곰브리치, [서양미술사](E. H. Gombrich, The Story of Art, Phaidon) (2001년 4월 6일)

*E. H. Gombrich, The Story of Art, Phaidon (2001년 4월 6일)

         (E. H. 곰브리치, 서양미술사, 최민 역, 열화당)

(식목일인 어제 청계천에 중고 비디오를 사러 갔다가, 노점에 펼쳐 놓은 여러 장식물들을 보았다. 그때, 나는 ‘이 싸구려 장식품과 우리가 흔히 명품이라고 일컫는 예술품과의 차이란 과연 무엇일까’ 하는 걸 잠시 생각해 보았다. 물론 우리가 옛날의 거장들이 만든 예술 작품과, 그 예술 작품을 모방한 장식품을 같이 놓고 비교해 본다면 그 차이는 확연히 드러날 것이다. 부분부분의 섬세함이랄까, 공들임, 또 작품 전체에서 느껴지는 생명력 같은 것이 천양지판일 것이기 때문이다. 하지만 또 다른 한편으로 생각해 볼 때, 일반 미술의 문외한에게는 작품을 보는 눈이랄까, 기준이 명료하지 않아서, 좋은 작품과 그렇지 않은 작품을 구분해 낸다는 것은 어려운 일일 것이다. 사실 예술가가 전통에서 일탈하여 새로운 시도를 할 때에는 전문적인 비평가들조차도 오판을 하기 쉽상이다.)

[고흐의 편지]를 번역하기에 앞서, 미술사에 대한 전반적인 지식이 필요하지 않을까 해서 집어들었는데, 책이, 그 명성에 걸맞게, 재미있어서, 상당히 두꺼운 책임에도 불구하고, 단 시간 내에 읽어 내었다. 이 책의 가장 큰 특징은 필자 자신이 서문에서도 밝히고 있듯이, 그 명징성에 있다고 할 것이다. 전문적인 미술 용어를 써가면서 난삽하게 글을 이끌어 가는 것이 아니라, 필자 자신이 미술사가로 직접 보고 느낀 것을 명료하게 써내었기 초판이 나온 지 50년이 지난 지금에도, 여전히 인기를 누리고 있다고 볼 수 있다. 이 책이 독창적인지 아닌지는 미술에 대한 전문적인 지식이 없는 나로서는 쉽사리 말할 수 없지만, 다빈치의 모나리자에서 모나리자의 신비한 미소를, 다빈치가 개발한 ‘sfumato'--the blurred outline and mellowed colours that allow one form to merge with another and always leave something to our imagination--라는 기법을 예를 들어 설명해 나가는 부분에서 특히 잘 드러나 있듯이, 일반인이 작품의 훌륭함을 함께 느끼도록 인도하는 데에 탁월한 능력을 보여주고 있다.

이 책 전반에 걸쳐서 저자인 곰브리치는 ‘예술은 과학과 같은 진보나 발전이 없고 단지 변화만 있다’고 보고 있는데, 이 문제는 전적으로 공감하기에는 어딘가 석연찮은 면이 있고, 또 쉽사리 단언을 하기도 쉽지 않은 그런 것이기는 하지만, 유행의 변화처럼 예술도 하나의 스타일이 득세하다가, 또 다른 스타일이 득세하는 과정에서, 이전의 형식이 되풀이되는 것을 볼 때에는, 일리가 있는 말임을 부정할 수는 없을 듯하다. 흥미로운 것은 동양 사회가 정체성을 보였듯이, 예술에 있어서도 큰 변화가 없었는데 반해, 서양에서는 끊임없이 변화를 추구했다는 점이다. 현대 사회는 서구의 주류 문화를 동양 문화가 쫓아가는 상황이 되었지만, 동양 사회가 모든 면에 있어서 변화가 서구처럼 극심하지 않았다는 점은 지속적으로 생각해 나가야 할 부분이다.

미술사--크게 나누어 보면, 건축과 조각과 회화의 역사라고 볼 수 있는데--를 요약해 보면, 미술이 시초에는 어떤 마법의 힘을 지닌 것으로 여겨졌다는 점을 명심해야 할 것이다. 그리고 이집트인들은 그들이 본 것을 그린 것이 아니라, 그들이 아는 것을 그렸다는 점, 보이는 것을 그려야 한다는 생각은 그리스에 들어와서 자리를 잡기 시작했으며, 그래서 예술은 놀라운 경지를 획득했다. 중세의 미술은 거의 모두 그 제재가 기독교와 관련되어 있다는 것도 꼭 기억해야 할 것이다. 근대 회화에 있어서 혁명적인 사건 중의 하나는 체계적인 원근화법, 투시화법이 자리를 잡게 된 것이라고 할 수 있다(It was Brunelleschi who gave artists the mathematical means of solving this problem; and the excitement which this caused among his painter-friends must have been immense. (229) [perspective의 체계 확립]) 그리고, 르네상스 시기로 들어오면서, 개별 작가가 중요성을 지니게 되고, 그로 인해, 우리는 다빈치, 미켈란젤로, 라파엘 같은 천재의 탄생을 맞이하게 된다. 거기다 프랑스 혁명 이후 화가는 자신의 제재에 자유를 누리게 되었으며, 이로 인해 풍경화가 회화의 중요한 한 장르가 된다. 대신에 화가는 이전의 패트론을 잃게 되어서, 자신의 그림을 직접 미술 시장에서 판매하게 되었는데, 대중의 기호에 영합하느냐, 아니면 자신의 예술적 비전을 추구하느냐 하는 것이 당시 화가들이 당면한 문제로 떠올랐다. 거기다 인상파 화가들은 이전의 화풍에 반기를 들고, 실제로 야외에서, 빛 아래, 대상들이 보이는 대로 그릴 것을 주창했다. 이런 인상파들의 뒤를 이어 세잔과, 고흐, 고갱이, 자신들이 직면한 문제들을 한껏 더 밀고 나갔으며, 그들은 현대의 미술, 입체파와 표현주의, 원시주의 등에 영향을 끼친다. 현대에 들어와서 예술가들에게 요구되는 것은 실험성인데, 이것은 예전과는 정반대되는 상황이라고 할 수 있다. 즉, 실험적이기만 하면 환영을 받는, 그래서 진정한 실험과 가짜의 구분이 모호하게 되는 위험도 있다. (이 부분은 다소 거친 표현이다.)

건축의 역사는 그리스의 건축 양식이 중세에서 한 번 바뀌었다가, 다시 르네상스 시대에 들어서 각광을 받게 되고, 그러한 양식이 기본적으로는 거의 현대까지 이어졌는데, 장식적인 측면이 쇠퇴하고 기능성을 중요하다가, 다시 장식적인 측면도 곁들이는 식이라는 정도로 기억이 된다.

훌륭한 작품과 그렇지 않은 작품을 구별하는 눈을 갖는다는 것은 어려운 일일 것이다. 그러나, 이 책을 통해 우리는 많은 훌륭한 작품들을 도판으로나마 감상할 수 있고, 또 그러한 감상과, 이 책이 이야기하는 지식을 통해, 우리가 미술 작품을 보다 더 풍요롭게 감상할 수 있게 된다면, 이 책의 임무는 어느 정도 수행된 것이라고 할 수 있으리라.

*We cannot hope to understand these strange beginning of art[Pictures and statues, in other words, are used to work magic.] unless we try to enter into the mind of the primitive peoples and find out what kind of experience it is which makes them think of pictures, not as something nice to look at, but as something powerful to use.(40)

 

*Every Greek sculptor wanted to know how he was to represent a particular body. The Egyptians had based their art on knowledge. The Greeks began to use their eyes. once this revolution had begun, there was no stopping it. The sculptors in their workshops tried out new ideas and new ways of representing the human figure, and each innovation was eagerly taken up by others who added their own discoveries. (78)

 

*The great revolution of Greek art, the discovery of natural forms and of foreshortening, happened at the time which is altogether the most amazing period of human history. (82)

 

*the Egyptians had largely drawn what they knew to exist, the Greeks what they saw; in the Middle Ages the artists also learned to express in his picture what he felt. (165)

 

*We have just compared the art of the Romanesque period with the art of Byzantium and even of the ancient Orient. But there is one respect in which Western Europe always differed profoundly from the East. In the East these styles lasted for thousands of years, and there seemed no reason why they should ever change. The West never knew this immobility. It was always restless, groping for new solutions and new ideas. (185)

 

*In this respect too, the Florentine painter Giotto begins an entirely new chapter in the history of art. From his day onwards the history of art, first in Italy and then in other countries also, is the history of the great artists. (205)

 

*It was Brunelleschi who gave artists the mathematical means of solving this problem; and the excitement which this caused among his painter-friends must have been immense. (229) [perspective의 체계 확립]

 

*Towards the end of the eighteenth century this common ground seemed gradually to give way. We have reached the really modern times which dawned when the French Revolution of 1789 put an end to so many assumptions that had been taken for granted for hundreds, if not for thousands, of years. Just as the Great Revolution has its roots in the Age of Reason, so have the changes in man's ideas about art. The first of these changes concerns the artist's attitude to what is called 'style'. (476)

 

*All this changed very rapidly during the period of the French Revolution. Suddenly artists felt free to choose as their subjects anything from a Shakespearean scene to topical event, anything, in fact, that appealed to the imagination and aroused interest. This disregard for the traditional subject-matter of art may have been the only thing the successful artists of the period and the lonely rebels had in common. (481)

 

*There was one branch of painting that profited much by the artist's new freedom in his choice of subject-matter--this was landscape painting. So far, it had been looked upon as a minor branch of art. The painters, in particular, who had earned their living painting 'views' of country houses, parks or picturesque scenery, were not taken seriously as artists. This attitude changed somewhat through the romantic spirit of the late eighteenth century, and great artists saw it as their purpose in life to raise this type of painting to new dignity. (491-2)

 

*To Constable all these ideas [looking at nature as a pleasing setting for idyllic scenes] were unimportant. He wanted nothing but the truth. 'There is room enough for a natural painter,' he wrote to a friend in 1802; 'the great vice of the present day is bravura, an attempt to do something beyond the truth.' (494)

(Constable의 그림과 Gogh의 초기 그림은 닮은 데가 많다.)

 

*The distrust between artists and the public was generally mutual. To the successful businessman, an artist was little better than an impostor who demanded ridiculous prices for something that could hardly be called honest work. Among the artists, on the other hand, it became an acknowledged pastime to 'shock the bourgeois' out of his complacency and to leave him bewildered and bemused. Artists began to see themselves as a race apart, they grew long hair and beards, they dressed in velvet or corduroy, wore broad-brimmed hats and loose ties, and generally stressed their contempt for the conventions of the 'respectable'. This state of affairs was hardly sound, but it was perhaps inevitable. (502)

[19세기 상황]

 

*The idea that the true purpose of art was to express personality could only gain ground when art had lost every other purpose. (503)

 

*There are harsh contrasts in the sunlight. Objects taken out of the artificial conditions of the artist's studio do not look so round or so much modelled as plaster casts from the antique. The parts which are lit appear much brighter than in the studio, and even the shadows are not uniformly grey or black, because the reflections of light from surrounding objects affect the colour of these unlit parts. If we trust our eyes, and not our preconceived ideas of what things ought to look like according to academic rules, we shall make the most exciting discoveries. (513)

[Impressinism]

 

*It may be said. . . that Manet and his fellowers brought about a revolution in the rendering of colours which is almost comparable with the revolution in the representation of forms brought about by the Greeks. They discovered that, if we look at nature in the open, we do not see individual objects each with its own colour but rather a bright medley of tints which blend in our eye or really in our mind. (514)

 

*Cezanne's solution ultimately led to Cubism, which originated in France; Van Gogh's to ｅxpressionism, which found its main response in Germany; and Gaugin's to the various forms of Primitivism. However 'mad' these movements may have seemed at first, today it is not difficult to show that they were consistent attempts to escape from a deadlock in which artist found themselves. (555)

 

*For good or ill, these artists of the twentieth century had to become inventors. To secure attention they had to strive for originality rather than for that mastery we admire in the great artists of the past. (563)

 

*For the ｅxpressionists felt so strongly about human suffering, poverty, violence and passion, that they were inclined to think that the insistence on harmony and beauty in art was only born out of a refusal to be honest. (566)

 

*Of course, there is one drawback in this method of building up the image of an object, of which the originators of Cubism were very well aware. It can be done only with more or less familiar forms. (574)

 

*To the artists of the 'good old days' the subject had come first. They received a commission to paint, say, a Madonna or a portrait and they then set to work to carry it out as best they could. When commissions of this kind became rarer, artists had to choose their own subjects. Some concentrated on themes which would attract prospective buyers. They painted carousing monks, or lovers in the moonlight, or a dramatic event from patriotic history. Other artists refused to become illustrators of this kind. If they had to choose a subject themselves they would shoose one which allowed them to study some definite problem of their craft. Thus the Impressionists, who were interested in the effects of light in the open, shocked the public by painting suburban streets or haystacks rather than scenes with a 'literary' appeal. By calling the portrait of his mother, 'Arrangement in grey and black' Whistler flaunted his conviction that to an artist any subject is but an opportunity for studying the balance of colour and design. A master such as Cezanne did not even have to proclaim this fact. We remember that his still life, could only be understood as a painter's attempt to study various problems of his art. The Cubists continued where Cezanne had left off. Henceforward an increasing number of artists took it for granted that what matters in art is to find new solutions for what are called problems of 'form'. To these artists, then, 'form' always comes first and the 'subject' second. (576--7)

 

*Here, at last, we are back at our starting point. There really is no such thing as Art. There are only artists--men and women, that is, who are favoured with the wonderful gift of balancing shapes and colours till they are 'right', and rarer still, who possess that integrity of character which never rests content with half-solutions but is ready to forgo all easy effects, all superficial success for the toil and agony of sincere work. (596)

 

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