Hegel & The Special Forms of Art

It is very clear from glancing at the organization of this text that Hegel's main project is to posit three distinctions that he terms the "Special Forms of Art". These distinctions seem to mainly rest on the divisions he draws between each in terms of the form and idea relation. Near the beginning of his text, Hegel summarizes this in the following way, "Symbolic Art seeks this perfect unity of the idea with the external form; Classic Art finds it, for the senses and the imagination, in the representation of spiritual individuality; Romantic Art transcends it in its infinite spirituality, which rises above the visible world" (Introduction). Hegel, then, documents the progression of art from the Symbolic to the Romantic arguing that the Romantic form is finally is able to unify matter with form--which it seems is connected to the Divine within.

One interesting point made quite explicitly in Hegel was the way in which form and idea are, ideally speaking, so tightly bound together. This seems like a quite useful binding, although Hegel often describes it in a somewhat static way. In noting this relationship he states, "imperfection of the artistic form betrays itself also as imperfection of idea. If, then, at the origin of art, we encounter forms which, compared with the true ideal, are inadequate to it, this is not to be understood in the sense in which we are accustomed to say of works of art that they are defective, because they express nothing, or are incapable of attaining to the idea which they ought to express. The idea of each epoch always finds its appropriate and adequate form, and these are what we designate as the special forms of art". Here (and also later in his discussion of architecture, sculpture, painting, music and poetry) Hegel seems to be suggesting that ideas do not and cannot live outside of forms. Ideas and forms are mutually dependent (although idea must be developed before it finds a suitable form) and, hence, we cannot judge an idea or a form without considering them in tandem. This makes sense to me, and although I'm struggling with the notion that particular Forms are better for particular cultural groups which have particular aggregate ideas (which Hegel hierarchizes), I do believe that Hegel does qualify this notion as he continues: "The imperfection or the perfection can consist only in the degree of relative truth which belongs to the idea itself; for the matter must first be true, and developed in itself before it can find a perfectly appropriate form". Then, again, here it seems like Hegel is reinscribing some sort of split between idea and form...hmm...

Hegel's audience, again, seems to be a group of white men who are "experts" on art and the beautiful. Hegels discussion of the Symbolic Form of Art perhaps made most apparent who this text was excluding. It is interesting to me that linear understandings of art and beauty that explain why white, wealthy people's art goes in art museums and the art of the marginalized Other often goes into archeological or field museums are so explicit in this text. I also found it interesting that although Hegel's text was still very rigidly structured, the binaries present in other texts were not as present here--Hegel even made gestures toward reconciling some of these.

As we move into our class discussion tonight, then, I'd like to talk more about Hegel's notion of Forms and what these imply about our society and about freedom. I would also like to start discussing what in these readings seems to map (and not map) onto our current sense of beauty, art and freedom in our contemporary world.