depictions of the natural world, the ‘human’ is never left out completely. The nature is always seen in relation to ‘the man.’
Nature, Monsters and the Concept of Sublime
You might have heard the phrase ‘the beautiful and the sublime.’ Coined by Edmund Burke, the sublime refers to an experience that elicits overwhelm and a kind of fear, and the fact that you are not directly confronted with it simultaneously produces a feeling of relief.
Beauty of Monsters
The Sublime Yet Wild Nature
Obsession with Lines, Cubes, and…Abstraction
It was Picasso who was the pioneer of the art revolution ‘cubism’ which was the first-ever move away from realism art, you know the kind of art with visible and neat outlines and borders that looks real as fuck. Picasso moved away from that. Believe it or not, but it was Picasso that set the stage for future generations to go down the path of abstraction.
I know many people cringe at the thought of abstract art, but that attitude is misplaced. I think Laurie Fendrich in her Chronicle essay, Why Abstract Painting Still Matters makes a strong defence for abstract art. She argues that our nostalgia for the romantic art of ancient and medieval ages comes from our want to adhere to certain grand narratives. For instance, one such narrative is the prevalence of order. As the twentieth century progressed, however, the distinction between order and chaos began to blur and it was only inevitable that this change in our values will show up in our art as well.
The Beauty of the Absurd
The Beauty of Consumption
These were some of the cherry-picked examples from Umberto’s book, On Beauty: A History of Western Idea which is a perfect guide to western art for noobs. To be fair, it is more of a history of beauty than art, as Umberto was more focused on ‘what’ and ‘why’ we tend to find certain things more beautiful than others in our artistic universe. His other book, On Ugliness, is an equally fascinating read that deals with the alternate question of why we find certain things ugly.
One rule that Umberto wants us to remember when it comes to art is that ‘history repeats itself’ in that there is a certain tendency to find certain things beautiful. If you think about it, the beauty of consumption closely resembles the beauty of opulence, even though the art style has changed, but ‘art values’ are the same.
