For Benjamin, this made criticism something more than judgement or explanation applied to a finished work. The artwork itself contains a Reflective potential which criticism can continue and unfold. The critic does not simply stand outside the work and assess it, but enters into its movement of Reflection, allowing relationships and possibilities already present within it to develop further.

 

The artwork was understood as resonant with Reflections and associations that could continue to unfold. Thought turns back upon its own activity: an earlier Form of thinking can itself become the content of a further act. Criticism could therefore attempt to identify with something of the artist’s own Reflective process — and these choices, revisions, associations and transformations may therefore remain active within the completed work.

 

The Reflective act is then a journey continued by the critic, or indeed by anyone seriously considering the work. They bring to it their own knowledge and experience, memories of other artworks, ideas and associations; these in turn are reflected upon and revised through the encounter with the work itself.

 

The Ideal Form of Art - Art as Ideal Class of Category

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There is a crucial difference between what the artist experiences or sees in the mind’s eye — both as an initial vision and as an imagined artwork, as they envisage it taking shape — and the actual artwork that results.

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These ideas and visual experiences, apprehended prior to creating an artwork, also contributed to a sense of a penumbra, collective cloud or Class of ideal artwork, to which all individual artworks are compared.

 

They formed an idea of a Totality of Art — a cluster of ideas about what art is, constituting an absolute of which no single work of art is fully representative.

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This notion of an Absolute Class of Artwork, or a collective overarching ideal, of course resonates with Plato’s Eidos (Idea) or Ultimate Form (in the sense of shape, idea or guiding principle). It reads as an inflexion of this Form.

It can again be read as an imaginative, if no less real, cloud or penumbra of Forms and Ideas connected with Art.

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Romantic Irony

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Close to this was the idea of Romantic Irony.

This too was derived from the difference between the experience or imaginative vision and the actual artwork produced.

The artwork was understood as insufficient fully to capture the original vision or experience, yet at the same time filled with appreciable Formal interactions in its own right, which were perhaps not foreseen, but which were experienced and fully appreciated during the process of making it, and afterwards.

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It was therefore also seen that within this the artwork carried within it qualities which were appreciable even within Romantic Irony and this sense of compromise - qualities that may be seen as occupying this ambiguous territory between achievement and ‘falling short’.  It could be seen as a ‘fault line’ between a mediumless communication and the medium itself.  It brings with it its own Forms and interactions which in some senses could not be foreseen but which unfold from viewing.

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The act of choosing a medium (i.e. painting) through which to relate it to others was part of this irony. It concerns how that experience or vision is communicated through the organisation of actual matter — the committing of the vision or experience to some chosen arrangement of matter — which is, of course, the necessary and only available means of attempting to communicate such an experience.

 

So, in this sense, Nature ‘applying the Rule to art’ through Genius, is partly an enactment of this conceivable compromise in actually choosing a medium and committing it to Form, as indicated by these moments of Romantic Irony.

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Form of the Form

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Another intriguing point is that this Romantic Reflective process also gives rise to a striking inflection of the word Form. In Fichte, a first Form of thought can itself become the content of a second Reflective act: Form is reflected upon by another Form. In this sense, Reflection produces what he calls the “Form of the Form” — a recursive movement in which consciousness turns back upon its own structure.

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Applying the Rule

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This decision — this Application of the Rule — is made within certain conventions: to rest upon a certain style, to modify it, or to circumvent it in some way, so as to give Form to the impulse emanating from Genius.

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Alignment between Creation and Criticism

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Here there is an alignment between the creation of the work of art and the critic’s response, with this Rule giving the critic the criteria for evaluating this and other artworks.

 

The Tyranny of the Form

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How, then, does the critic or the Artist apply this Reflective process and the ‘prescribing’ of the Rule to Art?

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Though criticism may proceed through formal, historical, social, psychological or many other kinds of analysis, Reflection may point to a common factor among these approaches. The Reflective demand is rather that the critic remain conscious of the method and assumptions being brought to the work — and capable of revising them when the work itself gives reason to do so.

 

It is conceivable that a critical method — Marxist, psychoanalytic or formal, for example, the latter based on arrangements of colours, tones and perhaps particular academic standards of depiction — can itself become a repeated formula or Form. What begins as a powerful means of understanding art could harden into a Rule through which every subsequent work is expected to pass. Reflection provides a means of keeping the method itself open to criticism.

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Both the critic and the artist have knowledge of existing Forms — styles, prominent and otherwise; movements, conventions, techniques and precedents — as part of their entire approach. This makes comparison possible: the work can be placed beside other works, its departures recognised, its successes or failures considered, and its relations and responses to the Cultural Climate around it understood.

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Yet the very knowledge that enables judgement can also restrict it. It can be tempting to assess a work only in the light of the range of artistic Forms available to one’s perception, or only through the preconceived ideas one habitually carries. Once a particular Form has become familiar as a sign of successful art, it is easy to judge subsequent work according to its conformity with that Form. The unfamiliar may then appear incompetent simply because the Rule by which it might eventually be understood has not yet become visible. The Reflective critic therefore needs Forms, but must remain capable of Reflecting upon the Forms through which the judgement itself is being made.

 

What can be concluded is that existing Forms are useful but can govern perception unconsciously.

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For the artist, existing artworks, styles, techniques and ideas constitute an immense inherited repertoire. These may be followed, rejected, combined or transformed. But here too familiarity can become confinement. It could all too easily become an unconsidered reconfiguration of existing art Forms, examples and also attitudes and ideas, with limited consideration, critical distance, or Reflection. In that sense, a successful solution becomes a style; a style becomes a method; and this method can unconsciously, unless closely guarded, become repetition.

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These considerations suggest that, in this sense, both artist and critic could become unconsciously guided by pre-existing Forms rather than prompted by deeper Reflection within themselves.

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For both artist and critic, then, Reflection involves a certain distance from the Forms one already knows. Not their rejection, but the ability to recognise them as Forms rather than as final laws.

 

Postmodernism and Eclecticism as Freedom with a range of Forms

 

As time progresses, an increasing range of styles inevitably becomes available, accelerated by changes in communications and technology. It is tempting to regard Postmodernism, with its scepticism towards overarching narratives, its freedom to quote, appropriate and combine historical styles, and its characteristic eclecticism, as a kind of collective Reflective distance from Form. An artist apparently stands above a whole repertoire of styles and chooses among them at will.

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This could appear comparable to a degree of freedom that the ‘Genius’ may have when ‘Prescribing the Rule’ to art — suggesting that Postmodern eclecticism may constitute a certain critical distance from the range of Forms.

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Yet eclecticism does not by itself constitute Reflection. An artist may quote ten Forms and remain entirely imprisoned by the eleventh: eclecticism itself

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Arguably, if the artist is not motivated by some deep critical Reflective insight — perhaps in relation to culture or to recent concerns of the human condition — the appropriation, application or circumvention of these Forms could itself become habitual, predictable and repeatable. The refusal of one convention can become another convention.

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Therefore, someone working even in this Eclectic way could still be driven by partisan, derivational or reactionary views. Once again Eclecticism can emerge as another Rule — resulting in repetition, staleness and a lack of essential vibrancy, and simply constituting a prescribed Form.

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What emerges here is that, whether an artist works within prescribed Forms, circumvents them, or appropriates multiple styles and Forms, recombining and repurposing them in various ways, it is crucial — whenever a critic encounters this — that they maintain a relationship to Form that remains Reflective and alive, rather than one that has become merely derivative, partisan or automatic.

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The point is that artist and critic must remain alert and subtly aware, maintaining a Reflective frame of mind in order either to remain awake to original and pioneering impulses, or to create them. Reflection allows both critic and artist to use those Forms without becoming unconsciously governed by them.

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And one may ask how it is that a Genius might arrive at a unique modification of, or break from, any stylistic currency — rather than become a Prisoner of those Forms. 

 

The Perennial End of History

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If one considers it, the sense of standing at a momentous turning point in history has been expressed by artists on many occasions, at junctures that may now appear surprising to us. It has emerged repeatedly as a sense of standing at the threshold of a vast cultural transformation, often read in an apocalyptic register.

 

A sense of being on the cusp of ‘The End of History’ characterised many of the art Forms and expressions of the Fin de Siècle, when people perceived themselves as standing on the cusp of Modernity. There was a strong historical self-consciousness: the past increasingly appeared as a vast repertoire of available Forms, while the present could seem belated, over-refined, saturated and exhausted. There was a sense that the old world was ending.

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William Blake, Byron and Caspar David Friedrich produced works that, in different ways, reflected a sense of standing at great turning points in the journey of humanity.

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Even some ‘Baroque’ artists could be seen to express related sentiments, amid changes in science and cosmology that accompanied the advance of the Age of Enlightenment.

 

Mannerism, prior to the Baroque, was characterised as a strange melting pot of preceding styles, which could seem almost to have saturated itself, with quotations from a myriad of cultures and influences commingling on the canvas. ‘Mannerism’ as a word in itself is derived from ‘In the Manner of’ and carries this sense of Eclecticism, or even ‘quoting’.

 

Quoting also came to characterise much of the approach of Postmodernism and, in this sense, has similarities with these Mannerist works.

 

Standing in relation to, and with some distance from, a panoply of existing Forms, motifs and styles is a recognisable condition of the artist. But Postmodernism witnessed this condition in a heightened sense, emphasising the experience of having access to a huge and diverse array of artistic Forms and expressions.

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At such moments or junctures in human history, a survey of preceding works and productions can make one aware of an oceanic immensity of differing Forms and styles (and Rules) of art.

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In the present, with the rise of digital technology, ranges of style have become increasingly available.

Eclecticism is a force to consider in this understanding of the relationship of artists to ‘Rules’.

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There has been an increasing sense of the range of Forms to choose from and experiment with, but when does this dissolve into repetition and derivation, and when can it be part of the dazzling creation of new Forms?

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Eclectic Artists

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Quite a few artists have been characterised by pronounced Eclecticism. Francis Picabia is one who made this variability itself a statement, so that a sense of Form could become aligned with that range of styles, as opposed to, or distinguished from, ‘Genius’ insofar as it is the informing dynamism of all those works (i.e. Picabia himself), whether or not it is really innovative or original.

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Picasso is one of the most prominent examples of a similar Eclecticism, though in his case it might be more readily described as a rapid succession of changes in style.

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It can be seen that Picasso worked within, departed from and occasionally completely reinterpreted existing Forms of his time, and criticism will attest to the life and vibrant, compelling nature of the works he produced.

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But Eclecticism alone does not necessarily qualify someone as a deeply Reflective, critical artist of Genius.

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What could it be that would float above all these Forms and use them at will?

 

Creating an Edge with Form

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Other examples exist, of course, of artists who, rather than flitting quicksilver between Forms or recombining and smashing Forms together, worked within a very established Form while instilling it with life, immediacy and pertinent themes.

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Examples include, of course, the extraordinary images of human figures created by the Italian Renaissance artists Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael.  These three artists all operated within a tradition which could, certainly in retrospect, be described as ‘Academic Figuration’ or, to use a less institutional term, ‘Renaissance Figuration’.

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These three pioneered developments in the representation of the figure through their (curiously animated) cartoons, Disegno and paintings: Chalk and Sanguine Disegno was becoming an academic standard at this time — a Form, a style.

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It was, of course, widely used.

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But within this tradition, and within these ‘Rules’, Michelangelo, Leonardo, and Raphael were infusing it with something that made it stand out with phenomenal luminescence — something that resists definition as a ‘Rule’.

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What distinguishes these great Cartoons and Disegno by Michelangelo, Leonardo and Raphael is what happens within the Form: that strange concentration of intelligence, necessity and — for want of a better phrase — vibrant kineticism.

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The lines seem to possess a life or autonomy of their own, with a curious dynamism or vibrancy that creates a mysterious Gold Standard in art, embodying an exceptionally rare quality — one Picasso was among the very few to repeat.

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Kinetic Forms Disrupting Romantic Irony

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If one looks at this kind of Kinetic Form, which seems to possess its own independent presence, less derivative of a particular vision or experience, then the sense of Romantic Irony — a diminishment in the passage from vision or experience to actual communication through an artwork — is reduced. In these special cases, this curious kineticism and life appear as a triumphant manifestation into which even lesser visions and experiences may be fed. It could be that this is itself a defining quality of the highest standard of artwork, applying not only to visual art but also to literature, music and the like.

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Possibly, this Vibrant Kineticism embodies this Excruciating Edge — or ‘fault line’ — between the actual artwork and the ideal (i.e. the original vision or experience), from which Romantic Irony derives. When such a life in its own right is achieved, it may be a phenomenon worth noting in itself — a Resplendent Form, far from diminished - far from ironic.

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In the context of the idea that the ‘Rule’ of the Form becomes appreciable and is ‘gathered’ from the performance of the artwork, this could be a particularly potent example. It could be an exemplary and transcendent Form of the artwork unfolding beyond what the artist could conceptualise.

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From the point of view of ‘Rules’ it seems to strain ordinary considerations to suppose that the derivation of ‘Rules’ from this ‘life’ and kineticism is strictly possible.

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Vibrant Kineticsm and Rule Breakers in Art

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El Greco, from the Late Mannerist or Early Baroque period, might be another example: he provided an interesting twist, or almost a complete circumvention, of the prevailing standards and Form of his time — a unique painter who can seem almost entirely contemporary in style today. El Greco takes the figure and stretches it almost beyond anatomical permission.