Page 64 - Studio International - July August 1973

`the specific conditions of one such meeting' trial at Lons-le-Saunier ; political strife at Mr Clark hopes his books will 'add up', and
(II p.13), searching there for the foundation of Salins, political quiet at Ornans; Courbet `add up' they do: to an important contribution
a unique subject-matter and style. In The collecting peasant songs, or Courbet at carnival to the sociology of art, the study of the particular
Absolute Bourgeois, as well as asking whether the time, whey-faced and black-suited, acting the artists concerned, and to the literature, relevant
insurrections of February and June 848 have part of Pierrot de la Mort' (II p. 78). But what to artists, of art and politics. For the author
their corresponding expressions in the art of the of the work itself? In what ways does the wealth does not allow this history to remain inert.
time, and whether the Republic produced a of historical material unearthed by Mr Clark Throughout his texts, and particularly in his
distinctive art of its own, he examines four inform us of the way the painter made his work ? conclusion to The Absolute Bourgeois, he returns
artists — Millet, Daumier, Delacroix and What is the significance of the spatial to the wider question: what is revolutionary
Baudelaire — setting their work in the context dislocations in Courbet's paintings ? What are art ? He briefly compares Courbet's solution
of political revolution, reversion and reaction we to make of the W composition of the Burial with that of El Lissitsky and of Huelsenbeck,
between February 848 and December 851. In at Ornans, echoed in The Stonebreakers, of hints at an answer to art's political role, and
each of his 'stories of privacy and evasion' whose upward opening angles, only that which makes clear the importance to the present day
(I p. 71) he believes he finds the true response isolates the priest is not shut off ? Where the of studying a time when art had power as part
to revolution and is able to show that the art church officials stand, even the landscape is cleft, of the historical process. 'Power', he adds, 'no
then produced by these artists was more allowing passage from earth to sky : to the realm word could be more inappropriate, more
political than now appears : Daumier's pictures of heaven occupied by an impotent, miniature absurd, now, when we talk of art' (11 p. 10).
saltambanques must be seen in the light of Christ. For the people there is no escape. The JOHN TAGG
the government edict of 1853 censoring these landscape hems them in. On either side of the
allegedly subversive itinerants; Millet's gap, the horizontal of the cliffs cuts them off
paintings of peasants gathering faggots or from relief, ties them to the land. Is this why the Half milestone
gleaning take on a new significance when seen people weep and the clergy are unconcerned ? Artistry of the Mentally Ill by Hans Prinzhorn.
as a defence of ancient privileges then under I cannot find the answers to such questions Translated by Eric von Brockdorff. 274 pp.,
attack; Delacroix's ceiling in the Gallerie in either book. The observations that we are 187 illustrations, 20 in colour. Springer-Verlag,
d'Apollon is seen to hide in its private imagery given seem 'literary' in character: they treat of Berlin-Heidelberg-New York, 1972. DM 62.40.
fiercely reactionary sentiments. Similarly, in the characters or the scene depicted. They are
his second book, Mr Clark is able to demonstrate rarely more than that type of art history the Fifty years is a long time to wait for an English
how, in Courbet's art, we may find the raw author purports to reject: an 'adding up of version of such an important book as Hans
issues of the crisis on the land, the political influences' (II p. 16); 'the kind of haphazard Prinzhorn's Bildnerei der Geisteskranken, which
battle for the countryside, the repression of collage . . . the dreary mixture of "absurd" and was published in Berlin in 1922. After an
popular images and almanacs, the role of the "sensitive" remarks (which) is all too familiar to enthusiastic reception, this classic work on the
clergy and the rural bourgeoisie, the tensions of art historians' (11 p. 11). Where he tries to move art of the mentally ill has remained for years a
town and country, and the dread of the common away from this, his remarks seem insubstantial, book often mentioned but rarely seen. It is a
grave. Hence the violence of the reaction by the as when he says of After Dinner at Ornans that pleasure at last to have proper access to its
bourgeois critics to the works exhibited in the `there is . . . a tremendous sureness of design fascinating text and illustrations, which offer an
Salon of 851; hence their drawing-power for in certain areas: in, for example, the arrangement unequalled introduction to a kind of art that can
the sort of exhibition-goers who, according to of mastiff, chair back, jacket and fold of no longer be segregated from art at large as
Lord Clark, 'are usually very simple and have tablecloth' (II p. 72). Or they may be plainly being solely the concern of professional
come for primarily non-aesthetic motives'. In mistaken. He notices in Meissonier's psychiatrists.
the author's words, 'this was painting that Barricade that 'the men and the street are The impulse to write the book came when
disturbed an iceberg of theories and emotions; somehow out of phase, in proportion as well as Prinzhorn was working at the Heidelberg
it was history painting, not of other people's in colour : the shop doors seem impossibly tall in Psychiatric Clinic under Karl Wilmanns, who
history, but of one's own' (II p. 154). relation to the men beneath them' (I p. 28). had begun seriously collecting paintings and
It is a measure of Mr Clark's skill in telling The disproportion is real, but surely it is the drawings done by his patients. Wilmanns
his stories that, as a result, 'the works may never other way round. encouraged Prinzhorn to embark on research in
look the same again'. That, as he says, was his I do not wish to deny what Mr Clark has this all but untouched field and to enlarge the
book's intention. And yet there is still a gap in done — I have already suggested that the collection with this in view. Prinzhorn made
his methodology, one stage missing from his material he presents must radically alter our contact with clinics throughout German-
approach to the art. It is not sufficient to trace view of the works he discusses — I am merely speaking Europe and in about three years had
all the sources, even in the great detail we have trying to identify the cause of a certain amassed some 5000 pieces by 45o different
here. What must be given is a credible account incompleteness in his approach. It is a gap patients. This unique collection is still housed
of how these sources generate a particular work which is found in both books and, indeed, in at the Clinic, though unfortunately it is
of art. The documents are not enough; they are thinking and writing about these works, I have practically inaccessible to the public. It
the flesh where the skeleton is a minute analysis tended to treat them as parts of a two-volume comprises drawings done on scrap paper such as
of the work in question. The author tells us edition. Their continuity of subject-matter, toilet paper or envelopes, and small works
at he wants to avoid Formalism, but an identical format, and common Preface, carved in wood or modelled in bread by patients
analysis only remains formalist insofar as the Chronology and Bibliography suggest this who had received a minimum of artistic training
critic artificially divorces such elements as approach but in fact they are meant to stand on and who, in those days before art-therapy, had
composition from their significance. In the their own. I suppose this avoids the tricky absolutely no encouragement to create. For
study of Courbet's Burial at Ornans, which problem of deciding which of the two should Prinzhorn's purposes, these conditions were
fills a major part of Image of the People, Mr come first. However, it is still a fact that each ideal: he needed a wide range of spontaneous,
Clark looks for its meaning in : 'a Parisian requires knowledge of the other: from The autonomous works against which to examine the
critic's careless aside, or a friend's advertisement Absolute Bourgeois one needs the sketch of postulate of a basic configurative urge shared by
in a Dijon newspaper; a novel by Wey or a political events, and from Image of the People, all men.
greater novel by Balzac, an almanac and a the methodological clarification. A reader will In identifying the psychological roots of the
caricature, a bloody image daubed on a tavern need to have both to hand if he is fully to human expressive impulse, Prinzhorn evolved a
wall; the worries of a Prefect or the result of a appreciate their implications. schema to cover the main tendencies of
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