mahr'svierteljahrsschriftfürästhetik
7
(2004), Nr.4/Dezember
Rezension
1.
Umberto Eco (Hg.), Die Geschichte der
Schönheit, übers. v. Friederike Hausmann/Martin Pfeiffer, München/Wien: Carl Hanser 2004, 440 Seiten, € 41,10 (On Beauty. A History of a Western Idea, transl.
by Alastair McEwen, New York-NY: Rizzoli International
Publ./London: Secker &
Warburg 2004, 432 pages, $ 40, £ 21.00). 26761 Characters.
It is Jeff Koons’s 1989 triumphant simultaneous triple gallery
exhibition in Chicago, New York and Cologne with spectacular sculpture in
editions of three thatv comes to my mind when seeing Bronzino’s Eleonora of Toledo
smile from the sleeve of Umberto Eco’s book „History of Beauty“ published
simultaneously in countries all over the world in 2004. Of course it was the
other way round: Koons adopted marketing strategies
that had been common to the book or movie market for quite some time and were
not applied to the art market before (compare: Thomas Zaunschirm,
Kunst als Sündenfall. Die
Tabuverletzungen des Jeff Koons, = Quellen zur Kunst 3, Freiburg i. Br.:
Rombach 1996). Yet it still is somewhat unusual to publish a more or less scientific
essay and have it translated before the book is published into the original
Italian language itself. In the case of famous author Eco who shares with Koons a specific sense of beauty the marketing procedure
included a preprint in form of a CD-ROM delivered by Motta
On Line s.r.l. in 2002. It
shows an author as producer and his publishers who are well aware of the
digital age potentials.
Eco’s interest in the history
of aesthetic theory reaches back beyond the late 1980ies when he published a
„History of Medieval Aesthetics“. For it was the history of
philosophical aesthetics that Eco started with already as a student. The
reasons for doing so might have been historical besides personal. It was the
ancient including medieval philosophy after 1945 that seemed to be unavailable
- because seemingly too far away - and modern philosophy (including
contemporary Crocean idealist philosophy) discredited
by the tragedy of the two world wars philosophy could not prevent from. When he
began to study what remained for 1932 born Eco was a strong belief in ancient
Greek intellectual traditions that especially in Italy merged with Christian
thought along the painful interrelated European developmental processes of the
Catholic Church and the Roman Empire. This development resulted in
Eco did it his way. Young as
he was, I take it, he obsessively read the
contemporary literature available to him. At least this is indicated several
times in Eco’s thesis „Il problema estetico in San Tommaso“. This
book length study was written with philosopher and esthetician
Luigi Pareyson at Università
Torino and finished in 1954 and published 1956 as Studi di estetica
2 by Pareyson-coedited post World War II journal „Filosofia“, however translated into English only as late as
in 1988. In this book Eco shows an interest in Marxist film aesthetics like the
number „Del verosimile filmico“
edited by the journal Filmcritica or Galvano della Volpe’s „Da Pudovkin a Malenkow“
published in the Rivista del cinema italiano. Yet it seems to have been more important for Eco
taking hold of two of Italian resident James Joyce’s books that obviously
contributed to Eco’s decision to write a thesis about Thomas Aquinas. In it Eco
explicitly discusses Joyce’s references to Aquinas as made in „Portrait of the
Artist as a Young Man“ (Italian 1943) and „Stephen Hero“ (Italian 1950).
According to Joyce (and Eco)
Thomas emphasized the integrity and wholeness of the aesthetic image as well as
the vagueness of clarity giving way to artistic discoveries as representation
of the divine design in all things making the aesthetic image universal and
thereby revealing the supreme quality of the quidditas
that provides light as an aesthetic pleasure. As discussed at length in the
central chapter of Eco’s book integritas and claritas together with proportio
are Aquinas’s three formal criteria of the beautiful. Including a remark on Joris K. Huysman’s book „La cathédrale“ (1908) Eco sheds light on Thomas’s applications
of these criteria to human beauty, sculpture, musical forms, games, and
symbolic vision finally arriving - with Lukács? - at
the aesthetic particularity and the ontological consistence of artistic form as
developed against the background of Pareyson’s theory
of formatività that were published in portions by
early 1950ies „Filosofia“ - artistic form, but not
art since Thomas grew up enjoying the musical education of Montecassino’s
flourishing schola cantorum
using the method of Guido d’Arezzo and studied in
Naples of course in a school of liberal arts that still were far away from the
modern system of the arts as we know and still live with it. Eco’s primary
concern is to show that Thomas is focused on aesthetic vision under the premise
of beauty not as subjective but transcendental. From the outset Eco is opposed
to influential aesthetician Benedetto Croce and his
reservations against medieval aesthetics. Against Croce, Eco says, the
aesthetic needs to be seperated from the artistic
thereby meaning an aesthetic that also includes the value of beauty when
realized, which is alienated into art („manifestazioni
di bellezza estranee all’arte“, p.10).
Long before his evolvement as
a novelist and semiotician Eco started out philosophically
as an aesthetician. His thesis on San Tommaso was
followed by articles on „Poetica and estetica in J. Joyce“ in Riviste di estetica, vol.2, 1957, „Problemi di estetica
indiana“ in Riviste di estetica, vol.3, 1958, and on
„Storiografia medievale estetica teorica“, in Filosofia 1961, the latter two republished in Eco’s essay
collection „La definizione dell’arte“
(Milano: Mursia 1968). Already
in 1959 appeared „Sviluppo dell’estetica
medievale“ (Milano: Marzorati 1959 as the first of a four volume series on „Momenti e problemi di storia dell’estetica“;
second edition in English 1986, German 1991), a book that focuses on
pre-renaissance and sort of pre-pictural(painting)
scholastic times and is structured a lot by means of the categorial
framework as developed with Thomas Aquinas and keeping in mind the
unavailability of nature by art as expressed for instance in Jean de Meung’s Roman de la Rose. Not to forget to mention another
important book that provided Eco with knowledge of technology, carefully
selecting and editing material and the experience of making an illustrated
reference work: U. Eco/G. B. Zorzoli, Zum Nutzen des Menschen - Die großen Erfindungen im Bild der Geschichte, = Panoramen der Geschichte 5,
Bern/Stuttgart/Wien: Scherz
1963 (Milano: Bompiani)
whose edition was artistically co-directed (with Bruno Munari)
by Renate <Eco->Ramge who today works as an art
instructor and manual graphics specialist at the Faculty of Design of Polytecnico di Milano, done with a care that is on the same level
(reminded here on pages 254-257) than that reached by the brilliantly
illustrated history of 18th century aesthetics „Die Erfindung
der Freiheit“ of Jean Starobinski in 1964 (Geneva: Albert Skira).
And finally in 1962 appeared
at once „Opera aperta“ and „Le poetiche
di Joyce“ (both Milano:
Valentino Bompiani) discussing contemporary aesthetic
problems at the same time examplifying these views by
an extensive reading of Joyce’s poetics that again shed light particularly on
Thomas’s aesthetics. Eco remained faithful. For the „History of Beauty“ sticks with separating beauty from art thereby laying
emphasis on the former. It follows the theoretical antecedents and successors
of integritas, claritas and
proportio with paying attention to categories and
phenomena opposed to them and considering artistic form as a realization or
alienation of the beautiful. Eco meets Thomas regarding a possible originary unity of beauty (see: Günther
Pöltner, Schönheit. Eine Untersuchung des Denkens bei Thomas von Aquin,
Wien: Herder 1978). And at the same time he remains postmodern and
being so he embraces medieval thought, that of Thomas, in order to have a more
practical grid at hand that allows to account for the premodern
(prerenaissance) aspects of the beautiful in its
historical specificity and that aesthetic qualities that are opposed or
complementary to the beautiful only with demonstrating that the domain of beauty
is apt to merge with them in its own historically accidental more modern ways.
Yet for achieving this Eco has
not invented an own narrative. In general he presupposes THE narrative of a
history of THE beautiful as extended from ancient Greek culture to our present
times. He did not spend efforts to invent a narrative of its own be it that of A history of (philosophical) aesthetics or even of a
fictitious story resulting in a novel, that is to say history embedded in a
novel. Concerning the history of aesthetics he could have conceived of a
history if not a story. He could have described temporal developments of what
he tells in fact, that is either of the beautiful with Greek basics including
the Nietzschean distinction of Apollinian/Dionysian,
or of the stages of an aesthetics of the machine, or of gender or the sublime
and monstrous. It would not necessarily have torn the project apart into five
or six ideas. Moreover Eco relies on the readers’ basic encyclopedic
knowledge of the last 2500 years’ art and world views and tells more or less
molecular stories about the dyads beautiful/pleasant, /rational, /graceful,
/good, /monstrous or /sublime inserting a lot of careful selected material.
What follows – before giving
an account and praise/criticism – is a detailed (German) table of contents with
the titles of the chapters, subchapters and authors whose work is quoted and
(;) depicted and with the numbers of the pages that contain Eco’s and Girolamo de Michele’s explanations - three fifths of the 92
pages net written stem from Eco (Introduction, chapters III-VI, XI, XIII,
XV-XVII), two fifths from de Michele (I, II, VII-X, XII, XIV).
<0>
Einführung 8, 10, 12, 14
I
Das ästhetische Ideal Griechenlands
Der
Musenchor 37-39, 41 Homer, Platon, Winckelmann, Theognis,
Euripides, Platon; Kuros-Statue, Kapitolinische
Venus, Exekias, Schale Eos
Die
Künstler und die Schönheit 42, 45, 47 Sappho,
Winckelmann; SkulpturLapithen-Zentauren, Diskobol, Parthenon-Relief, Laokoon, Venus, Hermes
Die
Schönheit der Philosophen 48-51 Xenophon, Platon,
Platon, Platon; da Vinci
II
Apollinisch und dionysisch
Die
delphischen Götter 53, 55f. Nietzsche, Nietzsche; Apollo Belvedere, Apollo +
Muses, Lysipp, Kleophrades-Maler,
BarberinischerFaun
Von
den Griechen zu Nietzsche 57f. Nietzsche, Nietzsche; Meidias-Maler,
Silen + Satyrn
III
Schönheit als Proportion und Harmonie
Die
Zahl und die Musik 61-63 aus Hrabanus Maurus, Gaffurio, Gaffurio
Die
Proportion in der Architektur 64, 66f., 69 Philolaos,
Pythagoras, Pythagoras, Theon von Smyrna, Bonaventura, Boethius,
Platon; pythagoräische Tetraktýs,
Ghyka, Michelangelo, de’Barberi,
goldener Schnitt, da Vinci, Piero Francesco, Palladio,
Kathedrale Notre-Dame, Kathedrale Notre-Dame
Der
menschliche Körper 72-75, 77, 80 Vitruv, Plinius, Galen, Platon, anon.
Kartäuser, Boethius; Kore, Doryphoros,
Polyklet, vierWinde, Führer
Stämme Israels, Maurus, Maurus,
Dürer, Cesariano, da Vinci
Kosmos und Natur 82f., 85 Plutarch, Alexander
v. Aphrodisias, Bonaventura, Wilhelm v. Conches, Isidor v. Sevilla, Johannes Scotus; Ars Demonstrativa,
Bible moralisée, Opferung Isaaks
Die
anderen Künste 86f. de Honnecourt, Dürer
Funktionalität
88f. Thomas v. Aquin, Thomas v. Aquin, Thomas v. Aquin, Thomas v.
Aquin, Thomas v. Aquin,
Thomas v. Aquin; Kathedrale
Notre-Dame, Sainte-Chapelle
Die Proportion in der Geschichte 90-92, 94-97 Burke; Mondrian,
Botticelli, Palma il Vecchio, Cranach, Jubilus Alleluja, Tupa tris sempiternus, Kathedrale
Notre-Dame Chartres, Palladio,
Cellarius, Cellarius
IV
Licht und Farbe im Mittelalter
Licht
und Farben 99f. Beatus v. Liébana, Handschrift, Gebr.
Limburg,
de La Tour, Beatus v. Liébana
Gott als Licht
102-104 Plotin, Pseudo-Dionysius, Pseudo-Dionysius,
Johannes Scotus, Al Kindi; Evangeliar-Cover
Licht,
Reichtum und Armut 105-109 Jean de Meung + Guillaume
de Loris, Chrétien de Troyes, anon. 14. Jh., Boccaccio, Lentini, Marco Polo, anon. 14. Jh., Dante, Petrarca; Gebr. Limburg, Gebr. Limburg
Die
Zierde 111, 113 Isidor v.Sevilla; Schrein Hl. Calmin, Evangeliar-Cover, da Fabriano,
Buchmaler am Hof der Anjou
Die
Farben in Dichtung und Mystik 114, 117 Dante, Dante, Hildegard v. Bingen; Hildeg. v. Bingen, Wurzel Jesse
Die
Farben im täglichen Leben 118 Gebr. Limburg, Gebr. Limburg
Die
Symbolik im täglichen Leben 121, 123 Beatus v. Liébana,
Lombardischer Buchmaler, Alexanderlied, Bildteppiche
Apokalypse
Theologen
und Philosophen 125-127, 129 Hugo v. St. Victor, Hugo v. St. Victor, Jean de Meung + Guillaume de Loris, Grosseteste, Grosseteste,
Bonaventura, Bonaventura, Dante; di Arpo, Fra Angelico, Colombe
V
Die Schönheit der Monster
Eine
schöne Darstellung des Hässlichen 131-133, 135f. Platon, Wilhelm v. Auvergne,
Bonaventura, Kant, Hegel, Rosenkranz; Bosch, Gorgonenziegel,
Beatus v. Liébana, da Modena,
Gebr. Limburg
Fabeltiere
und Wunderwesen 138-142 anon. 8. Jh., anon. 8. Jh., anon. 8. Jh., anon. 8. Jh., anon. 8. Jh., anon. 8. Jh., Marco Polo; Mappa mundi, Schedelsche Weltchronik, Schedelsche Weltchronik, Kapitell Saint Pierre Chauvigny, Bouricaut-Meister
Das
Häßliche in der universalen Symbolik 143, 145, 147
Hugo v. St. Victor/anon. 12. Jh., anon.
2.-5. Jh.; Pfarrkirche San Pietro, Crivelli,
Apokalypse
Die
Notwendigkeit des Häßlichen für die Schönheit 148f. Bernhard v. Clairvaux, Alexander v. Hales; Beatus
v. Liébana, Bruegel d. Ä., Bosch, Bosch
Das
Häßliche als Kuriosum der Natur 152 Kircher, Ucello, Ligozzi
VI
Von der Schäferin zur engelsgleichen Frau
Heilige
und profane Liebe 154, 156, 158, 160 Salomon, anon.
12.-13. Jh., Boccaccio; Leinentäschchen, Memling,
Madonna, Konrad v. Altstetten
Damen
und Troubadoure 161, 163 Jaufré Rudel, Bernart v. Ventadorn; Meister S. Martino, Heinrich v. Veldig
Damen
und Ritter 164-166 anon. 13. Jh., Cavalcanti;
Alexanderlied
Dichter
und unmögliche Lieben 167-171, 174f. anon., Jaufré Rudel, Jaufré Rudel,
Heine, Jaufré Rudel, Rostand, Lapo
Gianni, Dante, Dante, Dante, Rossetti; Jaufré Rudel, Zeichnung „Dante + Beatrice“, Rossetti, Schule Fontainebleau
VII
Die magische Schönheit im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert
Die
Schönheit zwischen Erfindung und Nachahmung der Natur 176, 178 da Vinci;
Botticelli, Veneto, Melzi,
da Vinci
Das
Bildnis 180, 183 Alberti; Ghirlandaio,
Jan v. Eyck, Tura
Die
übersinnliche Schönheit 184, 186f. Plotin, Ficino, Colonna; Botticelli, del Cossa, P. Christus
Venus 188 Bellini, Giorgione,
Tizian, Tizian
VIII
Damen und Heroen
Die
Damen ... 193, 196, 198 da Vinci, Grien,
Tizian, Correggio, Domenichino, Giorgione,
Velázquez, Fragonard, Manet
...
und die Heroen 200, 205 Holbein d. J., Bronzino, della Francesca, Clouet, da
Vinci, Verocchio, Caravaggio, Bruegel
d. J.
Die
praktische Schönheit ... 206, 208 Vermeer, Holbein d. J., Steen
...
und die sinnliche Schönheit 209, 212 Castiglione,
Cervantes; Raffael, Rubens, Rubens, Caravaggio
IX
Von der Anmut zur ruhelosen Schönheit
Auf
dem Weg zur subjektiven und multiplen Schönheit 214, 216f. Bembo, Agnolo Firenzuola, Castiglione, Castiglione;
Caravaggio, Bronzino, Holbein
d. J.
Der Manierismus 218, 220-222, 224 de LaFayette; Giorgione, Dürer, Parmigianino, Arcimboldo, Raimondi, Correggio
Die Krise
des Wissens 225 Andreas Cellarius
Melancholie 226, 228 Raffael, Dürer, Borromini, Guarini
Agudeza, Wit, Concettismo 229, 232 Gracián, Tesauro, Tesauro, Marino, Marino,
Francesco-Federigo de la Valle, Pucci;
daCortona
Das
Streben nach dem Absoluten 233f. Shakespeare; Sanmartino,
Watteau, Bernini
X
Vernunft und Schönheit
Dialektik
der Schönheit 237, 239f. Rousseau, Kant, de Sade; Zoffani,
Fragonard, Quentin de la Tour, Chardin
Strenge
und Befreiung 241 Fragonard
Paläste
und Gärten 242 Chiswick House, Villa Chigi Cetinale
Klassizität
und Klassizismus 244-247 Hume, Hume;
Tischbein, Canova, Pannini
Heroen,
Körper und Ruinen 249-251 Winckelmann, Winckelmann; David, Hackert,
Füssli
Neue
Ideen, neue Themen 252, 254-257 Addison, Diderot,
Hogarth, Burke, da Ponte; Liotard, Boucher, David, Encyclopédie,
Hogarth
Frauen
und Leidenschaften 259-261 de Scudéry, Defoe; Liotard, Kauffmann, Carte
du Tendre, David
Das
freie Spiel der Schönheit 264f., 267 Kant, Leopardi, Hutcheson; Romney, Russel, Boullée
Die
grausame und dunkle Schönheit 269, 272 de Laclos, Wollstonecraft Shelley; Goya, Longhi,
Goya
XI
Das Erhabene
Eine
neue Auffassung vom Schönen 275-277 Hume, Hume; Friedrich, Chardin, Fragonard
Erhaben
ist das Echo einer großen Seele 278f. Pseudo-Longinus,
Pseudo-Longinus, Pseudo-Longinus;
Bernini
Das
Erhabene der Natur 281f., 284 Aristoteles, Aristoteles, Poe, Foscolo, Burnet; Wolf, Friedrich,
Friedrich
Die
Poetik der Ruinen 285 Shelley; Schinkel, Friedrich
Das
„Gotische“ in der Literatur 288f. Shelley, Shelley, Tasso,
Schiller; Füssli
Edmund Burke 290-293 Burke, Burke,
Burke, Burke, Burke, Burke; Foscolo, Friedrich,
Burke, Piranesi
Das
Erhabene Kants 294-297 Kant, Coleridge, Schiller, von
Arnim/C. Brentano; Bradford, Friedrich
XII
Die romantische Schönheit
Die
romantische Schönheit 299, 301-303 Shakespeare, Foscolo,
Baudelaire, d’Annunzio, Hugo; Mengin,
Fabre, Medusenhaupt, Delacroix, Hayez
Romantische
Schönheit und romanhafte Schönheit 304, 306-308 de Laclos,
F. Schlegel, Foscolo, Manzoni,
Bonaparte, Goethe; Millais, Delacroix, Ingres
Die
vage Schönheit des „ich weiß nicht was“ 310, 312 Kant, Shelley, Novalis; Corot, Schinkel
Romantik
und Revolte 313f. Giraud, Delacroix
Wahrheit,
Mythos, Ironie 315, 317-320 Hegel, Keats, F.
Schlegel, ältest. Systemprogramm, Foscolo, Goethe; Chassériau, Hayez, Füssli, Delacroix
Finster, grotesk, melancholisch 321-324 Tasso, Marino, Milton, Shelley, Delacroix; Géricault, Delville
Lyrische
Romantik 325 Cammarano; Sargent,
Hayez
XIII
Die Religion der Schönheit
Die
ästhetische Religion 329-333 Dickens, Baudelaire, Barbey
d’Aurevilly, Vivien, Verlaine, d’Annunzio;
Rossetti, Doré, Couture, Courbet
Der
Dandy 333-335 Baudelaire, Wilde; Porträt Wilde, Boldini
Liebe, Tod und Teufel 336-337 Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Wilde; Moreau
L’art pour l’art 338-340 Huysmans, Wilde, d’Annunzio; Millet, Manet
À rebours
341-343, 345 Swinburne, Lorrain,
Huysmans, Gautier, Péladan,
Baudelaire, Zola, Huysmans, Wilde, Valéry; Degas, Rossetti,
Beardsley
Der
Symbolismus 346-350 Wilde, Baudelaire, Baudelaire,
Verlaine, Mallarmé, Rimbaud, Rimbaud; Klimt, Fantin-Latour, Manet
Der
ästhetische Mystizismus 351 Millais
Die
Ekstase in den Dingen 353-355 Pater, Joyce; Burne-Jones,
Abbott, Blanche
Die Impression 356, 358 Monet,
Renoir, van Gogh, Cézanne
XIV
Das neue Objekt
Die
solide viktorianische Schönheit 361-363 Hobsbawm; Guimard, Pugin, Foto von Tea
Party
Eisen
und Glas: die neue Schönheit 364, 366f. Labrouste, Labrouste, Eiffel, Paxton, Pugin
Vom
Art Nouveau zum Art Déco 368f., 371f. Sternberger,
PA-Ministerpräsident; Wolfers, Porträt Louise Brooks, van de Velde, Dudovich, Aghion
Die
organische Schönheit 374f. Gaudí, F. L. Wright
Gebrauchsgegenstände:
Kritik, Kommerzialisierung, Seriencharakter 376-378 Schawinsky,
Duchamp, Duchamp, Morandi, Oldenbourg,
Warhol, Warhol
XV
Die Schönheit der Maschinen
Die
schöne Maschine? 381-383 Blake, Montale;
Brammenstrang-Gießanlage, phöniz. Streitaxtklinge,
Relief Assurbanipal, Hine, Encyclopédie, Abb. Kanonenrohrmaschine, Curio
Von
der Antike zum Mittelalter 385, 387 Liutprand von Cremona; Heron, de Honnecourt
Vom
15. Jahrhundert bis zur Barockzeit 388-390 Ficino, Sempronio; de Caus, da Vinci, Kircher, Ramelli
18.
und 19. Jahrhundert 392f. Carducci; Watt, Paré, Encyclopédie Abb. Chirurgie, de Nittis
Das
20. Jahrhundert 394, 396-399 Marinetti, Marinetti, Folgore, Sempronio, Roussel, Kafka, Barthes; Rorè,
Chaplin, Tinguely
XVI
Von abstrakten Formen auf den Grund der Materie
„Seine
Statuen in den Felsen suchen“ 401 Michelangelo; Michelangelo
Die
zeitgenössische Aufwertung der Materie 402, 405 Pareyson;
Pollock, Burri, Fontana
Das
objet trouvé 406 Duchamp
Von
der reproduzierten zur industriellen Materie, auf den Grund der Materie 407,
409 Pieyre de Mandiargues; Twombly, César, Warhol, Lichtenstein, Peitgen/Richter
XVII
Die Schönheit der Medien
Schönheit
der Provokation oder Schönheit des Konsums 413f. Monroe, de Meyer, Man Ray
Die
Avantgarde oder die Schönheit der Provokation 415, 417 Severini,
Picasso, Malewitsch
Die
Schönheit des Konsums 418, 425f., 428 Twiggy, Garbo,
Hayworth, Kelly, Bardot, Hepburn, Dietrich, Ekberg, Wayne, Astaire/Rogers,
Grant, Brando, Dean, Mastroianni, Raymond, Edelmann, Hannah/Hauer, Ling,
Campbell, Rodman, Moss
Here is the summary. Chapter
ONE emphasizes that the Greeks stick with the opposition of the
beautiful-pleasant to the true and found the former expressed by the sculpture
of the human body and the philosophy of geometry, proportion/harmony and
splendour. Like never before chapter TWO takes historically
seriously the pair Apollinian/Dionysian. THREE
shows the theoretical significance of mathematical and unfortunately less
musical proportion from Pythagoras through Kepler
with useful remarks about cosmos, painting, architecture, body and the
discovery of a functionality with the mutual cooperation of parts finally
running in Edmund Burke’s criticism of mere objective proportion. What is only
an indication with splendor in Plato ascends to one
of medieval key features, that is, as told in FOUR, the history of light and
colour with respect to the concept of god and in relation to wealth and decorum
as exemplary thereby equipping light and colour with hitherto unseen symbolism
and mysticism. After having explained the often underestimated aesthetic of the
monstrous and ugly in FIVE, the figures of the shepherdess and the angel-like
woman in SIX - still with focus on medieval times from the Song of Solomon to preraphaelite Rosetti - give a
case of the relevance of the relation of the sexes for the perception of
beauty, a topic taken up again - after SEVEN’s all
too short elaborations on the magical beauty reserved for the renaissance -
with a grouping of ladies and heroes in EIGHT that prepares the ground for -
shown in NINE - an aesthetic of grace in its turn giving way to surfacing of a
more restless, subjective and mannerist beauty and opening up to the critical
epistemic values of agudeza and the absolute that are
so crucial before and after 1600.
Under the heading
„reason/beauty“ a superabundant chapter TEN is devoted to many of later 18th
century’s topics and cultural phenomena, to for instance an aesthetics of
„rapports“, ruins, „map of the heart“, the English garden, classicist and
revolutionary architecture, the carnival - of course entailing, with ELEVEN, a
history of the sublime that is told from Aristotle’s catharsis and Pseudo-Longinus’s first conception to Burke, romanticism (C. D.
Friedrich) and beyond (E. A. Poe). With TWELVE’s
„Romantic Beauty“ is dealt with a variety of texts, pictures and thoughts like
the revolt of Neue Mythologie,
but also 17th century remainders like Milton or the je-ne-sais-quoi
and the photographic Ingres or Delville
paintings. Separate chapter THIRTEEN labels with „religion of beauty“ movements
and phenomena after 1850 like l’art-pour-l’art, androgynity, symbolism from Poe to the poètes
maudits, impressionism and the preraphaelites
(including the book’s sole two poet portraits of Eco favorites
Joyce and Proust) and with John Ruskin’s contra views
that lead to chapter FORTEEN’s „new object“ aesthetic
with new technologies used by historist architecture,
arts & crafts, art nouveau and art déco paving
the way to the organicism of a Gaudí
or the serialism of today’s consumer culture. It
makes sense here to insert, with a chapter FIFTEEN, by references to Marinetti and Tinguely a history
of (the idea of) beauty machines even if extended to historically distant
antique or baroque areas. And it makes sense here to remember with SIXTEEN the
aesthetics of materials as put forward by abstract expressionists, pop art and
fractals. Whatever is meant by „beauty of the media“ in its full range, chapter
SEVENTEEN addresses it - with lots of photographic material - focusing on the
beauty of models who only seem to erase the last traces of a transcendence that
was preserved by artistic representation as realist as it may have been
considered to be.
To start with some criticism:
What I miss is kinds of beauty that are not restricted to be embodied in the
objects of paintings, beautiful human (!) beings (not animals, plants) and
machines. Eco does not consider landscape or environmental beauty, interior
(one single exception and no discotheque, Mr. Eco!), urban or media design
(last chapter’s title misleads), literature (not referring to the beautiful),
architecture, music and photography or film that is not restricted to the
rather little section of the looks of actresses and actors. Concerning
landscape we well know that the category of the picturesque - besides the
beautiful and the sublime - introduced the still little known categorial and objectual change
of the beautiful - along with an aggregation and accumulation of the named
three together with the shocking, the ugly, the comical, the ridiculous, the
interesting, the disgusting, the convulsive and all the other aesthetic
qualities/categories the beautiful is theoretically inextricably linked thereby
running into THE aesthetic as we know it today. I wonder how a history of the
aesthetic would look that does not dispense with the ambition to illustrate it
as richly as Eco does. (With Eco it is like with the various attractions to
Odysseus on his journey back home. You have to force yourself keep steering at
the road of discursive text and not being diverted by the pictures that are so
tempting and easy to browse through.)
The lack of a critical
approach, it seems to me, seduces Eco to sometimes fall into the traps of the
commercial beauty of geniuses’ pantings, rich woman
(depicted or photographed) and other expensive things. (The book - at least in the
German version - is already brilliant because of the outstanding graphic
quality of the pictures taken from a lot of equally famous and important
paintings from all the historical periods and areas available.) It comes to my
mind that ubertas was not thought as aesthetic since
Kant and industrialization, and that it was Baumgarten
as the last one to do so. Of course some further reading of the history of
aesthetics would have been required of Eco who almost provocatively names Pareyson as the only aesthetician of the 20th century and
in his rather select bibliography only Nietzsche and Wilde as aestheticians the
least distant from our times. I do not want to be unfair but I further wonder
what figure nature would have made if conceived of as the sole justification of
beauty in times that ideologically fetishize beauty
but would need it as a transcendent point of orientation of course with regards
to a philosophical concept of history still believing in true progress as the historico-materialist aesthetics of Adorno
had it.
Eco’s merits are to be found
in courageously delineating a perspective faithful to his original interest in
the 1950ies - Thomas, medieval aesthetics, Joyce and film - and daring to fill
in related and expanded areas. So we get a fresh perspective onto the cultural
complexities of English and non-English late 19th century and along with it
insights that historians and philosophers of the period’s aesthetics never
could have gained. The same with ancient times. Eco
applies the Apollinian/Dionysian distinction with
ease to the history of ancient thought and not only to the essence of
historical art itself that Nietzsche felt forced to diversify against the
monist conception of Winckelmann that still was influential in the later times
of that century. And when it is not Eco himself then it is his partner Girolamo de Michele who helps out with an unknown amount of
Burke that sheds another light on the Leibniz-Baumgarten-Kant
18th century, a twilight that the dark side 19th century well endures.
It seems almost obscene to me
to have at hands, on a few pages collected, the most important and almost
painfully beautiful pictures in the best optical quality imaginable. So much
beauty is hard to stand. At least one can understand it with Eco belonging to
the land of if not design, then of disegno:
That is the point. Eco is not
only a scholar who certainly could be more sharply criticized than done here in
terms of what we know today about the history of philosophical aesthetics. He
is also an author, and he reserves the right of an author with various
techniques beyond disciplinary aesthetics like the story or the montage or the
„picture“ of a composed page ore section or chapter. This
may be characteristic for mature author Eco who keeps in mind that a novel text
illustrated would have been impossible to write. Is this a postmodernism of a
scholarly kind in the humanities? I’d rather hold that Eco was wise enough to
stick with modern times’ intellectual achievements in this case. We know that
commercially aware Eco published along with the „History of Beauty“ a novel concerning his childhood indeed. It would have
been impossible to work on two novels at the same time anyway even though it
would have only been reworking the first version 2002 CD-ROM. Should we take
the fact of Eco’s real childhood as the subject matter of his novel of this
year as the point of departure for interpreting „History of Beauty“ as edited by Eco as a reflection of Eco’s intellectual
youth? That business definitely goes beyond the review at stake here. But it
seems evident to me that Eco’s two major occupations of writing novels and
philosophizing the beautiful are secretly linked with each other and be this
alone because of the intermediate link of semiotics and literary theory the
founding of which brought Eco his first fame long before his novel successes
and the success the „History of Beauty“ will become
almost as certainly as the sun rises or sets.
Peter Mahr © 2004
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