Ignore naturalism at your peril

Four phases of development

In the visual arts we can recognise four phases of development:

    1.    The primitive
    2.    The natural
    3.    The expressionist
    4.    The abstract

Of these phases, it is the natural that is most difficult to understand. 

Expressionism

The central premise of expressionism is that emotions do not come in proportion.  Therefore, to express an emotion or emotionally charged idea, some form of deliberate exaggeration of form is possible.  Expressionism of this kind is a highly conscious stage of mental and spiritual development on the part of the artist, and can only be reached through long study of nature.  In sculpture, the exemplar of expressionism is Rodin, though, perhaps surprisingly, Michaelangelo is also an expressionist in this respect.

Abstraction

    The abstract arises from long and patient observation of nature, resulting in a power of the artist to "see into the light of things"  -  to abstract from nature certain forms and patterns.  In sculpture Michaelangelo is an abstract artist.  In painting, an exemplar of abstract art is Vermeer.   Expressionism and abstraction are not mutually exclusive.  Furthermore, the distinction between classical and romantic has nothing to do with it.

The primitive

Art that is primitive is art that is unaware that representation may not be true to nature.  But it is crucially important to understand that there are two aspects to primitive art: the primitive-magical and the primitive-crude.  Art originally arose in relation to the divine.  In its most magical and original conception, there is no idea whatsoever of representation - the work of art is god.  The statue of the goddess is the goddess for she inhabits the material and is identical to it.
    The primitive-magical is laden with emotional power, and modern artists, such as Picasso, have famously delved back into the primitive and magical orgins of art in their attempts to rejuvenate art and consciousness.  Picasso was a natural primitive - a man whose psyche was close to the divine, though in the chthonic sense of the gods of the earth and underworld.  Whenever one encounters an emotion and attempts to represent unwittingly that emotion in form, then one encounters the primtive as magic.  This is a true foundation of all art.
    Modern man is a creature of a peculiar kind of consciousness that has become detatched from his primitive roots of emotion, the divine and magic.  That is to say, the primtive-magic in art cannot be immitated.  One is either brim full of passion, or one is not.  
    There arises in the context of modern consciousness  another kind of primitive art, which is the primitive-crude.  This is an unsophisticated and crude attempt at representation that simply does not consider the possibility that the result may be both passionless and false to nature.  This is the curse of much contemporary art, and precisely that which condemns it to banality.

What is nature?

The question, what is nature?  is too big to be wholly considered here.  However, we can say that nature is not a passive or mechanical representation of what is seen.  That is to say, a photograph is never nature.  This observation immediately condemns attempts at photorealism to the primitive-crude.  Nature arises from seeing, and seeing is active.  Seeing involves interpretation, and is mediated by concepts.  Thus, nature arises from the dual interplay of receiving impressions (the "passive" aspect) and understanding them (the "active" aspect).
    Naturalism involves the deliberate attempt to raise to consciousness the processes of active interpretation that the mind unconsciously imposes on impressions. 
    The artist deliberately looks at his models and attempts to recreate the structural understanding that he finds there.    
    Hence: ignore naturalism at your peril, for no matter how outwardly successful you are your art runs the threat of being condemned to banality; unless you draw on exceptional sources of the primitive as magic, your art will be empty, hollow and just crude.

Academic art

Historically, most art that has been classified as "naturalist" is not naturalist - it is a form of primitive-crude art.  It is precisely this primitive-crude art that has earned naturalism a bad name.  Needless to say the banal copying of photographs that is so much in vogue just now just heaps more undeserved criticism on naturalism, for what most people understand by nature is what they see through their camera lens, and that is precisely what it is not.
    Likewise, the distinction between classical and romantic art is separate from the distinction between primtive and natural.  Classicism involves being passionate about ideals and reason; romanticism involves being highly rational about passion.
    Great art that is not brim full of primitive-magic is natural; where it is expressionist or abstract it builds on the natural, and is not an alternative to it.  Being not natural is simply the same as getting it wrong.
    Being passionate about nature is a vehicle for developing emotional charge - in other words, close attention to nature brings one closer to the primtive magical and in a manner of speaking to god.
    In history artists of great spirit intensely study nature - in so doing they arrive at conclusions and these conclusions often take abstract form.  Subsequently, lesser spirits, instead of studying nature, study those forms, and academic art is born.  Academic art is primitive-crude art that arises in a social context of imitation and is fostered by decadence and the failure of criticism.
    Such is the generally sorry state of the art of our times.

Caveat

In art, as in all things, there are many paths to greatness.  Among these paths there is that which leads from the primitive through naturalism and beyond.  Here  I illustrate specific failures, not general ones.

Rodin's Iris. This beautiful work of expressionist sculpture is by an artist who profoundly understands nature. The artist has chosen to exaggerate the fluidity of contours in motion rather than simple elongation of limbs.

Night by Michaelangelo. Through long and patient study of nature the artist has abstracted to elementary volumes, forms and lines. The result is a work charged with emotion. We sense the pattern that lies behind appearences as such.

The Lacemaker by Johannes Vermeer. The artist has also abstracted to underlying forms. The emotional charge of the work is enhanced by a profound understanding of colour.

Abstract expressionism
Michaelangelo's Night also illustrates the way in which an artist can be simultaneously both abstract and expressionist.  By exaggerating ideal elements of the human head, for example the straight join between forehead and nose which eliminates the "keystone" region there, Michaelangelo expresses his emotional commitment to classicism.

Female ancestor figure of the Dogon people of Mali. This is an example of the primitive-magic in art.

Detail from Pablo Picasso, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon

The statue to the right is an example of the primitive-crude.  Notwithstanding, it is a quaint and charming piece - one of a series decorating the exterior to the Meridien Hotel in Budapest.  Its appeal comes from primitive-magic elements, giving it an emotive aura.  To illustrate the crudity of the piece, consider the way the upper thigh does not join with the hip, the exaggeration of the length of the limbs, the rigidity of the motion and the excessive thickness of the lower limbs.  The artist might object by claiming these are deliberate elements of expressionism; however, that would be false, for the power of the piece would indeed be enhanced if in fact the proportions were all true to nature.  The artist has not reached the naturalist level, and hence cannot find his way into expressionism.  To confirm this, compare the piece with the work of Rodin above.  Yet it has some primitive charm and is not without merit.

This piece is illustrative of the utterly banal that comes from a "photographic" approach to nature.  It may be found at Vigado ter in Budapest.  Works of these kind now litter our streets, and at Brixton in London, our train platforms too.  They are apparently made to titilate tourists.  It is possible that this particular piece is merely a caste and no modling whatsoever has taken place.  Close examination will show that one of the girls' eyes is significantly lower than the other, a give away sign of a slack approach.  A curious feature of this piece is that while it is lifesize, it seems to be very small.  People naturally project a kind of aura which enlarges them in our imagination, but the insignificance of this piece makes it appear smaller than it really is.  In this way the mind unconsciously passes judgement on it.  This is a feature of all such pieces that seem to fade out of slight, once the gimmick has been assimilated.

Why a photograph is not a representation of nature
This is a topic worthy of many pages.  But the simplest illustration is from a camera.  Hold your camera up to any reasonably distant object.  The image on the camera screen is immediately perceived to be very much smaller than the one presented to your eye.  The mind unconsciously judges an object on the basis of what it knows about it.  It enlarges objects.  The camera "sees" in perspective; the eye-mind does not.  Nature is what is presented to human consciousness, not what is given in three-dimensional projective geometry.  Since the work of the Gestalt psychologists this has been well documented, and there is nothing new in this remark, save that many contemporary artists seem to be ignorant of it.  Art is primarily the business of interpretion, not a passive act but an active one. 

This piece may be found in Budapest 32-esek ter.  It is a very interesting piece that dominates its environment and is very impressive from afar.  The helmet casts a deep shadow and the motion of throwing seems powerful.  It is a war memorial, and seems overtly miltaristic, though the artist could be praised for an intense faithfulness to the brutal truth of war.  Unfortunately, on closer examination the piece reveals definite flaws in regard to nature.  The figure is stiff and unnatural owing to crude understanding of the relation of limbs to sockets.  It is typical of the majority of "good quality" memorial sculpture - not quite into nature, but not wholly primitive either, and incorporating some primitive-magical elements of charged emotion.

The Meeting Place by Paul Day.  This work exemplifies the primitive-crude at its most banal.  Its emotive content is negligible.  Anatomically, it is a disaster, as the detail of the female ankle illustrates.  It is all  out of proportion.  The most interesting feature are the heads.  These are in a different style, not photorealist.  The artist endeavours to convey some kind of union by the exaggerated fusion of the noses.  The style is inconsistent, but this is a genuine primitive-magical element.  Overall, the piece falls signficantly short of naturalism, and lies firmly in the domain of the  primitive-crude. 

It is a physically huge piece, yet fails to impact on its environment.  This is because the mind unconsciously judges it and makes it shrink in the imagination.