Professor Dr. Michelle Facos
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Professor Dr. Michelle Facos Alfried Krupp Junior Fellow Oktober 2010 – September 2011 The Copenhagen Academy and artistic (Gedanken über die Nachahmung der grie- Kurzbericht innovation circa 1800 chischen Werke in Malerei und Bildhauer- kunst, 1755) conceptually rather than lite- In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth rally, and centuries several painters and sculptors who studied at the Copenhagen Academy of Art 3) the political mandate to create a distinct- (Det Kongelige Danske Kunstakademi) pro- ly Danish school of art. The works of pain- duce inventive art works that transgressed ters Nicolai Abildgaard, Jens Juel, Christof- contemporary norms and anticipated broader fer Eckersberg, and Caspar David Friedrich, artistic trends by decades. This was due in lar- and the sculptor and Winckelmann protégé Kurzvita Michelle Facos was born in Buffalo 1955. (California, 2008) and An Introduction to ge part to the singular confluence of several Johannes Wiedewelt evidence the indepen- She is professor of the History of Art and Nineteenth-Century Art (Routledge 2011). factors: dent creativity that would later become the adjunct professor of Jewish Studies at Indi- Michelle Facos has received awards from 1) a visual practice that emphasized careful- hallmark of modern artistic practice and ana University, Bloomington, where she has the American-Scandinavian Foundation, the ly observing and recording the natural world which are often attributed to French artists. taught since 1995. She received her Ph.D. in American Philosophical Society, Fulbright, (partly the result of the Institute for Natural 1989 from the Institute of Fine Arts, New and the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung. History being housed in the same building, York University with a dissertation entitled Charlottenborg Palace, as the Art Academy), Nationalism and the Nordic Imagination: Swedish Art of the 1890s. Her recent pub- 2) the interpretation of the influential lications include: Symbolist Art in Context teachings of Johann Joachim Winckelmann Projektbericht My project seeks to explain the unusual Jens Juel Rome where outdoor sketching was a com- ted that no comparably simple, geometric number of atypical and innovative works of mon artistic activity and another in Geneva sculptures were produced until Minimalism art created by teachers and students at the While Jens Juel’s Stormy Weather (1770s, Sta- beginning in 1777, when Juel befriended the emerged in the 1960s. The 54 commemo- Copenhagen Academy around 1800. Inspired tens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen) con- naturalist Charles Bonnet. Bonnet published rative sculptures in the park of the former by the first royal academy of art, the French forms to genre painting because it represents observations about the relationship between hunting palace at Jægerspris are among the Academy, founded in 1648 and housed in the common people in an everyday situation, it is the nervous system and external stimuli. All most singular commemorative projects in Louvre, Det Kongelige Danske Kunstakademi unusual because his fellow artists focused on of these experiences reinforced Juel’s inte- Western art. The sculptures were commissi- (Copenhagen Academy), was established in awe-inspiring forces of nature rather than on rest in natural phenomena. In paintings like oned during a turbulent moment in Danish 1754 and housed in Charlottenborg Palace human reactions to it. Juel recorded people Stormy Weather and Landscape with Aurora history and formed part of a xenophobic da- in Copenhagen. The mandate of art acade- running for shelter in a storm, a scene with Borealis, Juel captured fleeting moments, a nification of Danish culture and politics. The mies was to produce art that glorified the no apparent academic precedent at a time practice associated with the French Impressi- Jægerspris project commemorated great men nation and its ruler and created a uniform when conforming to established patterns onists who began painting in the 1860s. Alt- in Danish and Norwegian history – Norway and high standard of art training. To this end was the rule for artists seeking success. He hough primarily known as a portrait painter, had been ruled by Denmark since the Kal- five acceptable categories of subject matter also anticipated an important idea of Edgar Juel’s interest in recording atypical moments mar Union in 1523. The project expressed were established: history, portraiture, genre, Degas (1834-1917): to represent random but with careful attention to the effects of light a desire to honor significant accomplish- landscape, and still life. By 1800, the public’s rarely recorded moments of everyday life. Juel and atmosphere influenced a generation of ments in the humanistic, political, and sci- ability to understand a painting or sculp- communicates the visual effects of wind and students (including Eckersberg and Friedrich) entific fields and to keep these deeds a living ture depended partly on how precisely it fit fear. His scientific interest was inspired by a who studied with him between 1786, when part of Danish historical memory. It was also one of these categories. Copenhagen artists variety of experiences. In Hamburg, where he he began teaching at the Copenhagen Aca- part of an effort to spread knowledge and viewed these categories differently, often studied for five years, Juel began sketching demy, and his death in 1802. to culturally enhance Denmark beyond the taking conceptual approaches that antici- landscapes and for ‘my own pleasure’. Thus city limits of Copenhagen. These sculptures pated later artistic developments elsewhe- predisposition for the real was strengthened Johannes Wiedewelt are rigorous in their geometry and restrai- re. This becomes clear in the case of works during his 1765-66 studies in Copenhagen, a ned in their ornamentation. Just how unu- of art produced by Jens Juel (1745-1802), time when the Institute for Natural History The memorial sculptures in made in Jæger- sual they are becomes apparent when they Johannes Wiedewelt (1731-1802), Nicolai was also housed in Charlottenborg Palace. spris Park in the 1770s by Johannes Wiede- are compared to a similar project in France. Abildgaard (1743-1809), Caspar David Fried- There researchers studied natural phenome- welt were so radical that they had no impact In 1775 the Comte d’Angiviller, director ge- rich (1774-1840), and Christoffer Eckersberg na, an interest shared by Juel. Another in- whatsoever on art immediately following; neral of the French Art Academy, initiated a (1783-1853). fluence came in 1776-77 when Juel lived in sculpture historian Horst W. Janson has no- project to commemorate the Great Men of France, all of which were full-length portrait cantly, however, Goethe’s Stein represents an abandonment by his Troy-bound comrades, is or political intrigue, Abildgaard chose a mo- sculptures with the figure dressed in contem- abstract concept with an abstract form, while evident in his teary and rolled back eyes, his ment of despair – the protagonist is aban- porary costume. Wiedewelt’s monument to Wiedewelt was apparently the first sculptor to open mouth and his wind-blown hair. Signifi- doned, alone, and in pain. Philoctetes is a the 16th-century astronomer Tycho Brahe, commemorate an individual with a conceptu- cantly, Abildgaard painted this image around hybrid anomaly in the 1770s that anticipa- for instance, is radically different, conceptu- al monument. the same time – 1776 - as Friedrich Maximili- tes a trend which became increasing popular al rather than descriptive: a sphere balanced an Klinger coined the term Sturm und Drang during the nineteenth century as artists and atop a rectangular form in a manner that Nikolai Abildgaard in his play of the same name. Such an image patrons became dissatisfied with the expres- anticipates the elegantly abstract sculptures of extreme psychological and physical tor- sive limitations of academic standards and of Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957) created Nicolai Abildgaard’s Wounded Philoctetes ment in a figure compressed into such a small categories. more than a century later. Were it not for the (1775, Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenha- space does not occur again until Goya pain- now barely visible inscription on the sphere, gen) is a hybrid work remarkable in several ted Saturn Devouring His Children on a wall Caspar David Friedrich one would never guess this to be a comme- ways. First, the scene is reduced to a single in his house in the early 1820s (now Prado, morative monument to Brahe. Wiedewelt’s monumental figure, a kind of reduction and Madrid). Der Wanderer über dem Nebelsee is one of innovative approach could not be predicted pathos that do not occur again until 1793, Abildgaard did conform to contemporary ex- Friedrich’s most familiar paintings. Joseph based on his traditional training. However a when French artist Jacques-Louis David pain- pectations in three ways: choosing a classi- Leo Koerner has analyzed the back-facing scholarship enabled him to move to Rome in ted a memorial portrait of his recently-assas- cal subject (Homer), demonstrating mastery figure as one who draws the viewer’s ima- 1754 where he met Johann Joachim Winckel- sinated friend, the physician and politician of human anatomy, and basing Philoctetes’s gination through the picture plane into the mann, whose 1755 essay Gedanken über die Jean-Paul Marat (Royal Museums of Fine Arts, posture on a famous ancient sculpture, the fictive space of the painting. But it is not Nachahmung der griechischen Werke in Ma- Brussels). Abilgaard conveyed Winckelmann’s Belvedere Torso, then as now in the Vatican only the viewer who imaginatively occupies lerei und Bildhauerkunst suggested to Wie- idea that: “So wie die Tiefe des Meeres allezeit collection in Rome. The idea of depicting suf- the subject’s space and gazes at his view, but dewelt the notion that art should represent ruhig bleibt, die Oberfläche mag noch so wü- fering was not unusual at the time, but the the painter of the picture, Friedrich himself. ideas rather than actions, concepts rather ten, ebenso zeigt der Ausdruck in den Figuren conventional pictorial mode for suffering was This is his magisterial view of a constructed than appearances.