Bacon’s Study after Velazquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X, 1953, in Deleuze’s Francis Bacon commentary

 

by Corry Shores

[Search Blog Here. Index-tags are found on the bottom of the left column.]

 

[Central Entry Directory]

[Deleuze Entry Directory]

[Francis Bacon (painter), entry directory]

[Deleuze’s Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation, entry directory]

[Entry collecting the images of the paintings in this text.]

[I am profoundly grateful to the source of this image:

artinvest2000.com

Credits given at the end.]

 

[The following is quotation. My commentary is in brackets. Proofreading is incomplete, so please excuse my typos.]

 

 

Francis Bacon

 

Study after Velazquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X, 1953

 

(Thanks artinvest2000.com)

 

 

Painting 54 of Deleuze’s
Francis Bacon: Logique de la sensation. Tome II - Peintures
Painting [16] of the English translation
and Painting [54] of the Seuil 2002 French

 

 

From the text:

Tout le corps s’échappe par la bouche qui crie. Par la bouche ronde du pape [54] ou de la nourrice [55] le corps s’échappe comme par une artère.

(Deleuze 1981a: 23c; 2002: 33c)

 

The entire body escapes through the screaming mouth. The body escapes through the round mouth of the Pope or the nurse, as if through an artery [16, 24].

(Deleuze 2003a: 25c; 2003b: 28a; 2005:20d)

 

Commentary:

[In Bacon’s paintings, forces apply constricting pressure upon the Figures while at the same time there are forces internal to the Figure that are pushing outward, perhaps as a result of the constriction, like when squeezing a water balloon. On account of this play of forces, the Figure’s body tries to escape itself; and given the chance, it will dissipate through that escaping action. One exit for the escape is through the screaming mouth.

]

 

 

From the text:

À ce point extrême de la dissipation cosmique, dans un cosmos fermé mais illimité, c’est bien évident que la Figure ne peut plus être isolée, prise dans une limite, piste ou parallélépipède : on se trouve devant d’autres coordonnées. Déjà la Figure du pape [54] qui crie se tient derrière les lames épaisses, presque les lattes d’un rideau de sombre transparence : tout le haut du corps s’estompe, et ne subsiste que comme une marque sur un suaire rayé, tandis que le bas du corps reste encore hors du rideau qui s’évase. D’où l’effet d’éloignement progressif comme si le corps était tiré en arrière par la moitié supérieure. Et sur une assez longue période, le procédé est fréquent chez Bacon. Les mêmes lames verticales de rideau entourent et raient partiellement l’abominable sourire de « Étude pour un portrait [59] », tandis que la tête et le corps semblent aspirés || vers le fond, vers les lattes horizontales de la persienne.

(Deleuze 1981a: 24b; 2002: 34||35)

 

At this extreme point of cosmic dissipation, in a closed but unlimited cosmos, it is clear that the Figure can no longer be isolated or put inside a limit, a ring or parallelepiped: we are faced with different coordinates. The Figure of the screaming Pope [16] is already hidden behind the thick folds (which are almost laths) of a dark, transparent curtain: the top of the body is indistinct, persisting only as if it were a mark on a striped shroud, while the bottom of the body still remains outside the curtain, which is opening out. This produces the effect of a progressive elongation, as if the body were being pulled backwards by its upper half. For a rather long period of time, this technique appeared frequently in Bacon’s works. The same vertical curtain strips surround and partially line the abominable smile of Study for a Portrait [11], while the head and the body seem to sink into the background, into the horizontal slats of the blind.

(Deleuze 2003a: 26d; 2003b: 29b; 2005: 21c)

 

Commentary:

[We often see in Bacon’s paintings the Figure’s being confined within the limits of a geometrical structure, like a circular ring or platform or a rectilinear parallelepiped. But in this painting, which is during Bacon’s malerisch period, there are vertical smear stripes that seeming pull the Figure downward and sideward out of the bottom of its confining structure.

Bacon: Study after Velazquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X, 1953

(Thanks artinvest2000.com)

]

 

From the text:

Il faut considérer le cas spécial du cri. Pourquoi Bacon peut-il voir dans le cri l’un des plus hauts objets de la peinture [54] [55] ? « Peindre le cri… »

(Deleuze 1981a: 41a; 2002: 60b)

 

We must consider the special case of the scream. Why does Bacon think of the scream as one of the highest objects of painting? “Paint the scream . . .” [16, 24].

(Deleuze 2003a: 51a; 2003b: 60a; 2005: 42d)

 

Commentary:

[Recall from the first commentary the notion of the forces acting upon and within the Figure. To paint the scream is to paint those invisible forces.]

 

 

 

Texts:

 

Deleuze, Gilles. 1981a. Francis Bacon: Logique de la sensation. Tome I. Paris: Éditions de la différence.

Deleuze, Gilles. 1981b. Francis Bacon: Logique de la sensation. Tome II - Peintures. Paris: Éditions de la différence.

 

Deleuze, Gilles. 2002. Francis Bacon: Logique de la sensation. Paris: Éditions du seuil.

 

 

Deleuze, Gilles. 2003a. Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation [with translator’s introduction (Smith’s “Deleuze on Bacon: Three Conceptual Trajectories in The Logic of Sensation”) and author’s introduction to the English edition]. Translated by Daniel W. Smith. Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis.

 

 

Deleuze, Gilles. 2003b. Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation [with translator’s preface, preface to the fourth edition by Alain Badiou and Barbara Cassin, author’s foreword, and author’s preface to the English edition]. Translated by Daniel W. Smith. Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis.

 

 

Deleuze, Gilles. 2005. Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation [with translator’s preface, preface to the fourth edition by Alain Badiou and Barbara Cassin, author’s foreword, and author’s preface to the English edition]. Translated by Daniel W. Smith. London/ New York: Continuum.

 

 

 

Images obtained gratefully from:

http://www.artinvest2000.com/bacon_study-innocent-x.htm

 

.

Bacon’s Triptych, Three Studies of the Human Head, 1953, in Deleuze’s Francis Bacon commentary

 

by Corry Shores

[Search Blog Here. Index-tags are found on the bottom of the left column.]

 

[Central Entry Directory]

[Deleuze Entry Directory]

[Francis Bacon (painter), entry directory]

[Deleuze’s Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation, entry directory]

[Entry collecting the images of the paintings in this text.]

[I am profoundly grateful to the source of this image:

artimage.org.uk

Credits given at the end.]

 

[The following is quotation. My commentary is in brackets.]

 

 

Francis Bacon

 

Triptych, Three Studies of the Human Head, 1953

 

(Thanks source: artimage.org.uk)

 

Painting 60 of Deleuze’s
Francis Bacon: Logique de la sensation. Tome II - Peintures
Painting [13] of the English translation
and Painting [60] of the Seuil 2002 French

 

 

From the text:

Et si l’on rêve d’introduire un ordre dans un triptyque, nous croyons que celui de 1953 impose cet ordre qui ne se confond pas avec la succession des panneaux : la bouche qui crie au centre, le sourire hystérique à gauche, et à droite enfin la tête qui s’incline et se dissipe. [60]

(Deleuze 1981a: 24a; 2002: 34b)

 

And if one dreams of introducing an order into a triptych, I believe that the 1953 triptych [13] imposes the following order, which is not to be confused with the succession of panels: the screaming mouth in the center, the hysterical smile on the left, and finally, the inclined and dissipated head on the right.

(Deleuze 2003a: 26b; 2003b: 28d; 2005: 21b)

 

Commentary:

[Deleuze notes how generally there are no narrative relations between the Figures in Bacon’s paintings. This means also there would probably be no ordering relations between Figures displayed in separate panels. However, Deleuze says that were there to be some exception, it could be this triptych, because the panels’ successive states can be seen as displaying the stages of the self-escape of the Figure’s body. {1} First it begins its escape through the mouth through the scream. {2} Then it begins it dissipation, evidenced by the disjunction between the hysterical smile and and the tensed body (see the first quotation in painting 11.) {3} The body is now dissipating, with the face losing all form and the body slumping as it dissipates. When we pass from left to right, we might even hear a sort of melodic drop as we go from panel to panel.

(Thanks source: artimage.org.uk)

Note: the text says that the screaming mouth is in the center panel and that the hysterical smile is the left panel. In the French painting edition, they are in fact displayed in this order:

(Deleuze 1981b: painting 60)

]

 

 

From the text:

L’hystérique, c’est á la fois celui qui impose sa présence, mais aussi celui pour qui les choses et les êtres sont présents, trop présents, et qui donne á toute chose et communique á tout être cet excès de présence. [...] Bacon peut dire avec humour que le sourire hystérique qu’il peint sur le portrait de 1953, sur la tête humaine de 1953, sur le pape de 1955, vient du « modèle » qui était « très nerveux, presque hystérique ». Mais c’est tout le tableau qui est hystérisé.

(Deleuze 1981a: 36c; 2002: 52c)

 

The hysteric is at the same time someone who imposes his or her presence, but also someone for whom things and beings are present, too present, and who attributes to every thing and communicates to every being this excessive presence. [...] Bacon explains rather testily that the hysterical smile he painted on the || 1953 portrait [11], on the human head of 1953 [13] , and on the 1955 Pope [19] came from a “model” who was  very neurotic and almost hysterical.” But in fact it is the whole painting that is hystericized.

(Deleuze 2003a: 63b; 2003b: 75d; 2005: 36c)

 

Commentary:

[When an image represents a situation, we might say that the image provides itself in its presence, and the represented element is given indirectly through the representation. Processing images representationally is something more or less cognitive and cerebral. Bacon’s paintings avoid representation while still providing intense sensations, and thus we are not distracted by the cognitive elements and instead are left with the raw presences of the image and its sensations. And we might also note that when we experience an overwhelming sensory experience, it attests both to the presence of those sensations as well as to the presence of whatever may be causing them, including the “forces” that are at work in imposing themselves upon our sensory apparatus. And given how overwhelming the sensations are, it attests to the excessiveness of this presence that has such a disruptive effect on our body’s workings. The Figures in Bacon’s paintings can be said to both themselves experience and express this excessive presence as well as causing us to have an overwhelming sensory experience, and thus they communicate that excessive presence to us. We might also find that in such experiences of sensory overload, our bodies begin to undergo confusions of many physical sorts, like certain components of the sensation being at odds with others. We may for example want to look away from the image in disgust while at the same time being drawn to it with rapt and eager curiosity. While under this mode of experience, we could perhaps notice certain traits of hysteria, coming especially from the lack of control of all the influences, tensions, sensations, and so on wrestling throughout our body. Deleuze’s point in these passages is that the hysteria of these Figures is something found not just in the smiles but throughout their bodies and in fact throughout the rest of the painting. For, the other elements in the painting are involved in the play of forces that give rise the Figure’s hystericized body and smile.]

 

 

From the text:

 

Dans les triptyques, c’est donc sur l’horizontale qu’on cherchera le rythme- | témoin à valeur constante. Cette horizontale peut présenter plusieurs Figures. D’abord, celle du plat sourire hystérique : non seulement comme nous l’avons vu, pour le triptyque de tête de 1953 (panneau gauche), mais déjà pour le triptyque des monstres de 1944 (panneau central), où la tête aux yeux bandés n’est pas du tout une tête qui s’apprête à mordre, mais une tête abominable qui sourit, suivant une déformation horizontale de la bouche. [60] [80]

(Deleuze 1981a: 51-52; 2002: 74b)

 

In the triptychs, it is thus on the horizontal that we must seek the attendant-rhythm with a constant value. This horizontal can be presented in several Figures. First, there is the flat hysterical smile, which appears not only, as we have seen, in the 1953 triptych of the head (left panel [13]), but already in the 1944 triptych of monsters (central panel) [1], where the head with the bandaged eyes is not a head preparing to die, but an abominable head that smiles along the horizontal deformation of the mouth.

(Deleuze 2003a: 44b; 2003b: 75; 2005: 54b)

 

Commentary:

[Deleuze identifies three rhythmic tendencies or “figures” in Bacon’s triptychs. We might think of these rhythmic figures as being tendencies or forces of variation impressing themselves into the viewing experience, with all these figures being what they are individually on account of their relation to the other forces. There is an active rhythm, which acts upon or against a passive rhythm, which is the recipient, patient, or simply the opposite in a ‘losing’ way of the active tendencies. So if the Figure in one panel implies a force or motion that is rising, then the passive rhythm will be found in another Figure implying a downward force or motion. There is always a third rhythmic figure, which is like a baseline against which the other-two are oriented. So if one Figure has a rising motion, and another a falling motion, then the third will have a horizontal motion (or a horizontal stability), since that would be the neutral stance between rising and falling. Often times there is a horizontal smile in Bacon’s Figures which serve this attendant rhythmic function, and we see it here in the center panel.

(Thanks source: artimage.org.uk)

Note: as mentioned above, the text says the smile is in the left panel, which is how it is ordered in the Paintings volume.]

 

 

From the text:

 

On comprend du coup que les triptyques aient besoin de cette vivacité lumineuse ou colorée, et se concilient rarement avec un traitement « malerisch » global : le triptyque de tête de 1953 serait une de ces rares exceptions. [60]

(Deleuze 1981a: 55d; 2002: 80c)

 

We at once realize that the triptychs have need of this luminous or colored vivacity, and are rarely susceptible to a global “malerisch” treatment; the 1953 triptych of the head [13] would be one of the rare exceptions.

(Deleuze 2003a: 44b; 2003b: 84ab; 2005: 59c. Note: in 2003a, there are no quotation marks around malerisch.)

 

Commentary:

[The malerisch style was described previously in this way: “We see everywhere the reign of the blurry [flou] and the indeterminate, the action of a depth that pulls at the form, a thickness on which shadows play, | a dark nuanced texture, effects of compression and elongation - In short, a malerisch treatment, as Sylvester suggests” (Deleuze 2003a: 26|27; 2003b: 29c; 2005: 21d). In the triptychs, there is a coupling of Figures across panels. Often in the triptychs, this coupling is in part somehow effected by violently projecting the figures onto a uniform color field. (Perhaps the uniformity of the color field prevents there from being too much discernible visual givens standing between the spatially separated Figures, thereby compelling us to couple them, and perhaps the vibrancy of the colors makes the Figures stand out more distinctly, intensifying their coupling.) But there is an exception to this pattern, namely the triptych in question. The Figures here are sort of blurred into an uncolored background.]

 

 

 

 

Texts:

 

Deleuze, Gilles. 1981a. Francis Bacon: Logique de la sensation. Tome I. Paris: Éditions de la différence.

Deleuze, Gilles. 1981b. Francis Bacon: Logique de la sensation. Tome II - Peintures. Paris: Éditions de la différence.

 

Deleuze, Gilles. 2002. Francis Bacon: Logique de la sensation. Paris: Éditions du seuil.

 

 

Deleuze, Gilles. 2003a. Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation [with translator’s introduction (Smith’s “Deleuze on Bacon: Three Conceptual Trajectories in The Logic of Sensation”) and author’s introduction to the English edition]. Translated by Daniel W. Smith. Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis.

 

 

Deleuze, Gilles. 2003b. Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation [with translator’s preface, preface to the fourth edition by Alain Badiou and Barbara Cassin, author’s foreword, and author’s preface to the English edition]. Translated by Daniel W. Smith. Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis.

 

 

Deleuze, Gilles. 2005. Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation [with translator’s preface, preface to the fourth edition by Alain Badiou and Barbara Cassin, author’s foreword, and author’s preface to the English edition]. Translated by Daniel W. Smith. London/ New York: Continuum.

 

 

 

 

Images obtained gratefully from:

https://www.artimage.org.uk/4598/francis-bacon/three-studies-of-the-human-head--1953

 

.

Blending Isolated Conventions [10] Francis Bacon: Study for Crouching Nude, 1952. Deleuze on Bacon, Painting Series

by Corry Shores
[Search Blog Here. Index-tags are found on the bottom of the left column.]

[Central Entry Directory]
[Deleuze Entry Directory]

[Index of painting entries in the Deleuze on Bacon series].

[Entry collecting the images of the paintings.]

[I am profoundly grateful to the sources of these images:

www.dl.ket.org

newhumanist.org.uk

Credits given at the end.]

[The following is quotation. My commentary is bracketed in red.]

Blending Isolated Conventions

(Thanks www.dl.ket.org)

Francis Bacon

Study for Crouching Nude, 1952

Detroit Institute of Arts

Painting 62 of Deleuze's

Francis Bacon: Logique de la sensation. Tome II - Peintures

Painting [10] of the English translation

and Painting [62] of the Seuil 2002 French

At its simplest, the position behind the curtains is combined perfectly with the position on the ring, bar, or parallelepiped, in a Figure that is not only isolated, stuck, and contracted, but also abandoned, escaping, evanescent, and confused, as in the 1952 Study for Crouching Nude [10]. (Deleuze 2003: 22ab)

Au plus simple, la position derrière les rideaux se conjugue parfaitement avec la position sur piste, sur barre ou parallélépipède, pour une Figure isolée, collée, contractée, mais également abandonnée, échappée, évanescente, confondue : ainsi l'« Étude pour un nu accroupi » de 1952 [62]. (Deleuze 2002: 35c)

David Sylvester analyzes three general phases in the development of Francis Bacon's style. In the first one, the figure and background were both rendered in a fairly clear way. In the second 'malerisch' period, the figure and background were both made blurry, seemingly obscured by window shades. Then in the third phase, the figure is indeterminate while the background is clear. So in this last period, the two opposite conventions of the first two are brought together, the clarity of the backgrounds in the first phase, with the malerisch figures of the second. And while in the first and second phases, the figure and background were both of the same nature, in the third, they are 'violently juxtaposed', which isolates the figure from the field.

Deleuze's point is that the second period did not contradict the first one as much as it added to this predecessor. And the synthesis of the first two was already to be found in the second phase. What we see in this painting is that the figure on the one hand is blurred, indeterminate, and trying to escape into the field, and yet it is also isolated from the field, by being enclosed in a box.

(And thank you too newhumanist.org.uk)

Deleuze, Gilles. Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation. Transl. Daniel W. Smith. London/New York: Continuum, 2003.

Deleuze, Gilles. Francis Bacon: Logique de la sensation. Paris: Seuil, 2002.

Deleuze, Gilles. Francis Bacon: Logique de la sensation. Tome II - Peintures. Paris: Editions de la différence [Littératures], 1981.

Images obtained gratefully from:

http://www.dl.ket.org/webmuseum/wm/paint/auth/bacon/index.htm

http://newhumanist.org.uk/1863/cold-flesh

Violent Juxtapositions: Bacon's Three Phases, including Malerisch, according to David Sylvester

by Corry Shores
[Search Blog Here. Index-tags are found on the bottom of the left column.]

[Image credits are under the image itself and at the end. May I thank the source, www.sai.msu.su].

[Central Entry Directory]
[Deleuze Entry Directory]
[Deleuze on Bacon Entry Directory]

[Image obtained very gratefully from: euroartmagazine.com]

Violent Juxtapositions:

Bacon's Three Phases, including Malerisch,

according to David Sylvester

David Sylvester distinguishes three periods in Bacon's development. In the fifth chapter of his Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation, Deleuze refers to these periods, including the malerisch. Sylvester characterizes Bacon's first period this way: there are hard and bright backgrounds along with precise, simple, and clearly-rendered figures. In the second phase, Bacon's figures have a malerisch character, and the backgrounds soften and resemble a curtain, almost. In the third phase, Bacon replaces curtain-like backgrounds with hard, bright, and flat fields. Contrasted against them are the figures, which retain their malerisch traits and are composed of scrambled paint. In this way, figure and field become 'violently juxtaposed'.

The following is from the interviews, The Brutality of Fact. pp.18-20.

David Sylvester: It seems to me that in your painting you've confronted an immense and extraordinary kind of difficulty which possibly relates to your desire that the form should be at once very precise and very ambiguous. In that triptych of 1944 you used a hard bright ground for very precisely and simply displayed forms, carved-out forms, as it were, and that was entirely consistent.

(euroartmagazine.com Thanks Dr. Gerry Coulter)

Then the handling of the forms became malerisch, and with this the background became softer, more tonal, often curtained, and all that was entirely consistent. But then you got rid of the curtains; you came to combine a malerisch handling of the form - and with the paint getting more and more scrambled - with a hard, flat, bright ground, so that you violently juxtapose two opposite conventions. [18-20]

Francis Bacon: Well, I've increasingly wanted to make the images simpler and more complicated. And for this to work, it can work more starkly if the background is very united and clear. I think that probably is why I have used a very clear background against which the image can articulate itself.

DS: I don't think I can think of any other painter who has tried to resolve such a contradiction between a malerisch image and a vivid, uninflected ground.

FB: Well, that may be because I hate a homely atmosphere, and I always feel that malerisch painting has too homely a background. I would like the intimacy of the image against a very stark background. I want to isolate the image and take it away from the interior and the home. [20b, boldface mine]

Bacon, Francis & David Sylvester. The Brutality of Fact: Interviews with Francis Bacon. New York: Thames & Hudson, 1987.

More information from the publisher here:

http://www.thamesandhudson.com/9780500274750.html

Image obtained gratefully from:

http://www.euroartmagazine.com/new/?issue=6&page=1&content=140

Appearance & Indeterminacy: Wölfflin's Explanation of 'Malerisch', or 'Painterly'

by Corry Shores
[Search Blog Here. Index-tags are found on the bottom of the left column.]

[Image credits are under the image itself and at the end. May I thank the source, www.sai.msu.su].

[Central Entry Directory]
[Deleuze Entry Directory]
[Deleuze on Bacon Entry Directory]

[The images in this entry were obtained very gratefully from the following linked sources:

www.wga.hu

www.gutenberg.org

commons.wikimedia.org.

And parts of the text were obtained gratefully from:

web.sxu.edu]

Appearance & Indeterminacy:

Wölfflin's Explanation of 'Malerisch', or 'Painterly'

In Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation, Deleuze refers to the malerisch period that David Sylvester finds in Bacon's development. In the following I quote from two texts that will explain this term better. First I turn-to parts of Wölfflin's Renaissance and Baroque, excerpted in Art in Theory 1815-1900: An Anthology of Changing Ideas. Then afterward I quote from parts of hisPrinciples of Art History. In these texts he explains what he means by 'painterly' or 'malerisch'.

From:

Heinrich Wölfflin

Renaissance and Baroque

The Painterly Style

It is generally agreed among historians of art that the essential characteristic of baroque architecture is its painterly quality. Instead of following its own nature, architecture strove after effects which really belong to a different art-form: it became 'painterly'.

The term painterly is both one of the most important and one of the most ambiguous and indefinite with which art history works. There is not only painterly architecture, but painterly sculpture. The history of painting has a painterly phase, and yet we speak of painterly light effects, painterly disorder, painterly profusion, and so on. [boldface mine] Clearly it is impossible to use the word to definite purpose without first clarifying its meaning. What does 'painterly' mean? It would be simple enough to say that painterly is that which lends itself to being painted, that which without addition would serve as a motif for the painter. A strictly classical temple, if it is not in ruins, is not a picturesque object. [Wölfflin 2003: 717-719] However impressive it may be as a piece of architecture, it would look monotonous in a picture. An artist painting it on a canvas today would have great difficulty in making it look interesting; in fact he could only succeed with the aid of light and atmospheric effects and a landscape setting, and in the process the architectural element would retreat completely into the background. But a rich baroque building is more animated, and would therefore be an easier subject for a painterly effect. The freedom of line and the interplay of light and shade are satisfying to the painterly taste in direct proportion to the degree to which they transgress the rules of architecture. If the beauty of a building is judged by the enticing effects of moving masses, the restless, jumping forms or violently swaying ones which seem constantly on the point of change, and not by balance and solidity of structure, then the strictly architectonic conception of architecture is depreciated. In short, the severe style of architecture makes its effect by what it is, that is, by its corporeal substance, while painterly architecture acts through what it appears to be, that is, an illusion of movement. Neither of these extremes, of course, exists in a pure state.

Painterliness is based on an illusion of movement. Why movement is painterly, and why it is communicated through painting rather than another art form can only be answered by examining the special character of the art of painting. Because it has no physical reality painting has to depend on effects of illusion. Its means of creating an illusion of movement are also greater than those of any other art from. This has not always been so; the painterly period . . . was only one phase in the history of painting, and the painterly style was only slowly evolved by discarding a predominantly linear style. In Italy this process reached completion in the High Renaissance, notably in the work of Raphael. [...] [note, preceding ellipsis is not mine]

The new expressive means that were to have such a decisive influence on architecture were various, and we may now try to list the main features of the painterly style. The most direct expression of an artist's intention is the sketch. It represents what appears most vital to him, and reveals him actually in the process of thinking. It may therefore be useful to start by comparing two sketches so that we may establish the clearest distinction between the two manners. To begin with, the medium changes with the style. Where the linear style employs the pen or the silver-point, the painterly uses charcoal, red chalk or the broad water-colour brush. The earlier style is entirely linear: every object has a sharp unbroken outline and the main expressive element is the contour. The later style works with broad, vague masses, the contours barely indicated; the lines are tentative and repetitive strokes, or do not exist at all. In this style, not only individual figures but the entire composition are made up of areas of light and dark; a single tone serves to hold together whole groups of objects and contrast them with other groups. While the old style was conceived in terms of line and its purpose was to express a beautiful and flowing linear harmony, the painterly style thinks only in masses, and its elements are light and shade.

Light and shade contain by nature a very strong element of movement. Unlike the contour, which gives the eye a definite and easily comprehensible direction to follow, a mass of light tends to a movement of dispersal, leading the eye to and fro; it has no bounds, no definite break in continuity, and on all sides it increases and decreases. This, basically, is how the painterly style evokes an illusion of constant change. The contour is quite annihilated, and the continuous, static lines of the old style are replaced by an indistinct and gradually fading boundary area. [718-719, boldfaces mine] Where figures had been sharply silhouetted against a light ground, it is now the ground that is usually dark; the edges of the figures merge into it, and only a few illuminated areas stand out.

Corresponding to this distinction between linear and massive is another, that between 'flat' and 'spatial' (substantial). The painterly style, with its chiaroscuro, gives an illusion of physical relief, and the different objects seem to project or recede in space. The expression 'backward and forward' in itself suggests the element of movement inherent in all three-dimensional substances as compared to flat planes. In the painterly style, therefore, all flat areas become rounded and plastic with a view to effects of light and shade. If the contrast between light and dark is extreme an object may appear to jump right out of the picture plane. [...] [note, preceding ellipsis is not mine]

The aim of the painterly style is to create an illusion of movement; its first element is composition in terms of areas of light and shade, its second is what I should call the dissolution of the regular, a free style or one of painterly disorder. What is regular is dead, without movement, unpainterly. [boldface mine, italics his]

Unpainterly are the straight line and the flat surface. When these cannot be avoided, as in the representation of an architectural motif, they are either interrupted by some kind of accidental feature, or the building is depicted in a state of crumbling ruin; an 'accidental' drapery fold or something of the sort must be introduced to enliven it.

Unpainterly are the uniform series and the regular interval; a rhythmic succession is better, and better still is an apparently quite accidental grouping, depending entirely on the precise distribution of the masses of light.

To gain an even greater sense of movement, all or most of the composition is placed obliquely to the beholder. [...] [note, preceding ellipsis is not mine]

Unpainterly, finally, is the symmetrical composition. In the painterly style, there is only an equilibrium of the masses, with no neat correspondence of the individual forms to each other; sometimes the two sides of the picture are quite dissimilar, and the centre of the picture is undefined. The centre of gravity is transferred to one side, giving the composition a peculiar tension. A free painterly composition has no structural framework, no rule in accordance with which the figures are arranged; it is dictated only by an interplay of light and shade which defies all rule.

The third element in the painterly style may be called elusiveness, the lack of definition. It is characteristic of 'painterly disorder' that individual objects should be not fully and clearly represented, but partially hidden. [boldface mine, italics his] The overlapping of one object by another is one of the most important devices for the achievement of painterliness, for it is recognized that the eye quickly tires of anything in a painting that can be fully grasped at first glance. But if some parts of the composition remain hidden and one object overlaps another, the beholder is stimulated to imagine what he cannot see. The objects that are partly hidden seem as if they might at any moment emerge; the picture becomes alive, and the hidden parts then actually do seem to reveal themselves. Even the severe style could not always avoid overlapping objects, but all the essential features stood out clearly and any restlessness was softened. In the painterly style the composition is purposely arranged in such a way that the effect is an impression of transitoriness. [719-720] A similar device is the partial concealment of the figures by the frame, so that all we see of them is half-figures looking into the picture.

It is, in fact, on the indefinable that the painterly style ultimately depends. If the dissolution of the regular is the opposite of the structural, then it is also the antithesis of the sculptural. Sculptural symmetry avoids the indefinite and un-finite, the qualities most essential to the painterly style. [...] [note, preceding ellipsis is not mine]

Ultimately the painterly style had to lead to a total annihilation of three-dimensional form. Its real aim was to represent all the vitality and variety of light, and for this purpose the simplest subject was as suitable as the richest and most painterly profusion. [720a]

From:

Wölfflin, Heinrich

Principles of Art History

The psychologist of style finds a particularly rich booty in the stylised drapery of this epoch. With relatively few elements, an enormous variety of widely differing individual expression has here come to birth. Hundreds of artists have depicted the Virgin seated with the drapery pouched between the knees, and every time a form has been found which reveals a whole man. And yet it is not only in the great line of Italian renaissance art, but even in the painterly style of the Dutch genre painters of the seventeenth century that drapery has this psychological significance. [footnote 1: Malerisch. This word has, in the German, two distinct meanings, one objective, a quality residing in the object, the other subjective, a mode of apprehension and creation. To avoid confusion, they have been distinguished in English as "picturesque" and "painterly" respectively. (Tr.)]

As is well known, satin was a favourite subject of Terborch's, and he painted it specially well. It seems as if the fine material could not look otherwise than it is shown here, yet it is only the artist's innate distinction which speaks to us in his forms, and even Metsu saw the phenomenon of these fold-formations essentially differently. The fabric is apprehended as something rather weighty in fall and fold, the ridge of the fold is less delicate, each of its curves lacks elegance, and from the whole sequence of folds, the pleasing ease, the brio has vanished. It is still satin, and painted by a master, but seen beside Terborch's, Metsu's fabric looks almost dull.

Terborch: The Concert

(Thanks www.wga.hu)

(And thank you www.gutenberg.org)

Metsu: A Young Woman Composing Music and a Curious Man

(My thanks to commons.wikimedia.org)

And now, in our picture, that is not merely the result of a chance off-day. The spectacle is repeated, and so characteristic is it that we can continue on the same lines if we proceed to the analysis of figures and grouping. [Wölfflin 1950: 3-4] Consider the bare arm of the music-making lady in Terborch's picture - how finely it is felt in joint and movement, and how much heavier Metsu's figure seems - not because it is less skilfully drawn, but because it is felt differently. In Terborch, the grouping is light and the figures are bathed in air. Metsu gives something more massive and compact. An accumulation such as the bundled folds of the thick table-cloth with the writing materials could not be found in Terborch.

And so on. And if, in our reproduction, there is little trace of the shimmering-lightness of Terborch's tonal gradations, the rhythm of the whole still speaks an audible language, and it requires no special persuasion to see in the equipoise of the parts an art inwardly related to the drawing of the folds. [4-6]

Let us try to make the matter clear by examples. There are hardly two artists who, although contemporaries, are more widely divergent by temperament than the baroque master Bernini and the Dutch painter Terborch. Confronted with the turbulent figures of Bernini, who will think of the peaceful, delicate little pictures of Terborch? And yet, if we were to lay drawings by the two masters side by side and compare the general features of the technique, we should have to admit that there is here a perfect kinship. In both, there is that manner of seeing in patches instead of lines, something which we can call painterly, which is the distinguishing feature of the seventeenth century in comparison with the sixteenth. We encounter here a kind of vision in which the most heterogeneous artists can participate because it obviously does not bind them to a special mode of expression. Certainly an artist like Bernini needed the painterly style to say what he had to say, and it is absurd to wonder how he would have expressed himself in the draughtsmanly style of the sixteenth century. [11-12]

[...]

(1) The development from the linear to the painterly, i.e. the development of line as the path of vision and guide of the eye, and the depreciation of line in more general terms, the perception of the object by its tangible character - in outline and surfaces - on the one hand, and on the other, a perception which is by way of surrendering itself to the mere visual appearance and can abandon "tangible" design. In the former case the stress is laid on the limits of things; in the other the work tends to look limitless. Seeing by volumes and outlines isolates objects for the painterly eye, they merge. In the one case interest lies more in the perception of individual material objects as solid, tangible bodies; in the other, in the apprehension of the world as a shifting semblance. [14d]

Although in the phenomenon of linear style, line signifies only part of the matter, and the outline cannot be detached from the form it encloses, we can still use the popular definition and say for once as a beginning - linear style sees in lines painterly in masses. Linear vision , therefore, means that the sense and beauty of things is first sought in the outline - interior forms have their outline too - that the eye is led along the boundaries and induced to feel along the edges, while seeing in masses takes place where the attention withdraws from the edges, where the outline has become more or less indifferent to the eye as the path of vision, and the primary element of the impression is things seen as patches. [18-19, boldface mine] It is here indifferent whether such patches speak as colour or only as lights and darks.

The mere presence of light and shade, even if they play an important part, is still not the factor which decides as to the painterly character of the picture. Linear art, too, has to deal with bodies and space, and needs lights and shadows to obtain the impression of plasticity. But line as fixed boundary is assigned a superior or equal value to them. [...] Everything depends on how far a preponderating significance is assigned to or withdrawn from the edges, whether they must be read as lines or not. In the one case, the line means a track moving evenly round the form, to which the spectator can confidently entrust himself; in the other, the picture is dominated by lights and shadows, not exactly indeterminate, yet without stress on the boundaries. Only here and there does a bit of palpable outline emerge: it has ceased to exist as a uniformly sure guide through the sum of the form. Therefore, what makes the difference between Dürer and Rembrandt is not a less or more in the exploitation of light and shade, but the fact that in the one case the masses appear with stressed in the other with unstressed edges. [19a.bc, boldface mine]

As soon as the depreciation of line as boundary takes place, painterly possibilities set in. Then it is as if at all points everything was enlivened by a mysterious movement. While strongly stressed outline fixes the presentment, it lies in the essence of a painterly representation to give it an indeterminate character: form begins to play; lights and shadows become an independent element, they seek and hold each other from height to height, from depth to depth; the whole takes on the semblance of a movement ceaselessly emanating, never ending. Whether the movement be leaping and vehement, or only a gentle quiver and flicker, it remains for the spectator inexhaustible. [19c, boldface mine]

We can thus further define the difference between the styles by saying that linear vision sharply distinguishes form from form, while the painterly eye on the other hand aims at the movement which passes over the sum of things. In the one case, uniformly clear lines which separate; in the other, unstressed boundaries which favour combination. Many elements go to produce the impression of a general movement - we shall speak of these - but the emaciation of the masses of light and shade till they pursue each other in independent interplay remains the basis of a painterly impression. And that means, too, that here not the separate form but the total picture is the thing that counts, for it is only in the whole that the mysterious interflow of form and light and colour can take effect, and it is obvious that here the immaterial and incorporeal must mean as much as concrete objects. [19-20, boldface mine]

[...]

A painterly impression most easily comes about when the lighting no longer subserves the distinctness of the objects, but passes over them: that is to say, when the shadows no longer adhere to the forms, but, in the conflict between the distinctness of the object and the illumination, the eye more willingly surrenders to the play of tones and forms in the picture. A painterly illumination - say in a church interior - is not the one which will make the columns and walls as distinct as possible, but, on the contrary, the one which will glide over the form and partially veil it. And in the same way, the silhouettes - if the notion can be used at all in this connection - will be apt to become inexpressive: a painterly silhouette never coincides with the form of the object. As soon as it speaks too clearly of the object, it isolates itself and checks the coalescence of the masses in the picture. [20b.c]

But with all that the decisive word is not yet said. We must go back to the fundamental difference between draughtsmanly and painterly representation as even antiquity understood it - the former represents things as they are, the latter as they seem to be. This definition sound rather rough, and to philosophic ears, almost intolerable. For is not everything appearance? And what kind of a sense has it to speak of things as they are? In art, however, these notions have their permanent right of existence. There is a style which, essentially objective in outlook, aims at perceiving things and expressing them in their solid, tangible relations, and conversely, there is a style which more subjective in attitude, bases the representation on the picture, in which the visual appearance of things looks real to the eye, and which has often retained so little resemblance to our conception of the real form of things. [20-21, boldface mine]

Linear style is the style of distinctness plastically felt. The evenly firm and clear boundaries of solid objects give the spectator a feeling of security, as if he could move along them with his fingers, and all the modelling shadows follow the form so completely that the sense of touch is actually challenged. Representation and thing are, so to speak, identical. The painterly style, on the other hand, has more or less emancipated itself from things as they are. For it, there is no longer a continuous outline and the plastic surfaces are dissolved. Drawing and modelling no longer coincide in the geometric sense with the underlying plastic form, but give only the visual semblance of the thing.[21a, boldface mine]

Where nature shows a curve, we perhaps find here an angle, and instead of evenly progressive increase and decrease of light, light and shade now appear fitfully, in ungradated masses Only the appearance of reality is seized - something quite different from what linear art created with its plastically conditioned vision, and just for that reason, the signs which the painterly style uses can have no further direct relation to the real form. The pictorial form remains indeterminate, and must not settle into those lines and curves which correspond to the tangibility of real objects. [21b, boldface mine]

The tracing out of a figure with an evenly clear line has still an element of physical grasping. The operation which the eye performs resembles the operation of the hand which feels along the body, and the modelling which repeats reality in the gradation of light also appeals to the sense of touch. A painterly representation, on the other hand, excludes this analogy. It has its roots only in the eye and appeals only to the eye, and just as the child ceases to take hold of things in order to "grasp" them, so mankind has ceased to test the picture for its tactile values. A more developed art has learned to surrender itself to mere appearance. [21c, boldface mine]

Wölfflin, Heinrich. Renaissance and Baroque. Excerpted in Art in Theory 1815-1900 : An Anthology of Changing Ideas. Kathrin Simon, transl. Charles Harrison, Paul Wood, and Jason Gaiger, eds. Oxford: Blackwell, 2003.

Wölfflin, Heinrich. Principles of Art History: The Problem of the Development of Style in Later Art. M.D. Hottinger, tranls. New York: Dover Publications, 1950. Parts available at:http://web.sxu.edu/mdr1/222/wolfflin/wolfflin_principles.htm

Images obtained gratefully from:

http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/t/terborch/1/index.html

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/29532/29532-h/29532-h.htm

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gabriel_Metsu_-_A_Young_Woman_Composing_Music_and_a_Curious_Man.JPG