Today artists are still affected by a cultural shift at the close of the 1700s, the birth of a new aesthetic, Romanticism. Here were painters, poets, musicians all reacting to the constraining aesthetics of neo-classicism. The reigning Enlightenment’s quest for objective and universal truth was overthrown by a new subjective approach. Nature could no longer be imitated according to an objective standard. Each individual experienced their own truth, their own interpretation, their own perspective, their own expression of their nature, their own spiritual perception. The strict design forms and linearity of Jacques Louis David or Benjamin West were seen as rigid, lacking natural passion, motion and personal expression. Artists from Constable and Turner in England to Delacroix and Gericault in France and Friedrich in Germany gave a theatrical, spiritual and personal response to nature in their art. Yet, in the large exhibition paintings artists like Constable and Delacroix never quite give us the personal sense of experimentation and freedom which we see in their sketches. (example 1, small Constable oil sketch; example 2, small Delacroix watercolor sketch).
These are small, daring, expressive, gestural explosions of emotion coupled to observation only available in their sketches. They become more tempered in their exhibition works. These sketches were meant for no one’s eyes but, their own. This was another tenet of romanticism; the artist needs to satisfy no audience but himself. These images were subjective adventures, personal experiments which looked into the artist’s inner feelings, their dreams, their personal experience and, would later be found in the subjective art of Van Gogh. Then, even later in the mid-twentieth century expressionism evolved into abstract expressionism for example, in the work of Jackson Pollack
. After initially shocking and offering a sense of primordial emotional release, arresting textures, allusions to Asian calligraphic meditation, and complicated ambiguous rhythms the abstract expressionist vocabulary began to appear repetitive and, rather than mysteriously enigmatic it descended into either simple illegibility or a free-for-all of associative imagery. Even its authors like Pollack would tire of the effort and try other more veridical, symbolic, or mimetic forms(mapping, symbolism or imitation). Today, artists still feel the reverberations of Romanticism and its mid-twentieth century progeny, abstract expressionism. In my first example, I present an image that appears to suggest sky and tree reflections on a shallow pool whose bottom’s detritus appears through the darker areas of the trees’ reflections. 
The painting was created by first making an abstract tableau ( see detail area above)then, overlaying the expressionist marbling with light areas of the reflected sky. The viewer can will their attention to either the pattern of light areas of reflection(sky reflections) or, to the darker areas suggesting tree reflections. The chaos in these darker areas assumes an identity which suggests the detritus on the floor of the shallow pond. In my final example I present a more traditional view of Romanticism. The sky and earth are joined in a theatrical display of shared hot and cool colors and dramatic cloud motion. 
Leave a Reply