Art Philosophy

Art Philosophy

Introduction

We are faced with an extract which corresponds to the first part and to respective first chapter of Hipólito Adolfo Taine writing. Which is one of his most famous books, in which he tells us to detail And the moment. Which lead to an evolution of culture.

Analyze the artistic and literary works considering them as the result of the race and the environment and defining each author the power to dominate the impulse that led him to promote himself towards a certain direction. Hipólito not only leads to art, but also expresses it in literature, as is the case in his work "History of English literature" along with great historical phenomena that caused certain controversies.

Developing

The work to be commented, as mentioned above is the first part of 10 submissive lessons of a speech explained at the School of Fine Arts, where in its epilogue it tells us “I have not dared to condemn the reader to an extensive reading, and I have repeated only the General ideas of my explanations.”He has only written the general ideas, but explained for his greatest compression.

Hipolito Taine was born in the vicinity of Ardenas in April 1828 and died in 1893 in Paris. He was a historian and critical philosopher considered one of the main theorists of naturalism.

He studied in Paris and taught at the Institute of Poitiers and is from 1864 when he begins to teach aesthetics and art history at the School of Fine Arts, where he gave the speech to which our story belongs.

He criticized Cousin’s school inspired by the eighteenth -century ideologues in his intelligent treaty. And next to the Line of Comte and Sumo to the thought of Stuart Mill, which was positivist he founded an experimental psychology on the physiological bases. These ideas were relevant to the constitution of the theoretical basis of naturalism.

He had many followers, but also the criticisms, since he schematized too much leaving the characters of the formation of a work indeterminate. But he proved to be a critic at height. In his facet of historian he made an exhaustive examination of the causes for which the continuous decline of the French city had occurred. He demonstrates with Ernest Renan to be the most influential figures of the intellectuality of the minds of the time and today.

Positivism as previously mentioned is a philosophical current, which is born as intellectual thinking in the “day of the nineteenth century. Coinciding with the birth of a mandatory, secular and republican education. With this, the subjective appreciation to understand reality and giving priority and main character to imagination and observation is left aside.

Positivism affects art creating it as a science, that is, it is born so to speak the history of art as social or humanistic science. Thus, science provides elements of judgment to learn and appreciate art itself, this being a fundamental tool for art.

So it goes from being a hobbie hobby of work tool for not satisfying the primary needs of the human being and its society. But nevertheless, if it is a clear reflection of society, so it is a matter of help to the study and compression of this together with a pedagogical impact that serves both for cognitive or artistic education of the new artists, in addition to a selector instrument in The social and propaganda scale. Such as religious sculptures and complexes in Greco-Roman antiquity, and as will happen in World War II, which art wanted.

But positivism, is connected to naturalism, also mentioned above, because the common feature of this is to reflect everyday issues and having a greater influence, since the characters had to be in certain social situations. For example "La Panadadeo" by Millet. So it is defined that the artist highlights and reflects reality from the outside and not from the inside. Renoir said "it is the eye that does everything" or Courbet Pinto what I see.

Returning with our author, and referring to what is commented on in that art has moments and adding to what I have commented as a propaganda value, he underlined the difference from the times of war, peace, class struggle and times of stability.

“To understand a work of art, an artist, a group of artists, must be represented, with the greatest accuracy possible, the state of customs and the state of the spirit of the country and the moment in which the artist produces his works. This is the last explanation; In it lies the initial cause that determines all other conditions ”

conclusion

So we understand that being Taine in his work does not want to stop to explain the works as happened with Denis Lderot, which to a being considered as the first critic of modern art, this explained the color, composition etc. of the work, but from a merely physical explanation to what the eye sees; However, what this current is looking for is the search for why this color, that composition etc. 

So it is not surprising that this fact was possibly the great propeller of what began at the end of the 19th century and reaffirmed at the beginning of the twentieth to what we know as the avant -garde, because in some cases such as Cubism, Cubism, which represents portraits, but not with what the eye itself sees, but capturing the interior of the portrayed through the eyes of the artist; "Analytical Cubism"