My main problem with Worringer's ideas is that a "happy pantheistic relation of confidence between man and the phenomena of the external world", or what he calls the "empathy" expressed by "naturalism", is what I find in Chinese painting, Jalisco sculpture, and many other non-European genres. While I also think that European artists, at least the good ones, have torn the "external object out of the context of nature, out of the endless inter play of existence" and purified "it of all dependence on life, all arbitrariness, to make it necessary and stable, to make it approximate to its absolute value".
Even a turbulent naturalist like Rodin. So, what Worringer presents as opposite, I see as compatible. Working directly in the presence of a live model or landscape may be a uniquely European practice, but it's usually only part of a longer process, and rather than reflecting a positive attitude towards the external world, it reflects, I believe, a positive attitude towards change and the need to always look at the world anew - an approach that appears to be radically different from every other culture in human history. (except maybe 18th and 19th Century Edo). And come to think of it, a certain kind of abstraction is also a uniquely European practice: the kind where neither representation nor decoration are important. That's the kind of abstraction (as now practiced by William) that was emerging and gaining attention when Worringer wrote his piece (1908), and that's the unique phenomenon he could have been discussing. ____________________________________________________________ Click to replace your roof - modern technology. http://thirdpartyoffers.netzero.net/TGL2231/fc/BLSrjnxVSkTqbEyDT6K47dENdUZ1DU NtfNL2ly277spc7sGM8X7NtadbyDG/
