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THE MORPHOLOGICAL INVERSION AND THE PROBLEM OF MANNERISM
Grgo Gamulin
; Zagreb
Sažetak
The author’s starting point is his wish to define as precisely as possible the idea of mannerism for the purpose of its application in analysis as well as in synthesis of art history, thus rendering it serviceable in historical (scientific) seanse. The author considers that this idea enters into the wide province of cultural history, and even anthropology, only through a correct historization. The idea really was a factor of smashing conventions since the time of Dvořak and the polemic between Pevsner and Weissbach. The process of generalization was completed (and has even exceeded the limits) by the establishment of the idea in the sociological provinces by Hanser and in the literary and cultural historical ones. So has mannerism been looked upon as a spiritual-historical category, as an expressive aura of a definite time, lying between the Renaissance and Baroque, and not only of that period – here is where the questionableness of the suggestion begins – but, following in the footsteps of Curtius, as a constant, respectively as an alternating alternative of the classic period, as Urgebärde, as a great and wide space of the »spiritual-problematic position«, extending mostly after, but also before and during the classic period. One can, however, use that idea very carefully, and, only metaphorically, outside its historical time, as proposed by some reasearchers: always the art upsets the established balance between the subject and object, between the creative imagination and nature, conveying the centre of gravity to an »inside image«.
The exxential pre-suppositions for the historical appearance of mannerism are the following: 1) a stylistically defined starting point and the attained secure balance, and, 2) the existence of morphologic inertion. The latter is an epigonous extension of the classic period, in academic mannerism, a phenomenon of no small significance, but without the style = creative strength (Stilbildende Kraft). The morphological inertion, after all, is the aspiration of the realized beauty, formed in a stylistic category, to continue living and to revive – a natural wish of a reached ideal to survive. The significance of that inertion depends, naturally, on several heterogeneous factors, but also on the level of the achieved humaneness in the foregoing period, on the entirety of disalienation in him – but I should rather say on the realized historical degree. Collisions and crossbreedings generate new hybrids (syncretisms) and all the unperceivable wealth of our cultural horizon we owe just to that radiancew that lasts, traversing the limits. Mannerism is its creative alternation, a derived secondary art, intimately tied to Renaissance (with a classical balance on its top), while Baroque is its categorical negation: a new departure from nature and observation. Mannerism is, in reality, a pseudomorphous classic style – one should, perhaps, apologize for reviving this forgotten Spenglerian term, and throw some light upon the imposing thought, allusive and imperfect, of course, like all interdisciplinarian comparisons. That time, though, was not only the time of Reformation and Counter-reformation, but also of a new elevation of mind, research, empirism and phylosophy, so that the great forms of the classical Renaissance were filled by new contents by questions and suggestions, by a new experience of life and ancient myths. The creative subject has also undergone a change, as has the man who now faces the work. As in the world of minerals, in which the composition and the essence of crystals experience sometimes a complete change, but the formal crystallization remains the same, so has in our case the morphology essentially remained the same, classical (or, more exactly, clasicistic), but executed in a sense of the most sensual musical line (from Parmigianino and Primatieco to Spranger) or El Greco’s linear and chromatic spiritualization, etc. The spatial extension of the style particularly leads to changes of contents (experience). It often leads to a collision of styles, that is to syntheretism, as in the case of the Flemish »Romanesque« artists, and that dialectic play of styles is something quite different from morphological inversion and certainly much more stimulative, although neither in the former nor in the latter case must necessarily arrive at the pseudomorphous classic style. This pre-supposes a solid morphological background and its continuity. In other words: the essential reference of each secondary style consists in its original morphological layer and in the inherited form from which it starts and which should be present in the new visual structure. The style too, naturally, changes with the pseudomorphosis, taking on new ideas and sensitiveness, and even iconography; acording to itd meaning it may also be transformed into its opposite. Under syncretism we understand a stylistic manifestation in which the expressive qualities still bear visible characteristics of heterogeneous origin and a different morphology. A morphologic structure is laid on another and different one, this resulting in bizzare symbioses, often very fertile and apt for new »accelerations«. No schematism are, however, necessary in that immense number of systems of coordinates and inter-combinations, of development processes, contributing to the »marvelousness of the world«. The modern theory has, with much justification, found a difference between the classical period and the anti-Renaissance, and between the anti-Renaissance and mannerism (C. Battisti).
By engaging in exemplification of these theses, the author had the possibility to touch only tangentially the characteristic phenomena of the European 16th century, and has tried to do that with regard to their essential characteristics, constantly avoiding categorical conclusions, but always insisting on historical definition and the use of terms.
Ključne riječi
Hrčak ID:
159895
URI
Datum izdavanja:
23.12.1980.
Posjeta: 1.689 *