Berkeley, Vico, and Rococo Style by Bennett Bruce Gilbert a Thesis Presented in Partial
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Some Neglected Aspects of the Rococo: Berkeley, Vico, and Rococo Style by Bennett Bruce Gilbert A thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in History Thesis Committee: Thomas Luckett, Chair Richard Beyler John S. Ott Portland State University 2014 -i- Abstract The Rococo period in the arts, flourishing mainly from about 1710 to about 1750, was stylistically unified, but nevertheless its tremendous productivity and appeal throughout Occidental culture has proven difficult to explain. Having no contemporary theoretical literature, the Rococo is commonly taken to have been a final and degenerate form of the Baroque era or an extravagance arising from the supposed careless frivolity of the elites, including the intellectuals of the Enlightenment. Neither approach adequately accounts for Rococo style. Naming the Rococo raises profound issues for understanding the relations between conception and production in historical terms. Against the many difficulties that the term has involved in accounting for an immense but elusive cultural movement, this thesis argues that some of the chief philosophical conceptions of the period clarify the particular character and significance of Rococo production. Rococo production is here studied chiefly in decor, architecture, and the plastic arts. This thesis also makes an extended general argument for the value of intellectual history. Rococo style is a group of visual effects of which the central character is atectonicity. This is established by a synthesizing overview of Rococo ornamental motifs. Principal theorists of post-Cartesian thought have failed to see how these -ii- distinguish Rococo style from both Baroque and Enlightenment culture. The analysis addresses the historical narratives of Benjamin, Adorno, Foucault, Deleuze, and others about Baroque and Enlightenment culture. The core historical claim of this thesis is that Rococo atectonic effects are visual forms of the anti-materialist, idealist ontology of George Berkeley and of the metaphysics and ontology in the early work of Giambattista Vico. Close readings of important passages from works of both philosophers published in 1710 develop the relationship between atectonics and idealist ontology. Both men rejected the Baroque hierarchical cosmology in favor of finitude as the key to human understanding. The readings center on the issue of causality, including Berkeley’s views of the perfect contingency of the world and on Vico’s theories of truth and ingenium. A reading of Diderot’s critique of the Rococo, which led the reaction to it, shows that he recognized the power of idealist ontology in the Rococo cultural production. The larger force in the rejection of Rococo is the emergence of the sublime as a morally fearful feature of physical nature. Montesquieu’s aesthetic work also shows the transition to a more rigidly determined view of existence, which was expressed but constrained in the little-recognized lattice motif in Rococo arts. The result of these readings is the influence during and after the Rococo period of the concept of continuous creation, in which the memory and imagination of the human subject relays God-given powers of creation into the production of -iii- culture. Continuous creation also suggested a human capability to animate material nature. Rococo style displays this as pre-cinematic effects that represent the non- material, non-causal deep structure of reality. -iv- For Damien Jack -v- There is a square; there is an oblong. The players take the square and place it upon the oblong. They place it very accurately; they make a perfect dwelling-place. Very little is left outside. The structure is now visible; what is inchoate is here stated; we are not so various or so mean; we have made oblongs and stood them upon squares. This is our triumph; this is our consolation. Virginia Woolf, The Waves -vi- Gratitude The Department of History of Portland State University has shown me nothing but kindness. I am in debt to every member of this faculty for their willingness to nurture cross-disciplinary studies that raise difficult theoretical problems. I am deeply grateful to Prof. Thomas Luckett, my advisor, for his support, care, and advice in the writing of this thesis and throughout my time at PSU. Prof. John S. Ott is an irreplaceable part of my education. Prof. Richard Beyler encourage me in every way and provoked some of the most important questions in the course of this inquiry. Prof. Vanessa Lyon at Reed College led me into the Baroque, an experience from which the need to do this thesis sprung. I also thank the Resources Sharing staff of Millar Library. They are heroic. I owe the greatest debts of gratitude to Damien Jack, my partner in life, and to my dear friend Alexander Pierson; and to many friends, chief among them Nicholas Begley, Tommy Bourgeois, Janis Carpenter, Rocco Harris, Davia Larson, Lacey Legel, Keith Macomber, Kevin McCullough, Jack and Amy Meyers, and Aaron Vienghkou and Jen Chow. -vii- Table of Contents Abstract Page i-iii Chapter 1. Some Neglected Aspects of the Rococo Pages 1–29 Chapter 2. Interdisciplinary Intellectual History Pages 30–65 Chapter 3. Rococo Style Pages 66–96 Chapter 4. Rococo Variations Pages 97–127 Chapter 5. Berkeley’s Creation Pages 128–152 Chapter 6. Vico’s Imagination Pages 153–175 Chapter 7. Rococo Ontology Pages 176–194 Chapter 8. Continuous Creation Pages 195–223 Chapter 9. Diderot’s Decision Pages 224–240 Chapter 10. Rocaille and Lattice Pages 241–253 Illustrations Pages 254–266 Bibliography Pages 267–290 1 Chapter 1: Some Neglected Aspects of the Rococo This thesis concerns the relations of Rococo style in the arts in Europe from to some of the leading conceptions in philosophy from 1690 or 1700 through 1750 or 1760. These conceptions are fundamental ideas in the works of George Berkeley (1685–1753) and of Giambattista Vico (1668–1744). Linking Rococo style and contemporary philosophy deepens historical understanding of how much Rococo style contributed to and can tell us about the development of Occidental thought in the long period of cultural invention impelled by Baroque and Enlightenment ideas. So far as I am aware, the expression of ideas found in Berkeley’s and Vico’s philosophy in the Rococo arts has not been studied. Indeed, historians of ideas have hardly ever linked Berkeley and Vico to one another. In this chapter I shall first summarize the conclusions of the inquiry the reader is about to read, then begin to give the reader a point of view on Rococo style, describe a passage of conceptions in intellectual history of the periods that precedes and follows the Rococo, and explain the plan of this thesis. The work of this thesis is to explore a major though neglected similarity between the artistic style called Rococo and some major philosophical conceptions advanced at or near the start of the success of Rococo style among its producers, 2 including patrons and artists in nearly every visual craft. The thesis is anchored to the year 1710, in which the works of Berkeley and Vico that it examines were both first published. Other concepts from other philosophers also are part of this scene, but Berkeley and Vico did the richest, best work of the age along the lines here under consideration. Research for the thesis has focused on the decor and the plastic arts and crafts, including architecture, although paintings have been included in both research and the small group of examples herein illustrated and discussed. Rococo production was so vast that some limit of research is practical,1 but the desire to decorate space was decisive in the application of ideas to materials among the producers of Rococo. Within these limits, the reader will find here a network of links between philosophical conception and artistic production that afford us greater understanding of each in the light of the other. These links are just a few of the many fields of close relations between the supremely carnal arts of this period and contemporary philosophy that attempts to revolutionize concepts of materiality. The 1I have excluded the direct consideration of literature, music, and the performing arts. Whether or not European literature of the period is properly described as Rococo is a very vexed problem, in which the usual difficulty of analogy among the arts is greatly compounded. The literary output of the age is in any case beyond the scope of this project. As to the music of the period the case is clear: it defines and exemplifies what Rococo is nearly as much as anything in the visual arts. Stage and set design, discussed in Chapter 8, was inspired by the same concepts that inspired visual arts in this period, and the stage in turn greatly contributed to Rococo architecture and art. Thus contemporary opera and ballet certainly were part of the Rococo. It is the immensity of this fact that puts the domain of music outside of this project, which strains to link just one large category of the arts to philosophy. Nonetheless, an interdisciplinary history of Rococo ideas that ranges over music as well as visual and decorative art, and over literature too, is feasible and highly desirable. 3 logical and emotional complexity of the situation in the Rococo period that these analogies expose is best approached in the material developed in the following nine chapters.2 The network of connections that I develop in this thesis are links between philosophical and artistic conceptions. By “link” in this thesis I mean perspicacious comparisons showing that human persons likely used the linked conceptions, at varying levels of awareness, in some domain of actual human creative activity. Like linked items in a network, concepts work together, although not identical to one another; then the linked use of them adds to their similarity, though differences remain; and they can be and often are used in connection with other concepts to produce quite different results.