Social History of Art, Vol. 2 - Arnold Hauser - Hardcover Book

*long review and tons of quotes alert*

Hauser is fancy if he is your guy, period. I mean, if you are looking for an art history whose analysis concentrated NOT quite just on intellectual anecdotes and artistic heritage like master A learned his brush skill from master B, and master B's overall light iterative strokes is taken from master B's master's best friend master C who also writes sonnets and dates pretty boys, etc., but how those long dead and gone artists and poets were to their own age, their own history, their own society, then Hauser is one you'd like to turn to.

Here are some points impress me af in this volume:

1. I don't care but I'll just put that quote here, because it's more about art.
I totally suggest modern "progressives" or "conservatives" who really cannot understand a tiny bit of thing without naming or summoning or pressing complex phenomenon into some flat, general, arbitrary category first, cannot assert themselves without proclaiming their idea is some "general" or "historical" right choice, or right side, and believing themselves being so pioneer so new so revolutionary on insisting "diversity" or "defending classics" and it is "universally" preconditioned, should recite these below paragraphs down to their stomach every one hour, daily, with water:
"One ought, really, never to speak of a uniform "style of the time" dominating a whole period, since there are at any given moment as many different styles as there are artistically productive social groups. Even in epochs in which the most influential work is found on a single class, and from which only the art of this class has come down to us, it ought to be asked whether the artistic products of other groups may have been buried or lost.
[...]
They have not the slightest awareness of how restricted their idea of "universality" is and of how few they are thinking when they talk about "everybody" and "anybody". Their universalism is a fellowship of the elite - of the elite as formed by absolutism."

2. Rationalism
Rationalism corresponds not with naturalism, when its time comes, it undermines the artistic creativity - yep, not new point, but Hauser in fact illustrates the whole line of how rationalism comes first as a creative support to art then turned, not without intermingling struggles of power and swinging of sides which imprints its mark on society and art industry, into a dictatorship of dogma in court and the anarchy art market among middle class.

What level of fancy job are we talking about here? At first, Hauser points out that, "the doctrine of spontaneous naturalism of Renaissance comes from the same source as the theory that the fight against the spirit of authority and hierarchy [...] the same spirit which makes its way in the organization of labour, in trading methods, the credit system and double-entry book keeping, in methods of government, in diplomacy and warfare." intellectual and material life was rationalized, art as well. What we are talking about the most impressive (or "progressive", by its good meaning) achievement of Renaissance art is its rationalization of beauty:
"The whole development of art becomes part of the total process of rationalization. The irrational ceases to make any deeper impression. The things that are now felt as 'beautiful' are the logical conformity of the individual parts of a whole, the arithmetically definable harmony of the relationships and the calculable rhythm of a composition, the exclusion of discords in the relation of the figures to the space they occupy and in the mutual relationship of the various parts of the space itself. And just a central perspective is space seen from a mathematical standpoint, and right proportions are only equivalent to the systematic organization of the individual forms in a picture, so in the course of time call criteria of artistic quality are subjected to rational scrutiny and all the laws of art are rationalized."
Rationalization to art is not born a monster, but a vital side-kick when Western men started to shake themselves off the "great chain" of religious senses, and the world is no longer a place human helplessly and contently sunken within, it can not only be observed but studied as well. Notwithstanding such alliance with rationalism is far from stable, especially after those artists found their soul mates among humanistic intellectuals:
The latent conflict between the intellectual and the economic upper class is nowhere openly engaged as yet, least of all by the artists, who, with their less developed social consciousness, react more slowly than their humanistic masters. But the problem, even if it is un-admitted and unexpressed is present all the time and in all places, and the whole intelligenstsia, both literary and artistic, is threatened by the danger of developing either into an uprooted, "unbourgeois", and envious class of bohemians or into a conservative, passive cringing class of academics. The humanists escape from from this alternative into their ivory tower, and finally succumb to both the dangers which they had intended to avoid.
The namely "healthy rationalism" poured indeed efforts on preventing the feudalism revival, in which case Hauser believed Shakespeare took his side (if there is for real any) here (I'll talk about this later). But the more "unhealthy" result happened both in high court dominated society and middle-class ruled one. In France, within the reign of Louis XIV, artists in public are supervised under the guidance of authority (eg. Le Brun, Colbert), academic theories rules the canvas, art was constrained within the palaces and inwardness, fame of King and reputation of court, lost the connection to reality but became a mere decoration of glory, whilst claiming their standard of classicist "being universal" as they are the "citizens of the world":
"...the aesthetic of classicism of guided by the principles of absolutism - the absolute primacy of the political conception over all the other expressions of cultural life. The special characteristic of the new social and economic forms is the anti-individualistic tendency derived from the idea of the absolute state.[...] They have not the slightest awareness of how restricted their idea of "universality" is and of how few they are thinking when they talk about "everybody" and "anybody". Their universalism is a fellowship of the elite - of the elite as formed by absolutism. There is hardly a rule or a requirement of classicistic aesthetics which is not based on the ideas of this absolutism. The desire is that art should have a uniform character, like the state, should produce the effect of formal perfection, like the movement of a corps, that it should be clear and precise, like a decree, and be governed by absolute rules, like the life of every subject in the state. The artist should be no more left to his own devices than any other citizen; he should rather be guided by the law, by regulations, so as not to go astray in the wilderness of his own imagination."
Yet individual freedom is neither the guarantee of artistic life. Rationalism among prevailed middle class creates a new middle class art with psychological depth and a vivid realization of own psyche limitation, the intensified concentration comes from the next-level naturalism approach that "not only to make spiritual things visible, but all visible things a spiritual experience." It happened in Dutch, but the new sense of truth in art accompanied soon the expansion of art market and middle-class tastes (which, always, conservative) and bourgeois exploits when art became an industry of coerce on talent.
"In a conservative courtly culture an artist of his (Rembrandt's) kind would perhaps never made a name for himself at all, but, once recognized, he would probably have been able to hold his own better than in liberal middle-class Holland, where he was allowed to develop in freedom, but which broke him when he refused to submit any longer. The spiritual existence of the artist is always in danger; neither an authoritarian nor a liberal order of society is entirely free from peril for him; the one gives him less freedom, the other less security. There are artists who feel safe only when they are free, but there are also such as can breathe freely only when they are secure. The seventeenth century was, at any rate, one of the period furthest removed from the ideal of synthesis of freedom and security."

3. Machiavelli.
Oh babe. I should have put Machiavelli to number 0 instead 3 because, I think, he is in fact the eye of the tiger...no, I mean the eye of the volume, the keyhole of understanding the undercurrent billowing deep down beneath the prismy life and struggle of 17'c, the explanation of how the seed of the neurotic sorrow and unsettling sprout and encircled its gnarled vine among the artistic and individual lives, wounded them, troubled them, floundering its own power by unique marks within their works.
Hauser is absolutely royal on inserting Machiavelli on the turning point of the last struggle of mannerism age towards more "modern" baroque (and seriously, I believe a deep analysis on the relationship between baroque and Raison d'Etat must be very interesting), if not explicitly asserting him to be the one who gave a finally and fatal push of the wheel. Machiavelli was merely the first to make men conscious of political realism:
"It was not the violence of the tyrant which caused the general shock and not the panegyrics of their court poets which filled the world with indignation, but the justification of their methods by a man who allowed the gospel of gentleness to stand alongside the philosophy of force, the rights of the noble alongside those of the clever, and the morality of the "lions" alongside that of the "foxes". Ever since there existed rulers and ruled, masters and servants, exploiters and exploited, there also existed two different orders of morality, one for the powerful, the other for the powerless."
And it was just a matter of time when the baroque era came "the formal perfection no longer serves as excuses for any ideological lapse."
It in fact was a long way from the scintillating unsettled mind strifes to throwing down a rock-hard solid discovery, since the dual truth is rooted so deep in the mind of Western man. Yet when every liars seems speak the language of Machiavelli, all sharp-wittedness was distrusted, we know Machiavelli is like the Freud behind the slip of tongue, the wake in the face of the truth is chaotic and painful and a total lost for it was a realization that "reality was obedient to its own stern necessity,that all mere ideas were powerless when faced with its relentless logic, and that the only alternative was submit to or be destroyed by it". Machiavelli is inevitable, Machiavelli is the wheel to a awakened world.
Thus when Michelangelo even in his work (eg. Medici Chapel) betrayed the high renaissance but adopted the twisted body and uncanny spatial structure within which the world is longer felt home to human being, that unclassic spirit is the breaking of spatial unity of Renaissance earlier tradition, like a dream world where real (by common meaning) connections are abolished.
"The twist of body is the writhing of mind, Gothic took the first great step in the development of modern expressionism, and now mannerism takes the second by breaking up the objectivism of the Renaissance, emphasizing the personal attitude of the artist and appealing to the personal experiences of the onlooker...[...]It is impossible to understand mannerism if one does not grasp the fact that its imitation of classical models is an escape from the threatening chaos, and that the subjective over-straining of its forms is the expression of the fear that form might fail the struggle with life and art fade into soul-less beauty."
Hauser was right about it, the whole mannerism spirit was the last desperate struggle against the stern truth of Machiavelli and what the truth has awakened, aroused, justified.
And it was painful.

Hauser is for sure a Templar. He did a decent critical approach on Machiavelli, the one and only legendary Master Assassin who might want to write a book about Ezio Auditore. LOL

4. Shakespeare.
In fact Hauser also talked about Cervantes, which is good and decent, but the Shakespeare part catches me more. Hauser made a baroque poet out of Shakespeare (which is awesome) by explaining that the passion, pathos, impetuosity, exaggeration, the wilfulness, the exuberance of Shakespeare's style can be explained by the intermingled influence of baroque trend. He is of mannerism dominantly, but baroque trending can explain a lot also, just like even Michelangelo's style is not exempted from various sources of social influence.
BUT!!!
But it doesn't mend the crappy and cunning aspect of his approach on Shakespeare (IRRITATED.gif). I mean, to constrict Shakespeare's concern of social conflict just within the rejection of heroic ideal of feudal chivalry?? Seriously?? And you sure the Richard III is a proof of his early age pro-Machiavellism? You sure? SURE??? Are you serious, Arnold??? You sure Shakespeare for Brutus just having a warm spot in heart and nothing else and you sure that's a warm spot for real?? Are you serious, Arnold???
I enjoyed most of this book, but the Shakespeare part, Hauser is too selective on his information and approach, which in one way or another, looks like using Shakespeare to round his research and ideas on the political realism and decline of chivalry tradition, which is, not an uncommon strategy but far from decent if not hardly forgivable.
What a shame.

Anyway, it's overall a very good one.