Rhuthmos

A travessia como gesto: o contacto com o ritmo vital e a experiência estética

Salomé Lopes Coelho — 2020-05-10T17:00:00Z

Sommaire

Este texto já apareceu em 2018 na Revista Dobra N° 2.

Resumo : Manuel António Pina chamava-lhe isto porque não sabia o nome d'isto. Já eu venho escolhendo a precária, transitória e possivelmente redundante designação de “ritmo vital”. Escolher este nome não resulta de uma tentativa de definição, é antes uma decisão operatória que permite avançar e descolar a atenção do isto, para o gesto de contacto com esse isto – ritmo vital –, e a sua relação com a experiência estética e com a criação artística. Neste ensaio, dialogo com Gilles Deleuze e Félix Guattari (teoria sobre o ritmo), Mikel Dufrenne (experiência estética da natureza), Giorgio Agamben (gesto), e com o cinema de Raymonde Carasco e de Chantal Akerman, para pensar o ritmo vital e a sua relação com a arte. A tese central deste ensaio é a de que todo o contacto com o ritmo vital é um gesto de travessia.

Palavras-chave: Ritmo, Ritmanálise, Travessia, Gesto, Experiência Estética da Natureza

I

Este filme tem ritmo, variações de velocidades. Esta música tem ritmo, harmonia. Não aguento este ritmo, a quantidade de coisas que tenho de fazer em tão pouco tempo. Os tempos actuais têm um ritmo demasiado, acelerado, mecanizado. Esta dança tem ritmo, conjuga bem os movimentos, os tempos, a velocidade, o inesperado, as cores, o som, a espacialidade; os movimentos dos dançarinos estão dentro do ritmo, estão sincronizados. Ainda que possamos substituir a palavra ritmo por outros elementos descritivos entendidos como sinónimos, nenhum desses elementos satisfaz a definição de ritmo. De algum modo, esses elementos podem fazer parte da experiência do ritmo, mas nem todos sempre, nem sempre todos. Não é difícil tecer considerações sobre o ritmo experienciado em múltiplos contextos, sem necessidade de se explicitar do que se trata – todos parecem saber do que se fala, quando se fala da experiência do ritmo. No entanto, se perguntássemos às pessoas envolvidas numa conversa sobre ritmo como o definiriam, as respostas poderiam ser muito diferentes, até quando, antes, pareciam estar de acordo. Mesmo os estudos mais aprofundados sobre o ritmo variam na sua conceptualização, dependendo da área do conhecimento ou área artística em que se desenvolvem; e até dentro de cada área – como poderia ser a filosofia, biologia, cinema, semiótica, música, meteorologia, etc. – as perspectivas face ao ritmo podem ser diferentes, dependendo de quem as estuda ou do corpus de investigação. Não há acordo numa definição única de ritmo, mas existe um eixo que agrega diferentes perspectivas. Esse eixo é o do regresso a uma concepção pré-platónica de ritmo, com a qual me identifico e na qual me insiro.

Quem nos permite conhecer outras noções de ritmo que se distanciam daquela que domina e que é devedora de Platão – o ritmo é a ordem do movimento na dança e na música – é o linguista Émile Benveniste, num estudo realizado em 1966. Cheguei a esse estudo a partir de um outro, de Henri Meschonnic, Critique du rythme, de 1982, em que o autor retoma a análise etimológica levada a cabo por Benveniste, para sugerir que rhuthmós vem do verbo rhéin (“fluir”) com o sufixo (th)mόs, que significa forma / maneira. Como afirmam Barretta, Miramontes e Zorrilla, a ideia de forma aparece ali «relacionada a objetos que tienen formas cambiantes, como por ejemplo la forma de las letras del alfabeto, del caracter humano, de la imagen que reflejan los espejos, la forma de una opinion, de un pensamiento.» (Barretta, 2013, p. 32) Só mais tarde, nos textos platónicos, ritmo começa a estar associado a skhèma, morphè ou e dos, que se referem a formas fixas, a realidades imóveis, e a fenómenos periódicos. Para Platão, citado por Barretta et al, ritmo é «...la forma del movimiento que el cuerpo humano toma en la danza, y la disposicion de las figuras en las que este movimiento se resuelve» (Ibidem). Mas o mais significativo é, continuam os autores, a associação e submissão desta ideia de disposição à métrica, às leis numéricas. O que passa a ser entendido como ritmo, depois de Platão, é a ordem no movimento, o processo de harmonização das atitudes corporais combinadas numa métrica. Por isso, tantas vezes se diz ritmo da repetição em intervalos de tempo regulares de um ou vários elementos.

Seguindo a proposta de regressar a uma concepção pré-platónica de ritmo [1], entendo, pois, o ritmo como uma configuração momentânea de um fluxo em constante circulação, mas também a própria chegada a essa configuração, no momento em que ocorre. Ritmo é uma realidade dinâmica observada no momento do seu fluir, assim como também se refere à forma / maneira desse dinamismo em si.

II

Tomando esta premissa de que o ritmo não é a ordem do movimento, nem está necessariamente associado a uma organização numérica, nem repetitiva, o que aqui proponho é uma ideia de arte como configuração específica do ritmo vital, por um lado, e, por outro, como um exercício de persistência do artista no contacto com esse ritmo.

A designação de “vital” é uma escolha baseada em diferentes encontros teóricos e nas experiências associadas ao trabalho de campo que desenvolvi na região andina da Argentina, Bolívia e Peru, em 2016. De Janeiro a Abril de 2016, atravessei a região andina, desenvolvendo exercícios de “ritmanálise”, sobretudo das danças do Carnaval, na Bolívia e Perú. Por exercícios de ritmanálise entendo uma metodologia de análise que considera o ritmo não tanto um objecto de estudo, mas uma ferramenta – daí falar-se em “ritmanálise” e não tanto em “análise do ritmo”. Neste entendimento, sigo a proposta de Henri Lefebvre (2004), que, por seu turno, se baseia no capítulo, com o mesmo nome, do livro La dialectique de la durée, de Gaston Bachelard (1963). O referido capítulo é a leitura e a apresentação resumida que o filósofo francês faz de três volumes que lhe foram enviados desde o Rio de Janeiro, pelo português Lúcio Pinheiro dos Santos. Desses três volumes não há qualquer vestígio, para além desse capítulo no livro de Bachelard. [2]

Afirma Lefebvre que a primeira etapa num processo de ritmanálise passa por experienciar os ritmos, abandonando-se o ritmanalista a essa fluidez, para, numa segunda fase, encontrar-lhes uma ordem subjacente, para perceber o que esses ritmos revelam do tempo, do espaço e da energia. Este ritmanalista é, para o autor, uma combinação de psicólogo, sociólogo, antropólogo, poeta, que escuta as temporalidades e as disrupções rítmicas em que se desenvolvem as actividades humanas e não-humanas. O corpo pensa, não em abstracto, mas numa temporalidade viva, sendo o ponto de contacto entre os diversos ritmos. Em grande medida, e escolhendo um eixo possível que agregue a multiplicidade dos exercícios desenvolvidos no trabalho de campo, a ritmanálise consistiu em movimentos de travessia – só mais tarde pude formular desse modo: atravessar o Atlântico, atravessar os Andes, atravessar as montanhas no Sul de Perú, ou subir a de Machu Picchu, atravessar o Lago Titicaca, atravessar países, atravessar a pampa, atravessar o deserto da Atacama. Tais travessias trouxeram um conhecimento corporal, como lhe chama Mikel Dufrenne (2004), que escapava a qualquer gramática conhecida. As tentativas de tradução do corpo gestual em corpo de palavras ou corpo teórico resultavam, quase sempre, na formulação da palavra “magia” ou “mística”. À falta de melhor palavra, provisoriamente tomei a palavra “mística” para adjectivar a experiência, a “experiência mística” de atravessar aquelas geografias, aqueles espaços-tempos, aquele ritmo e, com a natureza, aqueles idiomas, corporalidades, gestos e formas de vida. “Mística” surgia porque designava uma experiência fora do domínio do quotidiano, da ordem do mistério, num duplo movimento de dissolução do corpo e do eu/ego/sujeito, ao mesmo tempo que esse corpo estava inteiramente presente naquela experiência. Aparecia-me, não raras vezes, a ideia de divino, a sensação de ser parte, de ser tocada e tocar algo extra-ordinário, misterioso, mágico. Talvez “místico” tenha vindo dessa associação ao divino, ainda que divino não seja o mesmo que Deus e muito menos religião (apesar de também a história das religiões estar marcada por movimentos que apontam para gestos de travessia: Moisés e a travessia do deserto, as peregrinações a Meca ou, em Portugal, ao Santuário de Fátima). [3]

Usei provisoriamente a palavra “mística” para nomear uma experiência de contacto com algo vital [4], para que, mais tarde, encontrei sustentação numa colectânea de escritos da equipa de investigação espanhola Trama, que apresenta distintos estudos sobre ritmo e arte, desenvolvidos sobretudo a partir da filosofia e dos estudos culturais e artísticos. Os diferentes artigos abordam desde a arte chinesa (arte como manifestação e afirmação do Tao) à pintura de Paul Cézanne (arte tornada carne), a relação entre a natureza e a arte, a música e as artes visuais, etc., e, ainda que sejam bastante diferentes entre si, partilham a ideia na qual sustento a manutenção desta designação de “ritmo vital”: nas suas distintas formas de expressão, o ritmo é a manifestação da vitalidade na arte.

Entendendo, pois, o ritmo como o fluxo constante que cristaliza, provisoriamente, uma forma/maneira; a minha intuição/hipótese é a de que existe um ritmo vital, cujo contacto é da ordem da experiência estética, e que se materializa provisoriamente em formas artísticas. Existe sempre experiência estética, isto é, contacto com o ritmo vital, que assume forma-objecto de arte, em determinadas circunstâncias. Não é privilégio exclusivo dos artistas o contacto com esse ritmo vital, ele não é próprio de ninguém ou de nada, sendo que a arte, como afirma Jacques Rancière, é apenas a aplicação singular de um poder comum a todas as pessoas (2002, p. 79). A meu ver, os chamados artistas a-penas intensificam ou persistem nesse contacto. Como diria José Gil (2016, p. 25), as diversas energias que habitam o artista focalizam-se numa vontade de fazer, de criar um objecto artístico. Esta intensificação significa «entrar num estado de circulação de energia de tal modo rápida, densa e forte» que destrói padrões e esquemas conhecidos, aparecendo o texto literário, continua Gil (2016, p. 27-31), como resoluções não patológicas do acontecimento catastrófico do vazio. E se Gil se refere ao texto literário, talvez nós nos possamos referir à arte em geral. Nas palavras do filósofo parece estar subentendida uma dimensão ameaçadora e desintegradora que dará origem à vontade de criar «um objecto “especial” - talvez indefinível em si, mas indirectamente caracterizável por não ser nem utiliário nem funcional» (Gil, 2016, p. 25). Ainda que possivelmente não sejam coisas distintas, interessar-nos-ia mais destacar não a desintegração do “eu”, mas o processo de integração com um “todo”, sendo que o “todo” pode ser uma espécie de vazio, se vazio for entendido como a quietude dos pensamentos e do corpo, de que fala a meditação. Já explorarei mais detalhadamente esta ideia.

III

O contacto com o ritmo vital é um gesto de travessia. Este vazio/todo, que é o contacto com o ritmo vital, dá-se mediante a entrada numa respiração específica, implicando sempre uma travessia. Marcel Mauss (1979) dizia, no final de um dos seus textos mais conhecidos – «Técnicas do Corpo», que a conexão com o divino terá bases fisiológicas e incentivava os seus seguidores a investigar essa suspeita (Mauss, 1979, p. 122). Quando Mauss se refere ao divino, talvez se esteja a referir ao isto a que se refere Manuel António Pina, no início deste texto, ou, e é esta a minha sugestão, talvez se refira ao ritmo vital.

Neste vazio, que associo à ideia de Cosmos em Deleuze e Guattari (1980), que também teorizaram o ritmo, existem fluxos de partículas em constante movimento, em distintas direcções, intensidades e velocidades – “partículas loucas ou singularidades nómadas” (Deleuze & Guattari, p.54) – sendo que tais partículas são de tal forma divisíveis que se poderiam quase dizer líquidas. A captura momentânea dessas partículas aprisiona-as numa determinada configuração específica e momentânea, até voltarem a ser fluxo. Diz-se momentânea porque as partículas – uma só ou muitas delas – acabarão por ceder à pressão do Cosmos para que circulem, se movam, se dissolvam noutra configuração. A resistência à ameaça constante que sofrem as configurações momentâneas ou a resposta à tentativa do Cosmos de obrigar a encontrar nova ou mais resistente organização é o que Deleuze e Guattari entendem como ritmo. Nesse sentido, ritmo é não apenas a configuração momentânea de um fluxo em constante movimento, mas também a própria chegada e esforço de manutenção dessa configuração, no momento em que ocorre. Este entendimento aproxima a concepção de ritmo destes autores ao entendimento pré-platónico dessa noção.

Mas as teorias de Deleuze e Guattari sobre o ritmo abarcam, ainda, outra dimensão relevante para a hipótese desenvolvida neste ensaio, e que tem a ver com a ideia de que o ritmo nunca se dá num só milieu [5]. Pelo contrário, para que haja ritmo, haverá sempre uma comunicação / contacto entre milieux. Tal significa que o ritmo se dá sempre num “entre”. Entendemos que esse “entre” – a comunicação entre milieux – implica uma travessia. Não há contacto, não há comunicação ou toque sem travessia. Quando as partículas circulam para formar determinados milieux, quando se mantêm porque estabelecem alianças de força com outras partículas e resistem à pressão de dissolução, exercida pelo caos, de algum modo existe um movimento de atravessar. E talvez aqui faça falta explorar o que entendemos por travessia.

O conto “A terceira margem do rio”, de Guimarães Rosa (1962), abre para a ideia de travessia a que me refiro. Nesse conto, um homem despede-se da sua família, para viver numa canoa no meio do rio, da qual jamais regressa, sem que, ao mesmo tempo, tenha ido a alguma parte. O homem «só executava a invenção de se permanecer naqueles espaços do rio, de meio a meio, sempre dentro da canoa (…)» (Rosa, 1988, p. 32). Quando digo travessia, não digo ir de um ponto a outro ou de margem a margem, no sentido ou direcção a, neste caso, direcção ao ritmo vital e ao contacto com ele, porque o ritmo vital não está situado / localizado em nenhuma parte em específico. Quando digo atravessar, digo-o como gesto, no sentido que lhe dá Giorgio Agamben.

A procura de compreensão do gesto é algo que tem ocupado, de forma mais ou menos evidente, as investigações de Agamben. No capítulo «Notes on Gesture» de Means without end. Notes on politics (2000), mas também em Los usos de los cuerpos (2017), Agamben parte da distinção que Varrão faz, em De lingua latina, entre três “graus” da actividade humana: facere, agere e gerere. Também se baseia na distinção aristotélica entre praxis e poiesis, para afirmar que o gesto não se deixa inscrever nesta polaridade. Praxis designa as operações com um fim em si mesmas, que nada produzem para além de si mesmas, e a poiesis inclui operações que produzem algo exterior, que possuem um fim para além de si mesmas. O gesto seria, então, a pura medialidade exposta enquanto tal, nem uma actividade com um fim em si mesma, nem com um fim para além de si. Diz Agamben:

(...) o gesto não é nem um meio, nem um fim; antes, é a exibição de uma pura medialidade, o tornar visível um meio enquanto tal, em sua emancipação de toda finalidade. O exemplo do mímico é, nesse sentido, esclarecedor. O que imita o mímico? Não o gesto do braço com a finalidade de pegar um copo para beber ou com qualquer outro escopo, mas, ao contrário, a mimese perfeita seria a simples repetição desse determinado movimento tal e qual. O mímico imita o movimento, suspendendo, entretanto, sua relação com um fim. Isto é, ele expõe o gesto em sua pura medialidade e em sua pura comunicabilidade, independentemente de sua relação efetiva com um fim. (Agamben, 2018, p. 3)

Neste sentido, atravessar seria um gesto, na medida em que é pura medialidade, intensificação de um “entre” que não se caracteriza por uma acção com um fim – o gesto interrompe, imprecisamente, a sua relação com um fim. Atravessar, no seu sentido geral, sugere um movimento em direcção a, um movimento de ir de um ponto a outro, uma acção com um fim, mas, quando me refiro a travessia, refiro-me à operação de atravessar e ser atravessado. Atravessar implica a intensificação de um estar “entre” que é sempre instável, sendo que o “entre” decorre da relação de dois ou mais elementos que estão em contacto. Este contacto, para seguir a proposta de Agamben, não seria uma tangência, mas uma ausência de representação, uma terceira margem.

Atravessar e ser atravessado é também do domínio da respiração e passa por se entrar num estado que associo à meditação, como referi. Talvez a figura do deus da dança, na cultura Azteca, nos ajude a aproximar-nos a esta ideia da meditação. Em Dancing the New World – Aztecs, Spaniards and the Choreography of the Conquest (2013), Paul Scolieri analisa o lugar da dança na colonização do continente americano, especificamente o actual México. Sem que consiga definir uma só divindade da dança, Scolieri identifica três divindades associadas à música e à dança, aparecendo Xochipilli várias vezes como “deus da dança”. Apesar de aparentar ser uma posição de quase meditação (refiro-me à postura de pernas cruzadas sobre si mesmas e mãos perto dos joelhos), é uma posição bastante incómoda, na qual não se poderia estar muito tempo (basta experimentar). É uma posição de transição, em que o deus ou está a ponto de sentar-se ou a ponto de se levantar. Há definições da dança como esse estado de tensão e de tentativa de equilíbrio entre o peso do corpo, a verticalidade e o peso da gravidade e talvez esta ideia de um deus que dança sentado, que se instala precariamente numa posição, seja uma possível aproximação à ideia de meditação, como estado da travessia, que aqui proponho. Ainda que atravessar seja entrar numa respiração própria, que se associa a um estado meditativo, e ainda que sejamos envolvidos pela noção de a tudo pertencer e de que tudo está já em nós, a travessia é sempre do domínio do instável e da transição: entre margem e margem, uma terceira.

Seguindo a cosmovisão andina, com a qual tive oportunidade de contactar no trabalho de campo, e seguindo a sistematização que dessa filosofia é apresentada por Josef Estermann (2006), poderia ainda descrever esta travessia como o movimento de instalação na certeza – isto é, passar a conhecer de forma cognitiva e emocional – de que não há uma separação entre sujeito e objecto, que cada parte contém o todo, que contém a parte. Em quechua, língua indígena pré-hispânica falada ainda hoje na região andina da Bolívia, Perú e Argentina, não existe o verbo “ser” e ainda que exista em aimará, outro idioma da mesma região, é, antes de tudo, uma expressão relacional, (usado, por exemplo, para dizer “de mim, meu filho é”). Nos Andes, tudo está relacionado e vinculado com tudo e a entidade básica não é o ser / o ente, mas a relação, e a língua espelha e constrói essa visão. O ritmo vital, como fluxo em constante movimento que tudo atravessa, que se configura em maneiras momentâneas e volta a ser fluxo, aproxima-se a esta ideia de que tudo está relacionado com tudo e o contacto – mental, físico, emocional, etc. – com essa ideia é o gesto da travessia.

Também a ideia do ritmo como relação aparece nos escritos de Paulo Fraisse. Diz-nos o autor Psicología del ritmo (1976), que o ritmo é percepcionado e criado, em simultâneo. Para Fraisse, o ritmo não está na obra de arte, nem em quem a experiencia. É a acção do espectador que, em relação com a obra, constrói a experiência rítmica, sendo aquele que percebe o ritmo também aquele que o cria. (Fraisse, 1976, p. 14)

IV

A experiência de contacto com o ritmo vital, vivido no trabalho de campo, vai ao encontro do que Mikel Dufrenne designa de «experiência estética da natureza» (2004, p. 60-77). Esta experiência da natureza, diz o filósofo, não nos traz somente a sua presença, ela mostra-nos que somos presentes a essa presença: «A percepção estética é a certeza de uma co-naturalidade do humano com a natureza» (Dufrenne cit. por António Pedro Pita, 1997, p. 303). A certeza (corporal, emocional, racional) de que tudo está relacionado com tudo e de que a experiência estética está relacionada com essa certeza é assim descrita por António Pedro Pita em “Constituição da Problemática Filosófica de Mikel Dufrenne”:

Entre o indivíduo e o cosmos, o singular e o universal, há uma correspondência profunda, uma homologia essencial que faz com que todas as diferenças sejam reabsorvidas na circularidade de um mundo sem história e sem diferenças. (Pita, 1997, p. 305)

O que se exprime no fenómeno da expressão é, então, “qualquer coisa de comum que o mundo diz através dos objectos diferentes” (Dufrenne cit. por Pita, 1997, p. 305)

A experiência estética está também associada, em Dufrenne, ao contacto com “o originário” que fica restabelecido, de que fala também Agamben (2005), para se referir ao ritmo, mas entendamos “originário” não como o início ou princípio, mas como arché, origem sem origem:

Cuando nos encontramos frente a una obra de arte o paisaje, submergidos en la luz de su presencia, advertimos a una detención en el tiempo, como si de repente nos trasladásemos a un tiempo más original (Agamben, 2005, p. 161).

Noutro momento, também afirma Agamben: «el regalo del arte es el regalo más original, porque es el regalo del mismo lugar original del hombre (…), permite que el hombre acceda a su estar original en la historia y en el tiempo» (2005, p. 164). Nesta citação, não só se sublinha a ideia da arte como contacto com uma temporalidade «mais original», como se põe na mesma linha a arte e paisagem, reforçando também esta associação da experiência estética da natureza à obra de arte. Também Deleuze e Guattari, ainda nos seus escritos sobre ritmo, associam a arte com a natureza. O ritmo é, para os autores, uma questão de formação e comunicação entre milieux, como comecei por assinalar, mas também está relacionado com os territórios. Quando a comunicação entre milieux adquire qualidades (cor, cheiro, sons, movimentos corporais, etc.), o ritmo torna-se expressivo e desenha um território. Os exemplos que os autores dão são quase sempre relativos a animais. As marcas que os gatos deixam através do odor da urina, o canto dos pássaros ou as cores que determinados peixes assumem e que funcionam como signos que marcam o território (que é mais uma morada do que um território com fronteiras claras), para estabelecer os seus limites e o defender. Neste sentido, o território instaura uma distância crítica que não define precisamente um espaço objectivo ou geograficamente delimitável. A essa distância crítica, que serve tanto para afastar como para aproximar, chamam os autores «ritmo». (Cf. Deleuze & Guattari, 1980, p. 393). Conforme sintetiza a investigadora Stamatia Portanova (2017): «rhythm is a display of distances and proximities» [6]. Ou de travessias.

Assim, a expressividade ou a qualidade – que os autores incluem sob a designação de estética – vem antes do território. Afirma Simone Borghi (estudiosa do ritmo em Deleuze e Guattari):

Debemos prestar atención, entonces, a una espécie de pasaje, que va del estado de pancarte, es decir de señal o marca territorial, resultante de un acto expresivo, que es, para los filósofos [Deleuze e Guattari], ya lo hemos dicho, el inicio o el suelo del arte, hacia lo que ellos definem como un estilo. (Borghi, 2014, p. 62)

A territorialidade é, portanto, o acto do ritmo tornado expressivo, estando relacionado com os actos de animais e outros elementos da natureza. Por natureza – seja na experiência estética de que fala Dufrenne, na paisagem de Agamben, ou na natureza de que falam Deleuze e Guattari –não entendemos apenas as montanhas, os rios, as árvores ou os animais. Natureza está mais próxima da noção de pacha, tal como é definida nos idiomas quechua e aimará: nestas línguas pré-hispánicas, não existe uma palavra para natureza, pacha é a palavra usada para designar o território, a terra, o tempo, o espaço, o universo. Diz-se da pacha(mama) que é um organismo vivo, que respira, sente, cria. Talvez o contacto com o ritmo vital seja escutar a respiração deste organismo vivo e, sobretudo, com ele – ela – respirar. E, seguindo a socióloga boliviana Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui (s/d), talvez nesse respirar em conjunto, nessa respiração colectiva, resida a potência política de transformação do mundo e das condições de dominação, tal como sucede numa marcha, quando caminhamos juntos, respiramos colectivamente e juntamos ritmos exponenciais. (Cf. Cusicanqui, s/d, s/p)

V

A relação entre o gesto da travessia e o cinema está, desde o início, presente nas investigações de Agamben e nos seus mais recentes escritos. No já referido «Notes on Gesture», o filósofo vê nos pioneiros estudos de Gilles de la Tourette «a prophecy of what cinematography would later become» (Agamben, p. 49). Na mesma década em que Muybridge desenvolvia as suas investigações, com recurso a várias câmaras fotográficas, La Tourette usava o «método das pegadas» para o estudo clínico e psicológico do caminhar. Foi a primeira vez, diz Agamben, que um dos gestos humanos mais comuns foi analisado com recurso a métodos estritamente científicos, tendo esse trabalho sido publicado em 1886. Consistia o método no seguinte:

An approximately seven-or eight-meter-long and fifty-centimeter wide roll of white wallpaper was nailed to the ground and then divided in half lengthwise by a pencil-drawn line. The soles of the experiment's subject were then smeared with iron sesquioxide powder, which stained them with a nice red rust color. The footprints that the patient left while walking along the dividing line allowed a perfect measurement of the gait according to various parameters (length of the step, lateral swerve, angle of inclination, etc.). (Agamben, 2000, p. 50).

Com o método das pegadas, desenvolvia-se mais uma forma de visualidade (tornar visível) o movimento humano, com vista a compreendê-lo, monitorizá-lo e modulá-lo. Para Agamben, o cinema aparece, assim, como uma continuidade deste dispositivo de visualização que procura fixar e resgatar os gestos perdidos (da burguesia) e regular os movimentos descontrolados pela industrialização e aceleração capitalista.

O filme Gradiva - Esquisse I, de Raymonde Carasco (1978), sugere uma possível continuidade com o método das pegadas, para logo dele se distanciar. O filme parte da personagem literária com o mesmo nome, uma mulher chamada Gradiva, do romance de Wilhelm Jensen, publicado em 1903 e celebrizado pelo comentário de Sigmund Freud. No romance, um jovem arqueólogo fica deslumbrado com uma imagem em baixo-relevo dessa mulher a ponto de caminhar – ou de dançar, como diz Marie Bardet, (2012) –, e uma noite sonha que se cruza com ela na rua da sua casa. Gradiva é inteira e detalhadamente descrita pelo seu gesto de caminhar. A Gradiva de Carasco, neste sentido, é bastante fiel a essa descrição literária por filmar demorada e detalhadamente os pés caminhando. Não há rosto, nem mãos nem tronco, só um pé, depois outro, os tornozelos e uma saia branca cujo movimento denuncia o ralenti ou slow-motion. É tal o detalhe com que filma os pés que caminham que quase perdemos a noção de que se trata disso mesmo: pés que tocam a pedra e voltam a descolar-se do chão que antes pisavam. São sete minutos iniciais em que não temos coordenadas, a música e a imagem são nebulosas, estamos talvez, nesse momento de deposição do familiar, desorientados, nesse vazio a que nos temos vindo a referir. É pura imagem e, ao mesmo tempo, deixa de ser da ordem do (audio)visual. Só mais tarde, começam a ser precisas as imagens, quando temos um plano mais aberto, que permite ver que se trata de uma mulher (ou alguém usando uma saia), a pisar uma rocha, caminhando sobre ela. O conhecimento e a experiência inicial do filme, proporcionado por essa imagem tão aproximada e de velocidade tão manipulada que quase está desfocada, permite que adentremos na travessia, antes mesmo de a podermos identificar como tal. Do mesmo modo que na travessia dos Andes havia um conhecimento corporal que tacteava pelas palavras que organizassem essa experiência, também no filme de Carasco o conhecimento corporal parece ir antes de qualquer entendimento mais mental. Por outras e talvez mais adequadas palavras: na travessia, o tacto parece vir antes da visão, ou, pelo menos, em simultâneo, e o conhecimento é mais da ordem desse sentido ligado à pele, do que do olhar. Atravessar é também depôr a visão como fonte primária de conhecimento, na medida em que convoca todos os sentidos e opera para além da especificidade. Sabemos que ver é já uma forma de tocar, mas é no gesto de atravessar que essa amodalidade perceptiva, como lhe chamaria Hubert Godard (2007), se revela inteiramente como experiência. Atravessar é também uma forma de conhecer – um gesto epistemológico.

Também neste ponto a travessia se relaciona com o ritmo, não apenas porque o gesto de atravessar é o que nos permite contactar com o ritmo vital, mas porque, em si mesma, a travessia é uma experiência rítmica. Seguindo a investigação de Yi Chen, autora de uma tese de doutoramento sobre Ritmanálise, a percepção do ritmo opera ao nível de um meta-sentido: não é específico de um sentido e funciona como uma unificação implícita das diferentes sensações e seus contrastes (cf. 2015, p.53-67). Esta concepção do ritmo aproxima-se à articulação que Deleuze estabelece entre sensação e ritmo, quando afirma que a experiência estética só é possível quando a sensação de um domínio específico (por exemplo a visão na pintura) está em contacto com um poder vital que excede qualquer domínio e o atravessa 2003, p. 42); esse poder é o ritmo.

Vai anoitecendo e Gradiva continua no “mesmo” movimento, e é só porque anoitece que sabemos que o tempo passa e aquela não é a repetição de uma mesma imagem, mas a repetição de um mesmo movimento. O gesto de caminhar repete-se de tal forma que convoca um estado de quase transe, o que nos leva até Jean Rouch e à noção de «cine-transe» (Rouch, 2003). Não é apenas significativo que seja o gesto de caminhar aquele que se repete, mas a própria repetição em si. Em Gradiva, como noutros filmes da autora ou de Chantal Akerman, que retomarei adiante, a repetição é central na criação de sentido e na convocação do estado dessa espécie de transe (seja repetição de movimentos, gestos, temas musicais, frases, paisagens, etc.). Ainda que esta repetição assuma uma centralidade tal que exigiria outra explanação, é de referir, pelo menos, uma das suas dimensões mais significativas naquilo que será o seu papel no contacto com o ritmo vital. Catherine Bell, que tem desenvolvido estudos sobre os rituais, afirma que a repetição é uma das características presentes, mas chama-lhe invariância e entende que «seems to be more concerned with ignoring the passage of time in general» (Bell, 2009, p. 150). A repetição no cinema de Carasco, como no de Akerman, parece ser a memória de uma gestualidade ritualística, que antes permitiu a travessia e o contacto com o ritmo vital. A repetição parece surgir como resquício dessa ritualidade, na tentativa de resgate de um contacto com o ritmo vital de que se tem memória corporal.

Num trabalho sobre o gesto em Agamben e o cinema de Rouch, João Mário Grilo afirma: «For Rouch, cinema posits itself as a borderline vehicle between different worlds, also offering itself as an opportunity to pass between them» (2014, p. 128). Em Gradiva, essa passagem – a que chamamos travessia – é objecto do filme, mas é também através do gesto de filmar que se dá a travessia. Gradiva é realizado em 1978, um ano antes de Raymonde Carasco e Régis Hébraud realizarem Tarahumaras 78, um dos muitos filmes feitos durante e a propósito da viagem ao México. Nesse período que se estendeu até cerca de 2003, Carasco e Hébraud filmaram sobretudo a população indígena Tarahumara, tendo em alguns casos como pano de fundo os fascinantes escritos México e Viagem ao País dos Tarahumaras, de Antonin Artaud (2004). Ao estar no México e nas terras dos povos Tarahumaras, Carasco parece ter desenvolvido a sua própria travessia, contactando com um ritmo vital que se configurou nestes objectos-filmes. À semelhança dos paisagistas chineses, que viam na pintura da paisagem tanto uma forma de transmitir ou plasmar o Tao, como uma experiência em si de união com o Tao (Mezcua López cit. por Linaje, 2015, p. 73), também aqui o cinema surge como expressão de uma travessia e como convite ou porta aberta à travessia do espectador. O cinema surge como esse ritual que permite atravessar e ser atravessado – não necessariamente mundos, como lhe chamaria Rouch, mas – pelo ritmo vital. Continua Grilo, citando Rouch:

I now believe that for the people who are filmed, the “self” of the filmmaker changes in front of their eyes during the shooting. He no longer speaks, except to yell out incomprehensible orders “Roll!”, “Cut!”). He now looks at them only through the intermediary of a strange appendage and hears them only through the intermediary of a shotgun microphone. But paradoxically it is due to this equipment and this new behavior (which has nothing to do with the observable behavior of the same person when he is not filming) that the filmmaker can throw himself into a ritual, integrate himself with it, and follow it step-by-step. [negrito nosso] (…) For the Songhay-Zarma, who are now quite accustomed to film, my “self ” is altered in front of their eyes in the same way as in the “self ” of the possession dancers: it is the “film-trance” (ciné-transe) of the one filming the “real trance” of the other. (Rouch cit. por Grilo, 2014, p. 129).

Neste, como noutros filmes de Carasco no México (por exemplo Divisadero 77, também ele quase inteiramente filmando pés que caminham), há uma enorme persistência em focar os pés, observá-los, sendo que essas imagens não sugerem apenas a travessia daquelas mulheres, mas também e sobretudo a travessia de Carasco, como se a própria intuísse e encontrasse no movimento que filmava a forma ou espelho do seu próprio movimento de travessia.

VI

De noite, um parque de estacionamento vazio e o ruído dos automóveis que nunca vemos. Depois, já de dia, uma janela aberta para as árvores e para alguns carros que passam velozes, de tempos a tempos, e uma música de fundo. São os primeiros planos do filme D'Est, de Chantal Akerman, filmado entre 1992 e início de 1993, sobretudo na Polónia e na Rússia, no ano e meio que se segue à dissolução da União Soviética. Com uma espécie de urgência histórica, Akerman decidiu ali filmar «tant qu'il en est encore temps» (cit. por Crary, 2013, p.122 ), enquanto houvesse tempo ou enquanto fosse ainda possível encontrar e filmar aqueles quotidianos – gestos – perante a suspeita da sua transformação iminente. A travessia começa, assim e à primeira vista, num parque de estacionamento inteiramente vazio, onde só se ouve o som de carros e camiões em movimento, para dar lugar, depois dos créditos iniciais, à janela aberta para o dia. Está instalada, desde logo, a sensação de limiar que vai persistir durante os 107 minutos deste filme, enquadrado no género documentário. Olhando o parque vazio ou instalados à janela, a sensação que logo ali se insinua é a de que estamos sempre a ponto de partir, ainda que saibamos que é uma partida que não tem, nem promete ter, uma chegada definitiva, para recorrer às palavras de Jean-Luc Nancy (2016, p. 31). A travessia requer essa iminência da partida.

Não será por casualidade que os registos em vídeo que fiz durante a etnografia na região andina sejam, quase na sua totalidade, feitos a partir de transportes públicos, chegando a uma nova povoação ou deixando outra. O que ali filmava era, certamente, o próprio transporte e as suas singularidades, mas era também o que estava para além do transporte, nas ruas, nas estradas, etc. Mas, sobretudo, o que é possível agora perceber é que filmava sempre a iminência da partida e da chegada, a terceira margem, a travessia. Filmava a travessia não como objecto ou tema, mas, ao filmar, atravessava. O traveling – essa espécie de caminhada oblíqua, travessa – foi o veículo que não só filmava a travessia, mas que a proporcionava ou a revelava também.

Em D'Est estão presentes vários outros motivos que atravessam os filmes de Akerman, mas parece não haver outro em que o traveling assuma tal centralidade (e não será porque há mais travelings, esta é uma apreciação sobretudo qualitativa). É possível também que esse destaque que assumem os travelings seja devido à longa duração dos planos ou ao lento movimento da câmara que faz com que a sua presença seja mais intensa, na experiência do filme. Também a intensidade parece ser maior nos travelings porque o que vemos na maioria das vezes são pessoas em filas de espera em transportes públicos [7], o que parece acentuar a duração e a intensidade da experiência do tempo dos planos.

A fazer lembrar O homem da câmara de filmar, de Dziga Vertov (1929), D'Est é também filmado na Rússia e a partir de transportes em movimento, mas seria uma versão significativamente mais lenta. A principal relação que, porventura, se pode estabelecer entre estes dois filmes tem a ver com esse jogo constante entre as diferentes camadas do gesto de filmar: a câmara que filma o homem com a câmara que filma, os espectadores (nós) que vêm os espectadores verem o que a câmara filmou (qual delas?). É um olhar no espelho do próprio cinema e do dispositivo cinematográfico. Em Akerman, este espelho mais subtil ou, pelo menos, diferido. Temos a consciência da câmara de filmar, quando, nos travellings, vemos as pessoas filmadas olharem quem filma (o grande olho), mas sobretudo olhando como quem fita os “pés da câmara”. Esta possivelmente uma perspectiva antropomórfica, mas esta noção dos “pés da câmara” aparece ligada a uma sensação vivida como espectadora. Quando as pessoas filmadas olham para um nível inferior à da lente da câmara, a sensação a de que olham directamente para os nossos pés de espectadores; só depois pensamos que olham a câmara e, por contaminação de ideias e sensações, pensamos que olham os “pés da câmara”. Não sendo certamente experiências da mesma ordem de intensidade, fazem lembrar a síndrome do membro fantasma (em que pessoas amputadas mencionam a percepção de um membro fantasma e chegam até a relatar dor nesse membro já amputado). Sejam os da câmara ou os nossos, os pés adquirem uma centralidade na experiência do filme, e, ainda que o gesto de atravessar não seja o de caminhar, a proeminência dos pés na experiência do filme remete para a travessia.

Tal como referimos em relação ao filme Gradiva - Esquisse I, de Carasco, também com D'Est o filme aparece como uma configuração da travessia de Akerman, sendo que ver o filme é começar uma travessia própria, desde o lugar de espectador, aproximando-nos do contacto com o ritmo vital.

O homem da câmara de filmar remata com uma imagem de um enorme olho que vemos ao final e se pensarmos em D'Est e na travessia, no lugar desse paradigmático olho apareceriam possivelmente uns pés. De algum modo, quando a pessoa filmada olha para a câmara, o espectador sente-se olhado, mas quando quem é filmado fita “os pés da câmara”, é ao próprio cinema que olha.

VII

D'Est termina abruptamente, com um apagão negro. Fim. Como a própria morte, que chega sempre fora de tempo, qualquer que seja o tempo, assim termina o filme. E, porque esse fim faz lembrar a morte, mais presente se torna que o que vimos até ali era Isto: vida, «pessoas a serem», como diria Clarice Lispector.

Menciono o final do filme, para introduzir um final possível a este texto, com pouco sucesso, até agora. Estou, há mais de uma hora, a cortar e a copiar, em distintas ordens, as frases que já escrevi nesta página, procurando encontrar um final menos abrupto que o de D'Est; procurando uma configuração possível destes elementos. Sabendo que estes elementos voltarão a estar em órbita, em circulação cósmica, até adquirirem uma nova configuração momentânea, tomemos a que se segue, a modo de conclusão ou de síntese.

A experiência estética é da ordem do contacto com o ritmo vital, fluxo em constante movimento, em distintas direcções, velocidades e intensidades. Esse contacto não é uma tangência, mas um vazio de representação a que poderíamos também chamar caos. O ritmo vital não reside numa geografia ou num tempo determinados, circula no cosmos e a todos é acessível. A criação artística poderia ser o nome dado à persistência no contacto com o ritmo vital, configurando-o numa maneira específica e transitória, num “objecto artístico”. Tal persistência no contacto com o ritmo vital deixa-nos numa espécie de vazio ou de caos, já que perdemos as coordenadas perceptivas, o familiar a partir do qual nos orientamos minimamente no espaço e no tempo. À resolução não patológica desse perigo é o que poderíamos chamar arte. Todo o contacto com o ritmo vital é um gesto de travessia: ser atravessado, atravessar.

A travessia seria a condição mesma do ritmo, porque este não habita exclusivamente no objecto artístico nem no espectador que a experiencia; é a relação, o encontro e o contacto que o constrói. O ritmo é uma relação de relações e talvez por isso seja tão difícil falar sobre ele e sabermos do que falamos quando ao ritmo nos referimos.

[Pergunto-me se pode o gesto da travessia ter um final].

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[1] Proposta do já mencionado Benveniste, mas também de investigadores do ritmo como Meschonnic (1982), Pierre Sauvanet (1996) ou Pascal Michon (2007), um dos maiores estudiosos europeus do ritmo, da actualidade.

[2] Pedro Baptista, autor do livro O filósofo fantasma (2010), dedica uma exaustiva investigação à vida de Lúcio Pinheiro dos Santos, disponibilizando escritos inéditos. Refere o autor que existiam apenas três exemplares dos três volumes que Pinheiro dos Santos escreveu sobre a ritmanálise: um deles enviado a Álvaro Ribeiro, juntamente com uma carta de 1936, cujo rasto se desconhece totalmente; outro enviado a Gaston Bachelard, e que não se pode encontrar em nenhuma parte do espólio do filósofo; o outro exemplar estava na posse da esposa de Pinheiro dos Santos e terá sido por ela queimado. Não existe, portanto, qualquer rasto dos referidos volumes, cujas tentativas de publicação foram várias e infrutíferas.

[3] “Realismo Mágico” toma agora, para mim, outra dimensão, depois de atravessar aqueles lugares.

[4] Já Friedrich Nietzsche usava o adjetivo “vital”, mas associado à potência (potência vital: aquilo que transborda todos os domínios do sensível e os atravessa). A psicanalista brasileira Sueli Rolnik usa a designação de fluxo vital, para designar uma experiência extrasensorial, extrapessoal, extrapsicológica, que atravessa os corpos e os transforma. Podia recorrer a essas designações já em circulação, mas, por agora, “ritmo vital” tem sido a mais satisfatória, porque acentua que é de ritmo que falamos, mas destaca que não é qualquer forma de ritmo (e abre para a multiplicidade de ritmos e não para uma só definição desse conceito). A noção que provavelmente mais se aproxima da de ritmo vital é a de vibração. “Vibração” é o termo usado por Lúcio Pinheiro dos Santos, através da leitura de Gaston Bachelard, nos seus já mencionados escritos sobre Ritmanálise, mas tende a acentuar a dimensão da física (física ondulatória, mais precisamente) e volta a ligar a ideia de ritmo à de átomo. Esta ideia de Pinheiro dos Santos de que o material vibra e, sobretudo, de que a vibração se materializa, é muito importante para o entendimento da ritmanálise. No entanto, parece-nos insuficiente falar de vibração, optando, por agora, por continuar a usar a designação de “ritmo vital”.

[5] Os milieux são meios vibratórios, blocos de espaço-tempo constituídos pela repetição periódica de uma componente – código –, dentro da qual um certo número de relações toma significado. O caos ameaça continuamente a estabilidade dos milieux que dele emanam e a forma que os milieux encontram para se apoiarem e criarem uma ordem que os sustente mutuamente é através de processos de transcodificação. A transcodificação é a maneira pela qual um milieu serve de base a outro milieu, se estabelece sobre um outro, se dissipa, ou se constitui num outro milieu. O milieu de todos os milieux é o Cosmos.

[6] Registo áudio da apresentação intitulada «Rhythm in the work of Gilles Deleuze», conduzida a 15 de Fevereiro de 2017, no âmbito do seminário Rhythmanalysis: everything you always wanted to know but were afraid to ask. Londres. Goldsmiths College.

[7] Como afirma Crary, a espera é uma dimensão central em D'Est e essa espera é, por seu turno, «something essential to the experience of being together, to the tentative possibility of community. (…) The suspended, unproductive time of waiting, of taking turns, is inseparable from any form of cooperation or mutuality.» (2013, p. 123).

Artisanat et révolution

Thomas Golsenne — 2019-07-18T12:06:46Z

Sommaire

Nous remercions chaleureusement Thomas Golsenne de nous avoir autorisé à reproduire le texte ci-dessous PM – Cette conférence a été présentée au Centre d'art contemporain du Parc Saint-Léger à Pougues-les-eaux le 4 avril 2017, en marge de l'exposition de Florentine Lamarche et Alexandre Ovize, Les motifs sauvages (19/02 – 30/04/2017). Que sa directrice, Catherine Pavlovic, soit chaleureusement remerciée de son invitation.

Florentine Lamarche et Alexandre Ovize, L'Artichaut, 2015

Florentine Lamarche et Alexandre Ovize, L'Artichaut, 2015

Florentine Lamarche et Alexandre Ovize, L'Artichaut, 2015

Dans leurs gros vases en céramique, qu'ils ont produits au Mexique, Florentine Lamarche et Alexandre Ovize glissent parfois une chaussure, elle aussi en céramique. Étrange endroit. À qui appartiennent ces chaussures ? Est-ce à un mort, comme si la chaussure était tout ce qu'il en restait, pieuse relique conservée dans une urne funéraire artistiquement travaillée ? Quand un artiste cache un détail dans son œuvre, et que seuls les plus fins observateurs le dénichent, c'est souvent que l'on touche là à une question personnelle, peut-être intime, une question que l'on n'a pas envie de partager forcément avec les spectateurs distraits et moyennement intéressés, mais avec ceux dont le regard patient mérite d'entrer dans la confidence.

La clé m'a été donnée par Pedro Morais, critique d'art, qui a organisé il y a quelques mois une exposition à Paris, dans laquelle il exposait un de ces vases à chaussure secrète de Lamarche-Ovize [1]. La chaussure, m'expliqua-t-il, est une allusion au cordonnier de la Commune, l'artiste des barricades, Napoléon Gaillard. Pourquoi un artisan cordonnier devint-il l'un des maîtres d'œuvre de l'insurrection et du mouvement populaire qui renversa l'ordre du monde pendant 72 jours ? Était-ce un hasard, ou bien existe-t-il un lien structurel entre artisanat et révolution ? Et pourquoi deux artistes d'aujourd'hui font-ils signe vers cette figure glorieuse dans l'histoire des mouvements populaires, mais qui a peu laissé de trace dans l'histoire de l'art ? Ce sont les questions auxquelles je vais essayer de répondre dans l'heure qui suit.

L'enjeu de la Commune de Paris – dont les dates traditionnellement retenues vont du 18 mars au 28 mai 1871 – fut de mettre fin au règne de la bourgeoisie, à l'inégale répartition des richesses et à la division du travail. Mais il était aussi d'instaurer un « luxe communal », expression formulée dans le Manifeste de la fédération des artistes d'avril 1871, et que l'historienne Kristin Ross a beaucoup commenté. Le luxe bourgeois est la manifestation du pouvoir dominant de la bourgeoisie qui s'exprime à travers l'accaparement du surplus inutile de production, dont la conséquence est la pauvreté des plus démunis. Le luxe communal est tout autre chose : ce qui est ici considéré comme du luxe, c'est que chaque travailleur peut consacrer du temps à la poésie ou à la peinture, c'est-à-dire que les activités manuelles, serviles, et les activités intellectuelles, artistiques, oisives, ne sont plus partagées en deux classes de la société. Il fallait déjà, pour parvenir à ce résultat, réduire la fracture entre l'artisanat, les beaux-arts et ce qu'on appelait alors « l'art industriel » ou « décoratif » ou « appliqué ». En effet, depuis longtemps, l'artisanat qui jusqu'à la révolution industrielle fournissait l'essentiel des marchandises en circulation, était pourtant une activité décriée, surtout par les philosophes de l'art. La position de Kant, dans la Critique de la faculté de juger de 1790, est assez exemplaire :

L'art se distingue aussi de l'artisanat ; l'art est dit libéral, l'artisanat peut également être appelé art mercantile. On considère le premier comme s'il ne pouvait être orienté par rapport à une fin (réussir à l'être) qu'à condition d'être un jeu, c'est-à-dire une activité agréable en soi ; le second comme un travail, c'est-à-dire une activité en soi désagréable (pénible), attirante par ses seuls effets (par exemple, le salaire), qui donc peut être imposée de manière contraignante [2].

La grande différence entre l'artisanat et l'art, c'est donc que le premier est une activité pénible, tandis que le second est une activité agréable. On pourrait assez facilement généraliser cette assertion : avec la révolution industrielle, c'est tout le travail manuel qui est devenu pénible ; et, on peut ajouter, avec la révolution des services, la pénibilité du travail s'est étendue à tous les métiers peu qualifiés, répétitifs et peu valorisants socialement. Si bien que la distinction de Kant semble plus que jamais d'actualité : seuls les artistes semblent montrer, aujourd'hui, en quoi consiste un travail agréable. Je précise pour que les choses soient bien claires : nous parlons ici du travail en soi, pas du travail comme moyen en vue d'une fin. Il ne faut pas opposer à l'argument kantien que beaucoup de gens considèrent leur travail agréable parce que, par exemple, il leur rapporte suffisamment d'argent pour vivre comme ils le souhaitent ; ou, inversement, qu'ils trouvent leur travail pénible parce qu'il est faiblement payé. Le débat politique actuel sur le travail porte essentiellement, à quelques exceptions près, sur cette question de la rémunération du travail ; il ne porte presque jamais sur la qualité du travail, sur le plaisir ou le déplaisir qu'on prend à travailler.

Or, chez les théoriciens de la Commune et leurs sympathisants, c'est bien la question de la qualité du travail qui prime sur celle de sa rémunération. En effet : contrairement aux apparences, le riche qui patauge dans le luxe n'est pas plus heureux que l'ouvrier qui patauge dans la misère. Car tous deux manquent de l'essentiel : produire par soi-même quelque chose dont il tire de la joie. L'industrialisation des modes de production n'a pas permis, selon ces théoriciens du « luxe communal », et contrairement à ce qu'en disent les économistes capitalistes, de donner accès au plus grand nombre à davantage de confort et de qualité de vie. Au contraire, elle a durci les conditions de travail des ouvriers, enlaidi les milieux où ils vivent (les grandes villes), rompu le lien millénaire entre l'homme et la nature, et substitué aux objets produits avec soin, amour et nécessité, soit des objets de pacotille à bon marché, soit des objets de luxe inutiles et prétentieux. L'expérience esthétique de l'homme s'en trouve amoindrie ; il ne sait plus distinguer l'essentiel du superflu ; il ne vit que pour assouvir une soif inextinguible pour l'argent et les biens matériels qu'il n'aura jamais assez, soit parce qu'il est opprimé par l'inégalité sociale, soit parce que sa position favorisée excite sa cupidité.

On pourra bien sûr discuter ces assertions, car sans doute la situation s'est-elle complexifiée aujourd'hui, où la majorité des gens ne travaillent plus à l'usine et où les managers incitent leurs employés à faire preuve de « créativité ». Quoiqu'il en soit, en 1871, l'enjeu du luxe communal était bien celui-là : que chacun devienne artiste. Cela ne voulait pas dire que tout le monde devait quitter l'usine, les champs ou la boutique pour se mettre à la peinture, à la poésie et à la musique ; mais plutôt qu'il fallait reconfigurer les modes de production de sorte que chacun puisse trouver du plaisir à travailler et que la beauté, c'est-à-dire le lien entre l'homme et la nature, s'imprègne dans toutes les manifestations de la vie. Cela impliquait, entre autres, que les beaux-arts ne soient plus séparés des autres activités humaines et que les artistes partagent leur prestige et leurs préoccupations avec les autres travailleurs. Kristin Ross le dit bien :

Demander que la beauté s'épanouisse dans les espaces communs et non plus seulement dans des chasses gardées privées revenait à transformer l'art pour qu'il soit pleinement intégré à la vie quotidienne et non plus seulement l'objectif de ces excursions dans ce qu'Élisée Reclus appelait “le palais coutumier où, tous les ans, sont enfermés temporairement ce que l'on appelle les ‘beaux-arts'”. [Reclus fait allusion aux Salons]. [3]

Ainsi, Élisée Reclus, géographe, membre très actif de la Commune et théoricien de l'art à ses heures, explique sa vision de l'art communal :

Ah ! si les peintres et les sculpteurs étaient libres, ils n'auraient pas besoin de s'enfermer en des salons. Ils n'auraient qu'à reconstruire nos cités ; tout d'abord à démolir ces ignobles cubes de pierre où se sont entassés les êtres humains dans une affreuse promiscuité, pauvres et riches, mendiants et fastueux, faméliques et repus, victimes et bourreaux. Ils brûleraient tout le vieux baraquement des temps de misère en un immense feu de joie et j'imagine que, dans le musée des œuvres à conserver, ils ne laisseraient pas grand'chose des prétendues œuvres artistiques de nos jours. [4]

Il y a dans ce texte une affirmation qui pourrait paraître étrange, celle selon laquelle les artistes ne seraient pas libres. Étrange, en effet, puisque justement les beaux-arts sont définis par Kant comme une activité libérée de toute contrainte, à l'inverse de l'artisanat ; puisque tout un processus historique commencé à la Renaissance semble avoir donné aux beaux-arts et aux artistes de plus en plus d'autonomie. C'est négliger le fonctionnement réel des beaux-arts en France sous le Second Empire : d'une part, l'Académie des beaux-arts, le Salon qui en est une émanation et les subventions qui vont aux artistes qui y réussissent, dictent le goût et classent les artistes en fonction de critères que l'institution formule. D'autre part, les arts sont fortement hiérarchisés : peinture d'histoire, peinture de genre, portrait, arts majeurs, arts mineurs, arts décoratifs, tout cela produit des catégories d'artistes étanches et implique des formes artistiques adéquates ou inadéquates à ces catégories ; sans compter que ces catégories sont aussi fortement genrées, que l'accès à l'école des beaux-arts est très limité pour les femmes et certains domaines leur sont interdits, comme la peinture d'histoire.

En somme, l'artiste sous le Second Empire (et encore en bonne partie sous la Troisième République) est autant corseté par ces institutions, ces catégories et ces clivages genrés, que la femme l'est par son corset. C'est pourquoi le premier objectif de la Fédération des artistes de la Commune était, précisément, de fonder une fédération des artistes indépendante de l'État, dont les membres s'auto-organiseraient de façon solidaire, et pour privilégier « la libre expression de l'art ». Ainsi la Fédération promettait « l'indépendance et la dignité de chaque artiste mises sous la sauvegarde de tous ».

Photographie d'Eugène Pottier (1816-1887) par Étienne Carjat (photographie réalisée en studio en 1871) Crédit/mention suivant : coll. musée de l'Histoire vivante – Montreuil

Mais la liberté acquise par les artistes n'était rien sans la liberté de tous les travailleurs. Cela signifiait, aussi, l'abolition des formes les plus pénibles du travail, à savoir le travail industriel, où l'homme était ravalé au rang de machine. Cela voulait donc dire mettre en avant ce type de travail intermédiaire entre les beaux-arts et le travail industriel : l'artisanat. L'artisanat était perçu à la fois comme une activité qui répondait aux besoins de la société, et en même temps comme un travail dans lequel l'artisan y mettait du sien, y mettait son cœur. Le Manifeste de la fédération des artistes de la Commune fut d'ailleurs signé par bon nombre d'artisans, à commencer par Eugène Pottier, qui en écrivit le texte. Pottier était un artisan décorateur, dessinateur sur étoffes, dont l'atelier produisait des draps, de la broderie et de la dentelle et de la peinture sur tissu ou sur céramique. Il était aussi poète, et on le connaît surtout pour avoir écrit les paroles de L'Internationale. Partisan d'une éducation polytechnique, autant manuelle qu'intellectuelle, Pottier et d'autres artisans comme lui furent parmi ceux qui insistaient le plus sur la nécessité de hausser la reconnaissance du travail artisanal au niveau de celui du travail artistique, notamment en faisant valoir leur droit d'auteur sur leurs productions, mais plus généralement, en associant l'art et la vie.

Un autre artisan important de la Commune est Napoléon Gaillard, le cordonnier. Personnage incroyable d'après tous les témoignages, il se spécialisa dans l'art de monter les barricades. Il se fit photographier devant celle qu'il fit édifier dans la rue de Rivoli, devant la place de la Concorde ; surnommé le « château Gaillard », elle montait sur deux étages, avec un chemin de ronde et un fossé. Mais c'était aussi un cordonnier hors pair, inventeur de chaussures en latex, facilement recyclables, et auteur d'un traité sur l'art de la chaussure. Il se définissait comme « artiste chaussurier », disait que l'Art de la chaussure était le plus difficile et le plus méconnu, et réclamait autant de respect pour cet art que « ceux qui croient travailler en tenant une plume » [5]. Posant les bases du design, il voulait créer des chaussures parfaites qui soient la conjonction du beau et de l'utile, conçues avec l'idéal « du pied tel qu'il devrait être ».

Après la Commune, il se réfugia en Suisse où il ouvrit un café qui accueillait anciens communards en exil comme lui et partisans de la Révolution prolétarienne, et un modeste magasin de chaussures, qui, d'après un témoin, contenait des merveilles :

Et effectivement, c'est un artiste qui préfère rester les bras croisés plutôt que de faire de la chaussure contrairement à ses principes. S'il avait voulu, il aurait pu gagner beaucoup d'argent à Genève, mais avec son système de se refuser à travailler au goût des gens et sa prétention de les forcer à se chausser suivant ses idées, il a fini par perdre toute sa clientèle sérieuse. [6]

Les artistes héritiers de la Commune

La Commune ne réussit à se maintenir que 72 jours ; mais, dans le domaine politique, ses effets furent durables (l'éducation laïque et obligatoire) et dans le domaine des arts, l'appel communal à la fusion de l'art et de l'artisanat eu de profonds échos dans les décennies suivantes. En France, au tournant du siècle, tout un ensemble d'artistes et de designers qui participent soit au renouvellement des mouvements artistiques soit aux mouvements de réforme ou de révolution politiques vers la fin du XIX^e siècle rejeta l'art conçu comme œuvre détachée de la vie et promut son insertion dans le cadre quotidien.

Ainsi, l'architecte Lucien Magne, dans sa conférence « L'art dans l'habitation moderne » (1887), déclare :

Toute œuvre qui est l'expression parfaite d'une idée ou d'un besoin, qui est exécutée dans la forme décorative, bien appropriée à sa destination, et qui satisfait à l'emploi rationnel de la matière, est une œuvre d'art. L'art ainsi défini embrasse toutes les œuvres du génie humain, et aucune d'elle ne doit lui être étrangère. Comment en effet établir une limite entre les beaux-arts et les arts industriels. Dira-t-on que les premiers sont l'expression d'une idée et les seconds l'expression d'un besoin ? Mais toute œuvre créée par l'homme et pour l'homme satisfait nécessairement aux besoins de l'homme. [7]

On en avait assez du tableau de chevalet et, à la place, on voulait faire des tapis et des papiers peints. En témoigne l'artiste nabis et moine bénédictin Jan Verkade qui s'écrit :

Depuis le début des années 1890, un cri de guerre résonnait d'un atelier à un autre. Plus de peintures de chevalet ! A bas les meubles inutiles ! La peinture ne doit pas usurper une liberté qui l'isole des autres arts. […] Des murs, des murs à décorer […]. Il n'y a pas de tableau, il n'y a que des décorations. (Wilibrod Verkade, Le Tourment de Dieu, trad. Marguerite Faure, revue par l'auteur, préface de Maurice Denis, Paris, Librairie de l'Art catholique, 1923, p. 94).

Les plus grands peintres semblent partager ce cri de guerre, de Paul Gauguin : « Tout art est décoration » à Maurice Denis : « Une peinture devrait être un ornement. » (M. Denis, Théories, Paris, 1913) [8].

Paul Cézanne, Portrait de Gustave Geffroy, v. 1895-96, collection privée

Il faut bien voir l'aspect politique de ces considérations : abolir la hiérarchie entre arts décoratifs et beaux-arts va de pair avec l'abolition des classes sociales. Par l'éducation, et singulièrement l'éducation artistique, le peuple, les ouvriers, pouvaient ainsi espérer renverser l'ordre social et voir un monde meilleur. Assez révélatrice à cet égard est la tentative du critique d'art Gustave Geffroy, au milieu des années 1890, d'ouvrir un musée du soir dans les quartiers ouvriers de Paris [9]. En effet, explique-t-il,

on se plaint sans cesse que le peuple emploie mal son temps de repos, on lui en veut d'entrer au cabaret, au café-concert, de se désintéresser de son travail, aussitôt la tâche finie. Il est de fait que peu de gens aiment leur métier, accomplissent leur part journalière avec amour. Pourtant, c'est dans le peuple que l'on trouve le plus le goût de la profession, la fierté de la besogne bien conduite, bien achevée. Mais encore faut-il que ce sentiment ne soit pas découragé, faut-il l'aider à se maintenir, à se renforcer, à se propager. Le musée du soir ouvert à tous, gratuitement, c'est la plus nette, la plus victorieuse concurrence qui puisse être faite au cabaret et au café-concert.

Thomas Hischhorn, Musée précaire Albinet, 2004, Aubervilliers

Si cette idée rappelle ce qu'a tenté, effectivement, Thomas Hirschhorn à Aubervilliers avec son « Musée Albinet », qui devait accueillir les chefs-d'œuvre du Centre Pompidou en 2004, le « musée du soir » de Geffroy s'en distinguait par son contenu : outre les peintures et les sculptures, dit-il,

dans le Musée du soir, qu'une place soit faite à l'ouvrier d'art, qu'un socle soit donné à l'œuvre, au “chef-d'œuvre” qu'il aime et qu'il aimera de plus en plus à créer et à parfaire, en dehors de ses heures de travail. L'ouvrier, il importe de le répéter, aime son métier, s'intéresse aux matières, aux pièces qu'il manie, qu'il façonne, aux conditions de solidité, de viabilité, de sa production. Que sera-ce alors qu'il pourra juger cet objet né de lui, mis en lumière, soumis à la critique ? Il viendra voir cette exposition changeante, le chef-d'œuvre de son voisin d'atelier succédant à son chef-d'œuvre à lui.

John Everett Millais, Portrait de John Ruskin, 1853-54, Oxford, Ashmolean Museum

Mais c'est surtout en Grande-Bretagne que les idées artistiques de la Commune ont trouvé un milieu favorable qui leur permirent de s'épanouir. L'Angleterre victorienne était considérée comme le pays le plus moderne de l'Europe parce qu'il était le plus industrialisé et le plus capitaliste. La réaction des ouvriers, des syndicalistes, des intellectuels et des artistes n'en fut que plus forte. Deux grands noms incarnent ce refus de l'industrie et un parti-pris pour les classes populaires : John Ruskin et William Morris. Les deux promouvaient, en même temps, la réunion de l'art et de l'artisanat. On associe généralement l'œuvre du premier à la redécouverte du gothique en architecture, à la défense de Turner et des pré-Raphaélites, c'est-à-dire aux tendances artistiques reconnues comme les plus importantes dans l'Angleterre du XIX^e siècle. Mais il ne faut pas oublier que ces tendances étaient, à leur époque, minoritaires : le gothique était ridiculisé par les architectes et les ingénieurs, Turner et les pré-Raphaélites par l'Académie des beaux-arts. Ruskin, défenseur des minoritaires en art, le fut aussi en politique : issu d'une famille anglicane à la morale sévère, il détestait l'enrichissement éhonté des propriétaires et utilisait la fortune familiale pour des œuvres de philanthropie, pour les bibliothèques et essaya même de construire un musée populaire, le Saint-George Museum, à Sheffield en 1875, bien avant Gustave Geffroy.

John Ruskin, Vue du musée de la guilde de Saint-Georges, v. 1876, Sheffield

Ruskin associait la montée en puissance de la bourgeoisie capitaliste à une décadence morale qui se manifestait non seulement par l'accaparement des richesses aux mains de quelques-uns, la dégradation des conditions de travail des ouvriers et des conditions de vie des pauvres en général, mais aussi par un enlaidissement généralisé. La cause de cet enlaidissement n'est pas un changement de style architectural, mais un changement de manière de produire : l'abandon progressif du travail artisanal et son remplacement par le travail mécanique, sans âme. Dans Les Sept lampes de l'architecture, publié la première fois en 1849, il écrit, après avoir décrié le travail à la machine :

Mais tant que les hommes travailleront en hommes, s'adonnant de cœur à ce qu'ils feront et le faisant de leur mieux, peu importe qu'ils soient de mauvais ouvriers, il y aura quand même dans l'exécution quelque chose qui n'a pas de prix. On verra toujours que l'ouvrier a éprouvé plus de plaisir en certains endroits qu'en certains autres – qu'il s'y est arrêté, leur a accordé plus d'attention ; puis il y aura des morceaux négligés, d'autres faits à la hâte ; ici le ciseau a frappé dur, là légèrement et plus loin s'est fait timide. Si l'ouvrier a mis son esprit et son cœur à son travail, tout ceci se produira aux bons endroit ; chaque morceau fera ressortir l'autre et l'effet de l'ensemble sera le même que celui d'une poésie heureusement dite et profondément sentie, tandis que ce même dessin exécuté à la machine ou par une main sans âme ne produirait pas plus d'effet que cette même poésie ânonnée de mémoire. Il y a des gens pour qui la différence sera imperceptible, mais pour ceux qui aiment la poésie, c'est tout – ils préféreront ne pas l'entendre du tout, que de l'entendre mal dite. De même pour ceux qui aiment l'architecture, la vie et l'expression de la main sont tout. Ils aiment mieux ne pas avoir d'ornements que de les voir mal sculptés – sculptés sans âme, veux-je dire. Je ne saurais trop le répéter, ce n'est pas une sculpture grossière, ce n'est pas une sculpture bavochée, qui nécessairement est mauvaise, mais c'est une sculpture froide – l'apparence d'une peine également répartie – la tranquillité paisible, partout identique d'un travail apathique – la régularité de la charrue dans le champ uni. [10]

John Ruskin, The Nature of Gothic, Kelmscott Press, 1892

Pour Ruskin, la perfection n'est pas le but de l'art, car celle-ci peut être atteinte par la machine. Le but de l'art, c'est l'expression de l'âme de l'artiste, y compris l'artisan qui sculpte la pierre d'un édifice ou le bois d'un meuble, car l'art doit être animé, la vie doit circuler dans les formes ouvragées. La machine produit ce que Ruskin appelle un travail mort, qui se manifeste dans la répétition mécanique des formes. De plus, le critique d'art anglais moralise le travail manuel ou mécanique : le travail de la machine est mensonger, il produit une illusion, il imite une forme motivée par une nécessité organique, produite par le geste vivant de l'artisan, à l'instar de la fausse pierre qui imite le diamant. Ce qui confère la valeur au diamant [11], comme à l'édifice, c'est la qualité du travail, la peine qu'il a coûtée, la joie qu'il a causée à l'artisan ; ce n'est pas le résultat final. Dans Les pierres de Venise, et spécialement dans le chapitre « De la nature du gothique » du deuxième tome (1854), Ruskin précise l'opposition entre travail artisanal et travail mécanique en lui donnant une tonalité historique et géographique : il oppose l'Italie médiévale et la Grande-Bretagne contemporaine. Ainsi, à propos du travail du verre :

Notre verre moderne est clair dans sa substance à un point exquis, il est vrai dans sa forme, précis dans sa découpe. Nous sommes fiers de cela. Nous devrions en avoir honte. L'ancien verre de Venise était sale, peu soigné dans toutes ses formes, et coupé maladroitement, voire pas du tout, et les anciens Vénitiens en étaient fiers. Car il existe une différence entre l'artisan anglais et l'artisan vénitien : le premier ne pense qu'à ajuster ses motifs avec soin, et d'arrondir ses courbes de la manière la plus parfaite, et d'affiner parfaitement ses contours, et devient une simple machine à arrondir les courbes et à affiner les bords ; alors que l'ancien Vénitien se moquait bien de savoir si ses bords étaient fins ou pas, mais il inventait un nouveau dessin à chaque verre qu'il faisait, et il ne façonna jamais une poignée ou un embout sans y adjoindre une nouvelle fantaisie. [12]

Emery Walker, Portrait de William Morris

Le problème est donc nettement posé en ces termes : le travail à la machine, ou produit par un homme qui pense et agit comme une machine, peut aboutir à un résultat parfait, parce qu'il se contente de reproduire un modèle, de construire un moulage, reproductible et répétitif. Le travail à la main, par un artisan consciencieux, sera peut-être plein de défauts, mais il ne se ressemblera jamais à lui-même : il fera toujours apparaître quelque chose de différent, c'est-à-dire de nouveau.

Ces idées, William Morris va les développer. Ce n'est pas un hasard si celui-ci publiera en un volume à part, dans ses éditions de Kelmscott Press, en 1892, La nature du gothique de Ruskin : Morris le vénérait et tenait ce texte comme l'un des plus importants de son mentor. Morris avait lu Les pierres de Venise dans les années 1850 quand il était étudiant à Oxford. Après quoi, il voulut devenir peintre et se rapprocha de la Confrérie des Pré-Raphaélites. Mais ce n'est pas en tant qu'artiste qu'il fit carrière. Il voulait appliquer les préceptes théoriques de Ruskin dans la pratique et cela passait forcément par l'artisanat et le médiévalisme.

William Morris, Philipp Webb et al., Red House, 1859-60

Il fit donc construire une maison-atelier, la Red House, en 1859, où il conçut avec ses amis pré-raphaélites les meubles et la décoration. Le principe directeur de ce qu'on appellerait aujourd'hui ce design d'intérieur était la convenance, c'est-à-dire un rapport entre la fonction et la forme adéquat ; on pourrait aussi appeler ce rapport une certaine honnêteté, dans l'esprit de Ruskin : usage de matériaux qui ne cachent pas leur nature, et production manuelle qui ne masque pas ses défauts. Malgré les formes néo-gothiques qui caractérisent cette décoration, ces principes sont fondateurs de ce qu'on pourrait appeler l'éthique du design moderne. En même temps, Morris crée une entreprise d'ameublement et de décoration : Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co, dont est membre notamment Ford Maddox-Brown, un designer Pré-Raphaélite déjà renommé.

Philipp Webb, William Morris, Saint-George Cabinet, 1862, Victoria & Albert Museum, Londres

La firme connaît un rapide succès notamment en présentant ses productions à l'Exposition Internationale de South Kensington de 1862, qui regroupait tout ce qui se faisait dans le monde en matière d'arts appliqués et décoratifs. Les principales productions de l'entreprise de Morris étaient le travail du verre (vitraux) et du textile. Dans un texte sur l'art textile, Morris explique :

N'oubliez jamais le matériau avec lequel vous travaillez, et tâchez toujours de l'utiliser au mieux de ses capacités : si vous vous sentez entravé par le matériau sur lequel vous œuvrez, au lieu de vous sentir aidé par lui, vous n'avez pas encore appris votre métier, pas plus qu'un aspirant poète qui se plaindrait de la difficulté d'écrire avec la mesure et la rime. Les limites du matériau devraient être pour vous un plaisir, non un obstacle ; un designer, donc, devrait toujours comprendre complètement le processus de l'ouvrage manuel qu'il est spécifiquement en train d'accomplir, ou le résultat ne sera qu'un simple tour de force. D'autre part, c'est le plaisir de comprendre les capacités d'un matériau particulier, et de les utiliser pour suggérer (non imiter) la beauté naturelle et spontanée, qui donne à l'art décoratif sa raison d'être. [13]

Il faut bien saisir ce qu'une telle déclaration a de minoritaire à son époque. En effet, la deuxième moitié du XIX^e siècle est marquée en Angleterre par une tendance toute différente : l'accroissement de la production de biens produits à la machine, de moins bonne qualités mais moins chers à produire. A cela s'ajoute une entreprise institutionnelle de développement des arts industriels, à travers l'aide à l'ouverture d'écoles de design, les expositions universelles et le musée de South Kensington (futur Victoria & Albert Museum). Par ce double mouvement, tout un chacun peut avoir accès à des objets de décoration peu chers et dans tous les styles disponibles. C'est ce que Morris appelle le début de « l'âge de l'ersatz », makeshift dans le texte, c'est-à-dire littéralement « succédané ». Dans une conférence de 1894 [14], Morris décrit ces ersatz qui empoisonnent l'existence quotidienne : non seulement les meubles et les maisons sont construites en faux matériaux de placage, pour faire baisser les prix, mais le pain est devenu un produit industriel, le beurre de la margarine ; même la nature, défigurée par l'exploitation agricole et les industries, est devenue une image appauvrie d'elle-même. Le travail comme le loisir sont des ersatz : ils ont l'aspect du travail et du loisir, mais ils n'en ont plus l'essence, à savoir : le plaisir dans l'activité, et le délassement qui pacifie l'esprit. Au lieu de cela, le travail abrutit l'homme et le loisir semble lui procurer un plaisir qu'il ne prend plus dans le travail. L'âge de l'ersatz est un renversement complet des valeurs, où le faux prend la place du vrai, et où on se donne de la peine à produire de l'inutile, en négligeant le nécessaire.

Florentine Lamarche et Alexandre Ovize, To Sarah (William & Rihanna), 2015

C'est, aux yeux de Morris, la mécanisation du travail qui est largement responsable de cette substitution des produits authentiques par des ersatz ; une mécanisation qui va de pair avec le capitalisme, c'est-à-dire l'accaparement des moyens de production par les propriétaires au détriment des ouvriers qui les utilisent. Morris étudie les étapes historiques de ce processus dans une autre conférence, « Architecture et histoire » (1884). Première étape : l'artisan médiéval.

Il vivait durement, certes, mais beaucoup plus facilement que son héritier d'aujourd'hui ; son seul maître était la communauté ; il fabriquait lui-même, du début jusqu'à la fin, les biens qu'il vendait lui-même au futur utilisateur. (…) On travaillait donc de telle façon que la division du travail au sein des différents corps de métier n'existait guère, voire pas du tout. Cela entraînait un adoucissement du labeur puisque à mon avis il est pénible d'être lié sa vie durant à la même besogne (comme c'est toujours le cas aujourd'hui) ; je parle d'adoucissement, car de fait le travail était extrêmement varié pour celui qui réalisait son ouvrage lui-même et en totalité, au lieu de reproduire éternellement la même petite fraction d'une pièce. (…) Il travaillait pour assurer sa propre subsistance et non pour enrichir un maître ; mais, je le répète, subvenir à ses besoins n'était pas si pénible : ainsi avait-il de nombreux loisirs et, maîtrisant son temps, ses outils et la matière première, il n'était pas contraint de produire des objets de pacotille mais pouvait se permettre de prendre plaisir à orner son ouvrage. [15]

Ce système, qui culmine au XIV^e siècle avec les guildes et les corporations (modèles de la Fédération des artistes de la Commune, de la confrérie des Pré-raphaélites et des coopératives anglaises du XIX^e siècle), décline petit à petit entre le XVI^e et le XVII^e siècle. La concentration des capitaux et des moyens de production aux mains de patrons transforme les conditions de travail des ouvriers : l'artisan est propriétaire de ses outils et du fruit de son travail, l'ouvrier dépend du patron. Mieux : la mise en place de la division du travail permet de faire des économies (on regroupe les ouvriers dans le même atelier) et d'augmenter la productivité, mais l'ouvrier est « astreint à fabriquer sa vie durant une portion insignifiante d'une marchandise insignifiante ». Le patron, lui, ne raisonne plus en terme d'usage des marchandises (est-ce qu'elles correspondent aux besoins réels des gens ?) mais en terme de vente (comment vendre des produits, même s'ils sont inutiles ?).

Troisième étape : le machinisme, ce que nous avons appelé ensuite la révolution industrielle. Morris résume ainsi l'évolution :

Tandis qu'au XVIII^e siècle l'homme était contraint par le système de la division du travail de travailler sans relâche pour produire des objets dérisoires d'une façon machinale et abjecte mais qu'il comprenait néanmoins, aujourd'hui, à l'ère de l'usine et des machines presque entièrement automatiques, il aura beau changer souvent de travail et être déplacé d'une machine à l'autre, à peine saura-t-il s'il produit quelque chose. En d'autres termes, si le XVIII^e siècle a abaissé l'homme au rang de machine, le nôtre l'a rendu esclave de celle-ci ; c'est la machine qui lui dicte ses gestes sous peine de mourir de faim. [16]

Le machinisme asservit l'humain et lui fait perdre son humanité, ce par quoi il prend plaisir à la vie. La dégradation des biens de production en ersatz ne signale pas seulement un appauvrissement esthétique, et la dégradation de l'artisan en ouvrier n'entraîne pas juste un appauvrissement matériel : c'est le sentiment vital de l'existence qui s'appauvrit, c'est la civilisation qui décline. Lutter contre le travail à la machine et le capitalisme, c'est donc lutter pour retrouver du plaisir au travail, pour produire des objets beaux et utiles, pour donner au plus grand nombre le sentiment du bonheur. Cette lutte, Morris l'aura entreprise par sa société d'artisanat, qui perdure après sa mort et est à l'origine d'un mouvement fécond en Grande-Bretagne dans les années 1880-1900 : le mouvement Arts and Crafts. Il l'entreprend également par un engagement politique : il fonde la Socialist League en 1884 et ne cesse, dès lors, de sillonner le pays en donnant des conférences sur ses thèmes de prédilection : le travail, l'art, l'artisanat, l'architecture, devant les ouvriers, les artisans ou les intellectuels. Il croise ainsi la route de communards en exil ou d'intellectuels européens proches des idées de la Commune, comme Kropotkine. La spécificité de l'approche de Morris, à l'égard de ses compagnons intellectuels, réside dans la place qu'il accorde à l'art, une place centrale. En effet, si tous sont d'accord pour dénoncer le travail à la chaîne, entraînant tout sauf un progrès social, seul Morris avance l'art comme forme de solution. En effet, dans la mesure où une vie heureuse et épanouie réside, à ses yeux, dans le plaisir que l'on prend à son travail, et dans la mesure où le problème actuel vient précisément de ce que la majorité des travailleurs ne prennent aucun plaisir dans le travail mécanique qu'ils sont obligés d'effectuer, les artistes constituent un modèle de travailleurs heureux. Car l'art reste une activité pleinement libre, qui procure du plaisir non en vue d'une finalité extérieure (avoir de l'argent), mais en elle-même [17]. Contrairement à Kant, qui opposait ainsi les beaux-arts (libres et agréables) à l'artisanat (servile et pénible), Morris pense que tout travail, toute activité, devrait être libre et agréable, c'est-à-dire être considérée comme de l'art. On le voit, la fusion de l'art et de l'artisanat était au cœur de la vision politico-esthétique de l'écrivain anglais.

William Morris, au rythme du Moyen Âge

Même si Morris était un socialiste engagé (ce qui voulait dire, à l'époque, engagé dans un projet de révolution sociale), et s'il appelle les artistes à entrer en « rébellion », comme l'avaient fait avant lui ceux de la Commune, son héritage a été renié par la génération des artistes dits « modernistes », ceux qui furent contemporains de la Révolution de 1917.

Le Corbusier, L'art décoratif d'aujourd'hui

Chez Adolf Loos, architecte et théoricien de l'art autrichien, dont les écrits et les édifices furent considérés comme une rupture par rapport à la génération précédente, comme chez Le Corbusier, grand amateur de Loos qui en adapta le message en France et connut la fortune que l'on sait, William Morris et le mouvement des Arts and Crafts font figure de vieilleries moyenâgeuses allant à contre-courant de la modernité. Sur un point très précis, l'analyse de Loos est en effet diamétralement opposée à celle de Morris. Loos est un partisan de l'industrialisation, qu'il associe à la modernité et au progrès. La mécanisation du travail, écrit-il, va rendre celui-ci moins pénible pour les ouvriers, dont les tâches les plus ingrates seront accomplies par des machines, va permettre d'augmenter la productivité, de libérer du temps libre et de laisser les travailleurs s'occuper de ce qui compte vraiment dans la vie : l'activité de l'esprit, l'art. En réalité, ce n'est pas tout à fait ce qui s'est passé : l'ouvrier est devenu l'esclave de la chaîne de production à l'usine, l'employé peu qualifié est soumis à un travail peu valorisant et répétitif et les peu de loisirs qui leur restent ne sont pas tellement consacrés à la poésie ou à la peinture. Seuls les riches, qui ont le capital financier et le capital culturel, peuvent dégager du temps et trouver de l'intérêt à développer des activités intellectuelles ou artistiques. Si bien que l'automatisation du travail et l'autonomisation de l'art ont produit un divorce ou ont renforcé l'écart entre les riches et les pauvres, entre le monde de l'art et le reste du monde.

Les théoriciens du modernisme et les historiens de l'art du XX^e siècle considèrent généralement que l'autonomisation de l'art est une bonne chose, qui se manifeste, socialement, par l'indépendance des artistes eu égard des institutions et des commandes et, formellement, par le triomphe de l'abstraction, c'est-à-dire l'art débarrassé de toute fonction illustrative. Mais on ne dit pas souvent que l'autonomisation de l'art est, sinon le fruit, du moins liée à la mécanisation du travail pour le reste de la société et à la disparition corrélative de l'artisanat. Rétrospectivement, on peut dire que la modernité de Loos ou de Le Corbusier est une modernité libérale, dont l'utopie passait par la scission entre l'art et le reste de la vie sociale, une scission entre les activités de l'esprit et celles du corps. C'est une modernité qui profite, avant tout, à ceux qui sont affranchis du travail corporel. La modernité de Morris est une modernité socialiste, qui implique d'associer le corps et l'esprit, l'art et le travail.

On peut ainsi comprendre que l'évocation du Moyen Âge, chez Morris ou Ruskin avant lui, n'est pas un refus réactionnaire de la modernité et le rêve nostalgique d'un idéal perdu, mais bien un modèle pour penser l'avenir. On a déjà vu que Morris trouvait dans l'artisan du XIV^e, organisé en corporation, son idéal de travailleur, par opposition à l'ouvrier contemporain. Certes, le Moyen Âge de Ruskin est en partie fantasmé. Mais la lecture du livre sorti l'an dernier de Jean-Claude Schmitt, grand historien médiéviste contemporain, qui s'intitule Les rythmes au Moyen Âge, peut expliquer cette opposition. Dans ce livre somme de 700 pages, Schmitt explique que les rythmes sont partout pendant le Moyen Âge, qu'ils ponctuent chaque moment de la vie humaine : les âges du monde, le calendrier des fêtes religieuses, l'alternance des saisons, le temps annoncé par les cloches, le battement du cœur et les périodes favorables au sexe, les temps du jeûne et les façons de lire ou de chanter, les manières de travailler et les gestes du corps, rien n'échappe au rythme. Mais c'est encore peu dire ; il faut encore ajouter que le rythme est conçu comme différence dans la répétition. Le rythme se distingue en effet de la cadence ou metrum en ce qu'il ne consiste pas en un battement régulier, c'est-à-dire dans le retour périodique à l'identique. Un bon exemple de cette conception médiévale du rythme est fourni par la conception du temps : le temps médiéval est pensé à la fois comme linéaire, tendu vers un futur connu (le Jugement dernier) mais à la date incertaine, et à la fois comme circulaire, pensé comme un cycle : ce double mouvement, cyclique et linéaire, qu'on pourrait assimiler à la forme d'une spirale, définit le temps médiéval comme rythmé.

Ainsi en va-t-il du travail de l'artisan médiéval : même s'il cherche à reproduire en plusieurs exemplaires une chaise, un verre ou une épée, l'irrégularité de son travail manuel produira toujours une différence, un changement qualitatif. Au contraire, le travail machinique voit triompher la cadence aux dépens du rythme : une bonne machine n'est jamais censée introduire de variation, qui ne peut être considérée que comme un écart par rapport au prototype, c'est-à-dire une perte de conformité. C'est pourquoi, dit Schmitt, la question des rythmes « est pleinement une question politique » et pourquoi le rythme est « le lieu du pouvoir », à partir du moment où des hommes imposent leur cadence à d'autres [18]. Que le rythme soit partout au Moyen Âge signifie aussi qu'il n'y a pas de domaine spécifique appelé « art » ; car pour que l'art existe comme domaine spécifique, il faut que le rythme se soit fait remplacer par la cadence dans la plupart des activités, il faut que seuls les artistes échappent encore à l'asservissement de la production industrielle et qu'ils développent, eux seuls, le sens du rythme. Musiciens, peintres, théoriciens de l'art, quasiment tous les artistes du début du XX^e siècle définissaient l'art comme l'expression du rythme. C'était vrai – parce que le sens du rythme s'était perdu dans les autres activités sociales.

Florentine Lamarche et Alexandre Ovize, Un peu plus, un peu moins (avec Laurent Gautier), 2017

Si l'artisanat est révolutionnaire, ce n'est pas seulement parce que les Communards, Ruskin, Morris et d'autres révolutionnaires voulaient le défendre, contre l'industrialisation ; c'est parce que l'artisanat est un rythme. En effet, la révolution a deux sens : celui de changement radical, comme dans Révolution de 1789 ; mais aussi, celui de répétition, comme la révolution des planètes autour du soleil. Répétition et changement : c'est la formule du rythme. La révolution par l'artisanat, c'est la substitution de la cadence industrielle par le rythme du travail fait avec le corps et avec le cœur ; c'est la répétition qui produit de la différence, et non la répétition abrutissante de l'identique ; c'est une façon joyeuse de travailler en créant.

À leur façon, Florentine Lamarche et Alexandre Ovize me semblent merveilleusement manifester cette joie du travail artisanal.

[1] Transition, galerie Alain Gutharc, novembre 2016-janvier 2017.

[2] E. Kant, Critique de la faculté de juger [1790], éd. publiée sous la dir. de F. Alquié, Gallimard, 1985, p. 256 sq.

[3] K. Ross, L'imaginaire de la Commune, p. 74.

[4] E. Reclus, « L'art et le peuple », cité par K. Ross, ibid.

[5] Cité par K. Ross, p. 71.

[6] Cité par K. Ross, p. 123.

[7] L. Magne, « L'art dans l'habitation moderne », in L'Art social de la Révolution à la Grande Guerre. Anthologie de textes sources, dir. N. McWilliam, C. Méneux, J. Ramos, Paris, INHA, 2014, en ligne : http://inha.revues.org/5592.

[8] Cités par Marilyn Oliver Hapgood, Wallpaper and the Artist. From Dürer to Warhol, New York – Londres – Paris, Abbeville Press, 1992, p. 96.

[9] « Gustave Geffroy, Un musée du soir aux quartiers ouvriers, 1895 », in Neil McWilliam, Catherine Méneux et Julie Ramos (dir.), L'Art social de la Révolution à la Grande Guerre. Anthologie de textes sources, cit., en ligne : http://inha.revues.org/5821.

[10] Ruskin, Les Sept lampes de l'architecture, trad. George Elwall, Paris, Société d'édition artistique, « V. La lampe de la vie », p. 235-36.

[11] Ibid, « II. La lampe de la vérité », p. 127.

[12] Ruskin, « On the Nature of Gothic », in W. Morris éd., Kelmscott Press, 1892, p. 27-28

[13] W. Morris, in Arts and Crafts Essays, 1899, cité par G. Naylor, The arts and Crafts Movement, p. 104.

[14] W. Morris, « L'âge de l'ersatz », in L'âge de l'ersatz et autres textes contre la civilisation moderne, p. 121-140.

[15] W. Morris, « Architecture et histoire », in L'âge de l'ersatz, p. 39-42.

[16] Ibid, p. 49-50.

[17] W. Morris, « Les arts appliqués aujourd'hui », in L'âge de l'ersatz, p. 108.

[18] J.-C. Schmitt, Les rythmes au Moyen Âge, Gallimard, 2016, p. 30-32.

Rhythm as Original Principle of Art

Pascal Michon — 2019-02-10T21:08:00Z

Sommaire

Previous chapter

The sudden emergence of artistic concerns in a book devoted to economics sounds rather strange and outdated by our current standards. Is there one single economist who would dare today cover a field of research spanning from work to art, from labor management to dance, poetry, and music? Yet, this was not only considered as entirely legitimate at the end of the 19^th century, it was also addressing problems that have been—quite mistakenly in my opinion—put aside by modern economics. At the beginning of the 21^st century, it becomes more and more obvious that the human beings cannot be reduced to production, exchange, and consumption, and that even the most classical economists have to take into account their cultures and values. Apart from the huge influence enjoyed by this part of Bücher's book, this is the reason why we must consider Bücher's discussion concerning the arts with utmost care.

The Rhythmization of Dance (Bücher – 1899)

In chapter 6, which was also entirely new, Bücher addressed “Gesang mit andern Arten der Körperbewegung – Song with Other Types of Body Movement,” such as dancing, cradle rocking, magic spell, exorcism, blessing, and healing performing.

The section on dancing was particularly rich and attracted immediately the attention of pedagogues and “life reformers” as Émile Jaques-Dalcroze (1865-1950) and dancers as Rudolf Laban (1879-1958) who used it as a scientific basis to sustain their own artistic and ethical research on rhythm. Since the latter belong to a world different from the one considered in this book which limits itself to science, I will address their important contributions in another volume. However, it is easy to imagine the enthusiasm of these artists when they read the following lines concerning much wider and more expressive uses of the body than those practiced in the 19^th century in body exercises and in ballroom as well as in ballet dances.

The dance of primitive peoples is not, like ours, merely a movement of the feet. There are dances performed while standing and sitting, the last especially in the South Sea islands. The Javanese dancers use almost only their hands and fingers. Many oriental dances are based on knee and hip movements. The upper part of the body, the head, actually all parts of the body capable of a peculiar movement, are used. (Labor and Rhythm, 1899, p. 254, my trans.)

Instead of the common emphasis on melody and harmony, Bücher also insisted on the centrality of rhythm in primitive dances. According to him, they all were representing common “processes and actions” in rhythmic forms. Although the case was not as clear as he claimed, this comment remarkably anticipated the imminent research on rhythm by dancers such as Laban or musicians such as Stravinsky (1882-1971).

We must therefore say that the dance of these peoples is rhythmic bodily movement par excellence. Its goal is a rhythmic representation [rhythmische Darstellung] of processes and actions which in and of themselves are not rhythmic, or a rhythmic figuration [rhythmische Figuration] of activities in which [by contrast] the rhythm is not usually lacking in daily life. (Labor and Rhythm, 1899, p. 254, my trans.)

In recognizing the fully artistic nature of primitive dances, Bücher was also perfectly in tune with the primitivist aesthetic that was developing in those years. Modern man was not the only one to be capable of art. Moreover, he could certainly find new expressive resources in primitive cultures; art was a common medium that connected the civilized man to his primitive forbear.

Thus the rhythmically moving human body becomes in dancing an artistic means of expression, and the tendency in human nature to rhythmically configure movements finds its highest perfection in dancing, in which it succeeds in achieving aesthetic effects. If poetry has been designated as the sculpture of the inner life, then the dance of primitive peoples may be deemed to be a sculpture of the external life, after the latter has passed through man's spiritual center. It is true that, in addition to mimetic elements, dance can and must express feelings. But with primitive peoples, it is always the whole body movement, arranged according to certain proportions and aiming at the pleasure of the spectators, which constitutes, in an inseparable association with song and music, the essence of the dance. (Labor and Rhythm, 1899, p. 254, my trans.)

Finally, in emphasizing the inseparability of music, poetry, and dance in primitive cultures, including in certain European folk traditions, Bücher provided ethnographical and anthropological evidence in favor of the widespread Wagnerian artistic motto of Gesamtkunstwerk – total work of art.

Dancing, singing and playing are inseparable to Spanish people. You do not dance without singing a song and playing an instrument. You do not hear a song or an instrument without giving the body the fleeting movement of the rhythm. Thus, because dancing, singing, and playing are practiced at the same time, there is a limit to these amusements: the dance does not become wild jumping, the song mere shouting, the accompanying music remains simple (raw, if you want), [and this has been unchanged] for centuries, for millennia. (Labor and Rhythm, 1899, p. 279, my trans.)

The conclusion of Bücher's survey in chapter 6 was that dance, music, and poetry had grown together in primitive cultures, and that rhythm was their common source. The problem was therefore to identify the source of the rhythm itself.

Our investigation has shown us body movement, music and poetry in close mutual connection. How did they originally join together? Were these three elements originally independent from each other, first existing by themselves, as in our cultural world, and then connecting only incidentally? Or did they emerge together and were they separated from each other only later on through a slow differentiation process? And if this is the case, which one of the three elements formed the nucleus with which the others two joined? In order to answer these questions, we can start from the fact that it is generally acknowledged that, originally, poetry and music are never separate. On a regular basis, poetry is also singing; lyrics and tune arise together, none of them can exist without the other. But we already know that for primitive peoples the essence of this double structure, the song, is its rhythm. Where does the latter come from? (Labor and Rhythm, 1899, p. 299, my trans.)

The Rhythmization of Poetry (Bücher – 1899)

In chapter 7, resuming with his previous study, Bücher came back to the question of “Der Ursprung der Poesie und Musik – The Origin of Poetry and Music” he had already addressed in chapter 4 of the 1896 edition. But he considerably expanded the section from 25 to 38 pages.

To begin with, Bücher argued again that language, whether considered as words or sentences, had originally no rhythm and that poetic rhythm must therefore have derived from an exterior source, namely body movements.

No language, as far as my knowledge goes, builds its words and sentences rhythmically by itself. [...] It is therefore very unlikely that people should have arrived, by mere observation of the speech, at measuring and counting the words and syllables by quantity or intensity of sound, at arranging rises and falls [Hebungen und Senkungen] in regular interval [in gleichem Abstand], in short at arranging the speech according to certain rhythmic rules. Since the poetic language cannot get rhythm from itself, it must have received it from outside, and it is only natural to suppose that rhythmically articulated bodily movements have imparted to the plastic speech the law of its course. (Labor and Rhythm, 1899, p. 300, my trans.)

Yet in “dancing and moving games” the body movements were “subject to free artistic creation” and thus represented “nothing solid and naturally compelling.” Only “regular movements” performed during work were arranged according “temporal proportions induced by the technique itself” and “possessed their rhythmic law in themselves” (p. 300). The conclusion was therefore obvious: the very first poets had derived speech rhythms from work rhythms and, in a footnote, Bücher suggested again that it had most probably been the same with the very first dancers.

The first attempts at a rhythmic arrangement [Gliederung] of syllables and words resulted from a regular movement rhythm produced by an inner necessity (1). [...] 1) Of course, one can even go a step further and trace the origin of dancing to the habituation to certain working rhythms. (Labor and Rhythm, 1899, p. 301, my trans. – page missing in archive.org version)

Bücher then proposed an evolutionist reconstruction of the transmutation of bodily rhythm into linguistic rhythm which elaborated further ideas already presented in chapter 3. “The first step” by which the primitive man had introduced singing into his work had not consisted “in arranging meaningful words according to a determined rule of syllable succession, aiming at pleasantly and clearly expressing thoughts and feelings,” but in varying “near-animal cries” and “arranging them in series corresponding to the course of his work in order to enhance the effect of relief induced by each single sound” (p. 302). The first work songs must therefore have been derived from “simple natural sounds” as it was amply shown by the number of them composed of “meaningless sound sequences.” “The next step” had been the introduction of “simple sentences between the sound sequences” or, more probably, a “distortion of the usual way of speaking” by way of the pronunciation of the syllables as if they were meaningless natural sounds. Such songs were usually sung by a single singer, alternatively supported by the rest of the working group. “Finally,” the work song was “fully developed into a poetic creation” whose extant examples still show “that they were connected with work” (p. 303). As a matter of fact, Bücher argued adventurously, most ancient poetic creation referred to work and expressed the “feelings and emotions of the workers.” Although their content often varied due to a widespread habit of improvising, their rhythm was unchanged (p. 304).

In conclusion, Bücher argued that work bodily movements, music and poetry had emerged at the same time, intertwined in the same composite activity, but that work movements, even if they were not meant as strictly as it is in modern societies (p. 306), were the decisive factor, while poetry and music were only “accessory.”

We come to the conclusion that, at the primitive stage of their development, work, music and poetry must have been conflated into one single [activity], but that the basic element of this trinity was work, while the other two had only accessory meaning. What united them was their common rhythmic characteristic, which appears as essential in older music as in older poetry but occurs at work only under certain conditions prevalent in a primitive economic environment. (Labor and Rhythm, 1899, p. 305, my trans.)

Bücher found in the dualistic and alternate structure of the work movement composed of “rise and fall” the proof that the poetic metric, which was based on “arsis and thesis,” viz. rise and fall “in the antique sense,” derived from work. This was so obvious to him that he could not think for a second that he was perhaps only projecting the Platonic metric paradigm onto work movements.

Let us turn now to the formal side of our question, which is by far the most important one. It is immediately clear that in working the rhythmic series follow the same course as in poetry. Its units consist of single body movements; for the poet they consist of verse feet. Now, we already know (p. 26) that every single work movement is somehow a compound of rise and fall [Hebung und Senkung], withdrawal and extension of the limb or tool (constriction and expansion of the muscle), corresponding to the arsis and the thesis in the verse feet—however only in the antique sense of these expressions, which is as we know contrary to the linguistic usage of the modern metric. (Labor and Rhythm, 1899, p. 307, my trans.)

However, Bücher rejected the hypothesis of a direct influence of the body rhythm upon the linguistic rhythm which would assume a crude physiological determinism. In order to stay closer to the latest psychological findings, he thought that the “bridge” between them could be found in the sounds produced by the tools or the limbs. Bodily movements produced sounds which in turn were perceived by the workers and translated into their speech.

One might think of directly relating these dual rhythmic units to each other by assuming that the body movement has simply translated its proportions into the accompanying sounds or words by making the word ictus coincide with the moment of the highest muscle effort. In fact, in the accompaniment of a vocal work process, the mutual relation of body movement and lyrics has [certainly] been fashioned in some cases in this way (for instance in the little miller song of Lesbos). But the rhythm of the movement and that of the language are separated from each other by such great a gap that one [cannot] derive directly one from the other. Rather, we must find a bridge between them and we find it in the tones already mentioned in the second chapter (p. 28), which result in many works from the contact of the tool or the limb with the material itself. The effect of these working noises, insofar as they have a rhythmical course of their own or are obtained through the cooperation of several workers, is undoubtedly a musical one. (Labor and Rhythm, 1899, p. 307-308, my trans.)

This circuit explained, he argued, why we could easily retrieve the most common kinds of poetic foot classified by the Ancients in various present-day works. In a spectacular inversion of cause and consequence, Bücher thus analyzed the sounds produced by a range of manual activities with the help of the traditional metric categories and fallaciously concluded that those categories should have derived from these activities.

This is how we arrive to the basic forms of work movement: beating, pounding, rubbing with pressure (scraping, grinding, squeezing). Only the first two are sufficiently clearly demarcated by the short and clear-cut sound they produce and by the spatial course of the motion itself, to produce a musical effect through their mere rhythmical form. If the human voice is here added, then it only needs to follow or accompany the sound of the work itself by raising and lowering, or stretching and shortening the sound. So we shall have to pay attention to these pounding and beating rhythms [diese Stampf- und Schlagrhythmen], and indeed we find here again easily the simplest meters of the Ancients. The iamb [◡ —] and trochee [— ◡] are ramming mass [sind Stampfmasse – probably: produced by ramming mass P.M.]: a weak and a strong foot; the spondee [— —] is a beat meter [ist ein Schlagmetrum], everywhere easily recognizable where two hands are knocking in time [im Takte]; dactyl [— ◡ ◡] and anapest [◡ ◡ —] are hammer meters [Hammermetren] that can still be observed in every village smithy, where the worker precedes or follows each blow on the incandescent iron with two short blows on the anvil. The blacksmith calls this “to let the hammer sing.” Finally, if you want to go farther, you can observe the three paeonic feet on every threshing floor or on the streets of our cities, where three stone-cutters hammer the paving stones in time [im Takt] with handheld pile drivers. Depending on the varying exertion of force of the individuals, and the height of fall of the iron pile drivers, a cretic [— ◡ —], a bacchius [◡ — —], or an antibacchius [— — ◡] comes about. (Labor and Rhythm, 1899, p. 310-311, my trans.)

The Rhythmization of Music (Bücher – 1899)

Music was the last art to become autonomous. For millennia, dance, poetry, and music have only been elements in the same compound artistic expression derived from work movements. Yet, they were not of the same importance: dance and poetry were still largely dominant while music remained in a subservient position. Bücher supported his claim by citing ethnographic observations drawn from the Malinke, the Bambara, the Maori, and the Iroquois concerning agricultural festivals, or the return from hunting, fishing, or war (p. 313-316). In primitive cultures, “the tune cannot exist for itself.”

But the connection between body movement and bound speech [gebundener Rede] is so firm that the tune cannot exist for itself. On the contrary, it involves the working movements, elaborates further its rhythmic-artistic side while the economic-technical side withers away, and thus those widespread danced pantomime emerge, the best of which is meant to be used in the service of the gods. (Labor and Rhythm, 1899, p. 313, my trans.)

Other evidence drawn, this time, from the Rig-Veda (c. 1500 BC–1200 BC) and the Homeric epics (800–650 BC) showed that dance (or ceremonial walking) and poetry were central in the religious life of the Ancients. The tune was unimportant compared to the rhythm which was directly derived from “the ‘work' of the priests and worshippers.”

And so, a great part of religious poetry seems to have originally been closely connected with the ritual movements required by the worship of the gods, the “work” of the priests and worshippers. Indeed, rhythmic movement of the body and accompanying vocal are so inextricably mingled at this stage of development that they are expressed by the Greeks with the same word (μολπή). The great role which dance and ceremonial walking played in their older rituals, the number of symbolic acts accompanied by choral songs, which marked not only the service of Demeter but also that of Dionysus, need not be further described here. But it must be remembered that often in daily life, work and worship merged almost imperceptibly into each other. (Labor and Rhythm, 1899, p. 317-318, my trans.)

When, due to human development, the compound of dance, poetry, and music evolved into an artistically elaborated form, at first it did not split into different arts. All of them were still performed together in the first dramatic representations.

Once entered into the higher experience of the celebration, the threefold formation of body movement, music and poetry, which was naturally derived from work, experiences a purely artistic elaboration. The same may first be seen in the richer figuration of body movements, then in the more substantial nature of the lyrics and their melodies. Finally, what used to be the mere imitation of a labor, becomes the representation of a whole human destiny that can no longer be fully illustrated by the sheer mimic of the dancing choir. The actor joins in, or perhaps more correctly said: the choir master becomes an actor, and thus the Attic drama emerges. (Labor and Rhythm, 1899, p. 320, my trans.)

Bücher was not very specific about the period in which the separation of instrumental music from the drama occurred. He only mentioned “in historical time.” He did not either elaborate on the translation of rhythm and tune from work to instrumental music as he had done with poetry, probably because the matter was too obvious to him to deserve special attention. But, echoing Wagner's success in the second half of the 19^th century, he recalled instead the latter's pursuit of a better connection between movement, poetry and tune rhythms.

That their separation has taken place only in historical time is well known. [Yet] it has never been completely achieved. Indeed, in the musical drama of Richard Wagner we have experienced a reconnection with the earliest stages of this development, which also reveals itself as a “Renaissance” in that it demands a rhythmic arrangement [rhythmische Gestaltung] of the movements of the actor-singers. (Labor and Rhythm, 1899, p. 321-322, my trans.)

As far as lyric and epic poetry were concerned, the emancipation of music, Bücher noticed, may have occurred at an earlier stage. As a matter of fact, in such instances, the poetic content was less significant than its rhythmic and melodic form. To substantiate his claim, Bücher cited ethnographic observations made in the Samoa islands, that he daringly associated with other evidence drawn from the European modern tradition.

The differentiation of lyric and epic poetry takes place somewhat differently. Since the older work chants have no fixed text, but are improvised according to the time and the opportunity, the poem itself cannot reach an independent existence for the time being. Rather, it is the musical part of the old working process, which first reaches a separate existence: the melody. Hagen, for instance, records in Upolu [Samoa] such a lyric-less melody with the remark: “The lyrics of the song are improvised and refer to events that have taken place recently.” Thus, with this emancipated melody, the word is by no means solidly united with the tune, and it stayed that way for a long time. Traces of this condition can be found in many of our older folk songs which are to be sung “to a familiar tune.” (Labor and Rhythm, 1899, p. 322, my trans.)

Bücher then gave some consideration to the emergence and improvement of music instruments, first the percussion, “above all, drum and kettle drum, gong and tam-tam, sound slats and sticks, rattles and noisemakers of various kinds” (p. 324). In a second stage, the strings were derived from the bow, and the winds, which “seem to be of a more recent origin and, incidentally, are quite retarded among primitive peoples,” from the pipe and whistle (p. 325). This evidence corroborated the long-lasting primacy of rhythm over melody.

The most common [wind instruments] are the chiefly rhythmic flute and pipe whistle. For the ancient Greeks, the flute was first and foremost a rhythmical and accompaniment instrument [in erster Linie Taktierungs- und Begleitungsinstrument]. (Labor and Rhythm, 1899, p. 325, my trans.)

In parallel with the development of new and more sophisticated instruments, lyric poetry underwent a four-stage development which led to the final separation of poetry and music. First, it emerged “with the popular form of the dance song” derived “from the third genre of our working song.” The lyrics still had to follow the rhythm given by the movements of the dancer and the musical instruments.

Its special story begins everywhere, where we can trace it back far enough, with the popular form of the dance song, which has evolved from the third genre of our working songs, so that the body movements of the dancers and the accompanying musical instrument give the rhythm that the lyrics, extemporaneously associated with the dance, have to follow. (Labor and Rhythm, 1899, p. 327, my trans.)

In the second stage, the lyrics began to detach themselves from the dance and the melody to become independent, although still under the rule of the rhythm.

The second stage of the development shows us music-accompanied vocals [already] detached from the dance. The musical sense has meanwhile developed sufficiently to independently achieve the transmission of existing melodies and the creation of new ones. The word is still intimately connected with the air but in such a way that the latter is now stronger than the former. The air is suggested by an instrument or at least the beat [der Takt] of the tune indicated with the hands. (Labor and Rhythm, 1899, p. 328, my trans.)

In the third and fourth stages, pure poetry devoid of melody and pure instrumental music devoid of lyrics parted from each other, the former being based “only on the word rhythm” and the latter on its particular “tone-rhythm.” Similarly, epic poetry began to separate from musical rendition “as soon as it was written down” (p. 331).

The third stage begins with the disappearance of the musical accompaniment. Lyric poetry still produces songs but they are composed to known melodies before going into larger use. It is the period of the folk song [des Volksliedes] in the usual sense of this expression. Only the fourth stage yields the actual lyrical poetry. A divorce takes place: on the one hand, there arises the pure poem (without melody and based only on the word rhythm), the “bound speech” [die “gebundene Rede”]; on the other, the pure instrumental music (which has outgrown the word meaning). Thus the poet and the composer often separate from each other and both from the reciter and the performing musician. The division of labor is carried out as fully as possible. With the separate existence of lyric poetry and music, the possibility of a separate development is made possible for both. Each of them perfects its technique for itself and uses its particular means to the utmost. Finally both arrive at forms that hardly hint at the former community. (Labor and Rhythm, 1899, p. 329, my trans.)

In a footnote, Bücher explained that this development scheme could be checked, for instance, against the development of the Ancient Greek lyric.

The first stage is represented by choral poetry with its hymns, paeans, dithyrambs, prosodies, partheneia, hyporchemata, and so on, all of which conform to the rhythmic demands of the round dance. As a representative of the second stage we find the melic poetry which is sung only with musical accompaniment. In Greece both become early artistic forms, while they develop elsewhere only into popular tunes. In the last stage of the development, the song merely sung (without accompaniment) finally emerges as well as, on the one hand, the independent music (ψιλὴ αὔλησις, ψιλὴ χιθάρισις), and, on the other hand, the poem merely uttered (ψιλὴ ποίησις). (Labor and Rhythm, 1899, p. 329, n. 1, my trans.)

In addition to the evolutionist account of the emergence of the rhythmized labor, Bücher thus provided a reconstruction of the origin of the three main “Künste der Bewegung – arts of movement,” as he called them. Dance, poetry, and music had all derived, more or less directly, from the bodily movements and songs of working people.

By our current standards, this reconstruction could naturally be deemed speculative and ill-founded. Yet it fitted perfectly with the strong interest that had already developed for several decades in history of art concerning the rhythm in “die Künste der Ruhe – the arts of silence”: architecture, sculpture, painting, and ornamentation. It also anticipated the controversy between Riegl and Schmarsow that was soon to break out.

It above all introduced into economics questions that are today quite unfortunately disregarded by contemporary specialists. Human beings were not only producers, traders, and consumers, they also enjoyed sound, bodily movement, and speech, particularly when those were endowed with rhythm. This was the part of human life that Bücher wanted both to defend from the invasion by modern industry and capitalism, and promote as a resource for improving modern life and easing social tensions.

Next chapter

Rhythm as Aesthetic Category (Part 1)

Pascal Michon — 2019-01-01T09:00:00Z

Sommaire

Previous chapter

Let us turn now to the art history in the 19^th century. As we already noticed, rhythm became a very important theoretical tool for aesthetics in German speaking countries, where it widely spread until WW1 and remained essential in a number of discussions during the first half of the 20^th century. According to Hermann Russack, who is certainly quite trustworthy on this subject, it was introduced in German research by the first great German art historians, Karl Schnaase and Franz Kugler, as soon as the 1840s and 1850s (Russack, 1910, p. 7). It developed eventually with Gottfried Semper and, to a much more limited extent, the Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt. I will start with Schnaase's groundbreaking contribution.

Rhythm as Harmonious Arrangement (Schnaase – 1843-1850)

Karl Schnaase (1798-1875) was a German art historian and also a jurist. When he was a student, he attended the lectures of Hegel in Heidelberg and Berlin in 1817-1818. From 1843 to 1864, he published one of the first complete—from the 19^th century-viewpoint—histories of art, Geschichte der bildenden Künste – History of the Fine Arts. Under Hegel's influence, he considered art history as aesthetically reflecting the development of the Human Spirit through the history of the various peoples (Völker) (vol. 1, p. IX-X) but Schnaase wanted to reintroduce in it a concern for form that was lacking in Hegel's account of art which gave the privilege to thought and subject matter.

Two volumes, the first on Indian, Babylonian, Persian, Phoenician, Jewish, and Egyptian art (vol. 1), the second, on Greek and Roman art (vol. 2), appeared in 1843; one on early Christian (until Carolingian times) and Islamic art in 1844 (vol. 3); two volumes on what Schnaase called the “Real Middle Ages” in 1850 (vol. 4.1) and 1854 (vol. 4.2); one on Gothic style in 1856 (vol. 5); one on the late Middle Ages in 1861 (vol. 6); and the last one on medieval Italian art in 1864 (vol. 7). The series on Middle Ages was simultaneously numbered from vol. 1 to 5.

As we will see, Schnaase used the term rhythm first in the traditional acceptation inspired by the spatial and mathematical Vitruvian-Albertian definition. As Russack rightly noted, it was then defined as “rhythmische Anordnung – rhythmic arrangement,” or “rhythmisches Verhältnis – rhythmic relationship” (1910, p. 10) and implied “the necessary connection of all parts of a whole” (1910, p. 12), sometimes arranged according a common size unit (1910, p. 13).

In many instances, Schnaase also used it in a poetic sense—partly as this term was traditionally understood in the first half of the 19^th century as a succession of feet, partly in a quite innovative manner based on a concern for sound and rhyme. Surprisingly, he did not often mention the musical acceptation as succession of measure.

Lastly, Schnaase was probably one of the first to introduce into architecture a third use of the term rhythm defined, this time, as “rhythmischer Wechsel – rhythmic alternation,” or “rhythmische Wiederkehr – rhythmic repetition” (1910, p. 10). This third use was in tune with the more modern emphasis on time, repetition, and regularity, although, due probably to a humanist education, he translated this new concept from poetry and music whithout ever mentioning medicine.

A thorough survey of the occurrences of the terms “Rhythmus – rhythm,” “rhythmisch – rhythmic,” and “Eurhythmie – Eurhythmy” in Schnaase's History of the Fine Arts shows the slow penetration of the third acceptation into art history. I recorded in the following table the number of uses in “Vitruvian” sense (Vitr.), “Poetic-or-Musical” sense (Poe.-Mus.), and entirely new “Alternation-or-Repetition” sense (Alter.-Repeti.). The last column shows the ratio between new and Vitruvian uses (A-R/V). The latter undergoes a significant change around 1850. From 1843 to 1850, it remains below zero (except for 1844), the number of the newest uses is thus inferior to that of the traditional ones. Instead, from 1854 to 1864, the ratio becomes superior to zero: traditional uses then become less numerous than the new ones.

Vol.	Pub.	Period	Vitr.	Poe.-Mus.	Alter.-Repeti.	Ratio A.-R./V.
1	1843	Oriental Antiquity	1	2	0	0
2	1843	Greek and Roman Antiquity	4	1	2	0.5
3	1844	Early Christianity and Islam	0	5	3	–
4.1	1850	“Real Middle Ages”	17	1	11	0.65
4.2	1854	“Real Middle Ages”	9	0	14	1.56
5	1856	Gothic Style	8	0	9	1.12
6	1861	Late Middle Ages	3	0	6	2
7	1864	Medieval Italian Art	2	0	3	1.5

In addition to this general trend, this table shows a steady use of the Vitruvian acceptation, except in vol. 3 (Early Christianity and Islam) from which it is completely absent—I will come back to this exception below. The latter reaches two maxima, as expected in the second volume dedicated to Greek and Roman Antiquity, and less expectedly in the fourth and fifth devoted to the “Real Middle Ages.”

In order to better understand the implications of this spread, let us take as example the section in volume 4.1 where Schnaase compared the “rhythm of the ground plan” in early basilicas and in Romanesque and Gothic churches. According to him, the basilica's ground plan lacked “inner necessary connection.”

The basilica consisted of a three- or five-aisled long-house, a broad transept and an apse behind it, and thus contained the necessary divisions for the liturgical purposes and for the assembly of the great congregation. But these parts were arbitrarily joined to each other, without inner necessary connection [ohne innern nothwendigen Zusammenhang]. (History of the Fine Arts, vol.4.1, 1850, p. 127-128, my trans.)

Instead, the ground plan of later Romanesque churches was designed around a central square by addition of spaces measured according a common standard.

This [the inner necessary connection] required, above all, a central place, from which the external parts would radiate and in which they would meet. Therefore a square was assumed in the middle of the whole, the side of which determined the width of the central nave, the transept arms, and the choir space, and thus contained the standard of all the parts. (History of the Fine Arts, vol.4.1, 1850, p. 128, my trans.)

The choir, the transept, the nave, and the side aisles were all proportionate extensions of the central square—a characteristic which, by the way, was later opposed to Wittkower's claim concerning the novelty of the design of S. Maria Novella church by Alberti in the 15^th century.

The choir was extended to give it both external and liturgical independence, however not by placing the apse directly on the central square, but by separating it by an antechamber of the same size. The church comprised a reiteration of the square in the central nave and a simple replication in each arm of the transept. Soon the distance between the pillars and the width of the side aisles, both of which had previously been unstable, were also regulated, and each determined to half the width of the central nave, so that the aisles now also consisted of squares [one quarter the size of the central ones], so that beside each square of the main nave there were on each side two squares, i.e. on both sides four, which together equaled the surface of the central one. This rhythmic relation was also indicated in the nave by the pillars, showing by their distance the width of the aisles, and at the same time on every third pillar the width of the main square, and thus of the central nave itself. Similarly, there was a rhythmic relation between the nave and the transept for, just as the nave connected its aisles through the central square, the latter again expanded through the transept out of the outer wall of the nave. (History of the Fine Arts, vol.4.1, 1850, p. 129, my trans.)

In Gothic churches, even if “the severity of those rhythmic relationships” was somehow soften “by subtle deviations,” Schnaase found the same kind of proportionate structuring of space.

In the Gothic style, those rhythmic relationships were found to be too severe and were softened by subtle deviations. But essentially, not only the shape of the cross, but also the given relation of the parts, persisted, and especially in certain earlier buildings it is emphasized with great strength and distinctness. (History of the Fine Arts, vol.4.1, 1850, p. 130, my trans.)

In short, the typically Romantic fondness for the Middle Ages, which motivated Schnaase, did not lead to the suppression of the Ancient-and-Renaissance concept of eurhythmy, which still supported a great number of comments and arguments.

Rhythm as Arabesque and Rhyme (Schnaase – 1844)

The second noticeable phenomenon which manifests itself in our occurrence table is a sizeable use of the term rhythm according to its poetic and, to a lesser extent, musical sense, which reaches its maximum in the volume dedicated to Islamic and early Christian-Germanic arts published in 1844, before surprisingly disappearing in those published between 1854 and 1864, to the apparent benefit of the third sense. Let us see if we can account for these changes.

Schnaase's account of Islamic art was organized according a repeated change of scale. First, he saw in the Arab city skyline a typical form, springing from the deepest part of the people's mind, and translating into architecture and urban design a “melancholic rhythm of eternal recurrence,” a “monotonous movement with slight rising and lowering,” sometimes interrupted by a “sudden upswing without mediating transition” of a minaret.

We can already perceive in the superficial views of their cities a common character of the Oriental-Mohammedan architecture. In addition to the flat roofs, the uniformity of which is lifted rather than interrupted by low domes, like those of a field of molehills, the thin minarets stand in greater or lesser numbers, like slender sticks, standing out in the pure eastern sky. In this picture we already have the basic character of oriental architecture: monotonous movement [einförmige Fortbewegung] with slight rising and lowering [Heben und Senken], then sudden upswing without mediating transition, this contrast being weakened by frequent repetition and participating in the melancholic rhythm of eternal recurrence [in den melancholischen Rhythmus ewiger Wiederkehr]. (History of the Fine Arts, vol. 3, 1844, p. 329-330, my trans.)

A few pages below, Schnaase noticed that in the buildings themselves, successions of columns and arches were often used but without any common “measure,” i.e. without Vitruvian eurhythmy.

Here, especially in the open court, which is essential to Southern and Oriental privacy, columns and arches are to be found. Both are [yet] of very different kinds; it is impossible to think of certain orders of columns, of established relations between the individual parts; they alternate without [common] measure [sie wechseln ohne Maass]. (History of the Fine Arts, vol. 3, 1844, p. 330, my trans.)

However, this lack of eurhythmy was far, in Schnaase's opinion, from implying a lack of beauty. On the contrary, it opened unto a new aesthetic freedom which found its highest expression in the entirely novel rhythm of the ornamental arabesque covering the walls overhanging pillars and columns—which, one more hint of the indifference towards the Ancient norm of eurhythmy, happened to be “undivided by architectural elements.”

Over the pillars and arches then rises a high wall, undivided by any architectural elements, but which is lavishly covered with more or less protruding or recessing ornaments made of stucco or painted. These arabesques, as they have been called because of their refinement by the Arabs, never consist of imitations of natural objects; they only occasionally remind of plant forms, never of animals, and in most cases they show only highly artificial and tasteful entanglements of straight or curved lines or bands. (History of the Fine Arts, vol. 3, 1844, p. 330, my trans.)

The intricate patterns and interlaced lines of the arabesque, with their supple oscillations and endless repetition were—just as the arabesques in conversation or fairy-tales, Schnaase added—another “genial” expression of the Arab mind.

There is scarcely any greater harmony [Uebereinstimmung] than that of the arabesques in the conversations by which the wandering Arabs shorten the hours of rest, the rich and the women the voluptuous boredom of the harem. The charming, fantastic fairy-tale, with its astounding wonders and unexplained relationships, forms the basis; it is the most genial expression of this spirit, which derives from the deepest nature of the people. (History of the Fine Arts, vol. 3, 1844, p. 447, my trans.)

Finally, Arabic poetry provided with its particular use of rhyme what probably was the finest rhythmic form directly springing from the people's mind. As its urban, architectural, and ornamental counterparts, the early Arabic poetry embodied supple rhythms based on repetition but excluding in any event any mechanical regularity. It made the language flow in “artificial fountains of bizarre and surprising shapes” yet moving “between these obstacles with admirable ease and grace.”

Even poetry follows this form. From an early age, it uses rhyme, the play of recurrent sound harmony, but handles it in a peculiar way, in which it sometimes introduces, as a surprise, into the unbounded speech, a mere accidental element; sometimes makes the same word constantly return while changing its meaning; sometimes develops in all sorts of artistry. [...] [The poetry] does not flow like a full stream from its natural source, but springs in artificial fountains of bizarre and surprising shapes. In its own way, however, Arab poetry is unsurpassable; it moves between these obstacles with admirable ease and grace. (History of the Fine Arts, vol. 3, 1844, p. 447-448, my trans.)

Schnaase found in Arab poetic rhythm the same blend of recurrence, slight inflections, and sudden changes, as in the skyline of the Arab city and the invasive use of arabesque in building as well as craft ornamentation. All of them sprang from a deep “musical sense” which gave a prominent role to “the pleasure of relationships, of recurrence, of rhythmic and harmonic interlacing.”

The use of rhyme seems to indicate a musical sense of the [Arab] mind, and many other peculiarities in the art of Mohammedan art might lead us to suppose that they must have particularly favored music. [...] In the arabesques and in the sound plays of the rhyme there is so much that is related to music; the pleasure of relationships, of recurrence, of rhythmic and harmonic interlacing. Music was probably designated as the beauty of change, and the same name can be used for those plays with rime and design. (History of the Fine Arts, vol. 3, 1844, p. 448, my trans.)

In the last chapter of his book (“Die Richtung der karolingischen Kunst – The Direction of the Carolingian Art”), Schnaase compared the Islamic art with that of the early Germanic peoples. Since both were expressions of a general movement of spiritualization of the human cultures, analogous rhythmic forms could also be found in early Germanic peoples' art. Although the Ancient Germans did not erect steady buildings and did not use either rhyme but alliteration (vol. 3, p. 540), they massively used the arabesque in their ornaments and jewels—if in a more naturalistic and “architectural” manner different from the abstract and purely decorative fashion of the Arabs.

The Germanic arabesque differs from the Moorish. One feels that it is not the last nor the highest, not only because, although it is true and pure arabesque, [...] the lines frequently and, increasingly over time, transform into vegetal and above all animal forms. The main reason is its earnest tendency to form masses and oppositions according to a strict geometric regulation of straight or curved lines, in one word, according to an architectural direction. (History of the Fine Arts, vol. 3, 1844, p. 537, my trans.)

Due to this “architectural” trend, the new freedom gained by Germanic poetry was different from that which made the particular charm of Arabic prosody and tales, and which Schnaase, inspired by the Orientalist trend of his time, fantasized as delicately and deliciously “arbitrary.”

In the case of the Arabs, the same game of delicate arbitrariness prevails in the rhyme as in the arabesque. In the Christian-Germanic peoples, at least gradually, not yet in this early period, and with many variations and transitions, rhymed poetry becomes more restrained. (History of the Fine Arts, vol. 3, 1844, p. 547, my trans.)

During the Carolingian times—Schnaase cited Otfrid von Weißenburg's Gospel harmony composed in rhyming couplets (ca. 790-875)—both rhyme and arabesque spread in Germanic art, indicating “an inner connection of the rhyme and the arabesque,” i.e. a common spiritual movement in the people's mind.

Thus, in the Germanic world, the rhyme, the formal principle of the new and future poetry, appears at about the same time as the first impulses towards a new formal principle for the visual arts, the arabesque. Both appear in a similar manner, unnoticed and undemanding, along with the deliberate imitation of ancient models; the rhyme in the German verses intended for the people, along with the Latin poetry in hexameters and Sapphic feet for the learned poets, the arabesque along with the Ancient or Byzantine forms of architecture and higher fine arts. We may therefore presume an inner connection of the rhyme and the arabesque, not a direct one, though, but through the feeling which produced them both. (History of the Fine Arts, vol. 3, 1844, p. 542-543, my trans.)

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Rhythm as Aesthetic Category (Part 2)

Pascal Michon — 2018-12-16T19:00:00Z

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From Poetic to Aesthetic Rhythm (Schnaase – 1844)

Since the explanation of this “historical fact” covers the very last pages of the volume 3, and probably reflects Schnaase's deepest thought concerning the role of poetic rhythm in aesthetics, we must go here into details.

According to Schnaase, the Ancient prosody, which was based on syllable quantity, resulted—just like Vitruvian architecture—in “perfectly unitary” wholes “structured according to a fixed rule, in which nothing indifferent, nothing unnoticed, may be contained.” As we noticed above, he was probably right about this concept translation from poetry to architecture by Vitruvius. But this phenomenon was not to be reduced to an isolated author and characterized as a rule consciously chosen. On the contrary, it was to be derived directly from the unconscious popular “feeling” by means of the natural speech. As a matter of fact, we already encountered in vol. 2 similar statements by anti-Hegelian thinkers as Humboldt and Nietzsche, to whom, at least in this instance, Schnaase may certainly be compared.

In Ancient prosody, every syllable has a meaning [only] in relation to the rhythm; it is not merely counted; it is not merely a syllable, but a syllable characterized as long or short. Now, since these syllables are joined together according to a certain rule [nach einer bestimmten Regel], forming a whole in the prescribed course, this whole seems to be structured [gegliedert] according to a fixed rule, in which nothing indifferent, nothing unnoticed, may be contained. There is nothing artificial and conventional in that. On the contrary, in prosaic speech [prosaischen Rede], a rhythm already arises everywhere involuntarily through the combination of words. The feeling [das Gefühl] likes to arrange the speech so that its tone corresponds to the intended expression. The poet only recognizes this natural rule and develops it. [...] The whole constitutes a perfect unity. (History of the Fine Arts, vol. 3, 1844, p. 544, my trans.)

The shift from the Ancient quantitative prosody to newer rhythmic forms, i.e. the increased importance given to the sound quality of speech instead of its mere quantity, which derived from obscure movements of the popular spirit, resulted in the weakening of what we could call the quantitative-Vitruvian prosodic rules and the development of a new poetic freedom and fantasy, which was actually quite close to the concept of rhuthmos or way of flowing (see vol. 1, chap. 1).

Rhyme, by contrast, is ruled by the principle of antithesis and difference. Between the few significant syllables, there are many which have no other formal importance than to measure the distance between the others. These, therefore, have no connection with each other; they only get one through the rhyme. The consonance occurs sporadically between unequal syllables; it then produces a sudden, unmediated consensus. The rule of rhymed poetry is [thus] to let oneself go free and through mere symmetry, and return to regularity [Regelmässigkeit] by a bold jump. One sees how playing fantasy has much greater freedom in it. Among the indifferent, freely flowing words [unter den gleichgültigen, frei hinfliessenden Worten], those which makes up the rhyme seem surprising, like kinds of miracle. In the regular chaining of the measured syllables, on the other hand, there is always a firm rule, a necessity, as in the plastic design of the natural body. (History of the Fine Arts, vol. 3, 1844, p. 545, my trans.)

Schnaase found the same rhythmic opposition in the fine arts. The Greco-Roman art often used repetitive decoration but the latter always “followed a certain rule” and formed an uninterrupted “series” with no midpoint between the successive elements.

We need to make, here, some remarks on the relation between the formal principle of the Frankish arabesque, and that of the rhyme, and [in turn] on the relation of the latter to that of Greco-Roman art. In the Greco-Roman art, the ornamentation either assumed the form of a natural object or, where this was not the case, of meander, egg motif, or other patterns. It nevertheless followed a certain rule. According to this rule, it formed and ran in a horizontal direction, simply repeating itself, without letting form any section, any midpoint between two corresponding sides mirroring each other. It predominantly had the meaning of the series. (History of the Fine Arts, vol. 3, 1844, p. 547-548, my trans.)

In Germanic art, by contrast—Schnaase took the example of the arabesque included in the initial miniature in some manuscripts—the dominant rhythmic element was not linearity nor the principle of continuous series but free move of curved lines completing their course in “a constant renewal of symmetrical recurrence.”

By contrast, in the Frankish arabesque, the rectilinear decoration (e.g., that within the initials) is only a repetition, a reflection of the outer outlines, while the curved line moves freely, and without following a necessary rule [sich frei und ohne ein nöthigendes Gesetz], up to a high point, then turns and, repeating the same course in the opposite direction, finally breaks off as it began, and thus completes its course in a constant renewal of symmetrical recurrence [in steter Erneuerung symmetrischer Wiederkehr]. Each side of such an intertwining is only the imprint of the other; it is governed by the rule of free agreement [das Gesetz freier Uebereinstimmung]. (History of the Fine Arts, vol. 3, 1844, p. 548, my trans.)

Schnaase concluded that there were in art history at least “two different, opposing formal principles”—which, as far as we are concerned, we might rightly call “rhythmic principles.” Both were unitary and integrating principles, but the Ancient art worked through exterior and quantitative rules, and aimed at closed and perfectly arranged wholes (as the Vitruvian model), whereas the Christian-Germanic art developed from an interior spiritual and qualitative drive, and let the forms proliferate and occupy the space within a certain frame (according to the dualistic model that Schnaase found in rhymed poetry).

We, therefore, see two different, opposing formal principles [Formpincipien]: in Ancient art that of continuous unity [das der fortlaufenden Einheit]; in Christian art that of recurrence or duality [das der Wiederkehr oder der Zweiheit]. In the Ancient unity [antike Einheit], while each member is firmly connected to the whole and locked, it distinctly separates itself from the others. In the latter, the external duality is based on an inner spiritual unity. For their two initially separate sides are related to each other by their position and relative, if not complete, equality. They point to an inner center and are connected by it to an unbreakable whole, which carries its rule in itself, not just in an external limitation. But this inner unity of every single part gives, precisely because it is not external, the rule of the whole, in that also the details are united by free agreement into a greater whole. (History of the Fine Arts, vol. 3, 1844, p. 548-549, my trans.)

Schnaase is often remembered for having introduced into the history of art formal concerns which had been unduly disregarded by Hegel, while basing them on the perfectly orthodox Hegelian claim that these forms were actually determined by “ein Kunsttrieb – an art drive,” or “eine Kunstrichtung – an art direction” (vol. 3, p. 530) expanding from the innermost spirit of each people. As a matter of fact, this concept will be, as we shall see, borrowed and reelaborated by Alois Riegl as “Kunstwollen – artistic will” in order to assist in the elaboration of his own kind of formalism which will have much in common with Schnaase's.

However, I would like to emphasize another aspect of Schnaase's endeavor which does not go in the direction of a sheer formalism, entirely devoid of temporality, while distancing itself from the Hegelian philosophy of history. In the final analysis, this opposition between Ancient and Modern formal or rhythmic principles—I said Modern, for the Middle Ages marked in Schnaase's opinion the beginning of a certain spiritual Modernity—was grounded, according to Schnaase, in a transformation of the language itself which allowed its conventional part to recess and its original motivated part to reemerge. Schnaase differentiated between the common use of words—the Speech—which was “the result of habituation,” and their essence—the Word—which, by contrast, was based on what he called its “musical” quality, i.e. the immediate association between sound and meaning—in a more modern vocabulary: a close motivation between signifier and signified.

This leads us to a second deeper inner affinity between the rhyme and the pictorial sense [dem bildnerischen Sinne], which already asserts itself in this Frankish art. The rule of the Ancient verse is, as we have seen, grounded in nature; it arises directly from the inflexion of Speech [aus dem Tonfall der Rede], from the expression. But it has little or nothing in common with the essence of the Word [mit dem Wesen des Wortes], to which it remains something completely exterior. It measures everything according to the monotonous measure of length and brevity, it does not care about the multiplicity of meaning. In rhyme, by contrast, the meaning of the words is taken into consideration, and also in this lies a natural element. Anyone who realizes that must recognize that the sounds of the word are by no means wholly arbitrary and unrelated to meaning. At least this is true of the first development of language. In the case of the root-words, a relation of the sound to the meaning cannot be denied, certain sounds consent with one idea, they recur in words of similar meaning, [and] are used [only] with modifications and slight deviations of meaning. The combination of certain sounds with certain concepts is partly grounded in human nature and [...] partly the result of a habituation whose origin cannot be demonstrated. With the further development of language, the need for the distinction between more numerous and freer concepts prevails so much that the origin of the words is forgotten, yet not without them retaining some of the power of the early impressions. The sound of the word, therefore, has a meaning that we must call musical, because it is the expression of a spiritual and individual being in the realm of time and sound. (History of the Fine Arts, vol. 3, 1844, p. 550-551, my trans.)

According to this theory, whereas the Ancient quantitative prosody implied a reduction of the language to its acoustic part, a certain indifference towards its meaning, and a poetic composition based on the mere horizontal joining of “building blocks” in “a regular measure,” the New rhymed poetry—which emerged in other European languages as well, but for which, according to Schnaase, the German language was particularly suited—was based, on the contrary, on a close association of sound and meaning, what he strikingly termed the “Klangbedeutung – sound-meaning,” and the development of “the musical element of speech” through the rhyme system. This “musical element” must be understood as a new dimension of the production of meaning based on what we may call “verticality,” a dimension deploying itself across or perpendicularly to the usual flow of speech.

The length and brevity of the syllables too are related to sound and meaning, at least in root syllables, but in grammatical flexion and in the composition of several words this relationship is completely lost. For the meter, therefore, this sound-meaning of the word [jene Klangbedeutung des Wortes] is completely indifferent. The words are joined together like building blocks in a regular measure [wie Bausteine im Ebenmaasse aneinandergefügt]. In rhyming, on the contrary, the individuality of the sound appears more clearly; it is emphasized by the repetition. Even if in a developed language the number of meaningful-sounding words [bedeutsam klingenden Worte] is not so great that this relation could be recognized in every rhyme, the musical element of speech is chiefly preserved in rhymed poetry, and the rhyme becomes the poet's means, through the nature and the variation of sounds [durch die Art und den Wechsel der Klänge], the word-areas in which his thoughts move, and thereby expresses the mood [die Stimmung] from which the poem flows. It is remarkable that in the German language this meaning of the sound is often apparent; even now, after the influence of so many alien elements, our language is rich in words whose tone is significant. It was therefore particularly suitable for the application of the rhyme. (History of the Fine Arts, vol. 3, 1844, p. 551, my trans.)

In order to avoid any misunderstanding, this analysis must be set in Schnaase's Hegelian perspective. According to this view, the Arabic or Germanic rhythms, be they visual, linguistic, or poetic, were still “underdeveloped” but they already had “surpassed” those pertaining to Indian, Egyptian, Greek and Roman art. This “progress” could be measured against a dualistic criterion opposing, on the one hand, stiffness, proportionate arrangement, linearity, and regularity of meter, and on the other hand, elegance, free design of the arabesque and the rhyme, and variable recurrence.

However, if we set aside this simplistic historical perspective and the nationalistic prejudice which accompanies it, we still may give some credit to Schnaase's attention—which goes against any hard formalism as well as, indirectly, any Hegelian historicism—towards a phenomenon that had already been noticed by Diderot, some German Romantics, and Humboldt, and that will be a central concern for the poets in the second half of the 19^th century: the rhythm in language should not be reduced to the succession of metric building blocks (be they quantitative or accentual) but should be enlarged to the vertical interweaving of theses blocks in and by the flow of sound-meaning (see vol. 2, chap. 3, 4, 7, and 8). In his own way, Schnaase rediscovered the rhuthmic nature of poetry and language.

I won't discuss the ultimate pages of vol. 3 in which Schnaase compared the change in the poetic-linguistic rhythm illustrated by the development of the rhyme, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the contemporary transformation in the use of color, what he called the emergence of the “malerisch – painterly” principle. It is largely beyond the scope of our survey but it would certainly be worth paying some heed to it since it will be later, yet in a very different way, reelaborated by Wölfflin into one of the categories of modern formal analysis, and since it suggests the outlines of a theory of the visual arts based, for once, on poetics instead of philosophy or psychology.

Rhythm as Alternation and Repetition (Schnaase – 1854-1864)

According to the previous occurrence table, the third and most recent kind of use of the term rhythm as “rhythmischer Wechsel – rhythmic alternation,” or “rhythmische Wiederkehr – rhythmic repetition,” was rare in the 1840s in the volumes dedicated to Antiquity and early Middle Ages. It forcefully emerged in the early 1850s in the volumes devoted to the “Real Middle Ages” and became prevalent after 1854 in those concerning the late Middle Ages. This emergence occurs at the expense of the Vitruvian-Albertian acceptation but, also, of the poetic one, which seemed to evaporate during this period.

One can find already, in the volume 2 on Greek and Roman art published in 1843, a few occurrences of this new acceptation. Frieze ornaments like the triglyphs, as well as the columns and the intervals between them, formed a “rhythm” by their mere regular alternation.

On the frieze, therefore, a full, vertical, effective element [a triglyph] always alternates with an empty, ineffective one, of greater width; here we see the same rhythm as the one which occurred in the alternation of the columns and intervals of the portico, recur on a smaller scale and in a doubled number. (History of the Fine Arts, vol. 2, 1843, p. 46, my trans.)

The same kind of expression was used in volume 4.2 (1854) to describe the “alternating succession of pillars and columns” in pre-Romanesque Saxony churches as well as, a few pages below, in the 12^th century basilica of the Holy Cross in Wechselburg – Saxony and St. Peter's church in Erfurt – Thuringia.

Since they are without vaulting, at least of the central nave, they all belong to the earliest form of Romanesque churches, but they differ from the early Christian basilicas by the rhythmic division of the ground plan through the alternating succession of pillars and columns, and by the formation of separate parts. (History of the Fine Arts, vol. 4.2, 1854, p. 56, my trans.)

Here, therefore, [in the monastery church of Wechselburg founded in 1174] one sees the same rhythmic thought, which underlies the alternation of pillars and columns, in another, more delicate manner. [Similarly], the pillars of the monastery church in the Petersberg [Citadel] in Erfurt, which was consecrated in 1147 after a fire in 1142, have a much more complete structure [eine sehr viel vollständigere Gliederung]. (History of the Fine Arts, vol. 4.2, 1854, p. 74-75, my trans.)

The inner spatial rhythm resulting from an “alternation of simple and strengthened pillars” provided to the 12^th century Romanesque churches of Rhineland a particular beauty.

The pillar construction, which was hitherto monotonous and tiring, had now obtained, thanks to the alternation of simple and strengthened pillars, a structure [Gliederung] and a rhythmic division [rhythmische Abtheilung], which was similar but much more energetic and animated than in Saxon edifices. (History of the Fine Arts, vol. 4.2, 1854, p. 118, my trans.)

Schnaase used the same expression to describe the Cathedral of Pisa whose construction began in 1063. However, this time, the columns were not providing a rhythmic structure to the interior space of the church but a rhythmic decoration of its exterior outlines.

Three rows of engaged columns, corresponding to the aisles, the gallery, the upper part of the nave, surround the whole building, around nave, transept, and choir, and connect to the decor of the facade, on which, a fourth floor is added corresponding to the roof height of the aisles. The column row corresponding to the galleries carries, in an ancient manner, straight entablatures; the other [upper and lower] rows form arcades, a difference which provides animation to the uniformity of the former by their rhythmic alternation. (History of the Fine Arts, vol. 4.2, 1854, p. 191, my trans.)

In vol. 5 (1856), Schnaase used again the term rhythm to describe the alternation of the upper semi-circular ornaments and the succession of columns on the sides of the portal of the 12^th century St. Jacob's Church in Coesfeld – North Rhine-Westphalia.

The most beautiful of these portals is that of the St. Jacob's Church in Coesfeld, which has a special value, owing to the rhythmic alternation of smooth and ornamented parts, and to the fact that the polychromatic coloring with which the outline was covered is still very well preserved. (History of the Fine Arts, vol. 5, 1856, p. 381, my trans.)

Finally, in the vol. 6 dedicated to the late Middle-Ages, in a section concerning the Cologne School of stained glass windows, Schnaase extended this use of the term rhythm from architecture to painting.

It was a design conformed to what was needed on the stained glass windows and, especially, to the principle of Gothic surface division [Flächentheilung]. At the same time our painter used it to produce a rhythmic alternation of forms and colors and a free play for his rich imagination. (History of the Fine Arts, vol. 6, 1861, p. 416, my trans.)

Although Schnaase barely mentioned life science or medicine, his growing use of rhythm as alternation or repetition was most probably inspired by the new scientific concern for regularity that developed around the middle of the century (see vol. 2, chap. 2). As a matter of fact, he sometimes used to describe the particular aesthetic rhythm of Gothic churches expressions like pulsirende Leben – pulsating life (id. in vol. 7, 1864, p. 136) or pulsirenden Lebendigkeit – pulsating liveliness (in vol. 6, 1861, p. 127).

In this way, the individual divisions, both in the nave and in the aisles, did not form squares, but rectangles. I have already remarked above, how the narrower form of the vaulted fields increased and accelerated the pulsating life of the vaults, because the movement repeated itself more often and emanated from the walls at an acute angle, that is, with a greater force. (History of the Fine Arts, vol. 4.1, 1850, p. 211, my trans.)

If we leave aside Schnaase's poetic reinterpretation of the concept of rhythm in art, which was actually the most innovative part of his work, but which he unfortunately abandoned in the 1850s, his most significant contribution was the transformation of the traditional Vitruvian-Albertian concept into a new concept based on alternation and regularity. Eventually, the latter deeply penetrated into art history and aesthetics, and finally entered into everyday language.

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Rhythm as Aesthetic Category (Part 3)

Pascal Michon — 2018-12-16T18:30:00Z

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Rhythm as Living Organism (Kugler – 1842-1859)

In the 1820s, the future German art historian and cultural administrator for the Prussian state Franz Theodor Kugler (1808-1858) studied literature, music, visual arts and architecture at the University of Berlin. As Schnaase, he attended some of Hegel's lectures. Among his numerous publications, I will concentrate on his Handbuch der Kunstgeschichte – Handbook of Art History first published in 1842 then republished many times in the 19^th century, and the first three volumes of his Geschichte der Baukunst – History of Architecture dedicated to Oriental and Ancient Architecture (1856), Romanesque Architecture (1858) and Gothik Architecture (1859). The whole body comprised two more volumes which were completed after Kugler's death in 1867 and 1872-1873 by younger collaborators as Jacob Burckhardt (1818-1897) und Wilhelm Lübke (1826-1893).

As Schnaase, Kugler developed his work within the Hegelian frame. Whatever the society and the period, art represented “in physical form the life of the Spirit [das Leben des Geistes]” (Handbuch der Kunstgeschichte, 1842, p. 3). Therefore, it followed the same “gradually progressing” course (p. 3). Art was both an anthropological datum and a sign of spiritual development. Naturally, as most of his Hegelian contemporaries, Kugler considered that the various peoples had differently contributed to this history according to their own particular spirit: the “Germanic” style that followed the Romanesque style, for instance, was an original creation of the Germanic nations. As we shall see, he changed his mind, though, in the third volume of his History of Architecture where he explicitly recognized the origin of the Gothic style in Northern France.

Like all his predecessors, in the 1840s, Kugler mostly referred to the Vitruvian sense of rhythm as “appropriate proportions or relations,” as in the following two examples concerning the Alhambra of Granada and Germanic churches in the Baltic region.

In the process, however, a harmony, a eurhythmy, is poured out over the whole as over the predominant parts of architecture, and yet embraces the playful arbitrariness of forms as a silent and sure rule. Among the various parts of the Alhambra, the Lions Court is primarily remarkable, in the middle of which stands the much-praised Lion fountain. (Handbook of Art History, 1842, p. 405, my trans.)

The Germanic style of building in the Baltic region differs from that of the origin of the system, which flourished chiefly in western Germany, by a far greater simplicity and severity. The feeling is cooler and calmer, the lively structuration of the architectural whole, the rhythmically moving development of its parts, retreats to the benefit of the mass effect. (Handbook of Art History, 1842, p. 562, my trans.)

The same use of the term rhythm is pervasive in later works. I found dozens of occurrences in the three volumes on the History of Architecture written by Kugler himself. I will limit myself here to a single example taken in his comments regarding the ground plan of the Cologne cathedral. Although he now clearly situated the origin of the new Gothic style in Northern France, Kugler claimed that the German spirit had yet introduced a noticeable rhythmic change by more “strictly” and “soberly” systematizing the relations between the parts.

The cathedral follows, even more than the above-mentioned monuments in the Lower Rhine, the model of the French Gothic. It resolutely joins the cathedral system [Kathedralensysteme] which had been completed in Northern France in the first half of the 13^th century; it has to be considered as a sequel of those monuments. It forms the capstone, the completion of their aspirations. [...] Such is the basic element of the French Gothic—but its renewed transformation betrays the peculiarity of the German artistic spirit. [...] From the very beginning, the building expresses the most moderate sobriety, the noblest and most sublime rhythm [die edelste und erhabenste Rhythmik], the sensation of a complete organizational penetration of the task [...] The relations are in perfectly purified mutual harmony [in völlig geläutertem gegenseitigem Einklange]; in the plan arrangement of the apsidal wreath, there is a strict rhythm [eine feste Rhythmik] as in no other building of this system [dieses Systems]. (History of Architecture, vol. 3, 1859, p. 217, my trans.)

Yet, in the 1850s, Kugler began to introduce into his massively dominant Vitruvian use an entirely novel concern for the movement. Contrary to what Schnaase sustained by abusively extending the Romanesque model to the Gothic churches, Kugler argued, the ground plan of the latter did not imitate a fixed and mathematical Platonic arrangement but expressed, instead, the proliferating “movements” of an inner life. Therefore, the rhythm in a building or in an ornament was not only “eine Gliederung – a structure,” but “ein System – a system,” or “ein Organismus – an organism,” animated by an inner drive or “basic movement.”

Even the part of the ground plan which manifests itself as the result of a rational calculation and which one likes to consider as the glory of the Gothic system—the polygonal closure of the choir with an ambulatory and a wreath of apses—was not successful. In itself, however, it gives the image of the purest spatial organism [Organismus], the basic movement [Grundbewegung ] of which find here in fact a perfect outcome, by passing from the central nave into the polygon, then flowing [strömend] through its openings (between the pillar arcades) into the lower side spaces and finally ebbing away in a rhythmically repeated play in the wreath of the surrounding apses. (History of Architecture, vol. 3, 1859, p. 23, my trans.)

This vitalist and metaphysical conception of architecture, with its cosmic connotations, was yet accompanied by a new concern for corporeal and visual sensation which anticipated eventual developments. The “rhythmic termination of the movement” was also that of the visitor strolling around in the church (I agree here with Vasold, 2010, p. 39).

The semicircle of the apse, already repeatedly replaced by deviant forms in late-Romanesque architecture, was totally incompatible with the Gothic system. The construction on pillars of the latter made an angular end absolutely necessary; the rhythmic termination of the movement required a polygonal end, the spaces of which were therefore necessarily narrow (in relation with the inner total breadth) and covered with corresponding narrow vaulting caps. (History of Architecture, vol. 3, 1859, p. 11, my trans.)

And it was the movement of his eye “peeping through” the pillars and sliding on the various parts of the building, and naturally that of Kugler's reader who was moved from within by his descriptions.

The spaces between the articulate pillars of the choir are too narrow for the eye peeping through [das hindurchblickende Auge] to receive a full impression [einen vollen Eindruck]; the latter is all the more dull that, at every point, it encounters a different spatial direction (according to the ever-changing position of the polygonal side chapels); it becomes overcast in a double measure, since the ends of those posterior spaces are interrupted by windows on all sides, and thus result in a change in the light effect, which is necessarily incomprehensible to the eye of a person standing in the inner space. (History of Architecture, vol. 3, 1859, p. 23, my trans.)

This emphasis on movement and life may explain why, as Schnaase, Kugler began to use—yet still not very often—rhythm as synonymous with regular alternation or repetition. In volume 1, the repetitive ornaments in Egyptian temples, the Greek and Roman rows of columns were now characterized as “rhythmic.”

[The capitals] are partly composed of leaves and flowers of aquatic plants or fern, which are laid over in slight relief and always in the happiest rhythmic alternation, partly of other foliage motive, as vine tendrils with even freer decorative game. (History of Architecture, vol. 1, 1856, p. 23, my trans.)

The outer walls of the temple house are often provided with half-columns, which repeat the column arrangement of the hall and decoratively reproduce the lively rhythm of the Greek peripteral arrangement. (History of Architecture, vol. 1, 1856, p. 279, my trans.)

The relation between the new concern for life and the repetitive or alternating acceptation of rhythm was also visible in volume 2. In the Romanesque architecture there was like “a rhythmic pulsation of forms” which—in an expression now opposing rhythm to the Vitruvian model—“dodged around the measured severity of the architectural composition.”

The pillars of the vaulted building, with the leaning supporting brackets of these vaulted structures [...] form, in proportion to the latter parts, an often lively alternation [oft lebhaften Wechsel] of right-angled protruding masses, half-columns and round rods. It is like a rhythmic pulsation of forms [Es ist wie ein rhythmisches Pulsiren der Formen], which, more or less fluidly, in rougher or more delicate sounds [Klängen], dodges around the measured severity of the whole architectural composition. (History of Architecture, vol. 2, 1858, p. 30, my trans.)

Naturally, this association of rhythm, alternation, and life, was the most adequate for describing, in volume 3, Gothic architecture, which was animated by a “living pulse,” as well as Gothic ornamental work, which due to its branching lines was entirely “penetrated by rhythm.”

There is like a living pulse in these masses and all their individual parts. In the liveliest contrast to the unstructured, heavy struts of the aisles, they are already furnished from the base with rod infill and slender tracery niches, from freer and thinner design [...]. The same rule is applied in the continuous window openwork, the rich tracery of which contains a renewed reshaping of the choir superstructure, in the lively division of its outlines, in the traceried ornamented gables above them, which always cut through the horizontal cornices. Everything is penetrated by a rhythm, everything, as diversely structured, is determined by a rule. (History of Architecture, vol. 3, 1859, p. 224-225, my trans.)

As Schnaase, Kugler was instrumental in the rhythmological mutation that occurred around the middle of the 19^th century in art history and aesthetics and that began to substitute the Vitruvian-Albertian notion of rhythm with a new concept based on alternation and regularity. Unlike Schnaase, however, who remarkably balanced his Hegelian presuppositions with sensitive—and in fact quite accurate—reflections on poetics, Kugler developed his theory of art in an Idealist direction, borrowing moreover from the strong vitalism that had been spreading in life science during the last decades, yet not without opening new paths towards the psychological aesthetics that was to meet a large success at the end of the century.

To conclude this section, I will add only a few words on the Swiss historian of art and culture Jacob Burckhardt (1818-1897). For many reasons, one would expect to find new insights on rhythm in his work. As a student, he studied first in Berlin and attended the lectures of Leopold von Ranke, the founder of academic history, who transmitted him his distrust towards Hegel's metaphysical treatment of history. Then, in 1841, he went to Bonn and studied art history under Franz Kugler to whom he dedicated his first book. He spent most of his academic career in Switzerland at the University of Basel—where in 1869 he met and appreciated the young Nietzsche—and remained throughout his life reluctant towards German nationalism and claim of cultural superiority.

However, the concept of rhythm was rarely mobilized by Burckhardt in his Der Cicerone: Eine Anleitung zum Genuss der Kunstwerke Italiens – The cicerone: or, Art-guide to Painting in Italy. For the Use of Travellers (1855), and most of the time in the traditional Vitruvian manner. Even more startling, there was not a single mention of rhythm in his world-famous Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien – The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy published in 1860 and only two occurrences in the volume he published in 1867 in Kugler's series on The History of Architecture (vol. 4) under the title Geschichte der Renaissance in Italien – The History of the Renaissance in Italy. I could not extend my inquiry into later texts but it was as if Burckhardt had rejected the concept with the Romantic, Hegelian, nationalist and finally technical prejudices it was related with. There was, deeply embedded in it, something like a Platonic and Idealist burden that he did not want to assume.

Rhythm as Incorporation of Series (Semper – 1860-1863)

Gottfried Semper (1803-1879) was a German architect, art critic, and professor of architecture. He is noted for the construction of the Opera House in Dresden in 1838-1841 and for having taken part in the May 1849 failed uprising. Pursued by the police of the victorious regime, he went into exile for the rest of his life, first in Paris and London, then in Zürich (1855-1871) and Vienna (1871-1876). In 1861 and 1863, he published, in two volumes, Der Stil in den technischen und tektonischen Künsten, oder Praktische Aesthetik – Style in the Technical and Harmonic Arts, Or, Practical Aesthetics. I chose to translate the adjective tektonisch as “harmonic” because, in architecture, it denoted the result of the Tektonik viz. “die Lehre vom harmonischen Zusammenfügen von Einzelheiten zu einem Ganzen – the theory of harmoniously combining units into a whole” (Gerhard Wahrig, Deutsches Wörterbuch, 1975, p. 3657).

Semper's contribution is remarkable on several accounts. First, unlike Schnaase and Kugler, he was not part of the Hegelian movement, which was actually recessing in the 1860s. As Burckhardt, he rejected the Historical Idealism. Second, unlike his predecessors, he explicitly theorized about the concept of rhythm and made it into a central category for art history and aesthetics. He directly addressed the issue in the very first pages of volume 1. Influenced by the growth of empirical psychology but eager not to abandon aesthetics to sheer subjectivism, Semper held that Beauty was the byproduct of both the formal properties of the art work and their effect on the viewer. Even if Semper took into account Nature's violence and absurdity, where “the individual is created only to serve as food for the whole” (p. XXII, Semper's ital.), the gap between the formal and the empirical aspects of Beauty was overcome because, he claimed, Nature itself was providing the norms (die Gestaltungsgesetze – the configuration laws) which ensured a pre-established harmony between human aesthetic sensibility and the organizing laws of the cosmos.

Strikingly, he gave as example of this harmony between man and nature the rhythmic pleasure already taken by the “simple, primitive man” from “the regularity of periodic space and time sequences,” whether in “wreath, a string of pearls, scrolls, round dances,” or in “rhythmic tones” used in dancing or rowing. This natural “rhythmic” pleasure, he argued, provides the natural foundation of the only two “purely cosmic (nonimitative) arts,” namely music and architecture, but it is essential to all other arts, considered by Semper as simply “imitative.”

Yet this artistic enjoyment of natural beauty is by no means the most naive or the earliest manifestation of the artistic instinct. The former is in fact undeveloped in a simple, primitive human being [dem einfachen Naturmenschen], who already delights in nature's creative law [das Gesetz der bildnerischen Natur] as it gleams through the real world in [the regularity of periodic space and time sequences], in wreaths, a string of pearls, scrolls, round dances, the rhythmic tones attending them, the beat of the oar, and so on. These are the beginnings out of which music and architecture grew, the two highest purely cosmic (nonimitative) arts, whose legislative [legislatorischen] support no other art can do without. (Style in the Technical and Harmonic Arts, I, 1861, p. XXI-XXII, trans. Harry F. Malgrave & Michael Robinson, my mod.)

Consequently, all beautiful forms produced by Nature or by Art must conform to the law of “Eurhythmie,” or, in other words, any beautiful form is necessarily “eurhythmisch.” However, this aesthetic quality was not defined any longer as Schnaase or even Kugler had suggested it. Semper proposed a third way which blended together the traditional architectural Vitruvian-Albertian notion based on the proportionate arrangement of the whole, now considered as a cosmic law, and the new scientific and musical emphasis on repetition and regularity, henceforth attributed to human psychology.

To illustrate the first side of his thought, Semper gave beautifully illustrated examples of snowflakes and flowers (p. XXV, XXVI). In this sense, Eurhythmie denoted a symmetrically-arranged whole (symmetrical here in the modern sense) which stood “in no direct relation to the observer” but existed per se—naturally—by being regularly organized around a center and neatly circumscribed and separated from the environment by a frame. From a naturalistic viewpoint, Eurhythmie required “center,” “symmetry,” and “closure.”

[Since] Eurhythmie is closed Symmetrie, [it] stands in no direct relation to the observer but only to [the] center around which the elements of the regular form are arranged and strung peripherally.

To establish a rapport [Rapport] with the eurhythmic figure, the observer has to imagine himself at the center of relations [Beziehungen]. Therefore, verticality [or] horizontality are not basic demands of the eurhythmic figure; its [essence] is closure [ihr Wesen ist Geschlossenheit]; it expresses symbolically the absolute concept of [inclusion] [des Einschlusses] and therefore alludes to what is [included] [das Eingeschlossene] as the actual object, as the center of the eurhythmic order [das Centrum der eurhythmische Ordnung]. (Style in the Technical and Harmonic Arts, I, p. XXVII, 1861, trans. Harry F. Malgrave & Michael Robinson, my mod.)

Among the three categories composing Eurhythmie, center, symmetry, and closure, Semper considered that the last was the most important one. In the final analysis, Eurhythmie resulted from the “framing” which enabled “the regular concentric structuring and ordering of formal elements.”

The frame is one of the most [important] basic forms used in art: no enclosed image without frame, no scale without it. Eurhythmie comes into play only when a frame is used: a regular concentric [structuring] [Gliederung] and [ordering] [Ordnung] of formal elements that form an enclosed figure around the framed object. (Style in the Technical and Harmonic Arts, I, p. XXVII, 1861, trans. Harry F. Malgrave & Michael Robinson, my mod.)

However, Semper also thought that—within the frame and subject to its structuring power—the elements were regularly repeated and segmented, thus introducing the second sensitive, “musical,” aspect of Eurhythmie.

The [structure] [Gliederung] of eurhythmic figures results from certain laws of repetition with cadence and caesuras, with elevations and depressions from which, when interlinked, the closed figure emerges. [In this respect,] musical figures (melodies) and visual ones are subject to the same laws, except that the ear is able to follow and [differentiate] far more complex arrangements than the eye, which has to absorb [the whole] at once. (Style in the Technical and Harmonic Arts, I, p. XXVII-XXVIII, 1861, trans. Harry F. Malgrave & Michael Robinson, my mod.)

Eurhythmie was therefore the result of the interaction and combination of the natural structuring power of the frame and the psychological recurrence and segmentation power of the elements, in other words, as far as we are concerned, of the architectural Vitruvian-Albertian concept and the scientific and musical one.

Eurhythmie consists in a closed sequence of uniform sections of space. [Die Eurhythmie besteht in einer geschlossenen Aneinanderreihung gleichgeformter Raumabschnitte.] (Style in the Technical and Harmonic Arts, I, p. XXVIII, 1861, my trans., Sempers ital.)

Semper claimed that Vitruvius had misunderstood this interaction—which by contrast had been plainly grasped by the Greeks—and had reduced it to a sheer system of mathematical proportions.

Undoubtedly the Greeks devised the canon for Eurhythmie as [artfully] [in architecture] as in music and poetry. We sense it from the powerful [interplay] of Doric columns, in the cadence of the entablatures, in the continual recurrence of the same decorative [elements]—all of which stimulate and soothe us but do not tire us. This canon was largely forgotten by the Roman period, [for Vitruvius confuses Eurhythmie with proportion, confounding] all formal-aesthetic concepts that he probably picked up by misinterpreting some Greek author. The relevant passages by this writer (bk. 1, chap. 2), far from elucidating the Greek principles of Beauty, only spread confusion. (Style in the Technical and Harmonic Arts, I, 1861, p. XXVIII, trans. Harry F. Malgrave & Michael Robinson, my mod.)

Should one start from the right interaction of opposite informing forces, one could identify three main types of Eurhythmie.

Therefore, although there is an infinite variety of eurhythmic sequences in optical figures, there are no more than three different kinds of structuring [Gliederung]. (Style in the Technical and Harmonic Arts, I, 1861, p. XXVIII, my trans.)

The simplest one was based on the regular alternation between formal units and intervals which are all equal to each other.

The first way in which this [the Eurhythmie] can be done is at even intervals, so that each element is [throughout] [durchaus] identical to the others. Such simple series include dentils, fluting, [leaf wreaths, the simplest pearl rods (without discs) and the like]. (Style in the Technical and Harmonic Arts, I, 1861, p. XXVIII, trans. Harry F. Malgrave & Michael Robinson, my mod.)

The second type of Eurhythmie was based on the “repetition of unlike parts” separated by different “intermediate elements.”

The series becomes alternating, when we separate the elements [in the above-mentioned examples] with intermediate elements. This is the case, for example, when the simple [leaf wreath], in the manner of the leaf-and-dart decoration, changes into a series of two [opposite leaves, or when discs are inserted between the beads.] The egg-and-dart molding with its so-called arrowheads is another very familiar example of an alternating series. The same principle of alternation is evident in the [garland] of metopes and triglyphs. — Contrasts in form and design, as well as color, are necessary [for the clear expression of the alternating order. The recurrence of unlike parts in eurhythmic cadence is the principle of alternation]. (Style in the Technical and Harmonic Arts, I, 1861, p. XXVIII, trans. Harry F. Malgrave & Michael Robinson, my mod.)

The third type was the most complex and could not be complexified further due to the limitations of the human eye—even if finer subdivisions were sometimes used where plastic Eurhythmie would appear too “dry and stiff,” for example in “curtains, embroideries, cloth fabrics, shawls, etc.” (p. XXIX). It was based on the introduction of “caesuras” or “interruptions” into the previous two types.

In addition to the simple and alternating series, [the eye allows a third one], which is the richest. It involves interrupting a simple or alternating series with periodic caesuras [durch periodische Caesuren]. This again was known to the Greeks, although they deliberately used it sparingly and only on accessories. Examples: pearl strings with two or more [disks] (an easily understood of unlike parts), lion heads and masks that punctuate garland decorations in the cymatia of Greek entablatures. (Style in the Technical and Harmonic Arts, I, 1861, p. XXVIII, trans. Harry F. Malgrave & Michael Robinson, my mod.)

The use of caesuras introduced “painterly-musical” rhythms into architecture, while the two previous kinds were by contrast dominated by “plastic” rhythms.

This intercalation [Intersekanz] is conductive to the romantic mood and has a more painterly-musical effect [mehr mahlerisch-musikalisch wirkend], while simple and alternating Eurhythmie corresponds to plastic beauty. (Style in the Technical and Harmonic Arts, I, 1861, p. XXIX, trans. Harry F. Malgrave & Michael Robinson)

However, according to Semper, the last kind of Eurhythmie was rarely brought into play by the Greeks and flourished principally in the “barbarian building style, as found in die Hindu, Arabian and Gothic architecture,” which jettisoned “the simple column rhythm [den einfachen Saülenrhythmus] of the Ancient buildings and adopted the alternation between columns and pillars” (p. XXIX, n. 1 – same expression in vol. 2, 1863, p. 456). Quite innovatively—this will be discussed again by Riegl only at the end of the Century—Semper extended his theory to applied arts and crafts. The third Eurhythmie was indeed also widely used in “polychrome representation, surface decorations, tapestry, ceramics, inlaid metal, woodwork, and so on.” (p. XXIX), whose introduction into art history, aesthetic and actual building practices was, probably, Semper's most significant and well-remembered achievement.

Between the 1840s and the 1860s, the concept of rhythm underwent a significant change in art history as well as in aesthetics.

1. Whereas it had been considered, since the Renaissance, under the guise of eurhythmy, chiefly as a criterion for aesthetic judgment based on appropriate proportions, it became a versatile tool, a methodological category, for describing and analyzing the works of art, first in architecture, then in the other fine arts.

2. Except in Schnaase's attempt to derive a new content for the concept of rhythm from poetics, most of this development occurred, however, within an Idealist frame which maintained the Platonic metric paradigm.

3. This probably explains, since no alternative was really envisaged, why the concept of artistic rhythm was more and more attracted by the new scientific metric paradigm, which was fast and strongly developing.

4. This general metric trend must not hide, yet, the few suggestive contributions of this period. Kugler's comparison of the artistic rhythm with a living organism, a system, or Semper's theory of the incorporation of alternating series into artistic wholes, were both attempts at surpassing the limitation of the metric paradigm. Both aimed at integrating its successions either through the postulation of an inner spiritual common drive guiding the proliferation of artistic forms, or through that of an outer natural common framing power ensuring, by integrating the otherwise dispersive psychological forces, the emergence of artistic forms. They were opposite theoretical strategies, respectively based on Idealism and Naturalism, but both demonstrated a certain realization of the limits of the metric paradigm.

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Rhythm as Temporal Aesthetic Form (Part 1)

Pascal Michon — 2018-12-15T09:00:00Z

Sommaire

Previous chapter

In the 1880s and the 1890s, there was a new turn in the use of the concept of rhythm in art history and aesthetics. Rhythm, which had been successively—and sometimes jointly—considered as a judgment criterion then as an analytical category, was increasingly considered as a form of process. This new trend was mainly influenced by the new development of psychology which began to be massively imported into aesthetics during this period, but it also resulted from the growing influence of the natural and life sciences.

Rhythm as Physiopsychological Process (Wölfflin – 1886)

The Swiss art historian Heinrich Wölfflin (1864-1945), who was to be considered, after WW1, as one of the founder of the formal analysis in art history with a book entitled Kunstgeschichtliche Grundbegriffe – Principles of Art History (1915), began his long career with a study oriented in quite a different direction.

In his PhD dissertation Prolegomena zu einer Psychologie der Architektur – Prolegomena to a Psychology of Architecture (1886 – he was only 22 years old), Wölfflin started his study by asking: “How is it possible that architectural forms can express a spirit or an atmosphere?” and by voicing his surprise that the “scientific literature has brought almost no answer to that question.” Whereas “analogous problem in music,” he noticed, had received comprehensive treatment “from art theory and psychology,” nothing of the kind had been done for architecture (Prolegomena, p. 1, my trans.). His aim was therefore to address the issue of architectural aesthetics from the new scientific physiopsychological perspective.

The psychology of architecture has the task of describing and explaining the spiritual effects [die seelischen Wirkungen] which architecture is able to produce by its own means. We call the effect we receive an impression [Eindruck]. And we consider this impression as an expression of the object [Ausdruck des Objekts]. So we may now formulate the problem as follows: how can architectural forms become expression? (Under “architectural forms,” we must also include the lesser arts of decoration and craft, since they are subject to the same conditions of expression.) One can try to get an answer to this question from two sides: from the subject and from the object. (Prolegomena zu einer Psychologie der Architektur, 1886, p. 2, my trans.)

He swiftly side-stepped the optical explanation, which was proposed by Lotze, relating the impression made by architectural forms to the mere “muscular sensation of the eye” (p. 2, Wölfflin's ital.). This, he noticed borrowing from Wundt, did not actually explain the full impression made upon us (for the difference between Lotze and Wundt on space perception, see Schwarzer, 1991, p. 51). One had to take into account the larger physiological conditions determined by the whole body which, in the case of architecture, was the real perceiving organ.

You only understand what you can do yourself. So we must say: physical forms can be characterized only because we ourselves own a body. If we were only visually apprehending beings, then an aesthetic appraisal of the physical world would always have been denied to us. But as human beings with a body that teaches us to know what gravity, contraction, force, etc. is, we collect the experiences that enable us to experience the states of alien forms. (Prolegomena zu einer Psychologie der Architektur, 1886, p. 4, my trans.)

Even if our higher culture has softened or even erased most of these reactions, we are still “sympathetically touched” by exterior behaviors or movements. Noticeably, to make his point, Wölfflin took the example of the “rhythm of breathing” which is “important, because breath is the most direct organ of expression.”

For the internal organs, above all, are sympathetically touched, and according to my observations, the respiratory movement is the most susceptible to change. The rhythm of breathing that we perceive in others is most easily transmitted to us. Watching a person suffocate is terrible because we feel all the pain, while we stay unmoved at the sight of other physical pains. This fact is important, because breath is the most direct organ of expression. (Prolegomena zu einer Psychologie der Architektur, 1886, p. 11, my trans.)

The corporal and sensory basis had thus to be taken first into account, however it was not sufficient to explain the aesthetic pleasure taken, for instance, while visiting a beautiful church. In addition to bodily experience, in fact we also perceive, he argued, spiritual feeling related to the “meaning” involved in a building, i.e. the expression of a “sentient soul,” even if this often is an imaginary or an “anthropomorphic” projection (p. 6).

The sounds of music would have no meaning if we did not regard them as expressions of a sentient being. This relationship, which was natural in the original music, the song, has been obscured by instrumental music but has not been completely abolished. We always subordinate the sounds we hear to a subject whose expression they are. And so it is in the physical world [Körperwelt]. The forms become significant to us only because we recognize in them the expression of a sentient soul [einer fühlenden Seele]. Involuntarily, we enliven every thing. This is an ancient human instinct. (Prolegomena zu einer Psychologie der Architektur, 1886, p. 5, my trans.)

At that point, Wölfflin made a few philosophical remarks. Those are important to us because they show a clear distrust towards the Hegelian Idealist tradition which Semper had already begun to call into question. Wölfflin first cautiously declared that he did not want to choose between Physicalism, Spiritualism, or Parallelism.

Who tells us where the priority is? Is the physical affection a condition of the atmosphere impression? or are the sensory feelings only a consequence of vivid representation in the imagination? Or finally, third possibility, are mental and physical parallel? By pushing the question to this point, it is high time to stop: for now we are faced with problems that mark the limit of all science. (Prolegomena zu einer Psychologie der Architektur, 1886, p. 12, my trans.)

However, the third perspective—which strongly resembled the subdued Spinozism heralded by Goethe at the beginning of the century—seemed to suit him best. He immediately claimed that architecture was perceived and appreciated according our “corporal organization.”

Our corporal [leibliche] organization is the form under which we understand everything that is physical [alles Körpeliches]. I will now show that the basic elements of architecture: matter and form, weight and strength are determined by the experiences we have made; that the laws of formal aesthetics are nothing other than the conditions under which organic well-being alone seems possible to us, that finally the expression, which lies in the horizontal and vertical articulation, is produced according to human (organic) principles. (Prolegomena zu einer Psychologie der Architektur, 1886, p. 13, my trans.)

And he added that the inescapable corporal condition of our knowledge only helped us to understand or to imagine—which was consequently the same thing—Nature as a relentless process composed of forces informing the matter. In its essence, architecture was thus dealing with the making of Nature itself.

The opposition between matter and formative force [von Stoff und Formkraft] that moves the entire organic world is the basic theme of architecture. Aesthetic intuition transfers this most intimate experience of our body to inanimate nature. In every thing we assume a will that tries to achieve a form and has to overcome the resistance of an informal matter. (Prolegomena zu einer Psychologie der Architektur, 1886, p. 14-15, my trans.)

As a result, Formal or Idealist aesthetics was only the translation of organic life into an abstract set of concepts. Form and matter were not separate principles but, on the contrary, two inseparable sides of the same dynamic reality.

And so I affirm that all determinations which formal aesthetics provides concerning the beautiful form are nothing else than conditions of organic life. The forming force is thus not only an opposite to gravity, a vertical-acting force, but it is that which life creates, a vis plastica, if I may use this expression which is forbidden in science. [...] After all that has been said, there can be no doubt that the form is not thrown over the matter as something exterior to it, but that it works out of the material, as an immanent will. Matter and form are inseparable. In every matter lives a will that presses towards a form but that cannot always express itself. One should not imagine that the matter is necessarily hostile; rather, a matterless form would be unthinkable. Everywhere the image of our bodily existence presents itself as the model by which we judge every other appearance. (Prolegomena zu einer Psychologie der Architektur, 1886, p. 15-16, my trans.)

The aesthetic effect of architecture was not limited to the recognition of beautiful forms, it was the result of a regular ebb and flow of the forms on the shores of our selves. Although it was essentially immobile, architecture had the power, just as “rhythmic waves,” to “penetrate us,” “seize us,” and finally, by an opposite shove, “draw us into the beautiful movement” itself. What the visitor most enjoyed was this performative power which transformed him, at least “for a moment,” and ensured him that man could give form to “the formless,” i.e. in the final analysis, liberate himself from the weight of matter. Through the rhythmic pounding of its waves, architecture made itself felt simultaneously in body and soul.

Underlying all these comparisons is the profoundly human experience of forming the Unformed. When one characterizes architecture as a frozen music, it only expresses the fact that we receive the same effect from both arts. Here, because the rhythmic waves [die rhythmischen Wellen] penetrate us, seize us, draw us into a beautiful movement, everything that is formless dissolves, and we measure the happiness of being liberated for a moment from the dragging-down weight of the matter. (Prolegomena zu einer Psychologie der Architektur, 1886, p . 17, my trans.)

Whereas Schnaase had considered the Kunsttrieb, in a Hegelian way, as a common spiritual force pervading all art productions of a people, Wölfflin now saw it acting—like Kugler as a matter of fact but this time on a Spinozist and evolutionist basis—in each building as an inner developmental force.

We feel the same formative force [formende Kraft] in every architectural structure, except that it does not come from outside but forms its body from within, as a shaping will [als gestaltender Wille]. The goal is not the annihilation of the substance, but only the organic construction [die organische Fügung], a state of which we feel that it was self-generated, not created by external constraint. Self-determination is the condition of all beauty. [...] Within the formally correct, i.e. viable architecture, a development is possible, which one probably may rightly compare with the development of organic structures [organischen Gebilde]: the same progress takes place from dull, poorly articulated figures to the finely formed system of differentiated parts. (Prolegomena zu einer Psychologie der Architektur, 1886, p. 17-18, my trans.)

Rhythm as Regular Recurrence (Wölfflin – 1886)

Once the physiopsychological and philosophical bases of his study solidly grounded, Wölfflin addressed the issue of form. The concept of form was to be considered, according to Friedrich Vischer (1807-1887) from whom Wölfflin explicitly borrowed this list, as “limitation in space, regularity, symmetry, proportion, [and] harmony” (p. 19).

Strikingly, after having dedicated two lines to “limitation in space,” Semper's most important category, Wölfflin started by discussing “Regelmässigkeit – regularity” which he defined as Vischer as “Gleichmässige Wiederkehr unterschiedener, doch gleicher Teile – Uniform recurrence of different but like parts” (p. 20). Yet, contrarily to his predecessor, he differentiated Regelmässigkeit from “Gesetzmässigkeit – lawfulness” (p. 20). The former, which was “of value to us because our organism, according to its constitution, demands regularity in its functions,” characterized the “columns order” or “the sequence of a decorative pattern.” The latter was, by contrast, a “purely intellectual relation” based on abstract mathematical recurrence and characterized “the straight line, the circle, the square, etc.” (p. 20). Although all this remained within the Platonic metric frame, this was his way to differentiate between meter and rhythm.

The regularity of the sequence, on the other hand, is something of value to us, because our organism, according to its constitution, demands regularity in its functions. We breathe regularly, we go regularly, every continuous activity takes place in periodic sequence [in periodischer Folge]. (Prolegomena zu einer Psychologie der Architektur, 1886, p. 20, my trans.)

Only in a second step, Wölfflin addressed the Vitruvian aspects of form: symmetry, proportion and harmony, whose requirements were respectively derived “from the structure of our body,” borrowed from “the organic structure,” or implied by “the inner purpose” structuring the “unified community” of the “organism.”

The requirement of symmetry is derived from the system [Anlage] of our body. Because we are symmetrically built, we believe that we can demand this form from every architectural body. [...] The principle [of proportion] is also borrowed from the organic structure [Aufbau]. We find this development from rawness to refinement in the most perfect way in Man. [...] Harmony is a term that we find fully developed in morphology as the definition of an organism. The individual [das Individuum] is a unified community, in which all parts work together for a similar purpose (unity). This purpose is an inner one (self-determination). And the inner purpose is, at the same time, an external measure to which the development of the living does not reach (form = inner purpose). (Prolegomena zu einer Psychologie der Architektur, 1886, p. 22-24, my trans.)

All Vitruvian features were now derived from the concept of “organism” and its teleological “inner drive,” which were explicitly borrowed from the physician and biologist Rudolf Virchow (1821-1902) (p. 24). It was also swiftly equated with the Kantian concept of “system” exposed in the Critique of Pure Reason – Architectonic of Pure Reason and imprecisely quoted: “By system is meant the unity of various parts under one idea” (p. 24-25). In fact, in the first Critique, Kant's concern was limited to the system of knowledge and did not imply any teleology: “Then, by a system I mean the unity of various cognitions under one idea” (Kant, 1781, B 860). It would have been more accurate to quote the Critique of Judgment (1790) which explicitly addressed the issue of teleology in living organisms. But this little inaccuracy probably reflected the knowledge common among late-19^th century Germanic academics who knew principally of the first two Critiques. As far as we are concerned, by conflating the biological concept of organism and the Kantian concept of system, Wölfflin was only elaborating further Kugler's and Semper's attempts at integrating the Vitruvian-Albertian concept of eurhythmy and the newer concept of rhythm based on alternation and repetition.

As a matter of fact, these organic or systemic dimensions of architectural form were not without rhythmic aspects of their own: they were all derived from the rhythms of the body and could, naturally, exert back a certain rhythmic control over the latter.

Proportions, for instance, which concerned principally the relation between vertical and horizontal axes (p. 26), had greatly varied in the past and translated into architecture a quicker or slower “pace” of the “respiration,” a cold- or “warm-blooded nature,” which influenced in turn those of the visitor and viewer.

Of great interest is the relationship between proportions and the pace of breathing [dem Tempo des Atmens]. There is no doubt that very narrow proportions give the impression of an almost breathless, hasty upward movement. [...] One can observe that the older the peoples are, the more rapidly they breathe in their architecture [...]. How quietly and peacefully do the lines of the old Doric temple run: everything is still largely and slowly measured. Then in the Ionian temple [appears] a more rapid mobility, one searches for the slender and light, and the more the ancient culture came close to its end, the more it demanded a feverish, accelerated movement. Peoples who have a warm-blooded nature make it the most [rapid]. Think of the suffocating hurry of Arab decoration lines. (Prolegomena zu einer Psychologie der Architektur, 1886, p. 28-29, my trans.)

Similarly, the principle of symmetry, which concerned primarily the horizontal axis (p. 31), was derived from the symmetry of the body and the overall need for both corporal agility and unity. Simultaneously, it naturally contented or contradicted, when it was missing, our expectations for equilibrium.

The principle of horizontal organization is called symmetry. [...] Thus, architectural design approaches the human organization and gains the capacity to express all that can be said about the relation of the limbs to the human body. The point here is in the greater or lesser independence of these parts. If the sense of freedom results, in the first place, from a development of parts that grow out of the mass of the body and live by themselves, the freer the connection with the central system, the happier the effect. On the other hand, closely connected lateral parts, without independent force, point to unconditional dependence, to complete subordination to the will [Willen] of the center, just as an energetic volition [Wollen] in man expresses itself in the limbs which are close to the body. (Prolegomena zu einer Psychologie der Architektur, 1886, p. 31-32, my trans.)

This resulted in another rhythmic rule derived from the body: the association of the symmetrical partition with a division in odd number, like the one resulting from a series of four of six windows on the façade of a symmetrical building.

We apply the symmetrical partition [Gliederung] or the odd division [Teilung] (3 =, 5 = division) to everything independent, since the center which is then emphasized and [stands] different from the parts represents the inner cohesion, analogous to the system of our and every animal organism. Against binary division [Zweiteilung] we have a decided aversion: it is un-organic to let the thing fall apart in the middle. (Prolegomena zu einer Psychologie der Architektur, 1886, p. 32, my trans.)

There were naturally cases, like in Greek temples, were architects had played with this rhythmic rule using both an odd number of intercolumniations for the front side and an even number for the lateral sides.

A fine feeling, however, has brought the binary division [Zweiteilung] into dependent bodies. In Greek temples, for example, the front side is symmetrical and oddly divided, we have 5 or 7 intercolumniations (and these do not depend on the columns because only 2 columns together are something independent like the 2 legs of the human body). On the other hand, on the sides we find an even number of them, that is, the side is not independent in itself: it has no center, rather the middle is filled by a supporting part. (Prolegomena zu einer Psychologie der Architektur, 1886, p. 32-33, my trans.)

Finally, the principle of harmony, or eurhythmy, which as symmetry mainly concerned the horizontal axis, was derived from the physical need for regularity and, as expected, could influence back the body of the visitor or viewer.

The consideration of the states of equilibrium leads us to what has been called in architecture regularity of the sequence [Regelmässigkeit der Folge] or eurhythmy [Eurhythmie] (Semper). We have already dealt with the necessity of the regularity for every living being, as well as with its pace on the occasion of [our discussion] of proportions. (Prolegomena zu einer Psychologie der Architektur, 1886, p. 34, my trans.)

As one may have noticed, although he explicitly quoted Semper, Wölfflin significantly transformed the definition proposed by his predecessor, which was based both on a more or less elaborated repetition of segments and a closure: “The Eurhythmy consists in a closed sequence of similarly shaped sections of space.” (Der Stil, I, 1861, p. XXVIII, my trans.) (see above chap. 6). Instead, in tune with the general trend in the end of the 19^th century, Wölfflin got rid of the notion of closure and reduced eurhythmy to the mere “regularity of the sequence.” Naturally, just as the principle of symmetry tolerated slight asymmetries, that of harmony, viz. regularity, accepted minor irregularities. It was, Wölfflin added, just as the rubato in music around the regular beat.

That irregularity is allowed to a certain extent within the bounds of something already formed corroborates the analogy with the symmetry and the general source, the human breathing figure, which is symmetrical in its arrangement and regular in its functions. The same determinations apply in both cases: the normal, strictly regular can, by a certain loosening of the rule, win the character of the cheerful and the free, but also that of the unsatisfying and restless. In monumental buildings we imperatively demand the uniformity of the rule. On the other hand, a slight irregularity will increase the charm of rural constructions, but it must be a light one, for we have to look at the regularity [in architecture] like at the beat in music which, although there is, here and there, something stretched, must still be considered as an enduring fundamental rule. (Prolegomena zu einer Psychologie der Architektur, 1886, p. 34-35, my trans.)

In other words, harmony was exactly for architecture what rhythm was for music: a regular recurrence of segments, which in turn could be again regularly segmented by stronger elements, which Semper, as we know, called “caesurae.”

To speak of a rhythm of the sequence [Rhythmus der Folge] seems daring. But because we now have a sequence of different parts [eine Folge unterschiedener Teile] and thus the elements of the measure [des Taktes] in front of us, why should not a rhythm arise from a stronger emphasis on the 2^nd or 3^rd part? Example: St. Michael's Church in Hildesheim, where every two columns comes one pillar. After all, this kind of rhythmization [Rhythmisirung] is an unusual one, because from a stronger part we demand a greater appearance, which is not here the case. But there is still another possibility [to account for this rhythmization] since we have several differently arranged sequences, side by side and one above the other, and the weaker parts must subordinate themselves [sich einordnen] to the stronger ones, like in music the light figures accompanying the slow-progressing main theme. In the resulting rhythm there is indeed a moment of essential importance, that plays a role in the impression made by the whole and that should not be underestimated. (Prolegomena zu einer Psychologie der Architektur, 1886, p. 35, my trans.)

Like Semper who contrasted Ancient and Medieval uses of his most complex kind of Eurhythmie, but for other reasons, Wölfflin thus distinguished two main types of architectural harmony, i.e. for him of regularity: the first based on a binary segmentation (2/2 or 4/4); the second on a ternary one (3/3 or 3/4). Whereas the former, which had been applied in most Greek and Roman temples, looked “austere,” the second, which appeared quite late in Antiquity, was “light and floating,” like our going when we march on “a 3/4 time signature.”

Take the Greek temple architecture, for instance: the columns are all the same, the triglyphs above are the same; but whether 2 or 3 triglyphs come on top of each column, in other words, whether the space between each two columns is divided into 2/2 or 3/3, entirely changes the rhythm. [In the latter case,] the triglyphic slot corresponding to the column will immediately appear as the more accented one [der stärker betonte erscheinen]. The effect in both cases is quite different. When a triglyph falls on the center of gravity of the entablature portion, that is, exactly in the middle of the intercolumnium, it gives us an impression of strict bondage. By contrast, when this point remains unmarked, a freer order unfurls lightly and cheerfully. But this is not a sufficient explanation. It may be good to remember the consequence [Bedeutung] of the 4/4 and 3/4 time signature [des 4/4 and 3/4 Takts] for our movement: we march more easily on a 3/4 time signature. The accented step [der betonte Tritt] then does not always coincide with the same foot but alternates; the walk becomes light and floating.

I refrain from citing further cases: generally it can be said that the old, austere art only corresponds to the binary division [Zweiteilung]. The Greco-Roman architecture has applied late the stimulant—if I may say so—of the 3/4 time signature [des 3/4 Taktes]. I first find it in the round temple in Tivoli. (Prolegomena zu einer Psychologie der Architektur, 1886, p. 35-36, my trans.)

In the last pages of his dissertation, Wölfflin finally explored the “vertical segmentation” and the “ornament.” Rhythm was not any longer mobilized but there were some allusions to Vitruvius' and Alberti's own comparison between the proportions and articulations of a building and those of the human body.

We have recognized the growing shaping of the matter [Durchformung des Stoffes] as the principle of vertical construction. In man, this shaping [Durchformung] consists in the formation [Bildung] of finer organs, which are able to move more freely along the body, and are, in themselves, more diversely articulated. Further, it implies, as it were, the openings in the closed mass, which, for example, confront us in the eyes. What is the equivalent in architecture? The latter divides its material [Stoff] in the same way and breaks openings through the walls. When the openings increase in size, the divisions become finer, the organs more independent. The support, which first appeared as a wall pillar, can become a free column with its own base. But I do not want to go into detail, it only depends on the principle: on the development of the vertical force of form. (Prolegomena zu einer Psychologie der Architektur, 1886, p. 36-37, my trans.)

All the evidence gathered so far show that Tobias Teutenberg was quite right when he recently underlined the fact that “Wölfflin traced rhythm back to the biological makeup of mankind and thus incorporated this principle in his anthropocentric architectural theory” (2018, p. 166), yet simultaneously quite mistaken not only to claim that Wölfflin's dissertation was “the earliest evocation of architectural rhythm in German art history” (p. 165) but also to allege that he “[stopped] short of declaring rhythm to be one of his four laws of form (Formgesetze)—namely, regularity, symmetry, proportion and harmony” (p. 165). In fact, each one of these formal categories was based on rhythm, particularly the first and the last one.

I could not study as much as I wanted Wölfflin's use of the concept of rhythm in the 1890s. In Renaissance und Barock – Renaissance and Baroque (1888) and Die klassische Kunst – Classic Art (1898), he quite interestingly extended its use to painting. This is something that remains to be studied. Nevertheless, as Vasold accurately noticed (2010, p. 54), Wölfflin's concern for the rhythm seems to have regressed simultaneously with his growing interest in a formalistic method. In his Kunstgeschichtliche Grundbegriffe – Principles of Art History published in 1915, the concept was still used here and there but it was not any more of a central concern. The rhythm had recessed into the background with the interest in body and time.

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Rhythm as Temporal Aesthetic Form (Part 2)

Pascal Michon — 2018-12-15T06:00:00Z

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Rhythm as Form of Space Intuition (Schmarsow – 1894)

August Schmarsow (1853–1936) was a German art historian. He studied German literature, philosophy and art history in Zürich, Strasbourg and Bonn. He was awarded a professorship at an early age at Göttingen university in 1882 and, in 1893 after a stay in Florence where he founded the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Institute for the History of Art in Florence, he was promoted to the more prestigious university of Leipzig where he taught art history until 1919.

Schmarsow first addressed the issue of rhythm in two short talks: the first in 1893 (published in 1894, the same year Meumann and Bolton published their own contributions on the psychology of rhythm) which was his inaugural speech at Leipzig university: Das Wesen der Architektonische Schöpfung – The Essence of Architectural Creation; the second in 1896 which was entitled Über den Werth der Dimensionen im menschlichen Raumgebilde – On the Value of Dimensions in Human Spatial Construct. He came back to the subject in 1905 in his famous Grundbegriffe der Kunstwissenschaft: am Übergang vom Altertum zum Mittelalter kritisch erörtert und in systematischem Zusammenhange dargestellt – Basic Concepts of the Science of Art: Critically Discussed at the Transition from Antiquity to the Middle Ages and Presented in a Systematic Context and again in Kompositionsgesteze in der Kunst des Mittelalters – Laws of Composition in Medieval Art, in 1915-1922. Throughout his life, he never ceased to present rhythm as a central category of art and published extensively on the subject, mainly in Max Dessoir's review Zeitschrift für Ästhetik und allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft: “Rhythmus in menschlichen Raumgebilden,” 1920, vol. 14, p. 171-187; “Zur Lehre vom Rhythmus,” 1922, vol. 16, p. 109-118; “Geist und Seele im Rhythmus (Eine Palinodie),” 1933, vol. 27, p. 333-339. It seems, moreover, that around 1900 he had intended to create, with other colleagues from Leipzig University such as Wundt and Riemann, a kind of center of rhythm (Vasold, 2010, p. 40-45; Pinotti, 2012, p. 20-31).

In his 1893 inaugural lecture, Schmarsow sketched in a few strokes his philosophical position. He declared that he wanted to “inquire into the origin and innermost essence of architecture” without resorting, he added in coded terms, to Platonic nor materialist aesthetics.

This would simply mean replacing aesthetic “from above” and “from below,” which since Fechner have been opposed to one another, with aesthetic “from within.” (The Essence of Architectural Creation, 1894, trans. Harry F. Mallgrave & Eleftherios Ikonomou, p. 3)

The aesthetic “from within” he was seeking was not, however, inspired by a Hegelian search for the various and progressive artistic ways the Spirit had found to express Himself, nor by the vitalist claim, which we found in Kugler and still in the young Wölfflin, that there exists in each piece of architecture an inner drive that accounts for its harmony. It was to be induced, according to him, by a strictly psychological and empiricist methodology.

It is important in a basic study to give due weight to the psychological origin or the creative act and to test the belief that in this art [architecture], as in all others, what is truly essential can only start in the mind of the artist and end in the mind of the observer. [...] Far from all the conceptual analyses and dialectical constructions with which speculative aesthetics struggles, this element has to present itself as self-evident to our common senses [dem gesunden Menschenverstand]. (The Essence of Architectural Creation, 1894, trans. Harry F. Mallgrave & Eleftherios Ikonomou, p. 4-5)

Schmarsow's empiricism was, however, quite particular. It demanded to be able to “transpose [oneself] into the whole [of the architectural work] and to understand and appreciate” all its parts. The decisive feature was not its “technical structure” or “all expenditure of massive material” but its “visual appreciation” which, as a “musical performance,” could be “repeated at will.” Scientific but also common observation was thus grounded in sensory participation.

Do the massive piles of hewn stone, the well-jointed beams, and the securely arched vaults constitute the architectural work of art, or does the work of art come into being only in that instant when human aesthetic reflection begins to transpose itself into the whole and to understand and appreciate all the parts with a pure and free vision? The moment we see this visual appreciation as the truly essential element—a performance that, like the musical performance, can be repeated at will—then the technical structure and all the expenditure of massive material are reduced to secondary importance; they become means to an aesthetic end. (The Essence of Architectural Creation, 1894, trans. Harry F. Mallgrave & Eleftherios Ikonomou, p. 8-9)

Just as for Wölfflin, architecture was a matter of bodily experience but, whereas Wölfflin had only postulated it, this experience had to be rigorously reconstructed. It was guided, Schmarsow argued, by our “intuition of space” which was not, as Kant had claimed, an abstract a priori form of human perception but resulted from both—he borrowed here from Wundt—“our sense of sight” and “the residues of sensory experience” including muscular, skin and bodily sensations.

Psychologically, the intuited form of three-dimensional space arises through the experiences of our sense of sight, whether or not assisted by other physiological factors. All our visual perceptions and ideas are arranged, are ordered, and unfold in accordance with this intuited form; and this fact is the mother lode of the art whose origin and essence we seek. The intuited form of space, which surrounds us wherever we may be and which we then always erect around ourselves and consider more necessary than the form of our own body, consists of the residues of sensory experience to which the muscular sensations of our body, the sensitivity of our skin, and the structure of our body all contribute. (The Essence of Architectural Creation, 1894, trans. Harry F. Mallgrave & Eleftherios Ikonomou, p. 10-11)

This psychological reconstruction of our intuition of space allowed Schmarsow to famously define architecture as “Raumgestalterin,” a neologism that could be translated as creatress, ‘configuratress,' or even sculptress of space, i.e. in an opposite way to the usual definition based on building of walls and roofs. Architecture was not the art of erecting physical masses but that of “creating or configuring spaces” inside and outside these masses.

Once the ever-active imagination takes hold of this germ [the subjective intuition of space] and develops it according to the laws of the directional axes inherent in even the smallest nucleus of every spatial idea, the grain of mustard seed grows into a tree and an entire world surrounds us. Our sense of space [Raumgefühl] and spatial imagination [Raumphantasie] press toward spatial [configuration] [Raumgestaltung]; they seek their satisfaction in art. We call this art architecture; in plain words, it is the creatress of space [Raumgestalterin]. (The Essence of Architectural Creation, 1894, trans. Harry F. Mallgrave & Eleftherios Ikonomou, my mod., p. 11)

Thus, our intuition of space set the frame for architectural creation according to its three main dimensions.

Architectural creation begins with the tangible setting up—if I may call it so—of the backbone of our intuition of space. The axial system of coordinates compellingly predefines the natural law that regulates creation. (The Essence of Architectural Creation, 1894, trans. Harry F. Mallgrave & Eleftherios Ikonomou, p. 14)

Precisely at this crucial point in his reasoning, Schmarsow introduced the topic of rhythm, although he did not use yet the term itself. Significantly, he argued that the creation of space followed our “natural tendency toward organization,” which he exemplified with the decoration of “our tools” or the adornment of “our body” with “similar or alternating series, in symmetrical repetition, and regular forms.”

Our natural tendency toward organization [die natürliche Organisation des Menschen] unconsciously and necessarily operates here, as it does in all the works of our hand: in the way we decorate our tools or adorn our body with similar or alternating series [gleichartige oder abwechselnde Reihung], in symmetrical repetition [symmetrische Wiederkehr], and in the regular forms [regelmässigen Formen] of rectangles, circles, and so on. (The Essence of Architectural Creation, 1894, trans. Harry F. Mallgrave & Eleftherios Ikonomou, p. 13)

Exactly as for Wölfflin, “order,” “distinct recurrence,” and “abstract regularity” were, for Schmarsow, the essential rules of architecture—to which he added however “purity” in order to include from the outset mathematical forms into his account. All those principles were, he claimed, “ideal forms of the human intuition of space.”

Both realms [mathematics and architecture], however, are ruled by the basic law of the human mind whereby we see and seek to promote order in the external world. In everything we do, it is evident that we are truly pleased by the clarity of obedience to the law [die Klarheit des Gesetzmässigen], by the distinctness of recurrence [die Uebersichtlichkeit der wiederkehrenden Teile], by regularity [die Regelmässigkeit], and by purity. [...] Thus in the walls that we built, in the post and pillars that supported them, as in all the individual forms of our later harmonic [tektonischen] creation, we preferred the abstract regularity [für abstrakte Regelrichtigkeit] of lines, surfaces, and bodies as a characteristic architectural effect. [...] Architecture, therefore, is the creatress of space, in accordance with the ideal forms of the human intuition of space. (The Essence of Architectural Creation, 1894, trans. Harry F. Mallgrave & Eleftherios Ikonomou, p. 13-14, my mod.)

However, while Wölfflin considered rhythm to be mainly related with the horizontal axis, Schmarsow associated it with the depth axis. Rhythm was perceivable only through the “free movement” of the body and therefore was primarily related to the third dimension which was the “most important direction for the actual spatial construct.”

Next to the vertical line, whose living bearers resolve space by our bodily orientation into above and below, front and back, left and right, the most important direction for the actual spatial construct is the direction of free movement—that is, forward—and that of our vision, which, with the placement and positioning of the eyes, defines the dimension of depth. (The Essence of Architectural Creation, 1894, trans. Harry F. Mallgrave & Eleftherios Ikonomou, p. 16)

As a matter of fact—and he fully agreed on that with his predecessor—there was no other way to appreciate the space of a piece of architecture, than to move or imagine to move within it, or by “attributing to the static lines, surfaces, and volumes” the movement of our eyes and our kinesthetic sensations (same idea, p. 23). Schmarsow underlined the fact that all rhythmic metaphors that were now commonly used in architecture demanded to be grounded in the movement—be it real or imaginary—of the observer or at least of his eyes.

The linguistic terms that we use for space, such as “extension,” “expanse,” and “direction,” suggest continuous activity on our part [die fortwirkende Tätigkeit des Subjektes] as we transfer our own feeling of movement directly to the static spatial form. We cannot express its relation to ourselves in any way other than by imagining that we are in motion, measuring the length, width, and depth, or by attributing to the static lines, surfaces, and volumes the movement that our eyes and our kinesthetic sensations [Muskelgefühle] suggest to us, even though we survey the dimensions while standing still. The spatial construct is a human creation and cannot confront the creative or appreciative subject as if it were a cold, crystallized form. (The Essence of Architectural Creation, 1894, trans. Harry F. Mallgrave & Eleftherios Ikonomou, p. 19)

Similarly, from the object viewpoint, the space of a building could produce a pleasant impression only if it was not too “pure and rigid” and filled of “a life of its own.” While he grounded this rule both on the inner movement of space designed by the architect and the free spatial movement of the visitor, instead of the inner movement of the masses, Schmarsow was thus finally joining Wölfflin in his opposition between Gesetzmässigkeit and Regelmässigkeit.

A pure and rigid form would in the long run prove unbearably oppressive as the everyday setting for human life, even allowing for the marked human preference for regularity and rule. Space must be filled with a life of its own if it is to satisfy us and make us happy. (The Essence of Architectural Creation, 1894, trans. Harry F. Mallgrave & Eleftherios Ikonomou, p. 20)

“Animation” and “human sensation of force” were to be favored to “abstract regularity,” in other words, rhythm to meter.

The more all articulated forms and tectonic parts deviate from abstract regularity in their basic form (as dictated by their function within the whole), and the more they approach sculptural form, the more they are animated and saturated with the human sensation of force. (The Essence of Architectural Creation, 1894, trans. Harry F. Mallgrave & Eleftherios Ikonomou, p. 24)

Unsurprisingly, Schmarsow finally compared, once more like Wölfflin, the feelings induced by architecture with those produced by music. By “creatively elaborating” our three-dimensional sense of space, architecture yielded an effect akin to that of music on our “command of the world of sound.”

Just as the art of music enriches us in a thousand ways, as a creative elaboration of auditory sensations and as the command of the world of sound in accordance with law and analogous to human kinesthetic sensations, so architecture as the creatress of space is based on a systematic command of the material of spatial imagination and constitutes a creative elaboration of the three-dimensional visual image for human satisfaction and pleasure. (The Essence of Architectural Creation 1894, trans. Harry F. Mallgrave & Eleftherios Ikonomou, p. 22)

Rhythm as Form of Space Configuration (Schmarsow – 1896)

In his 1896 talk On the Value of Dimensions in the Human Spatial Construct, Schmarsow elaborated further his ideas on architecture as “creatress of space.” There were however some discret but significant changes in his position. Whereas he had, in his previous talk, advocated a purely psychological perspective, looking for the forms of space intuition, he tried this time, looking for a deeper empiricism, to ground his view directly on the psychophysiological constitution of the human being.

This move should not be misunderstood, though. If architecture was not the “art of physical masses” (p. 44), it was not either, as Ancient, Renaissance, Modern, and even some recent architects and theorists had claimed, “an imitation of the human body, or an image of its organism.”

From the outset, architectural creation is not an imitation of the human body, not even an image of its organism on a different scale, as some popular comparisons make us believe, but it is a correlate of man, in fact of his whole being. (On the Value of Dimensions..., 1896, p. 47, my trans.)

Schmarsow actually substituted a novel proto-phenomenological perspective to the traditional anthropomorphic conception. Architecture was “a creatress of space” (p. 44) but her creations were established on the basis of the “creative dispute of the human subject with his spatial environment,” which involved both “our spiritual as well as bodily organization,” and was determined by the rules of the “existence in space.”

According to this, architecture would be a creative dispute [eine schöpferische Auseinandersetzung] of the human subject with his spatial environment, with the outside world as a spatial whole, according to his most individual nature. It cannot only refer to man “as a corporal being,” as it has been claimed, but necessarily proceeds according to the constitutive peculiarity of the human intellect, to our spiritual as well as bodily organization. And as a result, it will bring to light the common basis, the rules of the existence in space [die Gesetzmässigkeit des räumlichen Daseins] by which man and the world are dependent on each other, and in this lies the objective as well as the subjective value of its creations. (On the Value of Dimensions..., 1896, p. 45, my trans.)

The analysis of this “creative dispute between the human being and his spatial environment” unfolded, in the rest of the article, along the three dimensions of the intuition of space, “the threefold extension into height, breadth, and depth” (p. 45).

“For man, the first dimension [was] the height” (p. 46), for the axis which related “the center of gravity to the site of intelligence” constituted his “meridian” (p. 47). It resulted from the upright posture which differentiated man from animal. If the vertical dimension was limited downwards by the ground (p. 48), our capacity to extend our arms above our head (p. 49) and our gaze above our arms (p. 49) allowed the height to develop indefinitely, even if “at a certain distance from our eyes, the whole region over our heads passes into the indeterminate” (p. 50). The “compulsion of looking upwards” and even “going up the walls”—in order to find “the only way out”—we experience for instance when inside a tower, was a good illustration of the necessary introduction of movement into the vertical axis, that finally resulted in the transformation of “the first dimension into the third” (p. 51).

The original inner core of the second dimension, the breadth, resulted from the “juxtaposition of several heights,” or in more simple words from the “presence of a second body near me” (p. 51). But it also resulted from the “width of the shoulders and hips, our way to elbow through, and finally the whole extension of the arms” (p. 52). In addition to that, we must naturally take into account the “width of the field of view” (p. 52) and the possibility to enlarge it by turning the eyes and the head on both sides (p. 53). This made the measure of the breadth easier than that of the height—which, as we saw, ended up in the “indeterminate”—since we could gauge it “in its entirety” simply by imagining that we move “from one end to the other” as “a successive process” (p. 53). This, again, introduced movement into the second axis and made it tilt into the third.

The third dimension, that of depth, was consequently the most important for architecture. First, because the two others needed, in order to fully unfold, “the idea of movement” which they necessarily borrowed from the third dimension into which they then “transform[ed] themselves.”

The first and the second dimension, we have said, can transform themselves into the third with the help of the idea of movement; indeed, they must involuntarily do so, as soon as this psychological power [the idea of movement] operates. Only the actual movement within space and its memory images can enliven the surface image [viewed from the vertical axis] and transform the mere juxtaposition in space [perceived on the horizontal axis] into a succession. (On the Value of Dimensions..., 1896, p. 55, my trans.)

Second, because depth implied by its very nature the idea of movement and, therefore, was the fundamental dimension, “the psychological root of architecture” (p. 57).

The third dimension is the almost exclusive bearer of this important factor, the spatial movement, the directional axis κατ᾽ ἐξοχήν [prominent] for all our movements. [...] I can scan and pace the distance; the space in front of me can be covered bit by bit, after my eyes have already measured it and prepared to arrange its various parts within a common space. Since the man is accustomed to move and to see forwards, the length of the depth axis [die Länge der Tiefenaxe] provides the intuiting subject with the measure of his free movement into the existing space. (On the Value of Dimensions..., 1896, p. 55-56, my trans.)

Third, because depth was the dimension from which the others derived, and that intertwined them into a “systemic relationship.”

We have tried to consider one by one the three dimensions [Dimensionen] of the human spatial structure in their value for the creating and enjoying subject, but their systemic relationship [ihr Zusammenhang unter einander] and their inseparability in whole spaces must be everywhere taken into account. The aesthetic value of each dimension [der einzelnen Ausdehnung] will always receive its particular meaning through the connection with the other two on a case-by-case basis. (On the Value of the Dimensions in Human Spatial Structure, 1896, p. 59, my trans.)

Strangely, Schmarsow claimed that each one of the three spatial dimensions was governed by a particular aesthetic “Gestaltungsprincip – configuration principle”: height by “proportion”; breadth by “symmetry”; depth by “rhythm,” which he remarkably substituted to the traditional principle of “harmony.”

Each of these axes has its own configuration principle [Gestaltungsprincip]: in the first dimension, proportionality prevails; in the second, symmetry; and in the third the element of direction [das Moment der Richtung] (as Gottfried Semper called it) or rhythm [oder des Rhythmus] (as I would like to call it, because the successive perception [die successive Auffassung], the idea of movement [die Bewegungsvorstellung] is the deciding factor). (On the Value of the Dimensions in Human Spatial Structure, 1896, p. 59, my trans.)

But the rigidity of this tri-partition is often exaggerated by commentators who make it weird and difficult to understand. In fact, all dimensions communicated with each other and especially with the third. By way of consequence, rhythm was not only the configuration principle for the third dimension but came into play each time movement was introduced into one of the two others—that is most of the time, and except when we artificially freeze the space, i.e. our movement and our gaze, to look at it as an immobile surface or to study it geometrically. This point is important because it will help to explain Schmarsow's fierce critique against Riegl to which I will return below.

Each one of these configuration principles confers a special character to the extension it governs. But here, too, [the concept of] unity of the whole space proves its worth, in that the first two dimensions are able to change into the third, as soon as the perception of immobile persistence which at first challenges the space with its forms clearly defined, is replaced by the perception of a living creation or temporarily superseded by the human subject asserting the right of the living against the material. Then the height appears as a growth from bottom to top, the breadth as an unfolding to the left and right, the depth as an advancing movement forwards with the possibility to repeat it backwards to the starting point which is behind us; — i.e. in pure human relationships about which mathematics does not want to know anything. (On the Value of the Dimensions in Human Spatial Structure, 1896, p. 59-60, my trans.)

Schmarsow was not, however, very consistent in characterizing the form of this movement, i.e. its rhythm. He first claimed, in a physiopsychological spirit close to Wölfflin's emphasis on “periodic functions”— “we breathe regularly, we go regularly”—that it was regulated and measured by the oscillations of the walk, the succession of the movements of our legs, the throbbing of our heart, or the alternation of our respiration, that is binary movements.

Our swinging gait, the more or less rapid separation of the two legs, help us to control the succession in space and time, like the fast-paced throbbing of our heart, [or] our adjustable alternate breathing. (On the Value of Dimensions..., 1896, p. 55, my trans.)

But a few lines below, once more like Wölfflin, he used again an artistic comparison which entailed instead an implicit opposition between the mere binary repetition and the more supple play of the rhythm around the beat. The “composition” resulting from the pacing and scanning of the space by the observer during his movement into the depth was similar, he said, to a “musical composition” or a piece of poetry,” or “even a drama.”

The preponderance of the third dimension, the lifeline of every spatial formation, which does not leave the ground and the horizontal position, or only reluctantly and not without loss, should make one think. From the viewpoint of the temporal course of our intuition, the developed spatial composition [die entwickelte Raumkomposition], which we are only able to experience successively by going through the parts and grasping them in connection with each other, compares only with a musical composition [mit einer musikalischen Komposition], or a piece of poetry, possibly the performance of a symphony or even a drama. (On the Value of the Dimensions in Human Spatial Structure, 1896, p. 58-59, my trans.)

Although, there were some noticeable differences between Wölfflin and Schmarsow, during the 1880s and the 1890s both used and transformed the notion of rhythm in the same way.

1. Whereas Kugler or Semper had tried, in the 1850s and 1860s, to renovate—and thus in a way preserve—the old Vitruvian-Albertian concept by introducing either a living process or a musical succession into it, Wölfflin and Schmarsow, influenced in this by the rise of the physiopsychology and probably also by the success of the science of the living in the 1860s and 1870s, replaced it altogether with an entirely new temporal notion.

On the side of the object, architectural rhythms resulted either from organic developmental processes determined by the “play of formative forces,” or from the organized movements that were already implied in the “configuration of a building.” On the side of the subject, for Wölfflin as well as for Schmarsow, these spatial rhythms could not appear as they were, unless an observer, strolling or gazing around the edifice, corporally involved, made them do so. In both cases, since physiology was now the most basic reference, rhythm was essentially a form of process based on regular recurrence and its previous roles as aesthetic criterion and analytical category merely derived from its temporal essence.

2. Yet, both of them rejected any abstract or mathematical conception of rhythm which could impair the aesthetic effect sought by the architect and impede the art historian to provide an account of it. Wölfflin differentiated between “Regelmässigkeit – regularity” and “Gesetzmässigkeit – lawfulness.” He insisted that harmony, i.e. for him regularity, tolerated minor irregularities. Similarly, Schmarsow rejected “pure and rigid forms.” In his opinion, “animation” and “human sensation of force” were to be favored to “abstract regularity.” One remember that this was also the opinion of the English architect George Edmund Street in 1888 (see above, chap. 5).

3. But as most of their contemporaries except maybe Meumann, Wölfflin as well as Schmarsow entirely ignored the push that had occurred in some of the fine arts, particularly in poetry, from the 1750s, to get rid of the Platonic metric paradigm altogether and to challenge it with new versions of the Aristotelian poetic and even sometimes of the Democritean physical paradigms.

4. Consequently, they relied exclusively on music in order to counterbalance the weight of the simplistic concept of rhythm they borrowed from physiology. In addition to its definition as regular recurrence, rhythm was thus to be considered according to the latest musical conception developed a few decades earlier by Hauptmann and more recently by Riemann, opposing rhythm and beat, movement and measure.

5. But this resulted first in a disturbing inconsistency. Whereas, a few years before, Wundt had still taken great care to bridge those two diverging perspectives through an evolutionary process (see above chap. 2), there was no mention in Wölfflin's and Schmarsow's aesthetics of any mediation of the kind. They simultaneously and contradictorily resorted to the new hyper-metric concept derived from life science which conceived of rhythm as sheer regular repetition, and to the para-metric concept of rhythm borrowed from music theorists which, by contrast, emphasized life, movement, rubato around the beat.

6. In fact, music itself was far from being able to really challenge the Platonic metric paradigm. After having been for centuries directly inspired by the neo-Platonic theories of Boethius associating music with mathematics, music theory had begun at the end of the Middle Ages, mainly for practical reasons, to pay more heed to regular timing, although in a very limited way. In the 16^th century, there was still no written measure and the musicians followed the “tactus,” i.e. an external beat usually materialized by a movement of the finger or the hand, roughly equivalent to the heartbeat. From the beginning of the 17^th century, a new notation system based on bars and regular timing developed. Between the 17^th and the 18^th century, rhythm was thus merely conceived of as meter and structured association of meters, most of the discussion concentrating on harmony.

In the 19^th century, this position was still defended by Eduard Hanslick (1825-1904). Applying to music the traditional Aristotelian duality of matter and form, Hanslick claimed that rhythm was the “essence,” viz. the form, applied upon “the primordial stuff” of music, the “pleasing sound.” This form was to be understood both as “alternating motion of individual units,” i.e. meter, and as the overall “symmetrical structure” of the piece.

The primordial stuff [das Urelement] of music is the pleasing sound [Wohllaut]; its essence [ihr Wesen] is the rhythm: in the larger scale, the rhythm as the co-proportionality [die Uebereinstimmung] of a symmetrical structure [eines symmetrischen Baues]; in the smaller scale, the rhythm as regular alternating motion [wechselndgesetzmässige Bewegung] of individual units [einzelner Glieder] within the metric period [im Zeitmass]. (Eduard Hanslick, Vom Musikalisch-Schönen, 1854, my trans., chap. 3)

From the 1850s, some German theorists tried, however, to challenge this reduction of rhythm to meter. Moritz Hauptmann (1792-1868), who advocated just intonation and considered enharmonic progressions unnatural, was clearly a conservative in relation to the compositional trends of his time. He displayed a taste for classical proportion, formal order, metrical clarity, and tonal logic. However, concerning rhythm, he introduced a novel idea that was to rapidly spread in the second half of the 19^th century. While the meter was “the constant measure by which the measurement of time is made,” and could consist of “a two-, three-, or four-part unity,” the rhythm was defined as “motion in that measure.”

WE shall call the constant measure by which the measurement of time is made—Meter; the kind of motion in that measure—Rhythm. 2. The measure, as to outward structure, is found to be a two-, three-, or four-part unity. For the motion in that measure, it may in itself be infinitely manifold of shape; nevertheless as measured it can be understood only by the determinations that issue from the metrical notion. (M. Hauptmann, Die Natur der Harmonik und der Metrik: zur Theorie der Musik, 1853, Eng. ed. 1888, trans. W.E. Heathcote)

This equating of rhythm with movement or motion, within the frame of the regular measure, was elaborated further in the 1880s by Hugo Riemann (1849-1919). Rhythm was now defined as “the living musical arrangement within the metric patterns.” The rhythmic movement was that of life itself, as opposed to the stiffness and the monotony of the regular succession of “the metrics units.”

Rhythm is the living musical arrangement within the metric patterns [innerhalb der metrischen Schemas], breaking the monotony of the regular course of the pattern [die Monotonie des gleichmässigen Verlaufs des Schemas] by contraction or subdivision, etc. of the metric units. (H. Riemann, Musiklexicon, 1882, p. 760, my trans.)

Since it opposed any mechanical performance and gave composers the freedom to introduce polyrhythm and unusual time signatures, this theoretical novelty was, naturally, decisive for music itself. But, if we ponder this question, we will recognize that this did not change the core of the musical concept of rhythm which, although it could legitimize irregularities and deviations, remained based on meter. The notion of movement that was introduced into the concept remained subordinated to the metric frame within which it occurred. For the new generation of music theorists, rhythm was only the play introduced into the succession of meters by their “contraction or subdivision, etc.”

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Rhythm as Spatial Aesthetic Form (Part 1)

Pascal Michon — 2018-12-14T18:30:00Z

Previous chapter

During the 1900s, the rhythm became the subject of a fierce debate between the Swiss-German and Austrian schools of art history. Rhythm which had been considered by the former as a form of process was now redefined by the latter as a spatial form. To better assess this controversy, I will first expose the position of the main opponent to Wölfflin and Schmarsow: the Austrian art historian Alois Riegl (1858-1905) (for a useful introduction on Riegl, see Gubser, 2010). I will then address Schmarsow's answer to Riegl in the next chapter.

Rhythm as Geometric Pattern (Riegl – 1893)

When a student at the university of Vienna, Riegl attended classes on philosophy and history taught by Franz Brentano (1838-1917), and Alexius Meinong (1853-1920). As many art historians, he began his career by studying architecture: his dissertation was a study of the Jakobskirche – the Benedictine Abbey of St James, in Regensburg. But he, subsequently, switched to applied arts. In 1886, he was appointed a curator in the textile department at the K. K. Österreichisches Museum für Kunst und Industrie in Vienna, and in 1889 he completed his habilitation on medieval calendar manuscripts. In 1894, he was finally awarded an extraordinarius position at the University of Vienna where he served until his death in 1905.

Riegl is nowadays regarded as one of the main contributors to the establishment of art history as a self-sufficient academic discipline, and also, along with Wölfflin, as one of the introducers of formalism. We may add that his innovative concern for form resulted in a significant transformation of the concept of rhythm.

Already in 1891, the architect Ferdinand von Fellner-Feldegg of the Österreichisches Museum für Kunst und Industrie—that is, the very institution where Riegl worked—had delivered a lecture open to the public on the theme “Rhythm, symmetry and proportion in nature and art” (Vasold, 2010, p. 45)

In 1893, Riegl published his Stilfragen: Grundlegungen zu einer Geschichte der Ornamentik – Problems of Style: Foundations for a History of Ornament. In the introduction, as it was customary in Germanic academy, he gave a few hints on his epistemological and philosophical position. He had tried, he said, to refute the materialist account—commonly, yet wrongly according to him, attributed to Gottfried Semper—of the origins of decorative motifs from wickerwork or weaving of textiles, a theory according to which “all art forms were always the direct products of materials and techniques” (p. VII). He argued that Semper's followers had twisted and exaggerated Semper's useful insights, exactly as Darwin's followers had done with Darwin (p. VI).

Instead, Riegl attempted to describe a continuous “History of ornament” based on a principle of autonomous “development” of forms. He concentrated on four ornamental motifs: the “geometric style,” the “heraldic style,” the “vegetal ornament,” and the “arabesque,” whose transformation and permanence he followed from Prehistorical, through ancient near Eastern, then Classical and up into early Medieval and Islamic art. All these motifs, he claimed borrowing from Schnaase's Kunsttrieb or Kunstrichtung, had been produced and continuously reelaborated by a “bestimmtes Kunstwollen – particular artistic will” or “immanenter künstlerischer Trieb – immanent artistic drive.”

Technical factors surely played a role as well [in prehistorical art], even within the process described above, but it was by no means the leading role that the supporters of the technical-materialist theory of origin assumed. The impetus [Der Anstoss] did not arise from the technique but, on the contrary, from the particular artistic [will] [von dem bestimmten Kunstwollen aus]. First came the desire to create the likeness of a creature from nature in lifeless material, and then came the invention of whatever technique was appropriate. A carved reindeer on the hilt of a dagger certainly does not make it any easier to handle. Therefore, it must have been an immanent artistic drive [ein immanenter künstlerischer Trieb], alert and restless for action, that human beings possessed long before they invented woven protective coverings for their bodies, and that impelled them to carve bone handles in the shape of reindeer. (Problems of Style, 1893, p. 20, trans. Evelyn Kain, my mod.)

Since the most ancient time man had “struggled with the material” and expressed in art a desired reality. Consequently, the stylistic development had been driven by contingent tendencies particular to each age or social group, and devoid of any connection to technological concerns.

All of art history presents itself as a continuous struggle with material; it is not the tool—which is determined by the technique—but the artistically creative idea that strives to expand its creative realm and increase its formal potential. Why should this situation, which obtains throughout the history of art, have been any different during its initial stages? (Problems of Style, 1893, p. 24, trans. Evelyn Kain)

In a way, this was resuming with Schnaase's Hegelian tradition in art history. However, since Riegl discarded the speculative claim that the whole development expressed—and was led by—the History of the Spirit, he finally ended up advocating a blunt historical relativism: in fact, there was no superiority of later over earlier artistic expressions; each one of them only resulted from a particular and incommensurable Kunstwollen. It also displaced the attention from content or meaning to form. Given that each kind of art was driven by a unique artistic will, particular to a period and a people, all works produced during this period and by this people possessed the same formal features. Therefore, art history should not limit itself—as it was customary in the 19^th century—to finding the historical, cultural, or religious significations of the elements composing an ornament, a painting, a sculpture, or a piece of architecture. It had to concentrate on the formal similarities between the various expressions of an era or a people.

This new formalist orientation paradoxically contributed to the spread of rhythm: as Wölfflin who had extended it from architecture to painting, Riegl applied it to ornament. It also made rhythm a key concept for aesthetics—but, as we will see, in a way that was almost opposite to that of Wölfflin and Schmarsow. Each one of the basic ornamental motifs: the “geometric style,” the “heraldic style,” the “vegetal ornament,” and the “arabesque,” was based somehow on rhythm. However, Riegl did not differentiate any longer, as Wölfflin and Schmarsow had done, between Regelmässigkeit – regularity and Gesetzmässigkeit – legality, i.e. between rhythm and meter.

In the first chapter devoted to the development of the most ancient form of ornament, “the Geometric style,” Riegl claimed that, in prehistoric times, after the “encircling line” had emerged in animal representation, it had developed into “an art form in and of itself.” The cave-dwellers began to arrange lines according “the fundamental artistic laws of symmetry and rhythm,” by which he meant geometric forms like “triangles, squares, rhombuses, and circles,” or repetitive figures like “zigzag patterns [...] undulating lines, and spirals.” All these shapes were “familiar to us from plane geometry.”

Ultimately, however, line became an art form in and of itself and was used without direct reference to any particular model in nature. Since, of course, not just any irregular scribble [ein regelloses Gekritzel] can claim to be an art form [Kunstform], linear shapes were made to obey the fundamental artistic laws of symmetry and rhythm. As a result, straight lines became triangles, squares, rhombuses, zigzag patterns, etc., while curved lines produced circles, undulating lines, and spirals. These are the shapes familiar to us from plane geometry; in art history, they are generally referred to as geometric. Consequently, the style based on the exclusive or predominant use of these patterns is called the Geometric Style. (Problems of Style, 1893, p. 3, trans. Evelyn Kain, my mod.)

As we see, whereas in architecture the concept of rhythm had been used traditionally mainly to describe whether proportional sets of parts or straight rows of ornaments, columns, or windows, Riegl resumed with Schnaase's extension to non-linear motifs as zigzag patterns, undulating lines, and spirals. But his definition of rhythm was now quite different from Schnaase's. Whereas the latter compared the rhythm of the arabesque—its dualistic nature and its endless repetition—with that of rhymed poetry, deriving them both from a radical change in the language, Riegl contended that the “laws of symmetry and rhythm” that governed the Geometric style were inspired partly by innate geometric capacities, and as Semper himself had observed, by the observation of corresponding “natural forms of humans, animals, plants, and crystals.”

Even if the forms of the Geometric Style do not seem to be based on real things, they are nevertheless not completely divorced from nature. The same laws [Gesetze] of symmetry and rhythm that govern geometric shapes are apparent in the natural forms of humans, animals, plants, and crystals as well. In fact, it does not require any particular insight to perceive how the basic shapes and configurations of plane geometry are latent in natural things. (Problems of Style, 1893, p. 3, trans. Evelyn Kain)

This emphasis on geometry instead of poetry explains why Schnaase's poetic analysis was entirely forgotten and why Riegl's new extension of the rhythm concept was based—in tune with the now most common scientific acceptation—on sheer regularity, be it that of the motif itself or that of the changes in the motif. A rhythmic ornament could imply a regular alternation of direction, as in zigzag patterns and undulating lines, or a regular change in direction, as in spirals.

As a matter of fact, Riegl saw the historical origin of the Geometric style in Semper's first and second kinds of eurhythmy, the regular series of pearls, or beads, interrupted or not by unlike elements. Using evidence provided by anthropologists, he evoked also a possible derivation from the tattooing of the skin in prehistoric societies.

Do we not still encounter Polynesian tribes today who do without any form of clothing, while they tattoo their bodies from head to toe, thereby making full use of linear decorative motifs. Unfortunately, we have no way of knowing whether the cave dwellers of Aquitaine tattooed their skin as well; there is, at any rate, no evidence for it on their representations of human figures. We know for certain, however, that they wore jewelry. Otherwise, what would have been the purpose of the large number of perforated cattle and bear teeth found in caves partially engraved with animals except to be strung on a sinew or strip of raffia and worn around the neck? Here people are already following the elementary artistic principle of arranging things in rows and, moreover, without any inspiration from crisscrossed fibers, since the cave dwellers apparently had not felt the need to invent and practice the technique of weaving. (Problems of Style, 1893, p. 22-23, trans. Evelyn Kain)

In the rest of the chapter, Riegl's use of the term rhythm was consistent with his primary metric definition as regular series of like or unlike elements. He repeatedly used expressions such as “rhythmische Wiederkehr – rhythmic repetition” (p. 5), “rhythmische Abwechslung – rhythmic alternation (p. 13), “abwechselnder Ordnung – alternating arrangement” (p. 13).

The second chapter treated of “the Heraldic style,” i.e. compositions of “paired animals arranged symmetrically to either side of an intervening central element” (p. 33). This type of decoration had been associated by previous scholars, most notably Ernst Curtius, with the technical demands of silk-weaving. Again, Riegl argued instead that heraldic ornament arose before the invention of mechanical weaving-looms, and stemmed from a natural desire for symmetry.

At first, Riegl seemed to oppose heraldic style and rhythm. Animals, he noticed, were “repeated simply and rhythmically in rows one behind the other,” or “placed in pairs opposite each other in absolute bilateral symmetry.” But the pairs themselves could naturally be repeated and associated in more complex rhythmic patterns.

There were still two possible decorative arrangements for the profile views of animals. First, the animals could be repeated simply and rhythmically in rows one behind the other [reihte die Thiere bloss rhythmisch hinter einander] with no attention paid to symmetry at all; such is the case with Curtius's so-called Carpet Style. Secondly, the animals could be placed in pairs opposite each other in absolute bilateral symmetry, and moreover, whenever possible, to either side of an equally symmetrical median for which a plant motif was best suited. This is roughly the way we should explain the Assyrian beasts grouped in pairs to either side of the so-called “sacred tree” (fig. 4) rather than by relying on a technique whose role is in no way certain. (Problems of Style, 1893, p. 40, trans. Evelyn Kain)

The third chapter dealt with “the introduction of vegetal ornament and the development of the ornamental tendril” and traced an unbroken evolution of vegetal ornament from ancient Egyptian through to late Roman art. Given the irregular and mobile nature of this new ornament, one could expect that Riegl would improve his conception of rhythm, which he himself had found of “little aesthetic value” a few pages before.

Nature, it seems, can claim as few examples of absolute perfection as humans can of their ethical behavior; after all, the kinds of things that make history, that immediately capture our attention and save us from the monotonous pace of everyday life tend to be the exceptions to abstract laws. The Geometric Style, strictly constructed in accordance with the highest laws of symmetry and rhythm, is from the standpoint of regularity the most perfect of styles; on our scale of values, however, it occupies the lowest rank. Our present understanding of how the arts developed associates the Geometric Style as a rule with cultures still at a relatively low stage of development. (Problems of Style, 1893, p. 3, trans. Evelyn Kain)

But this is not what happened. Riegl kept using rhythm as synonymous with repetition, whether of similar motifs, as in the “guilloche,” or full rhythmic sequences composed of unlike motifs as “palmette, blossom, palmette, bud, and so forth.”

It is surely clear by this time that I see the guilloche as a linear shape formed exclusively according to the principles of symmetry and rhythm. What is more important at present, however, is the examination of the vegetal motifs flanking the guilloche in figure 33. There are three different kinds of motifs: a bud, a palmette, and a three-pronged blossom; they are repeated in the following rhythmic sequence: palmette, bud, palmette, blossom, palmette, bud, and so forth. (Problems of Style, 1893, p. 90, trans. Evelyn Kain)

Similarly, Riegl regularly used the term rhythm as “rhythmic alternation,” as in this example taken from the Late Roman period.

The examples thus far are all from buildings of the Late Roman period. The complete acanthusization of the motifs and the connecting lines comprising the intermittent tendril, however, had actually taken place much earlier. I offer two examples from the Forum of Nerva. The motifs in figure 135 are standard lotus blossoms, alongside palmettes with leaves overflowing laterally, which alternate rhythmically in two-dimensional or acanthusized form. (Problems of Style, 1893, p. 256, trans. Evelyn Kain)

It is no wonder, then, if Riegl saw in “the further development of the all-over tendril pattern,” at the end of Antiquity and after, a continuous respect for “the basic decorative laws of rhythm and symmetry.” ¨Paradoxically, the rhythm of vegetal tendril patterns was still a matter of geometry.

So long as vegetal tendril patterns could only expand lengthwise within the format of the register or frieze, they did not enjoy complete freedom of movement. This only became possible when they were able to expand in width as well as in length. As indicated earlier, the only area where this could take place was around and beneath the handles of the ceramic vessels that, alas, provide virtually our only source of evidence. Nevertheless, it is still easy to reconstruct the path that vegetal tendrils took as they spread out unrestrictedly over surfaces, while at the same time respecting the basic decorative laws of rhythm and symmetry. At this point, we are really approaching the conclusion and ultimate goal of the entire development. (Problems of Style, 1893, p. 188, trans. Evelyn Kain)

Under the probable influence of the new scientific concerns for waves and cycles, the notion of rhythmic repetition was extended by Riegl to the “undulations” of “tendril” or “band ornament” so remarkably illustrated by Mycenaean and Greek art.

It is important to emphasize that in this type of decoration [spiral ornament in Mycenaean art], the bands are always clearly juxtaposed, in contrast to the overlapping or “interlaced bands” of early medieval Scandinavian art. Should we not also attribute this regularity, along with the rhythmically undulating course of Mycenaean band ornament, to the classical artistic spirit latent in Mycenaean art? (Problems of Style, 1893, p. 140, trans. Evelyn Kain)

The rhythmically undulating vegetal tendril, a goal to which Near Eastern art had also aspired, is the most beautiful and significant achievement of Hellenic ornament. It represents the Greeks' most invaluable contribution to the development of vegetal ornament. (Problems of Style, 1893, p. 112-113, trans. Evelyn Kain)

Naturally, both uses could be associated together in order to describe “undulating movements, giving rise to slightly curved rushes and volute blossoms rhythmically branching off to the side.”

Another example of this (fig. 49) is found on a potsherd from Shaft Grave I at Mycenae. In this instance, the plant stems run next to each other parallel to the axis of the vessel. What distinguishes this arrangement fundamentally from that of the Egyptians is, once again, the treatment of the stems. They are not stiff and straight but wind their way upward in gentle, undulating movements, giving rise to slightly curved rushes and volute blossoms rhythmically branching off to the side. (Problems of Style, 1893, p. 119, trans. Evelyn Kain)

We now understand why Riegl never mentioned Schnaase in his book nor in the fourth and last chapter, yet dedicated to the development of “the Arabesque” during the late Antique, early Byzantine and early Islamic eras. Whereas Schnaase had explained the spread of the arabesque by a change in linguistic and poetic rhythm—thereby introducing a concern for the systemic dimension of rhythm—it was now understood by Riegl, in tune with the accelerating spread of metrics in science, as resulting from a growing “geometricization” of earlier systems of tendril ornament. The original geometric “spiral” had been changed by the Greeks into a “living tendril,” which had been in turn transformed by Islamic art into a highly “geometricized” motif fit into “polygonal compartments.”

The point of departure for vegetal ornament in the Near East (Egypt) was the geometric spiral (figure 25), in which blossom motifs served only as accessory axil fillers. The Greeks transformed the spiral into a living tendril whose sheaths emitted beautifully formed blossom motifs. During the Middle Ages, the geometricized tendrils of Islamic art once again display that Oriental spirit of abstraction, which had, as we shall see, already begun to re-emerge in the late antique period. To be sure, the fundamental achievements of the Greeks—the rhythmic, undulating tendril sprawling freely over larger surfaces—were not abandoned; in fact the latter characteristic developed even further along the established course. However, the geometric element had again pressed itself, into the foreground wherever it could: this is manifested most clearly in the polygonal compartments created by the curving tendril lines, which are unquestionably geometric in character. (Problems of Style, 1893, p. 267, trans. Evelyn Kain)

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Rhythm as Spatial Aesthetic Form (Part 2)

Pascal Michon — 2018-12-14T18:00:00Z

Sommaire

Previous chapter

Rhythm as Result of the Folding of the Visual Plane (Riegl – 1901)

In 1901, Riegl published his most famous work: Spätrömische Kunstindustrie – Late Roman Art Industry. The book focused on the much neglected, “transitional,” period of the Late Antiquity that was commonly considered as having witnessed the “collapse” of classical standards under the “barbaric” pressure of the Germanic peoples. Instead, faithful to the aesthetic relativism presented in Stilfragen – Problems of Style, he approached artistic change in Late Antiquity not as a symptom of decay—“there is no such thing in history” (p. 7), “everything flows steadily forwards” (p. 10)—but as a result of the interaction between the legacy of previous periods and an entirely new Kunstwollen.

As in his previous book, Riegl rejected the materialist account of art proposed by the Semperians, and substituted it with a reformed idealism. In each particular period, he claimed, the artistic expression is motivated by a singular active drive, ein Kunstwollen, through which art becomes, not an imitation of reality, but the expression of a desired world. Consequently, art historians should not concentrate on the material and technical substrate but on the succession of historically contingent drives that permeate all artistic productions of the successive eras with similar formal features closely connected with the contemporary “worldview.”

All human will is directed toward a satisfactory shaping of man's relationship to the world, within and beyond the individual. The plastic Kunstwollen regulates man's relationship to the sensibly perceptible appearance of things. Art expresses the way man wants to see things shaped or colored, just as the poetic Kunstwollen expresses the way man wants to imagine them. Man is not only a passive, sensory recipient, but also a desiring, active being who wishes to interpret the world in such a way (varying from one people, region, or epoch to another) that it most clearly and obligingly meets his desires. The character of this will is contained in what we call the worldview (again in the broadest sense): in religion, philosophy, science, even statecraft and law. (Late Roman Art Industry, 1901, p. 215, trans. Wood)

Due to his previous research on ornaments, Riegl wanted first to focus on “Kunstgewerbe – arts and crafts” (p. 11), that is on small artifacts as fibulas, broaches, belt buckles, all kinds of jewels, produced in series for a large market covering, late into the 7^th century, the whole Mediterranean basin. However, since these artifacts had been considered by most previous historians, quite inaccurately according to him, as directly reflecting the “barbarization [Barbarisierung]” of the Roman culture during the “Migration Period” [Völkerwanderung] (p. 11), he finally chose to begin his study with three less controversial kinds of arts: architecture with buildings such as the Roman Pantheon, pagan and Christian basilicas, and monuments as the Arch of Constantine; sculpture with reliefs on sarcophagi, busts of emperors, and ivory diptyches; and, finally, if not painting, which were lacking during the late Roman era, at least mosaics such as those decorating some of the churches and palaces in Ravenna and Rome.

Concerning architecture, Riegl first agreed with Schmarsow: architecture aimed at “Raumbildung – space building.” But he immediately complemented his view with Semper's emphasis on “Raumgrenzen – space limits” and “Massencomposition – mass composition,” i.e. a composition of several individual forms into a higher unit. The former primarily concerned “the inside of the building,” the latter “the outside” (p. 16). We will see that it also concerned different periods.

But, since the earliest rise of mankind to civilization, has the creation of space [Raumbildung] not been the aim of every architecture that went beyond the making of a mere monument? Architecture is, after all, a utilitarian art, whose purpose has always been the creation of limited spaces offering to man the possibility of free movement. But as this definition already tells us, the task of architecture is divided into two parts, which necessarily complement and condition each other, but which also somehow oppose each other: the creation of a (closed) space as such and the creation of the limits of this space [die Schaffung des (geschlossenen) Raumes als solchen und die Schaffung der Raumgrenze]. (Late Roman Art Industry, 1901, p. 16, my trans.)

Thus, contrarily to what Schmarsow was to claim a few years later, Riegl did not entirely reject movement and bodily experience but he tried to consider them in connection with the outlines of the building itself. There was actually, he noticed, two extreme possibilities for architects: the first was to form kinds of very large sculptures; the second to create spaces for the free movement of human beings. Consequently, art historians should not limit themselves to one of these two poles and had to assess “how Antiquity, especially in its final phase, addressed this opposition.”

Thus the possibility of implementing unilaterally only one part of the task at the expense of the other has been open from the beginning to human artistic practice. It was possible to let the spatial outlines dominate in such a way that the architectural work did become a sculptural work. On the other hand, one could expand the spatial outlines to such a distance that the thought of the infinity and immeasurability of free space was awakened in the spectator. The question now is how Antiquity, especially in its final phase, addressed this opposition. (Late Roman Art Industry, 1901, p. 16, my trans.)

According to Riegl, in Antiquity, the “ultimate goal” of artistic creation, the most important principle of its Kunstwollen, was to “reproduce the external things [be they objects, animals, or humans] in their distinct material individuality” (p. 17, same idea p. 209). But “the space filled with atmospheric air, by which the [latter] seem to be separated from one another” did not appear to them as “material”; much to the contrary, it was “the negation of materiality, a nothingness.” Therefore—and this made Schmarsow's perspective entirely inappropriate, at least in Antiquity—“space could not be the subject of artistic creation” and Ancient architecture was consequently bound to emphasize the “limit-building” at the expense of the “creation of space” (p. 17).

Riegl drew the same conclusion from the evolutionist and empiricist psychological doctrine that had become common in his time. The recognition of “the external things in their clear material individuality” was, he said, originally based on “pure sensory perception” (p. 17). It depended first on the sense of touch. But when, “eventually,” the sight was used to induce in the observer's mind the notion of the “palpable, impenetrable surface of a closed material individuality,” it was necessarily limited to “plane colored surfaces,” and therefore excluded “the dimension of depth” (p. 18).

Very early, it may have happened that the optical perception alone was found sufficient to provide certainty about the material unity of an external thing without resorting to the sense of touch for direct testimony. But the most important prerequisite for this was always that the absolute plane [die absolute Ebene] would be respected and the extension limited to the dimensions of height and width. [Consequently], ancient art must have fundamentally denied the existence of the third dimension—the depth—which we tend to consider as the spatial dimension as such. (Late Roman Art Industry, 1901, p. 18, my trans.)

Contrary to Schmarsow's opinion, height and breadth, i.e. plane, had been privileged by ancient art, while depth, i.e. space, was limited to the maximum, although in a way varying in time.

Among the three spatial dimensions, in the broader sense, the two dimensions of the surface or the plane, the height and breadth, (the outline, the silhouette) are indispensable in order to arrive at the idea of a material individuality. They are, therefore, permitted from the beginning by the ancient art. The depth dimension, by contrast, does not appear absolutely necessary, and since, moreover, it may blur the clear impression of material individuality, it is at first suppressed as much as possible. (Late Roman Art Industry, 1901, p. 19, my trans.)

In order to understand Riegl's position in its entirety, we must keep in mind, however, that although he based his analyses on this joint primacy of the material individual and the plane of representation, he nevertheless proposed to reconstruct the evolution of ancient art until late Roman time under the pressure of a progressive, if limited, “emancipation of space.” Thus, contrary to what many commentators claim, space and even bodily experience were not disregarded by Riegl. They were only, if I may say so, “historicized.”

Riegl's reasoning went as follows: in the Egyptian art, in the closed temples or the painted very low reliefs used in tombs, the presentation of external things was enclosed within a “tactile” or “haptic plane,” that is, resulting from the sensations of touch, which corresponded, as far as the sight was concerned, to “near vision” (p. 20).

In a second phase illustrated by the Greek classical art, for instance the Parthenon or the low reliefs which adorned it, a certain depth and therefore some shadows were introduced into the presentation of things. In order to be correctly perceived, the latter necessitated the eye to recede, although “not to the point where the continuous tactile link between the parts would be interrupted.” This “tactile-optic” perception implied a kind of vision “located inbetween the distance and the near vision,” which could therefore be characterized as “normal vision” (p. 20).

In the third phase specific to the Late Antiquity, the existence of space was finally recognized in the artwork but—and this restriction is essential—“only insofar as it adheres to the material individuals, that is, as an impenetrable, cubic [cubisch], and measurable space, not as an infinite depth expanding between the individual material things.” Since the primary aim of the artists remained to “distinctly reproduce material individuals,” the forms, closely surrounded by their cubic space, remained positioned “regardless of the [larger] space in which they move,” that is, by way of consequence, within the plane. This strongly contrasted with modern art, which, Riegl emphasized, presents the things “within an infinite free space.” As a result, the various material entities forwent the tactile connection with the bottom plane from which they stemmed and were now separated by deep shadows, forming with the former “an optic-colorated surface” whose perception required the eye to recede again and adopt a “distant vision” (p. 21). This new way of looking at artworks implied an increased involvement of the “subjective consciousness that complemented the perception” (p. 22).

This is the point where Riegl introduced rhythm into his analysis. Rhythm, he claimed, has been crucial in the dialectical evolution of representation under the pressure of the opposite forces of plane and space, especially during the late Antiquity.

In classical Greek temples or porticos, for instance, there was a beginning of “recognition of space as such,” i.e. depth, but the latter was not sufficient to suggest a clear-cut optical rhythm. The columns were still visually connected with the background plane.

In fact we find the first recognition of the three-dimensionality, the shadow, and the space in the Greek column building [Säulenhaus]. Although the main task of architecture remained the limitation and not the formation of space, it did not conceal as systematically as before the existence of space as such. [...] Concerning the column porticos, where the shadow accumulates as in the folds of the classical drapery, the recognition of the depth and space inherent to things is also limited, since the eye immediately finds a support on the closed cella wall, as on the flat bottom surface of a relief. (Late Roman Art Industry, 1901, p. 23, my trans.)

The next step was illustrated by the Pantheon in Rome. Remarkably, Riegl abstained from using the term rhythm to depict the succession of columns supporting its famous portico while he explicitly used it to describe its interior space and its unambiguous alternation of clear wall surfaces and deep shadows produced by lateral niches. Although it was built during the Nerva-Antonine dynasty and probably dedicated about 126 AD, Riegl recognized in it the earliest example of the distant, optical, and subjective perception which was to become typical of “the third phase of ancient art.”

In the lowest zone of the cylindrical wall, there are a number of niches whose entrances are partly obstructed by a pair of columns, and which therefore appear to be some sort of separate lateral spaces. The deep shadows that accumulate in their cavities produce, together with the clear surfaces of the wall of the rotunda that separate them, an effect of colored contrast, that is to say, optic and in distant vision. Both things will become of paramount importance in the following years, as we will see. We shall rediscover, as the essential features of Late Roman art, both the mass composition of the central space with no less central side-spaces [...] and the effort to animate the surface with a colorist rhythm [rhythmische coloristische Flächenbelebung]. Both features are apparently rooted in the concern, characteristic of the third phase of ancient art, to interrupt the tactile planes with deep shadows. (Late Roman Art Industry, 1901, p. 25-26, my trans.)

As we see, contrary to Schmarsow, Riegl did not conceive of rhythm as the effect of the movement of the observer, or that implied by the layout of the spaces of a building, but as mere regular optical alternation. Rhythm was a Wechsel – alternation or Wiederkehr – recurrence of bright and shady, light and dark parts, on a plane, observed from a distance.

This optical aspect has often been underlined by commentators, however they have sometimes presented it as if Riegl had a favorable bias toward sense of sight, immobility, and contemplation, and a negative one against sense of touch, movement, and bodily experience. Against that kind of narrow psychological and binary critique, one must recognize that Riegl did not abstractly nor arbitrarily, for subjective reasons, imposed his optical concept of rhythm upon the historical material he had to deal with: on the contrary, he constructed it genetically. The spread of optical rhythm in late Antiquity was, according to him, the outcome of a long historical confrontation between plane and space.

As Deleuze many years after, Riegl actually resorted to the idea of fold or better yet, of folding process. In his view, everything happened as if the original smooth and flat surface of the art work, whatever the art it belonged to, had contracted itself, resulting first in shallow grooves during the Classical period, then in deep furrows in the Late Roman era. To put it in less metaphorical terms, the spread of rhythmic forms in Late Antiquity resulted from the progressive folding upon itself of the initial plane of artistic representation. The progressive recess of the eye, the transformation from close-range to distant vision, and the primacy of the plane that accompanied this mutation, were thus only phenomena subordinated to the progressive introduction of space and the folding of the art work upon itself that resulted from it.

Rhythm as Folds in the Visual Plane (Riegl – 1901)

According to Riegl, these folds in the visual plane could be observed in sculpture and painting as soon as the early Imperial period. Unless I am mistaken, the earliest example cited by Riegl is a marble pilaster ornated with vine tendrils from the 1^st century AD that is kept in the Lateran Museum.

Vine tendrils are growing out of a vase and intertwine with, among other things, a ladder supporting putti (today missing). The leaf tendrils are densely arranged and sharply carved, so that one sees below them, instead of a background, only a dark shady hollow, that is, the space. The constant rhythmic alternation of a light, marble pattern and a dark, shadowy, spatial background produces the coloristic, optical and colored charm that is so characteristic of this whole art and its specific will. (Late Roman Art Industry, 1901, p. 71, my trans.)

Riegl noticed that, quite early in the Imperial era, dressed up figures replaced nude bodies because, he claimed, they provided artists with the opportunity to carve “drapery and folds.” In this case, the object of representation was, at least partly, selected—he did not mention cultural, ideological, or religious conditions—to fit the larger folding process that supported the new Kunstwollen.

One encounters mostly dressed up instead of nude figures. This predominance is certainly closely linked with the optic conception which finds its satisfaction better in the drapery and its folds [in der brüchigen Draperie] than in the nude which had been preferred, in reverse, by the earlier art periods due to its tactile tendency. (Late Roman Art Industry, 1901, p. 66, my trans.)

Simultaneously, there was a progressive collapse of the eurhythmic norm. This is something that should be underlined with respect to the essential role played by this norm in rhythmological history (see above, chap. 5). However, quite surprisingly, there is not a single mention of Vitruvius in the Late Roman Art Industry. Riegl did not care, unfortunately, to address the distance between the ancient Vitruvian definition of rhythm based on “appropriate proportion” and his own based on “regular alternation.”

The spatial isolation of the individual forms within the plane inevitably resulted in the abandonment of the norm of proportionality which was fundamental in Classical art, for the proportions are nothing other than the expression of the connection which unites, within the optic plane, the different parts into a clearly recognizable harmonic whole. But, as soon as the parts show a tendency to isolate one from another in the plane (to unravel the connection), the respect for correct proportions must necessarily lose its importance. (Late Roman Art Industry, 1901, p. 67, my trans.)

The neglect of the eurhythmic proportions in the Roman reliefs accelerated between the end of the 3^rd century and the early beginning of the 4^th century.

The main point remains that about 315 AD, the proportional relations of the parts to each other (from which, in the last analysis, the living beauty results for the Ancients) have considerably receded compared to ten years before. This suggests that, during the last years of Diocletian's reign, the development in the visual arts has taken a more rapid course, and that the new elements which announced the future must have become more firmly established. (Late Roman Art Industry, 1901, p. 84, my trans.)

At the beginning of the 4^th century, the rhythm as series of folds of the representation plane had become a dominant feature of artistic expression. On the Arch of Constantine, built in Rome between 313 and 315, the reliefs showed figures, “projected with meticulous precision on a plane,” “sharply separated from each other” by deep notches, so that as presenting a “regular alternation” of “bright parts and “dark shadows.”

Although the whole appears to be projected with meticulous precision on a plane, the individual figures, as parts of the whole, show an equally marked tendency to spatially isolate themselves within the common plane. Their outlines are all deeply cut so that they are nowhere conspicuously connected with the ground plane [Grundebene]. In the upper tier, two rows of figures are arranged one behind the other and are no less sharply isolated from each other. This is the decisive point in which the Constantine reliefs differ from Ancient Eastern and Classical ones. In the Early Imperial period, every relief had still to obey an inviolable law according to which an obvious tactile connection should be maintained between the figures and the plane ground [ebenen Grunde], whether directly or through intermediate figures. Now, the common plane loses its former tactile continuity and breaks down into a series of bright figures separated by dark shadows whose regular alternation [mit ihrem regelmäßigen Wechsel] creates a coloristic impression. (Late Roman Art Industry, 1901, p. 47, my trans.)

The same optic alternation resulted from the opening, from the 4^th century, of windows into the building walls, an opening that was a novelty in Antiquity. While a row of columns was only a limited or embryonic rhythmic expression, a regular series of windows such as those cut into the drum of the so-called Minerva Medica temple (actually a ruined nymphaeum built in Rome in the 4^th century) formed a fully developed rhythmic sequence.

The cutting of windows into the tambour (and even in the domed vault) was another noteworthy innovation at the Temple of Minerva Medica. If in utility buildings, sidelights have been indispensable since Eastern Ancient times, monumental architecture has fundamentally rejected them, since for an art which aims at forming the material into closed units, the window, seen in near or normal vision, is a disturbing hole in the wall, a displeasing interruption of the tactile materiality by a purely optical-colored nothingness like the shadow. Windows are therefore exceptional in classical monumental buildings [...]. A view from a distance was thus the prerequisite for the integration of the window into the monumental art, for it gives to the rhythmic alternation (symmetry of the sequence) of the shaded cavities and the bright wall sections, which separate them, the aspect of a coherent optical unit in a plane. (Late Roman Art Industry, 1901, p. 27, my trans.)

Even the mosaics of the 4^th century shared the same rhythmic characteristics, like those decorated with tendrils and putti in the church of Santa Constanza in Rome built in the second quarter of the 4^th century.

Incidentally, these putti (fig. 45, between the tendrils) allow us to see that the restlessly shimmering lights playing on their flesh neither contribute to the modeling (surface connection between ledges), which was achieved in the preceding antique art by its complement, the shadow, nor associate the figure with its spatial environment, as does modern art through one ray of light, an open-air or reflected light. These lights only produce a constant rhythmic alternation of illuminated and shaded parts, and thus evoke a very special life within the enclosed mass. (Late Roman Art Industry, 1901, p. 127, my trans.)

One could find a comparable development of optic rhythm in the Christian basilicas that spread from the 4^th century. Due to the action of the same Kunstwollen as in “sculpture and painting,” they broke with the classical expectation of the “organic” continuity in the visual effect produced by the various parts of the building, in other words with the plane of representation.

The deliberate elimination, in the early Christian basilica, of all tactile connections between the parts of a structure resulted in the almost complete loss of the impression of necessity and intimate organic connection of the parts, which Classical as well as Modern art require of composition (as it also disappeared in buildings built on central plan, but to a lesser degree). The phenomenon is exactly the same as that which, in the sculpture and painting of the time, makes us see ugliness and grossness in the figures. (Late Roman Art Industry, 1901, p. 31-32, my trans.)

Consequently, instead of the classical smooth and even harmonic continuity, the Christian basilica often presented discontinuous, uneven and sharply alternating forms, whether columns and intercolumniations, or windows and wall parts.

The treatment of the parts, which had now shed the last remnants of tactile connection between each other, could be none other than a coloristic one. It manifests itself, below [in the nave], in the rapid alternation [in dem raschen Wechsel] of the columns set closely together with their intercolumniations, and on the upper wall, in the row of windows which are opened into it. (Late Roman Art Industry, 1901, p. 31, my trans.)

Riegl found analogous rhythmic features even in the column capitals that were not carved any longer with chisel but with rotary drills. He emphasized the alternation of lights and shadows that resulted from the generalization of this carving technique in a marble capital from the Basilica of Sant'Appolinare in Classe in Ravenna built in the first quarter of the 6^th century.

By contrast [with modern colorism], the ancient colorism ignores space and sticks to rhythm which, in turn, is bound to the plane: if for Classical art the unity of the composition was in the rhythm of the lines, it now rests in the rhythm of light and shadow, which, of course, as the former, still unfolds in the plane and not in the space (which is inaccessible to it). It is clear that this ancient colorism has a restless, flickering effect on us; but it seems to have fulfilled the Late Romans with the same sense of harmony that we Moderns find in space colorism. (Late Roman Art Industry, 1901, p. 38, my trans.)

Riegl finally analyzed, in the last chapter of his book, some jewels made in the 4^th and the 5^th century. He unsurprisingly found them based on the same rhythmic Kunstwollen.

In order to distinguish the pattern, in particular the rolling tendrils on the semicircular head shield, one must take a closer look, for the superficial view, on which the artistic will of the Late Antiquity is accustomed to rely, merely sees a constant rhythmic alternation of light and dark. [...] [In the gold fibula found in Apahida and probably made in the first half of the 5^th century] the top of the foot shows an openwork pattern in which the alternation of light and dark points is so dense that the underlying motif is revealed only by a closer examination: in the center part, one notices an undulation sided with interrupted laces. The objective motive, a (Latin) Christian cross, is laid on this openwork pattern, in which positive and negative, material and empty space have been brought into the most perfect rhythmic equilibrium and, thus, into an absolute coloristic unity, as if it were on a carpet. (Late Roman Art Industry, 1901, p. 144, my trans.)

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