Definitions and Values of Archaism and the Archaic Style

Leonardo, Vol. 14,pp. 41-44. Pergamon Press,1981. Printedin Great Britain. DEFINITIONS AND VALUES OF ARCHAISM AND THE ARCHAIC STYLE Seymour Howard* 1. Like writing, image-making in the archaic style is, generally speaking, an invention of the Bronze Age (5000 to 6000 years ago). Both writing and images presented in the archaic style are evidence of the new mental organization achieved at that time, which is commonly termed analytical thinking. Typically, archaic art defines and combines the most readily observable aspects of things, using elementary configurations or gestalts. Formulas of the archaic style illustrate the revolution in understanding self, society and nature that took place in various river cultures in the Bronze Age. The imagery of the artworks is a concrete expression of the newly achieved sublimations necessary for life in cities. This was the dawn of urban living. Vague ancient schemes of abstraction inherited from the Stone Age were at this time radically transformed into rational and intellectualized ensembles and details. A new, more objective sense of history was presented in writing and in pictorial form; both used newly invented methods of linear exposition, in which the elements are grounded on base lines and extended in serial registers, that is, one line after another, in a consistent scheme denoting a regular conceptual sequence. When writing one takes this for granted, and the pictorial scheme is still to be found in comic strips. Other hallmarks of archaic composition, such as simultaneous views of the frontal eye and torso and the profile face and limbs, are also simplified signs for transmitting easily recognized and replicable information [1]. The momentous shift toward individualism that occurred in the Hellenic world around 2600 years ago, bringing with it the appreciation of individual artistic gifts, skill in illusionistic representation and tolerance for idiosyncratic perception, relegated the anonymous products and methods of archaic craftsmen to the realm of folk art. Archaic style persists even now in the drawings of untutored children, pre-urban societies and popular culture. Moreover, even the descendants of the classical period in Ancient Greece and Rome (2500 to 1650 years ago) and allied traditions abroad did not abandon the use of the archaic style for orthodox icons and in recurrent revivals that persisted for short periods. The absolute and conceptual apparatus of archaic style usually reemerges when the humanistic illusionismof classicalnorms loses social significance[2]. Artists seem to return to the archaic style in times of romantic nostalgia and if possible basic reassessment of a culture's ideology, finding in it a stabilizing point of reference rooted in folk values. *Art historian, Dept. of Art, University of California, Davis, CA 95616, U.S.A. (Received 29 Oct. 1979) 41 It should be noted that even within Bronze Age civilizations the archaic style itself did change, and there were periodic revivals of earlier, venerated, simpler prototypes. So reversion to an earlier archaic mode is not necessarily associated with an intervening mimetic (classical) tradition. 2. Individuals and societies use Archaism as they need it. Sometimes its style is employed as a superficial and mannered mask; at other times it is deeply integrated into the full fabric of the artistic process. Attempts to revive and assimilate a previously rejected style, such as Archaism, historically coincide with and assist in the discovery of new ways of perceiving self, society and nature. With the new perspective comes a new appreciation of the past. This is how archaic material can assist in the overthrow of a rejected style and reappear as a vital force. In a germinal discussion in the 1760s, Johann Joachim Winckelmann (expanding upon venerable academic doctrines that echoed models of progress already expressed by Greco-Roman classical authors) argued that artworks made before the time of Phidias in Ancient Greece and Raphael in Italy are simpler and less corrupted with affectation than theirs, and that they are therefore more suited to be chosen as a basis for a new artistic style that will have the potential to grow and mature [3]. Late in the 1790s, the primatifs, fronl the studio of the French painter Jacques Louis David, adopted the artistic style and even the clothing of the archaic Greeks, because in their view...