Plenitudes of Painting: Wilhelm Worringer and the Relationship between Abstraction and Representation in European Painting at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Art History and Theory at the University of Canterbury by Cristina Silaghi University of Canterbury 2012 i Table of Contents Acknowledgments ................................................................................................ vi Abstract ................................................................................................................. ix Key words.............................................................................................................. ix Preface .................................................................................................................... x Introduction ........................................................................................................... 1 Part 1: Outer pictures, inner contours ............................................................ 10 Wilhelm Worringer: sketch for a portrait ..................................................... 10 About Worringer: W. Eugène Kleinbauer, Hilton Kramer, Debbie Lewer ....................................................................... 14 Worringer, T. E. Hulme and Herbert Read .................................................. 17 Recent opinions, 1960-2008 .......................................................................... 23 Gazing in the mirror of history: Worringer’s forewords to Abstraction and Empathy and Form in Gothic ........................................... 37 1908: first foreword to Abstraction and Empathy ....................................... 38 1910: Abstraction and Empathy, third foreword ......................................... 41 1918 and 1919: Form in Gothic forewords .................................................. 42 1948: Abstraction and Empathy republished ............................................... 44 1957: a new edition of Form in Gothic ........................................................ 47 Worringer’s approach to the writing of art history and theory ................. 49 Immanuel Kant and Theodor Lipps: creativity, aesthetics and experience ............................................................. 51 Empathy: Friedrich Theodor Vischer and Robert Vischer ......................... 54 Heinrich Wölfflin: embodiment and expression .......................................... 57 Objects, feelings, and aspects of empathy .................................................... 59 Worringer: subjectivity and objectivity ........................................................ 62 Empathy, abstraction and representation in Worringer’s Abstraction and Empathy ....................................................... 65 Empathy and abstraction: Lipps and Worringer .......................................... 65 From aesthetics to art-making: naturalism and style ................................... 75 W. J. T. Mitchell and Juliet Koss about empathy ........................................ 77 Abstraction and representation: Clement Greenberg, Frances Colpitt ....... 81 Representation and abstraction in art-making: Worringer’s perspective .................................................................................... 86 Adolf Hildebrand: nature, form, imitation ii and artistic self-sufficiency ............................................................................ 87 Imitation, naturalism, empathy and abstraction in Abstraction and Empathy .......................................................................... 90 Ferdinand Hodler: exactness and expressiveness, emotion and parallelism ................................................................................. 92 Distinctions and transitions: Alois Riegl on the art of antiquity ............................................................... 103 Abstraction: representational inflections .................................................... 106 Worringer and Classicism ........................................................................... 109 Part 2: Predecessors, critics, supporters ....................................................... 111 ‘Common to all’: form for Kant and Worringer ........................................ 111 Form, beauty, charm and emotion .............................................................. 113 Senses and form ............................................................................................ 113 Wölfflin and Worringer: beauty, form, matter and will ............................ 115 Regularity and uniformity............................................................................ 117 A matter of will: Schopenhauer and Worringer on life and art ............... 122 Distancing, urges, and will .......................................................................... 123 Riegl and artistic will ....................................................................................... 127 Will, perception, inner drive, and art-making ............................................ 128 Abstraction, representation, opposition: Worringer and Rudolf Arnheim .................................................................... 132 Withdrawal, productive thinking, and abstraction ..................................... 133 Re-examining Abstraction and Empathy.................................................... 134 The relationship between abstraction and representation: highlights from Worringer’s Abstraction and Empathy, and Gilles Deleuze’s Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation (1984) ........ 140 Classical ornament and Gothic line ............................................................ 141 Non-organic dynamism in Gothic art ......................................................... 144 Painting, representation and abstraction according to Deleuze ................ 146 Part 3: Around Expressionism ....................................................................... 149 The words of Worringer: ‘Expressionism’ at the beginning of the twentieth century ..................................................... 149 ‘The Historical Development of Modern Art’ (1911): Worringer’s early response to Expressionism ............................................. 158 Worringer’s impact: Expressionism (1914) by Paul Fechter, iii and Expressionism (1916) by Hermann Bahr .............................................. 185 Current Questions on Art (1921): Worringer revisits Expressionism ................................................................. 196 Questioning Worringer: critical discussions on the writings of Worringer and his association with the Expressionism movement ......... 199 Georg Lukács and the decline of Expressionism ....................................... 200 Richard Sheppard, and Lukács’ debt to Worringer ................................... 204 Joseph Frank’s Worringer: expressiveness, emotion and the passage of time ................................................................. 205 William Spanos: empathy, abstraction, and the urge to engagement ......................................................................... 207 Ulrich Weisstein: Worringer, Expressionism, and abstract-representational middle grounds ............................................ 210 Neil Donahue: ‘world feeling’ and the history of ideas in Abstraction and Empathy ........................................................................ 211 Worringer and Expressionism: late twentieth-century perspectives ...... 215 Part 4: Redrawing antithesis .......................................................................... 225 Antithesis: Classical, modern and contemporary contexts ....................... 225 Aristotle and antithesis ................................................................................. 227 Worringer’s rhetoric: Neil Donahue, Geoffrey C. W. Waite, and Joshua Dittrich ....................................................................................... 230 Kant, Schopenhauer, Riegl, Wölfflin, antithesis ........................................ 233 Gradation, displacement and transposition: alternatives to antithesis in Worringer’s Abstraction and Empathy ..................................................... 244 Form in Gothic: interplay readdressed ......................................................... 254 History and Ego: Worringer’s approach ..................................................... 257 Interplay in naturalism .................................................................................... 260 Interplay in the Gothic art of Northern Europe: memory, assimilation, interpolation .............................................................. 261 Schiller, Worringer, interplay ........................................................................ 264 Interplay: a dual, hybrid state in Gothic art ................................................ 270 iv Part 5: Interplay in painting ........................................................................... 274 Worringer, his contemporaries, and early twentieth-century art-making in Abstraction and Empathy ............................................................................. 274 Pictorial contexts for abstract-representational interplay: Cézanne’s realized sensations ......................................................................... 278 Monet, Worringer’s Impressionism, and the interplay of abstraction and representation .................................................................. 293 Monet and his motifs: representational and abstract aspects................... 298 The Doorway (Morning Effect) (1894): re-materializations ....................... 301 Representation and abstraction in Monet’s Water Lilies (1907) ............... 308 Towards the expression of inner worlds: Kandinsky, Worringer, and turn-of-the-twentieth century artist writings ....................................... 316 Interplay in Kandinsky’s On the Spiritual in Art (1912) and ‘On the Question of Form’ (1912) .......................................................... 325 On the Spiritual in Art: oppositions and interplay ..................................... 325 Kandinsky’s approach to form and content: The Struggle for Art (1911), and the First Exhibition of the Editors of the Blaue Reiter (1911) ........... 328 Inner life, painting, and its relationship with the world in On the Spiritual in Art ............................................................................. 329 Representation and abstraction in interplay ............................................... 334 ‘On the Question of Form’: the inner similarity of representation and abstraction ............................................................... 338 Painting interplay: Kandinsky’s Impression V (Park) (1911), Picture with a Black Arch (1912), and Picture with Red Spot (1914) ......... 343 Rethinking abstract-representational interplay: Worringer, Arnheim, Deleuze and Guattari ....................................................................................... 350 Conclusion .......................................................................................................... 362 Selected bibliography ....................................................................................... 373 List of illustrations ............................................................................................ 398 v Acknowledgments A University of Canterbury Master of Arts Scholarship (2009), and a Doctoral Scholarship (2010-12) have made this research possible; I would like to extend a debt of gratitude to the Postgraduate Office and Scholarships Office of the University of Canterbury Te Whare Wānaga o Waitaha, who have generously facilitated my inquiries over the last four years. My warmest thanks go to my supervisors, Morgan Thomas, Emilie Sitzia, and Richard Bullen, for their guidance, input, advice and insight, as well as for accepting to gift their time, attention and expertise to a research project proposed by a Fine Arts student. With the encouragement and support of Emilie Sitzia, I have presented my work at the 2011 Conference of The Art Association of Australia and New Zealand, Contact, as well as at the 2012 Symposium of The Australian Modernist Studies Network, Modernism, Intimacy and Emotion. I wish to express my gratitude to David Maskill, Lorraine Sim, Ann Vickery, and to all the organizers of these events for granting my access to two most valuable learning opportunities. I very much thank Jon Winnall and Judith Brooks for their interest in my project, as well as The University of Canterbury, Universities New Zealand Te Pōkai Tara, and The New Zealand Federation of Graduate Women, for their funding my participation to the 2011 AAANZ Conference and the 2012 AMSN Symposium. As a 2012 Claude McCarthy Fellow and recipient of NFGW Conference and Travel Awards, I pursued my research in Paris at the Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art, at the Bibliothèque Kandinsky of the Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, and in the Centre Pompidou exhibition spaces; I would like to warmly thank these organizations for their welcome and support. Kindest thanks to Barbara Garrie and Katherine Higgins for including my contribution in the first number of Oculus: Postgraduate Journal for Visual Arts Research. I am grateful to Barbara Garrie for inviting me to take part to a collaborative project, Stochastic Dialogue, presented by her at the 2009 Conference of the Association of Art Historians of Manchester Metropolitan University, Intersections. The 2011 Place and Placelessness Online Graduate vi Workshop was a great learning opportunity for which I am grateful to Andrew Watson and Michael Del Vecchio. I warmly thank Janet Abbot, Rudolf Boelee, Tony Bond, Wendy Cox, Margaret Duncan, Victoria Edwards, Douglas Horrell, Kiri Jarden, Ina Johann, Simon Ogden, and Louise Palmer for their professional advice, words of kindness, and support of my practice. For their contribution to and support of Sense of Place (2010-12, Hastings City Art Gallery) and Colour of Distance (2011-12, Papakura Art Gallery), I am most grateful to Celia Wilson, Kim Lowe, Helga Goran, Jocelyn Mills, Tracey Williams, Maree Mills, Kath Purchas, and the wonderful teams at PAG and HCAG. I kindly thank Justin Morgan, Jodie Dalgleish, Warren Feeney, Janet Bayly, Jasmine Bailey, Kim Lowe, Linda Lee and Mirabel Oliver for welcoming my work at The New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts, Mahara Gallery, and Shared Lines – the 2012 Christchurch/Sendai Project. My thoughts often go, in heartfelt gratitude, to Riduan Tomkins for his clarity of vision, luminous practice, passionate engagement with art, insightful advice, generosity and support. The earliest motivating factor in the writing of this thesis was my admiration for the art and thought of Desmond Rochfort; I extend my boundless gratitude to him for his support of my practice and kind encouragement. At crucial points of my research, I have had the chance to be surrounded by the wisdom, kindness and generosity of Gabriela and Letiția Silaghi, Libby Munt and Alex J. Plescan, Ana and Narcis Gǎnescu, Elena, Alex and Zoe Nesterovich, Jane Williamson, Nadia and Andrew Plescan, and by the wholehearted support of Alex M. Plescan; they have my deepest, very special thanks. vii To Lucian Silaghi, in loving memory viii Abstract Throughout the twentieth century, the relationship between representation and abstraction has been regarded predominantly in terms of opposition. One of the prominent early twentieth- century defenders of this approach is Wilhelm Worringer (1881-1965), who introduces representation and abstraction as antithetic modes of art-making in Abstraction and Empathy. A Contribution to the Psychology of Style (1908). However, while he distinguishes between abstraction and representation on theoretical grounds, Worringer also observes that, in the history of art, these modes of art-making coexist. The current thesis examines Worringer’s approach to the writing of art history and theory, inquiring into his perspective on the personal responses of viewers and artists to the world, and the manifestations of these responses in art. Abstraction and Empathy addresses issues of empathy, form, and will, in aesthetics and art-making; it discusses and extends the writings of Theodor Lipps, Immanuel Kant, Arthur Schopenhauer, and Alois Riegl. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Worringer’s book attracted much attention: like its sequel, Form in Gothic (1910), it was often associated with the rise to prominence of Expressionism in Germany. Later in the twentieth century, Worringer’s thought came under the scrutiny of Rudolf Arnheim, who criticized Worringer’s emphasis on abstract-representational opposition. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari praised Worringer’s approach to antithesis, yet questioned the terms Worringer proposed as opposites. For Arnheim, Deleuze and Guattari, alternatives to the antithesis between abstraction and representation became visible. Indeed, in Worringer’s time, artists such as Adolf Hildebrand, Ferdinand Hodler, Paul Cézanne, Claude Monet and Wassily Kandinsky underscored the common grounds between representation and abstraction. Exploring Worringer’s Abstraction and Empathy and Form in Gothic, as well as the words and works of Hildebrand, Hodler, Cézanne, Monet and Kandinsky, this thesis aims to highlight abstract-representational interplay as observable in early twentieth-century writing and art-making. Key words: Worringer, Abstraction and Empathy, Form in Gothic, abstraction, empathy, representation, antithesis, interplay, painting. ix Preface Painting is either representational or abstract, the notes I had been taking for the last two weeks seemed to imply. The University of Canterbury postgraduate seminar for fine arts, art history and theory students organized by Desmond Rochfort and Pamela Gerrish Nunn was due to begin soon; we would be responding to a painting of their choice, and sharpen our interpretive skills in the process. As a painter working with abstraction,1 I felt more at ease focusing on my canvases in 2007 – to search for the words, concepts and contexts that could accompany my viewing of artworks was a task I approached with the curiosity and hesitation of a newcomer. My readings explained that contemporary pictorial explorations revolved around issues of abstraction and representation, two modes of art-making predominantly approached as antithetic. If common grounds between representation and abstraction were to be found, I mused while hastening towards the seminar room, a key question of the art of painting would be answered.2 Soon I was to come across Mark Rosenthal’s Abstraction in the Twentieth Century: Total Risk, Freedom, Discipline (1996), where the approach of Wilhelm Worringer (1881-1965) to artistic tendencies was summarized. Worringer, Rosenthal explained,3 recognized two distinct urges (or inner tendencies) in art: an urge to empathy and an urge to abstraction; in Worringer’s Abstraction and Empathy. A Contribution to the Psychology of Style (1908), these urges featured as polar opposites.4 At first glance, the distinction between representational and abstract tendencies in art-making appeared to drive Worringer’s inquiry 1 I explore the interweaving of colours, lines, shapes in my paintings. While my works seem independent from motifs in the world, they develop in resonance with such motifs. The processes that foster ‘abstract’ practices in contemporary painting require in-depth investigation, and need to be addressed in self-standing essays. 2 Five years later, I acknowledge the role of this thought as a starting point of my explorations. However, I see in representation and abstraction only two of the coordinates that support the access of viewers and artists to painting. The key questions posed by painting abound; they can indeed receive punctual solutions, but are not limited to them. 3 Mark Rosenthal, Abstraction in the Twentieth Century: Total Risk, Freedom, Discipline (New York: Guggenheim Museum Publications, 1996), 8-9. 4 Wilhelm Worringer, Abstraction and Empathy: A Contribution to the Psychology of Style (New York: International Universities Press 1953 [1908]), 4. x