The Philosophy of Fine Art, volume 1 (of 4): Hegel's Aesthetik
Georg Hegel · en
set forth in harmonious relation these very types, although he may
doubtless have, committed errors of judgment with regard to particular
masterpieces while carrying through the same. As a possible example
of such an oversight Herr von Rumohr thinks he has made out (p. 115)
that the increase of length in the lower half of the body, which
Winckelmann has characterized as an ideal feature of the antique,
is really borrowed from Roman statuary. And naturally enough, as an
opponent of the Ideal, improves the occasion by insisting that the
artist should unreservedly take Nature into his confidence in the
study of form. Here, and here alone, he will find the presence of true
beauty. To quote this writer once more it is affirmed (p. 144), "that
the beauty of most importance depends on a symbolic of forms rooted in
Nature rather than human caprice, a beauty through which these forms
are nourished into their characteristic and symbolic relations, in
the vision of which we necessarily have brought back to our memory
definite images and conceptions, and are made more definitely conscious
of previously dormant feeling.[295]" I And so finally it appears that
in this writer's view (p. 105) "a mysterious trait of our spiritual
life, what many would perhaps call Idea, seems to bind together the
artist and the appearances of Nature, in which latter he is constantly
and continuously learning to recognize the true character of his own
artistic purpose[296], and to find himself in a position through them
to give expression to it."
There can be no question, of course, that ideal art has no business at
all with "a symbolism capriciously created;" and, if it really is the
case that these ideal types of the ancients have been composed only to
reduce the veritable forms of Nature to false and empty abstraction,
we may freely admit that Herr von Rumohr is justified in his most
trenchant opposition.
For our own part we would emphasize the points of fundamental
importance to be grasped in this antithesis between the ideal of art
and Nature as follows: