”… just as his contemporary William Wordsworth rejected what he called the ‘poetic diction’ of his predecessors, so Constable turned away from the pictorial conventions of 18 th century landscape painters, who he said were always, ‘running after pictures and seeking the truth at second hand’ ”
John Constable, The Leaping Horse (1825)
John Constable (1776-1837) redefined the notion of what a finished picture could resemble without being labelled a heretic. His intense experience of nature was theoretically based on an artistic vision that nature was mutable and in perpetual movement and not fixed and rigid. Therefore, the picture would have to contain elements of spontaneous freedom involving a very expressive handling of paint. The application was almost abstraction as Constable extensively used a palette knife to create his ”atmospherics”. These effects were often centralized in the depiction of the sky which were a vital part of his compositions and preeminent conveyor of mood.
In retrospect, the Romantic movement of Constable and latter day works of Turner, seem to spring from some of the theories of Baruch Spinoza. It is evident in Constable’s work that their is an intertwining of the physical and mental world and a unity with nature. As Spinoza rejected the Descartes vision of dualism, a separation between mind and body, so Constable’s art evolves on a similar Spinozian spectrum where everything that exists in nature ( the universe) is one reality ( substance). The cat was out of the bag, so to speak.
There is a freedom, a liberty of painting in the abstract. A sensorial beauty that can attain a certain level but is not sufficiently supported by content or substance to be more expressive. The Leaping Horse looks as if the paint has been thrown on just as much as a Jackson Pollock , but with greater meaning and cohesion.
Pollock was genuine and authentic, but Constable was equally reckless yet with greater sensibility, concentration and a clearer knowledge of what he was trying to accomplish. Yet…he was also carried away by some divine spark about which he could not explain.
The Hay Wain (1821)
COMMENTS
In truth, immediately i didn’t understand the essence. But after re-reading all at once became clear.
The line of thinking of Spinoza et al. is rather subtle, and in a modern sense, the ideas were rushed to market too fast. However, the post classic period was inevitable due in part to technology brought about by urbanization and industrialization. Or so it appears…