Romanticism and the contradiction of recognition

First, consider medieval art.  Medieval artists were creating beautiful, fascinating works (painting, sculpture, stained glass, etc.) for their patrons - usually for the Church, but sometimes for a member of the nobility and so on.  These works are often extraordinary, transcendent pieces, but the artists received little if any recognition for them - or perhaps they received a different kind of recognition, one that we can scarcely begin to understand.  In any case, for many of these works, we don't even know the artist's name, or anything about them.  For some pieces, we may know more about the benefactor who commissioned the art work, but that's another story.  (The Byzantine artist Manuel Panselinos and people like him are exceptions that prove the rule, and show that Europe was transitioning to a new phase.)

Then comes Renaissance art, a profoundly mysterious transitional period.  It was during the Renaissance that artists began to be credited by name for their work, particularly beginning with Giotto.  In some ways, this was the birth of art as we know it today.  But why?  How?  What motivated masters like Raphael, Michelangelo, and Leonardo da Vinci?  How did they think about this motivation?  How can we know?

After the Renaissance comes the Enlightenment, during which the philosophes questioned the entire structure of authority and divine hierarchy that had given meaning to art and to artists' lives.

And after this comes romanticism.  Finally, the paradox that had been at the heart of recognition all this time becomes manifest.  The romantic artist desires recognition, but the recognition of his or her peers - of the Church, of the nobility, of the bourgeoisie, even of his fellow artists - in some obscure way, somehow fails.  Whatever they give him, it lacks - it is somehow not enough.  For the romantic artist desires not only recognition, but freedom - free recognition, the recognition of freedom - these terms sit uneasily together, like north poles on magnets.  And so the romantic artist is forced not only to transform his art, but to transform himself / not only to transform her art, but to transform herself, again and again, ceaselessly reinventing until death.  This profound restlessness is the essence of romantic art, and gives rise to all of romantic art's titanic production.

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