Page 60 - Studio International - July August 1973

published in 1953 in Partisan Review and critic's work - do not know, or pretend not to monumental, was faced by a choice : either to
reprinted in a revised version in 1958 in know, how real the problem is. They wait it out follow one at the expense of the other or to
Reflections On Art) Steinberg deals witharelated until the channels are safely dug, then come search for an entirely new combination.
topic, this time taking issue with André out and enjoy the smooth sailing, saying, who Eitner explores the stages on his way, the
Malraux's doctrine that, since Manet, art has needs a critic ?' Barberi Horses, the Cattle Market, in which he
been prised loose from the world and is now CYRIL BARRETT tries to transpose a scene from the streets into a
'triumphantly a law unto itself'. Having pointed monumental no-time no-place.
out that this was not how Manet himself; nor Above all it was important for him to get
Van Gogh, nor Cezanne nor Matisse, viewed the Tumbled walls back into the arena of the Paris Salon; he had
matter, Steinberg argues there never was a time Géricault's Raft of The Medusa by Lorenz been away and was half-forgotten. Alongside his
when a painter worth his salt exercised, to use Eimer. 176 pp. 158 illus. Phaidon. £9.00 dilettantism there was a declamatory strain, and
Malraux's phrase, merely a 'technical capacity an urge `to shine, to illuminate, to astonish the
in the imitation of nature'. Anyone who uses his Eitner makes one feel that he is not just world' now made even more urgent by the
eyes reconstitutes the appearance of nature interested in the Raft, he is addicted to it, and painful collapse of an adulterous love-affair. He
afresh, and this is no less true of the artist who there is an undertone of excitement which runs considers a recent political murder but drops it,
wishes to reproduce what he sees. The true through the whole book, and not only gives preferring the popular illustrations of it to his
antithesis, according to Steinberg, is not impetus and brilliance to his account of the own versions. 'Only luck could give him the
between representation and 'simply - painting', picture itself but also shapes the vast array of right subject for the attempt'. The right subject
but between a fresh vision and academicism. information that he has mustered around it. He came. The Medusa had gone down in fair
Acadeinicism is slavish copying, but a copying gives it a place of honour in that great line of weather off the coast of Senegal. It was a story
of other artists' achievements, styles and revolutionary figure compositions that stretches of incredible horror, replete with treachery,
mannerism, not a copying of nature; and it will from the Oath of the Horatii to the Burial at mutiny, starvation, cannibalism, sacrifice; it
blight non-objective figurations and Ornans, the dangerously rich fruit of the French was also a political cause célèbre, since the, e
abstractions as readily as illustrative, anecdotal State's demanding policies towards the arts. He cowardly and incompetent officers were
pictures. 'An artist searches for true vision, but, sees the Raft as the immediate descendant of royalists appointed over the heads of
having found it, leaves in his successors' hands Gros's Pesthouse at Jaffa, its 'main link with the Bonapartist professionals retired on half-pay.
a blueprint of a new academy.' secular history painting of the Napoleonic era Two survivors had written a detailed account.
finally, in 'Objectivity and the Shrinking and beyond it, with the tradition of Baroque Géricault knew them. The officers were treated
Self', Steinberg questions another piece of religious art'. He is also able to convince us, leniently. The survivors who asked for
widely held dogma, or, perhaps more accurately, despite first appearances, of its connection with compensation were treated as traitors. But the
strategy, namely, the view that value judgments David himself. When we see it now in the Government was playing a double game and one
should be eliminated from serious investigations Louvre, he says, in a sentence that shines out in faction was using the scandal at the expense of
of art because they are subjective. He argues a book which is marvellously written from first another. To the opponents of the regime, the
that the sureness or failure of valuation - the to last, 'Its composition seems to consist entirely Raft of the Medusa was both a demonstration of
fact that in 1510 what we rate as the best of nerve and muscle; surrounded by paintings the incompetence of the regime and a symbol
artists were highly thought of in Rome or that sumptuously clothed in colour, it appears naked : of the plight of France.
the best were not highly thought of in Paris in a gigantic écorché, forever in tension, When the picture was seen it must have
187o is the material of history. Again, if Manet galvanized by an effort without possible release'. appeared as an attempt to stir these muddy
is not rated more highly than Leon Gerome, The point about the Raft is that it is an heroic waters. Appeared - for when looked at more
then a history of French painting in the composition with no hero, a tragedy without closely its message was strangely blurred. It `was
nineteenth century would be only an incomplete catharsis. on an heroic scale, yet in Eitner's words 'No
list of the paintings produced. Moreover, if it is The centrepiece of the book is the catalogue God, no saint or monarch presides over the
suggested that, say, Raphael should be restored of all the drawings and studies related to the disaster- no victory justifies the suffering of
to his rightful place in art history, on what picture. This is the basis of a fine-grained the men on the raft.' Descriptive neutrality
grounds, if not evaluation, is this to be done ? analysis of the process by which Géricault belonged to the category of genre. To whom
On account of his fame, innovations, influence, arrived at his final composition. The was this grand statement addressed, one critic
the importance of his patrons, or what ? Finally ramifications spread out to include the Raft's asked, 'what public building, what royal
unless connoisseurship is to be relied on in some place in Géricault's life - it was the central palace . will receive this painting ?' In
cases, what are the criteria for telling a work by episode - and the private and public meanings answer to which Eitner quotes Géricault's
Giotto, say, from interference by a pupil or of the picture's subject, and its style. sombre remark: 'Only suffering is real.'
restorer ? Géricault was born in the third year of the Eitner shows us an extraordinary
These are only a few of the points raised in Revolution. He was 24 at the time of Waterloo. transformation of the Davidian language of
this stimulating book. It would be too much `Heroism became a memory of childhood, figure art, with the most direct emotional
to expect that the author should in every case something retrospective' (the phrase is involvement as its object. Classical frontality
answer satisfactorily the questions he raises. Friedlander's) and one can be certain that the is painstakingly broken and a process can be
For instance, he does not tell us why he was violent, adventurous action that was so traced by which, as the composition is modelled
prepared to make an effort to understand, attractive to his temperament was tinctured into deeper and deeper space, psychological
Jasper Johns's work where he might not take a with the smell of defeat. What were ambitious distance - out-there-ness - gives way to
precocious first-year art student quite so artists to paint under the Bourbon restoration, identification and envelopment. A parallel
seriously. But, in raising the sort of questions when neither atmosphere nor events corres- process gradually eliminates all cathartic
he does, Steinberg does a great service to ponded in any worthwhile way with the elements in the action: early experiments had
criticism and the image of the critic. (He also language that had been shaped under included the more dramatic episodes like the
restores one's confidence in the critic's ability Napoleon's heavy-handed but virile patronage? mutiny, or the rescue itself with a rowing boat
to write clear, unpretentious and elegant prose.) The school of David collapsed into shallowness. approaching the raft. Finally all such
His book should help to give the lie to those The present no longer offered subjects fit for oppositions are done away with and we are left
whom he describes on page 23: monumental art. An artist like Géricault, who with the unresolvable straining of the
'Most people - especially those who belittle a was wedded both to the contemporary and the survivors backwards into the picture, the rescue
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