Robert Williams, Art Theory – An Historical Introduction (Second Edition) 2009(A John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., Publication)
Reviewed by Beth Laura Chapman
The title ‘Art Theory’ induces the content of this book’s argument, although the unsatisfying thought of only the Western speculation about the visual arts from ancient times to the early years of the twenty-first century, makes the interpretive tradition of exploration of familiarity, hard to comprehend in a sense of the intensity or current interest. The introduction outlines the expectations and narratives of traditional ‘Art Theory’ books, in contradiction to a theoretical or philosophical perspective of understanding art, whereas this content does not attempt to suggest what they call theory. Williams argues that, “Art is not something we must go out of our way to encounter but is woven, like language, into the very fabric of our experience and consciousness, and it is essential to the way in which we navigate in a complex culture”, this aligns the language of visual communication and the nurtured response to the account of history, and the development in contemporary art and thought.
In Chapter 1, ‘Antiquity and the Middle Ages’, Williams suggests that tales reflect the capacity of images to interpret a living presence such like ‘The Greek Anthology‘: “I laugh because I marvel at how being put together out of all kinds of stones, I suddenly become a satyr”. He also states that, ‘The Greek Anthology preserves numerous epigrams about a famously naturalistic bronze statue of a cow by the sculptor Myron.. As in the epigram about the mosaic satyr, the image itself speaks, a device that is used to suggest – and succeeds remarkably well in capturing – the startling effect of being fooled’.
The first section in chapter 1, ‘The Shield of Achilles’ emphasizes that the object is fictitious and intended to surpass in its magnificence the work of all human goldsmiths, it’s description documents a profound responsiveness to the power of art. The representations of emotions and the power of art are strongly collaborated in the manner of admiration in the Greek Ages, and having “instilled the very passions of the soul into works of stone” (The Greek Anthology). William’s suggests that ‘the most famous demonstration of the power of personification was the picture of Calumny by Apelles’, although the picture is lost, the tantalization of gossip and lasting generations was recovered by Botticelli representing ignorance and suspicion, and acting under the influence of those qualities. Art was successfully seen as a way of power and the knowing, knowing as one and the power to be known. This then proceeds to the next section in chapter 1, ‘Imitation and Knowledge’, all myths and epigrams previously assessed in the section before are hand made (sculptures/works of art) and the assumption of the adaptation of ‘natural processes’ defining the opposition of ‘nature’ simply define the meaning of ‘nature and art’, in the idea that art imitates nature for historical truth. The next section ‘Beauty’ also interrelates that the idea of art imitating nature, ‘the idea that beauty is somehow fundamental to art – that beautiful natural forms, for instance, should be privileged objects of imitation – was highly developed in ancient times’ (Williams). Plato’s philosophy promotes the idealistic form of beauty, it is not a mere appearance or a lesser substitute for some higher integrity, although it is an essential attribute of any ideal form. Williams states that ‘The idea of ascent, prompted by love, from the particular to the universal, from the many to the one, from the contingent to the absolute, is perhaps Plato’s most profoundly influential contribution; we will see it reappear in various forms in later thought’. Calculating displacement of erotic energy onto increasingly abstract objects, might yet be moved in testifying the reality and intensity of our inner life.
In the second Chapter, ‘The Early Modern Period’, Williams references The Book of Art or Craftsman’s Handbook, by Cennio Cennini, a Florentine painter active in the decades before 1400. He quotes ‘Essentially a “recipe book”, a compilation of practical advice regarding the materials and processes of painting’. The Book of Art is one of the only surviving examples of a Middle Ages type of text. Cennini describes the easiest and the foremost important methods of craft, such like how to mix gesso, plaster, varnish, how to make different kinds of brushes etc. Amongst the particular practical tips that confide within the make up of the book (‘The Book of Art‘) itself, he attempts to speculate more addressing issues of the matter of theory and imitation. Cennini suggests that one can learn a great deal by the imitation of your teachers, the “best steersman” or “triumphal gateway” achieving perfect mastery of ‘nature’. In this section Williams places the identity that painting is a form of knowledge that subordinates and integrates other forms. As all this documentation is explained by Williams in the first section ‘Craftsmen and Theorists’. The second section ‘Humanism’, he discusses about how it is another concept traditionally associated with the emergence and evolution of early modern culture.
BethLauraChapman . Illustrator and Contemporary Artist 