"No
lesson of psychology is perhaps more important for the historian to
absorb than this multiplicity of layers, the peaceful coexistence in
man of incompatible attitudes... what happens is rather that
different institutions and different situations favour and bring out
a different approach to which both the artist and his public learn
to respond. But beneath these new attitudes, or mental sets, the old
ones survive and come to the surface in play or earnest." (168)
E.H. Gombrich
Today, as women wear any length of skirt, and even pants, we mix and
match styles and periods in everything, and we call it eclectic. We
have a style of `no- style'. In art shows, realistic pictures hang
next to abstract, and we can easily accept both. This tremendous
diversity is a result of the habit of old ways surviving and
surfacing over and over again.
"Since the form is only an expression of the content and the
content is different with different artists, it is then clear that
there can be many different forms at the same time which are equally
good." (169)
Kandinsky
In 1947, Vladimir Kemenov expressed a tendency of contemporary
artists to be narrow or one-sided in their thinking. He says that
"the impressionists made a fetish of light and visual sensation"
while "Cezanne banned light in favor of geometric volumes
modelled in color." (170) The futurists were concerned with
problems of motion, while the expressionists "emphasized the
subjective factor and the element of exaggeration. Lesser schools
have contented themselves with making a fetish of such components of
painting as surface texture, geometric line, and so on. Innumerable
schools and trends have arisen, each of them making pretentious
claims, shouting imprecations at each other, waging a war of
`principles'" (171)
168. E.H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion, (Princeton, N.J.,U.S.A.,
Princeton University Press, 1972), p.113
169. Herschel B. Chipp, Theories of Modern Art, (Berkeley and L.A.,
Cal., University of California Press, 1968), p. 157
170. ibid., p. 492
171. ibid., p. 492
