MICROSTORY OF ART

MICROSTORY OF ART
ONLINE JOURNAL FOR ART, CONNOISSEURSHIP AND CULTURAL JOURNALISM

Dedicated to Tipping Points

(4.-7.12.2022) The notion of ›tipping point‹ has become a buzzword, just like the buzzword ›sustainability‹. And the two notions (as well as the buzzwords) are closely, and obviously, interlinked. If a social, or ecological, or economic, or whatever system reaches a tipping point, in simple terms, this means that the system has to face change. A state of the system may follow that is unwanted, but it can also be a wanted change. At any rate, the new state, unlike the old one, can be stable (with positive or negative effects – but in the context of the climate change debate, of course, it is about unwanted, threatening, negative effects.)
The notion has come up in many fields of science, and it seems that it can be traced back – also – to the social sciences (at the time of racial segregation, as has to be added, because, then, it was about the question whether white people leave an area, if a certain number, a growing number of non-white people, moves into that neighborhood). So also the origins of the very notion seem problematic, but also interesting, and the notion is closely interlinked with the notion of ›critical mass‹ as well, and today, it is, of course, often, and often in a more trivialized sense, more about the dynamics of social networks, about something ›going viral‹ (›social pandemics‹); and the notions of pressure, influence and power, come in sight as well, referring to the conditions under which some content may circulate in a way that could be described as ›viral‹.
Aware of all that, we would like to introduce the notion of tipping point to art and to art history, here. That is, we will look at art here that deals with the subject of tipping points, but we will also ask, if there are tipping points in art history (since the notion already has been introduced to history). In the end we will dedicate our fourth edition of our Iconography of Sustainability series, exclusively, to the subject of tipping points, contributing further to our Art History of Sustainability with a new series of essays.

(Picture: de.wahooart.com)

One) Basics

Sociologically speaking there are not many actors in Exodus, 32. It is the people, a collective actor, that demands from Aaron, the brother of Moses, while Moses is absent, to have an image of Jahwe to worship. Which results in the Golden Calf being created and worshipped. The people have not fallen from God, it is the manner of worshipping that enrages Jahwe, who at first threatens that the people will be extinguished (but Moses shows able to prevent that).
What we see in a depiction of the Golden Calf episode – for example in the classic rendering by Poussin – is a society that has, during the absence of its actual leader, demanded and chosen a way of worshipping that enrages its God. The relation between the people and God has, rather suddenly, become unstable. Painters have always focussed on the spectacle of worshipping by dancing. Something has happened that, for the individual subject, might have been overwhelming, a sort of change that, wave-like, results from a social dynamic and cannot be interpreted as the result of individual effort, and also can hardly be prevented by an individual effort. At least, such individuals, working for change or resisting change, are not named, only the leader who is representing absent Moses, his brother Aaron, is named by the Biblical text, and shown as a leader who shows no inclination, nor ability at all to prevent the society reaching a tipping point. And without the effort of Moses, Jahwe might have chosen to end the relation with the people of Israel. On that level, the painting is actually showing precisely the tipping point: as to the alliance, it does raise the question, if the alliance will further exist or be doomed. Something has happened – after a society had reached a critical state due to a social dynamic –, but now the future of that society itself is at a tipping point, as one might say.
The Biblical account is radical, and many people among the people have to die, until the old order is being restored, and the alliance between Jahwe and the people of Israel is newly established. This stable state is reached, but it takes much, with the Biblical account leaving no doubt that a highly critical point had been reached, with negative effects already showing (the spectacle shown by the painters that viewers might marvel to look at), but, as a matter of fact, this seemingly stable new state shows to be unstable and reversible, and in hindsight it shows as a warning not to ignore the wishes of God, by worshipping idols yet meant to represent God, but actually running into danger of confusing the one God with other Gods of other cults.

Compared to Poussin, Vermeer, in his Woman Holding a Balance, is showing an individual having reached a tipping point, but an individual in society, in society that is only alluded to. A female individual that is, due to her pregnancy (if this reading is correct), facing the religious, moral, and legal system of norms that demand obeyance in the society that she is living in. The painting is perhaps not didactic in an all-too obvious sense, but raises obviously the question of what will be the individual, but socially embedded future of that individual, in face of a religious moral codex (which is evoked by the Last Judgement painting in the background), and in face of other people judging her on the basis of such codex, or on the basis of mere social conventions. Pearls might signal wealth, but also (according to religious norms) vanity, and it is open what will be the individual's destiny in society. All depends upon factors that are not shown, but appearing all the more mighty due to being absent. The light is soft, but little differences might make a future, easily turning to be a lighter or a darker one. Tipping points might be associated with social systems, but it is the individual here that faces the power of social rules that are meant to exist for every individual, so that it is a society that might further exist and remain stable, no matter what the cost for the individual will be.

[I tend to think that the woman in the painting is indeed pregnant, because, otherwise, the picture would appear as being too banal to me, with no element, such as the pregnancy, challenging an idealized vision (and admonition) of harmony and balance; but I am aware that there are other readings possible, without the woman being interpreted as being pregnant or at least seeming to be so (which would be another alternative reading – considering possibilities rather than facts)]

Matisse, our third example, shows not to be interested in society, but is still showing a tipping point, or more precisely, the dynamics of reaching a tipping point. He does that by blending actually two images. The Indian cress that has been positioned on a small table might be in a solid position, despite its dynamic of growth and bloom. But the dynamic of exstatic dancing in the background, in the second picture, if one does like so, contrasts seeming stability with turbulence. One does fear, if the background was real, for the stability of the Indian cress, having been placed on that small table. And the pentimenti in the background seem to remind us that there is even a dynamic – of changing and correcting – within the picture. What Matisse is showing, abstracted, simplified, but not in full abstraction, paradoxically, is stability and instability at the same time. The composition is stable, but filled with motion due to the turbulent background, raising also the question, if the Indian cress in itself, due to wild growing, can remain in a stable position. Two images are in harmony, but also in conflict, an image of instable movement, and a second one, evoking peaceful contemplation, but in the end disturbed by humans in wild motion – as in Poussin, but here only seemingly endangering a state of stability and calm (that also might be interpreted as ecstatic mere being), so on a certain level this example is also a picture about what a picture can do and evoke, in case we might not yet have understood it with Poussin or with Vermeer.

Two) Monitoring and Simulating Tipping Points

In 2022, while scholars debate whether tipping points do indeed exist and have to be reckoned with in the context of the climate system, also the concept of sustainability is understood in extremely conflicting ways. While some seem to think that modern civilization, as it is, can be turned into a sustainable civilization and keep all the luxury we are – or at least some are – enjoying, others dismiss such idea, claiming that modern civilization itself has to change, to be build back and to be rebuilt anew, based on the principle of sustainability.
Cautious scholars seem to suggest that tipping points – in the climate system – have to be monitored and simulated. And observers of the political system seem to be fearing now that protests of climate activists might become even more radical as well as anti-democratic.
Art has always monitored and simulated. And artists such as Goya or Bruegel – thinking artists –, have provided us with images that seem to comment on the current situation. What Goya suggested to be a ›folly‹ – a group of people, in some sense a society, sitting on a branch – could be read as a metaphor, describing our current situation. And Bruegel, in his painting which is dedicated to the conflict of carnival and lent, seems to have an even broader view, because instead of carnival we might think: boundless consumerism, and instead of lent we might think of: building back, so that, even if the picture can and has to be read as dealing primarily with the conflict of Protestantism and Catholicism, it does offer a metaphor of conflicting trends in society, without showing one trend winning over the other. Tipping points, the picture seems to say, might be feared if such would happen, but for the moment there is just a turmoil of conflicting attitudes, existing more or less peacefully alongside each other.
The sheer dynamic of revolution, might it be feared or wished for, is of course the subject of the iconic painting by Delacroix. And also this picture can be read in the context of a particular political situation, but also seen as a timeless representation of what is happening if a revolutionary movement indeed does win a critical mass, with one guiding idea, mobilizing a movement, even if the costs of such dynamic are also obvious: bloodshed, turmoil and death. We might speak of turning points in history, revolutions, but we might think of tipping points instead, a slightly different terminology that offers to think the state before, as well as the state after, comparing such states, as to advances and backlashes mercilessly.

Three) Cubism as a Tipping Point

The great Austrian art historian Werner Hofmann who dedicated a book to ›turning points in twentieth-century art‹, referred to the whole period from 1890 to 1917 as a turning point, but actually did use the concept very little in his text, only here and there referring to turning points that individual artists did experience. The isms of art, in art, cannot be referred to as states of things, even if propagandists of isms might seem to think so. And even if, on some level, a movement like Cubism might have challenged, on a very basic level, the idea of what a picture was, is and can be, such ideas probably may mobilize communities of artists, but not whole societies, and certainly not the art system as a whole. So also in art we may observe a turmoil of conflicting ideas as in the painting by Bruegel. But if we would introduce the concept of tipping points into art history, we may raise the question perhaps more insistingly, if such revolutions as Cubism indeed live on, perhaps rather unseen, but still as a challenge to a whole system of pictorial representation. A tipping point might be a tool of the mind rather, asking for change and identifying change, by naming tipping points, but it is the nature, the direction and dynamics of change – the sustainability of change, as one may say – that we might be asking for in truth, if naming tipping points and if asking if such points do indeed exist. In art or society. And not only as a concept in our minds.

(Picture: Blogotron)

MICROSTORY OF ART
ONLINE JOURNAL FOR ART, CONNOISSEURSHIP AND CULTURAL JOURNALISM
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