The Aesthetic Theories of Roger Fry Reconsidered

Author(s): David G. Taylor

Source: The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 36, No. 1 (Autumn, 1977), pp.
63-72
Published by: Wiley on behalf of The American Society for Aesthetics
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/430750
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 DAVID G. TAYLOR

The Aesthetic Theories

Roger Fry Reconsidered

PERHAPS THE MOST CONTROVERSIAL and ulti- reaching. Much of the terminology in this
mately influential art critic of his day, first major work of his theoretical maturity
Roger Fry has achieved a reputationl since tends to suggest the tone of earlier formalist
his death in 1934 which he would probably ideas, but as he moves toward the conclu-
find disconcerting. Though the bulk of sions of his first chapter, "Some Questions in
Fry's critical productivity, both periodical Aesthetics," it becomes clear that the terms
essays and books, was produced in the final which he now chooses to employ were formu-
decade of his life, his critical reputation is lated to conform to the pressure of very
generally associated with the speculative different theoretical implications.
period, the dozen or so years from around Central to the argument of this introduc-
1913 to 1925, during which time the orien- tory essay is Fry's formulation of his (to me
tation of his approach to the plastic arts totally successful) reply to I. A. Richards's
was severely formalistic. Though evidence attack on the concept of an aesthetic emo-
is clearly available that Fry, in his final tion peculiar to art: a concept which,
decade, was motivated by ideas and atti- Richards argued, led directly to the postu-
tudes quite different from those of his close lation of "a peculiar, unique value, differ-
theoretical association with Clive Bell, the ent in kind and cut off from the other
tendency to subsume his life's work in the values of ordinary experiences." Of a de-
more celebrated (one might almost say cidedly contrary mind, Richards asserted,
notorious) excesses of the strictly formalist "When we look at a picture, or read a
period is very widespread. Thus Morris poem, or listen to music, we are not doing
Weitz apparently feels confident in assert- something quite unlike what we were doing
ing, "Fry's theory of the appreciation of art on our way to the Gallery or when we
is on the whole a reiteration of Bell's. . . or dressed in the morning." 3 As Fry's answer
at least in final formulation . . . very close to this position, in his following analysis of
to . . . Bell's." 2 With the publication of Rembrandt's A Schoolboy at his Desk, so
Transformations in 1926, however, it was clearly reveals, the main value afforded us
clear that Fry, far from sustaining the by the true (or hypothetically "pure") work
severnties of his earlier criticism, was vigor- of art is the experience of the uniquely
ously at work on the foundations of a sig- transmutational force of the individual art-
nificantly liberalized, interpretive theory of ist's sensibility, as it operates upon experi-
the plastic arts, as consistent as it is far- ence. In contradistinction to Richards's
levelling and democratizing, one might al-
DAVID G. TAYLOR teaches painting at Concordia Uni- most say homogenizing, perspective, Fry
versity, Montreal. asserts the primacy of idiosyncratic organiza-

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 64 TAY LOR

tion - or transmutation - of the common- sensations apprehended in their relations"

place, the sensations of experience, in art. it is not really necessary to view him as
If one brings to art, in short, only the gen- hurtling, irretrievably over the cuckoo's
eral perspective one employs in pulling on nest into a realm of impossilbly recondite,
one's socks, something surely is going to formalistic abstraction.
be missed. The most clearly apprehensible The centrality of Rembrandt's uniquely
feature distinguishing the formation of transmutative sensibility to Roger Fry's
visual forms in art from the generally soupy,later, or mature, theories can hardly be
levigated consistency of Richards's view is overstated; and, in this context, Transfor-
their unique principle of organization, the mations, with its new approach to this
profound difference, according to Fry, of a painter, is clearly a transitional work, intro-
meaningful relation as it applies to such ducing, though not fully realizing, the po-
visual forms. This strikes me as being argu- tential of its implicit theory of aesthetic
mentatively admirable, going straight to the personality, or principle of aesthetic trans-
heart of the matter: mutation. Fry's first recorded announce-
Now the crucial fact which appears to me to
ment of a change towards the psychological
arise from the comparison of a number of thesepreoccupations of Rembrandt's art - an as-
pect which he had previously rejected-
experiences which are the subject of our inquiry
is that in all cases our reaction to works of art actually occurs in January of 1928, appar-
is a reaction to a relation and not to sensations
ently emanating directly from the specu-
or objects or persons or events. This, if I am
lative change of course witnessed by his
right, affords a distinguishing mark of what I
call esthetic experiences, esthetic reactions, or reconsideration of Rembrandt's unique, vi-
esthetic states of mind.4 sionary powers in Transformations of 1926.
The relevant pronouncements of the 1928
One may only lament the very great deal article are perhaps best given here, before
of nonsense which this - argumentatively turning to a detailed consideration of the
admirable - assertion of Fry's has managed Rembrandt sequence in Transformations.
to generate among the critics: the numerous
extrapolations of his position to an argu- Rembrandt probes so deeply into all the impli-
ment for the suppositional dissociation of cations of his sitter's appearance, builds his de-
sign upon such a deep understanding of life that
relatum from relata in the appreciation of
the image he creates possesses its own reality,
art: something, quite clearly, which no sane
an(d that reality is so satisfying and so impressive
man could hold. Fry's minute preoccupa- to the imagination as to deprive us of all curiosity
tion with the texture of Rembrandt's paint, about the particular phenomenon which gave
in his following discussion, is sufficient to rise to it. ... Rembrandt's Dutch sitters are as
miuch lost in his visions as Sir John Fastolf, or
give the lie to all such conjectures.
whoever he was, in Shakespeare's Falstaff . . .
To employ a more modern terminology, Such then is the devasting effect of imaginative
and in deference to Fry's intent, it might truth when placed beside the flattering unreal-
be pointed out that the peculiar sensibility ities of the English portraitists.6

of the artist, his characteristic response to

vision, is made available only in the trans-
local visual phenomenon which is the work
of art,5 and that translocality, even in its
smallest manifestations, must inevitably in-
volve the recognition of a relation among
visual elements. If the viewer recognizes
only an aggregate of forms: trees, buses,
trousers, socks, the expressive potential of
the work must remain unseen. The char-
acteristic force of a work - more commonly
regarded as style - is inevitably a relational
thing. When Fry refers to "the effects of
The content or aesthetic reality of Rem-
brandt's portraits, the reality which Fry
finds "so satisfying," is thus generically
different from the content which I. A.
Richards sees as the common grist of every-
day experience and, in attenuated or re-
fined form, of art. It is towards the tradi
tional dichotomy of easily separable form
and content that Fry, in the first chapter of
Transformations, directs his attention, em-
phasizing again and again the illegitimacy
of these essentially literary or linguistic con-

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The Aesthetic Theories of Roger Fry Reconsidered
cepts as extrapolated to works of plastic art.
Having been at some pains to make this dis-
tinction, Fry then proceeds to his considera-
tion of the art of Rembrandt:
We get, then, from the point of view to which
our inquiries have led us, a method of distin-
guishing between good and bad realism-a
method by which we can more or less judge
whether realistic representation is esthetically
justified or no.7
I take as all example of . . . realism, therefore
. . . [Rembrandt's] very late picture of "A
Schoolboy at his Desk," in Lord Crawford's col-
lection. . . . The boy was at his lessons. Puzzled
and bored by them, he looked up from his task;
his thoughts wandered, and he sat there day-
dreaming, with his cheek propped on his thumb.
Rembrandt painted this scene with complete
realism, without a thought of anything but the
visionI before him. He realised the modelling in
all its solidity and density, but also with all that
is infinite, intangible and elusive in the play of
light on its surface. In painting such a work, in
accepting so much of the whole complexity of
appearance, Rembrandt was taking on tremend-
ous odds. To get that density and mass as he
felt it he had to paint with a full brush and
model in a rich paste, but he had to get every-
where transitions of tone and colour of impalpa-
ble subtlety: at every point the drawing had to
have the utmost sensitiveness and elasticity....
But what is of . . . [particular] interest for our
present inquiry is the painting of the desk. This
is a plain flat board of wood, but one that has
been scratched, battered and rubbed by school-
boy's rough usage. Realism, in a sense, could go
no further than this, but it is handled with such
a vivid sense of its density and resistance, it is
situated so absolutely in the picture space and
plays so emphatically its part in the whole plastic
scheme, it reveals so intimately the mysterious
play of light upon matter that it becomes the
vehicle of a strangely exalted spiritual state, the
medium through which we share Rembrandt's
deep contemplative mood. It is miraculous that
matter can take so exactly the impress of spirit
as this pigment does. And that being so, the
fact that it is extraordinarily like a schoolboy's
desk falls into utter insignificance beside what
it is in and for itself. . . . nothing [in fact]
appears more impertinent before this Rembrandt
than to call attention to this likeness, exact
though it may be. ... We can say, [then] sup-
posing the picture to envisage plastic expression,
that the moment anything in it ceases to serve
towards the edification of the whole plastic vol-
ume, the moment it depends on reference to
something outside the picture, it becomes descrip-
tive of some other reality, and becomes part of
an actual, and not a spiritual, reality. That
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65
process of incorporating any given visual datum
in a spiritual whole is what I endeavour to de-
scribe by the words interpretation or transmuta-
tion. That transmutation of the visual values
of natural objects into plastic and spatial values
is the great problem of most modern artists, since
the majority of them take some actual coup
d'oeil as their point of departure for plastic
construction.8
In his introductory comments concern-
ing the boy "puzzled and bored" by his
lessons looking up from his task, Fry is not
so much providing us with an incongruously
conceptual and literary interpretation of
the picture as indicating, 1) the contentual
point of departure in this apparently suc-
cessful example of "justifiable" realism, the
nature of whose justification is immediately
to concern him, 2) the details of that "whole
complexity of appearance" whose accept-
ance by Rembrandt, as grist for his trans-
mutational mill, provided him with such
"tremendous odds." Fry's concern in the
above passage is clearly with what happens
to a legitimate conceptual incursion into
the realm of plastic art when it undergoes
a successful transformation into the aesthe-
tic context of the work of art. That Fry is
clearly implying a duality of conceptual
thought as, a) the unassimilated content of
illegitimate realism (such as that of the prac-
titioners of coup d'oeil) and b) legitimate
conceptualism as the assimilated content of
legitimate realism (that of Rembrandt) is
attested by the foregoing assertion:
[We have] then ... a method by which we can
. . . judge whether realistic representation is
justified or no. . . . Supposing the picture to
envisage plastic expression . . . the moment
anything in it ceases to serve towards the edi-
fication of the whole plastic volume, the moment
it depends on reference to something outside the
picture, it becomes descriptive of some other
reality.
If Fry does not imply a peculiar duality of
conceptual thought: linguistic conceptual-
ism as opposed to the legitimate, or trans-
muted, conceptual content of plastic expres-
sion, then his introductory, apparently
literary, description and the above segment
of his argument become hopelessly incon-
gruous. If, in this section, Fry is still re-
ferring to the literary conceptualism of the
 66 TAY LOR

"boy . . . puzzled and bored" by his lessons, delivery of an individual artist. If the emo-
looking up from his task, whose reference tional content of such characteristically de-
is to a recollection from external life, how livered representational items is seen as the
can these elements possibly be reconciled real object of Fry's concern, the theoretical
to a view of plastic art in which "the mo- significance of his argument tends to be
ment anything . . . ceases to serve towards missed. It would seem far too easy to say
the edification of the whole plastic volume that the emotional import of such and such
. . . [or] depends on reference to something representational objects illustrates the way
outside the picture, it becomes descriptive in which Rembrandt, responding to life
of some other reality?" The two passages with his characteristic manner of vision,
are, of course, perfectly consistent, since does such objects. As Fry's treatment of
Fry's preoccupation is with the nature and the conceptual content of Rembrandt's
elements of transformation: first with the painting shows, this is not what he is say-
elements to be transformed, second with the ing; for this view reveals nothing of the way
realization of such successful transforma- in which the representational elements con-
tion in a consistent, self-contained aesthetic tribute or "serve towards the edification of
whole; or, briefly, with 1) the elements of the whole plastic volume . . . the spiritual
linguistic conceptualism to be dealt with, whole ...." If the view that such and such
and 2) the legitimate conceptual content of representational elements merely illustrate
plastic expression. the way in which Rembrandt does such
The final subject of Fry's treatment of things is to be held, then the subject matter
Rembrandt's portrait of his son Titus thus would not really participate in the work of
reveals itself as the theoretical concern art at all: any subject matter would do and
which Professor Fishman informs us Fry would afford equal access to the painter's
was to abandon after 1901, though this con- characteristic manner of seeing and doing
cern, as Professor Fishman has articulated things - would be merely "directive" of the
it, is surely accurate enough: particular manifestation of the all-important
characteristic style. The real question posed
Can a distinction be drawn between the formal
by Fry, in his treatment of Rembrandt,
and nonformal elements in a work, and to what
extent can the supposedly nonformal elements however, is to what extent does conceptual
be assimilated by the formal ones? . . . Fry [in subject matter in a painting itself occasion
his essay on Giotto in Vision and Design] was a significant adaptation of the artist's char-
actually engaged in a highly fruitful line of
acteristic mode of vision to its specific con-
investigation-the aesthetic status of presumably
nonformal properties in the visual arts.9
tingencies? Since the answer to such a ques-
tion can be given only in terms of the
A perhaps more revealing and pertinent perceptual significance of such a conceptual
way of phrasing the question here italicized incorporation we are dealing with emi-
would be to ask, to what degree may these nently aesthetic considerations and hence
elements be said to be directly responsible with a fully "justified" representational
for provoking emotions in the context of realism: "If," as Fry says, "one looks care-
the painting which they would not be capa- fully in the original at the passage where
ble of provoking outside of it, quite apart the thumb indents the cheek one can see
from any mere illustrational facility. Such why such works occur at very rare intervals."
a question may, of course, be answered only Had Alma Tadema (to whom Rembrandt
by clarifying the nature of such emotions. is contrasted in this analysis) delivered such
The position of Fry on this matter can- a passage, we would, no doubt, be very
not be reduced to the sort of view suggested much aware of the delicate resiliency of the
by his contemporary D. S. MacColl; a view flesh of a child's cheek, of, perhaps, the
in which the conceptual content of a paint- natural humor of childhood associated with
ing and its formal elements are simply re- the pushing of a stolid little thumb incon-
garded as supporting, and hence influencing, gruously into that delicate texture, which
each other, according to the characteristic might be more appropriately treated, and

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The Aesthetic Theories of Roger Fry Reconsidered 67

so on: in short, all the unassimilated lin- gested, with the distinct and characteristic
guistic associations which the object in engagement of the formable potential of a
nature would clearly provide. The emotive medium by a given artist. And in this
handling of paint, with all its manifold regard it is important to note that it is the
possibilities, would be reduced (as it invari-artist who is more correctly "given" than
ably is in Alma Tadema) to an economy of the medium. A given medium, in aesthetic
communicative means aimed exclusively at discussion, is almost always a misnomer.
responsive conceptual activity. Fry's real The physical constitution of painting me-
interest may thus be seen to lie in that diums is always adjusted by the significant
aspect of the representational in paint- artist according to his personal inclinations,
ing which involves "what [the transmuted and in this regard the artist is always the
thing] . . . is in and for itself," that "trans-
all-important variable in any "given me-
mutation of the visual values of natural dium." For example, the diversity of oil
objects into plastic and spatial values ...." paint, or more broadly oleoresinous me-
In the isolation of Fry's view of legitimate diums, can hardly be overstated. To all
plastic conceptualism it will be well to intents and purposes El Greco and Vermeer
pause over the implication of these phrases. cannot be said to paint in the same me-
The essential difference between the vis- dium: as the physical constitution of Ver-
ual values of natural objects and the plastic meer's medium (an immediate descendant
and spatial values of representational forms of the oil-resin medium of the Van Eycks),
in painting, according to Fry, must center established by the personal inclination of
upon the physical constitution of pictorial the artist, largely accounts for the totally
forms as opposed to natural ones. In the inscrutable method of Vermeer's artistic
process of transformation, the values of such procedure, so the medium of El Greco
natural forms: their three-dimensionality, (modified from the formulas of the Vene-
their illuminative nature (the capacity, for tians) is largely responsible for the totally
example, to reflect sunlight in varying in- overt and immensely valuable, instructive
tensities from their various planes), their nature of his delivery. The plastic poten-
actual distance from the viewer, and so tialities of these media, in their specific ad-
on, are clearly subject to an infinite variety justments, are, however, clearly traceable
of adaptations to the terms of the two- to the proclivities of the individual artist
dimensional surface upon which they are according to whose executive insights such
imitated. Since, further, such imitation is adjustments have been made. And in this
possible only through the artist's individual light medium-potential becomes indistin-
delivery of his medium, the spatial predeter- guishable from artist-potential. It is this
minates of the canvas will also become part fact which Fry clearly has in mind in his
and parcel of the artist's plastic or form- Reflections on British Painting (1934) when
making potential. It would seem clear that, he stresses the rather tragic misapprehen-
since the actual physical constitution of sion of Reynolds that the possession of
pictorial forms is profoundly different from Rembrandt's medium would provide access
the physical constitution of their correlates to Rembrandt's characteristic manner of
in nature, the perceptual significance of vision. Rembrandt's medium, as Fry em-
those forms may be apprehended only phasizes, cannot be separated from Rem-
through direct reference to the physical brandt's total manner of vision.
context within which they have proven To return to the nature of legitimate
formable. Or, as Fry has said, the moment conceptualism in the context of plastic art,
anything in painting ultimately depends then, the subject matter of Rembrandt's
"on reference to something outside the pic- study of his son Titus at his lessons is not
ture . . . it becomes part of an actual, and merely a contentual point of departure -
not a spiritual reality." a necessary model - but, rather, an ulti-
Plastic values, as employed by Fry in his mate point of arrival: a "content" accessible
mature phase, are associated, as I have sug- only at the limits of virtuoso delivery, whose

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 68 TAY LOR

specific conformation the subject

terms.has
Frypro-
is not contemplating a visual or
voked. The supposedly nonformal elements
conceptual species at all: he is not thinking
have, in fact, become aesthetically relevant
categorically or responsively. Clearly, if the
since their physical manifestation (as wit-
cognitive category of thought is shifted,
then
nessed, for example, by the plastic the recognizable "identity" of the
expression
of thumb upon cheek) has been initially object so contemplated must also be
"sighted" by Rembrandt as a possibility shifted. Indeed, beside the perceptual,
capable of delivery only in terms of his transmuted identity of this object, per-
technical virtuosity. The highest aspira- ceived and bodied forth by Rembrandt, the
tions of Alma Tadema, to the contrary, conceptual or linguistic implication of "a
would seem perfectly accessible to any prac-
schoolboy's desk" seems to drop into total
irrelevance.
titioner of the trompe-l'oeil of photo-
graphic realism. For Fry, from 1926 on- For Fry, then, to return to his specific
ward, aesthetic content would appear to terminology, a "spiritual" rather than an
be the whole emotional import of the art- "actual" or merely representational reality
ist's unique sensibility, transmuting, by becomes the desideratum of good and bad
means of its deep familiarity with the ex- realism. What distinguishes the vision of
pressive resources of its medium, the fa- Rembrandt from that of Alma Tadema
miliar into the revelatory: a content acces- must ultimately lie in the emotive handling
sible only within the context of the work of of paint: the characteristic delivery of a
art. medium suggesting a creative act of vision
Fry, in his answer to Richards via Rern- and a preference (to use D. S. MacColl's
brandt, thus attempts the unhinging of terminology): the presence of a mind mov-
that commonplace, responsive vision which ing with characteristic selectivity over the
automatically categorizes (with perhaps in- resources of its medium and extending the
stantaneous reference to the manifold range of visual experience beyond the range
Gestalt-formations of its memory banks) the of such visual experience as known before.
particular objects of vision presented by the Fry's use of the word spiritual in regard to
artist, under their conceptual counterparts, this process would seem peculiarly appro-
or abstractions in the mind of the viewer. priate since what is involved is essentially
But has Fry, in fact, found and applied a the operation of transmutative mind in
method of distinguishing between good and the manifestations of sight, the bestowing
bad realism? Can, indeed, Fry look at upon these of the connotation of a distinct
Rembrandt's presentation of wood as if it "spirituality," or sense of heightened visual
were not a schoolboy's desk? The answer and psychic activity. Since the plastic and
to both questions would seem to be yes,
spatial values of a painter such as Rem-
since, ultimately, Fry is not contemplating brandt emanate directly from his character-
Rembrandt's wood from a merely general istic delivery of his medium - a selectivity
or conceptual perspective: if Fry is regard- dependent upon both intellect and spirit -
ing this plastic construction as a perceptual the peculiar spirituality of such plastic and
identity informed by and infused with Rem- spatial values is viewed by Fry as the ulti-
brandt's characteristic plastic manner of mately validating force of a painting. This
seeing something, in terms of his medium - spiritual (emotional-intellectual) force ema-
and as only he can deliver it - Fry is not nating from the perceptual identity of the
contemplating anything like a conceptual work of art is thus seen by Fry as necessar-
Gestalt-formation implied by "a schoolboy's ily discrete, and its validating power thus
desk": not even, in fact, a particular desk lies in its ability to extend uniquely the
as an entity of I. A. Richards's "normal" boundaries of human perceptual experi-
experience. Nor is he thinking in terms of ence. Fry's comments on Rembrandt in
Dryden's or Bellori's "nature wrought up the first chapter of Transformations thus
to a higher pitch," a totally linguistic or strongly suggest that the formal (coloristic,
conceptual notion in each of its individual volumetric, tactile, linear) elements of the

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The Aesthetic Theories of Roger Fry Reconsidered 69

product of genius are, in fact, accessible to inform much of the practical criticism
only in the characteristic delivery of genius,
and theoretical speculation of Fry's last
and to abstract them from that character- decade. The salient features of this theory
istic force is to decimate their formal power.
may, however, be indicated. Implicit in
A relation of forms in Rembrandt's art de- Fry's view of artistic personality, as a
rives its formal significance from the man- principle of selectivity, is a distinction -
ner in which only Rembrandt is capable of similar to that of Bernard Berenson - be-
texturally, tactilely, coloristically relating tween the social or civic personality of the
forms, and the formal relations of a work artist and the creative mind, whose emo-
by Rembrandt are thus only metaphorically tional focus, Fry strongly implies, rests
analogous to the formal relations of a upon the expressive and emotional con-
Poussin or a Chardin. comitants of his medium. Separate from
For Fry, significance of form, from this the demonstrative social identity of many
time on, begins to be associated with the artists, this nexus of creative emotion is
clearly manifested genetic differentiae of discreet and meditative, since so much of
specific artists - something quite different its inspiration depends upon a contempla-
from the merely categorical or abstractive tive approach to the natural world: the
common denominator of plastic expression, world as apprehended in terms of a specific
as exemplified by Bell's theory of significant medium.10 The emotion attending the
form. Fry's view of genetic form is, in executive powers of a great artist may, in-
deed, be intense, but oriented as it is to the
short, his view of aesthetic personality - or
more correctly its immediate product: the expressive potential of a medium, the art-
inevitable emanation of a sustained prin- ist's passion is generically different from
ciple of characteristic selectivity; a principle the passions of his fellow men. For the
irreducible to any abstractive conceptualism later Fry, the aesthetic personality, or in-
and accessible only in its immediate per- forming sensibility, behind the subtle con-
ceptual manifestation. formations of a work of art clearly involves
In summary, then, the various theoretical "some constant principle which underlies
points which Fry makes in this appreciation the variations." This principle, further, is
of Rembrandt's study of a schoolboy be- antithetical to any geometrizing or rigidly
come the basis of a theory of practice and formal preoccupation:
implication informing Fry's critical writ-
It is rhythmical-there will be continual recur-
ings throughout his mature period and rences of similar though not identical sequences.
achieving final articulation in the Last . . . This principle [in the operation of sensi-
Lectures of 1934. The passage is particu- bility] is, I think, a fundamental one . . . we
larly interesting in formulating his new shall always find the tendency at once to recog-
nize a law or fixed principle and at the same
approach to the relationship of formal and time never to let the work of art become a mere
supposedly nonformal elements in painting. enunciation of the law. It will perpetually
Fry's view of the integral complexity of approximate to a law and perpetually vary from
it....
artistic or plastic form now turns upon a
Now in works of art we find, I suspect, something
recognition of the creative vision, unique
like a compromise between the mathematical
to every artist, as able to draw into the order in which the intellect finds satisfaction and
purview of its expressive and executive the conformity to type, but with the infinite
powers the elements of an external nature, variation which distinguishes organic life. . . .
But it is almost certain that in these intimate
and to do this in such a way as to convert
rhythms which make up the texture of a work of
the substance of supposedly nonformal art, in those parts which are due to the artist's
elements into the substance - not merely sensibility, we pass into regions which elude all
the context - of a particularized formal mathematical statement as indeed do all but

significance. the simplest organic forms. We pass always from

It is not possible, within the scope of this
paper, to give a detailed account of the
theory of aesthetic personality, as it tends
rigid and exact relations to complex and end-
lessly varying rhythms, which we may perhaps
be allowed to call, hypothetically, vital rhythms,
through which the artist's subconscious feelings

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 70 TAYLORK

reveal themselves to us by what we call his this is only so of the coarser facts. Those final
sensibility. It is in this region, then, which lies valuations, those particular accents of form, tone
between rigid order and chaos, that the artist's and colour on which a work of art depends, can
sensibility functions; and as in the case of hand- never be stated objectively, they depend on the
writings we may find examples which approach whole system which the artist has set up by his
to a fixed order and others running through all various choices.'5
the various degrees of freedom to something
very like chaos, so in works of art we shall find It is, in fact, from this transformational
endless degrees of fixity and freedom in the
capacity of an artist's unique principle of
artist's expression.1"
selectivity that aesthetic substance, some-
thing far removed from the old concepts of
Or, as Fry had earlier asserted in Transfor-
mations: either content or form, may be said directly
to emanate.
The whole object and purpose of the work of Space, once again, does not permit any
art is the expression of the artist's peculiar sensi- comparison of Fry's mature theory of aes
bility, his own special reaction to vision.'2
thetic personality to analogous aesthetic
theories such as those of Veron, Baudelaire,
The consistency of this position with the
later assertions of Last Lectures would seem
Conrad Fiedler, or Wilhelm Worringer, or
any substantial indication of its very real
clear enough:
degree of originality and importance for
Now . . . two elements in the work of art-the contemporary aesthetic speculation. The
external situation and the artist's reaction-vary point of this essay has merely been to indi-
immensely in proportion. Some artists bring to cate that the aesthetic theories of Roger
every experience so marked-it may be so dis-
torted or it may be so profound-a nature that
Fry, as generally received, are not the theo-
every experience they record is as it were lost in retical positions at which he ultimately
that. [As, in fact, it may be recalled in Fry's arrived, and upon which the significance of
comment of 1928, Rembrandt's sitters were "lost his life's work should actually be estimated.
in his visions."] Thus whatever El Greco paints
wve are forced to think much more of El Greco
That such a case clearly needs to be made
than of the subject. Before a portrait . . . by a would seem indicated by the extraordinary
competent minor artist we may find ourselves distortions which have been visited upon
discussing in detail the character of the man as this perceptive and important writer by
revealed by his features-before a portrait by contemporary critics. Since Professor Solo-
Rembrandt [and it is significant that Fry returns
so frequently to this painter] I have never found
mon Fishman's essay on Fry, in his The
it possible to discuss any other personality thanInterpretation of Art, is highly representa-
that of Rembrandt himself.'3 tive of these critical extremes, as well as be-
ing perhaps the most extended theoretical
In short, Rembrandt's peculiar sensibility, consideration of Fry's theories to date, it
his constant principle of aesthetic selectiv-
is perhaps enough to let Professor Fishman
ity, transmutes the world of Rembrandt's have his say and then allow Roger Fry to
experience into the context of a unique have his:
vision. Nature, as apprehended by the art-
ist is clearly not nature as apprehended by Professor Fishman:
I. A. Richards. As Fry consistently asserts
Fry was strongly drawn toward the idea of the
in Reflections on British Art (1934): dehumanization of art; but even after he had
committed himself to an outright formalism he
[To] face reality and probe deeper into its pos-
was not dogmatic, and occasionally certain echoes
sible spiritual significance . . . I believe to be
from the past are heard.'6
the function of all the greatest art.14
It would appear that, by means of a self-imposed
Or, as he had stated somewhat earlier in discipline, he rejected the aesthetic significance
1932: of all evidence of personal expression in art."7

Most people imagine that there is something He retained to the end a profound aversion for
really there in nature and that you can say pos- art which is deliberately employed as the vehicle
itively and with objective truth what it is, but of personal emotion.'8

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The Aesthetic Theories of Roger Fry Reconsidered
Roger Fry:
(1924)
Mr. Epstein is surely to be congratulated on
having found his own indisputably original and
unique artistic personality. There is no doubt
about it; it sticks out authentically from every
work, however varied the subjects are. How-
ever completely he seems to abandon himself to wrong. But every way is right when it is ex-
the personality he is interpreting it is Epstein's pressive throughout of the idea in the artist's
personality that really startles us. That is the
way of great masters, or at least most of them.'9
Professor Fishman:
(1926)
In the case of works of art the whole end and
purpose is found in the exact quality of the
emotional state.. .20
The fact is . . . it is a question of the full de-
velopment of a sensibility which is peculiar to
each individual, and depends for its whole value
upon that unique individual quality. . . . The
thing to be [learned] . . . is a thing that does not
exist, but has to be discovered.2'
The whole object and purpose of the work of
art is the expression of the artist's peculiar sen-
sibility, his own special reaction to vision.22
(1927)
By what magic of handling, by what elusive
accents in the tone . . . [Rubens] has managed
to colour this literal note of a thing seen, with
the special quality of his lyrical feeling.23
(1934)
Before a portrait of a great historical figure by
a competent minor artist we may find ourselves
discussing in detail the character of the man as
revealed by his features-before a portrait by
Rembrandt I have never found it possible to
discuss any other personality than that of Rem-
brandt himself.24
Professor Fishman:
Fry's taste was conditioned to a considerable
extent by a predisposition toward clarity and
rationality, insofar as these qualities can be con-
veyed by visual means. He was insensitive to
visual configurations which, lacking these prop-
erties, nevertheless evoke emotion of a different
order. . . . Fry had classical tastes; however, he
was not drawn toward Graeco-Roman art, which
he found wanting in plasticity, but rather to the
archetectonic qualities of Italian Renaissance
painting which were perpetuated chiefly in
French painting.25
Roger Fry:
When I was a young man I thought the Italian
masters had got hold of what I considered the
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71
right technique. ... At that time I really be-
lieved there was a right way of painting and a
wrong way of painting. I honestly confess that
I have changed my mind. Now I no longer think
that there is a right way or a wrong way of paint-
ing, but every possible way. Every artist has to
create his own method of expression in his
medium, and there is no one way, right or
mind.2
Plastic form [for Fry] is achieved by the trans-
formation of the data of appearance into a uni-
fied, coherent structure, whose elements are the
relations of volumes in space. The principles
by which the structures themselves are ordered
are autonomous, in the sense that they are
peculiar to works of art.27
Roger Fry:
(1927)
That very homeliness of the Flemish painters,
that naive delight in the things of daily life, that
absence of the generalizing spirit did bring a
richness of content, a diversity of material which
was of the utmost importance. For the general-
izing spirit of the Southerner in the end emptied
art too completely of content, gave it a too cold
and academic abstraction. Like Antaeus it lost
power when it left earth for too long. Its force
could only be renewed by fresh contact with that,
and it was here that it found salvation precisely
in the earthiness of Flemish art. Neither Rubens
nor Rembrandt are thinkable without that native
Northern background of uncritical delight in the
familiar aspects of everyday life.28
(1932)
How peculiarly the French genius was able to
accept life as it is. The fact that French art
maintained a vigorous creative effort all through
the nineteenth century is, I believe, largely due
to this special capacity.29
[Courbet] felt as no one had before him the
material quality of things, the density and com-
plexity of rock surfaces, the corrugations of tree-
trunks, the shimmering multiplicity of foliage;
and always his technical resources proved ade-
quate to his feeling."0
And, with final emphasis upon the central-
ity of the personal to the nature of aesthetic
substance:
[Constable] leaves us alone with his impression
to make what we can of it, to repeat, in con-
templating his picture, the experience he had
before nature and to feel gradually the mood
which emanates from it-a mood . . . too subtle
 72
and too complicated to be defined in any way.
. . . The contemplative artist is ... an adventurer,
a discoverer of the mysterious significance of his
own experiences in front of nature.31
1 Fry's influence and importance in gaining rec-
ognition for the Post-Impressionists (a name he
invented) has, of course, now passed beyond the
range of controversy.
2 Professor Weitz's outline of the various phases
of Fry's thought is, in fact, totally unreliable. Of
Fry's position in Transformations he informs us,
"All of the elements that Fry accepts as legitimate
are reduced to the compositional. Colour is now
rejected in the way that representation was char-
acterized as illegitimate on the second view." This
confusion could possibly have resulted from the
misinterpretation of Fry's comments in the open-
ing pages of Transformations, but how it is to be
reconciled with Fry's later chapter on "Plastic
Colour," in which precisely the opposite position
is maintained we are not informed. Professor
Weitz's summary of the central positions of Trans-
formations has apparently been arrived at by in-
tuitive rather than investigatory means. Vide Mor-
ris Weitz, Philosophy of the Arts (Harvard
University Press, 1963), p. 13.
3I. A. Richards, Principles of Literary Criticism
(New York), p. 16 ff.
4 Roger Fry, Transformations (New York) p. 3.
5 The term translocal, as used here, is adapted
from the Gestalt theory of Ehrenfels qualities (as
attributed to Christian von Ehrenfels, who pro-
ceeded from an observation by Ernst Mack). The
sensation of roughness, for example, is a quality
which depends upon translocal experience and has
no existence in any purely local experience of touch.
8 Roger Fry, "Burlington House: Winter Exhibi-
tion," The Nation &f Athenaeum 42 (January 28,
1928) 648-649. Italics mine.
7 Roger Fry, Transformations, p. 42.
8 Ibid., pp. 40-42. Italics mine, with the excep-
tion of the French.
9 Solomon Fishman, The Interpretation of Art
(University of California Press, 1963), p. 114. Italics
mine.
"?Thus the self-aggrandizement of the young
Cezanne, posturing as l'enfant terrible of contempo-
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TAY LOR
rary Paris, is dismissed by Fry as artistically irrel-
evant; but after Cezanne's retreat to Aix and his
emergence from artistic adolescence, such self-asser-
tion disappears in his deeper and deeper identifica-
tion with the expressive potentialities of his medium.
As Fry comments: "The years 1873 and 1874 were
of crucial importance . . . for the development of
Cezanne's artistic personality. ... One may indeed
say that . . . [Auvers] is one of the finest pictures
of a purely Impressionist inspiration that exists,
precisely because one divines a more intense passion
asserting itself through all its carefully pondered
and sedulously executed statements." Cezanne: a
Study of his Development (New York, 1960), pp. 33-
36. Italics mine. Or as Fry asserts of Constable:
"he is infinitely discreet and self-effacing-he is
never there to jog our elbow and say, Don't you
see how stunning that is? Still less does he ever
hint what a great man he is to have found it."
French, Flemish and British Art (London, 1951),
pp. 205-206.
"Roger Fry, Last Lectures (Boston, 1962), pp.
24-33. Italics mine.
2 Roger Fry, Transformations, p. 236.
13 Roger Fry, Last Lectures, pp. 12-13.
4 Roger Fry, French, Flemish and British Art.
5Ibid., p. 68. Italics mine.
16 Solomon Fishman, Interpretation of Art, p. 115.
7 Ibid., p. 134-135.
"Ibid., p. 139.
19 Roger Fry, "Mr. Epstein's Sculpture at the
Leicester Galleries," The New Statesman 26 (Jan-
uary, 1924), 450.
20 Roger Fry, Transformations, p. 6.
21 Ibid., p. 46. Italics mine.
22 Ibid., p. 236.
23 Roger Fry, French, Flemish and British Art,
p. 130.
"4 Roger Fry, Last Lectures, p. 13.
25 Solomon Fishman, Interpretation of Art, pp.
129-130.
2 Quoted by Virginia Woolf in Roger Fry, a
Biography (New York, 1940), p. 250.
27 Solomon Fishman, Interpretation of Art, p. 129.
28 Roger Fry, French, Flemish and British Art,
pp. 103-104. Italics mine.
29 Ibid., p. 74.
":Ibid., p. 126.
31 Ibid., pp. 205-206.