In 1829, two years after the first section of Humbert's Essai appeared, Paillot de Montabert published his monumental nine-volume Traité complet de la peinture. In the preface he stated that Europe had as yet witnessed no methodical and complete treatise on the art of painting.[1] As we shall see, Paillot's contention was correct. For Humbert's aesthetic treatise, much slimmer in size but vaster in scope than the Frenchman's work, was never to see completion. Paillot remains well within the realm of French academic tradition. believing that
for the painter representation is only the means for attaining the great end, which is harmony or beauty; and one can thus understand what must be the importance and usefulness of this study of beauty, aim of all the fine arts. [2]
Humbert's Essai, in contrast, shows no inclination to examine the nature of beauty, but considers, instead, those most essential and abstract forms of symbolism: line and color. Paillot's empirical approach would never have satisfied the more philosophically inclined Dutchman. In this rare book Humbert evolves the theory that certain directional lines and colors will infallibly unconditionally, and for all men, convey certain emotions. The basic axiom that governs his system is already found in the opening sentence; man's function and essence are contained in his vertical axis: "man is upright and turned toward heaven."[3] Three other linear directions are possible to art: the horizontal which, like the vertical, is one and invariable, and two types of oblique lines. These diagonals are susceptible to an infinite range of modifications, depending on how they relate to the vertical axis. They form the "signes sensibles," the symmetrical signs which appear to the right and left of the normative perpendicular.[4] In the human face, the physical organs - eyes, nose, mouth - are replaced by directional signs; when these move horizontally they indicate psychic repose; when they are stationed diagonally, they are either expansive or contracting. [ fig. 1 ]Thus Humbert sees two major expressive possibilities flanking the central immobility and blandness of a face at rest.[5] The originality of his theory consists in that meaning is not attached to the organs of the face as such, but to their directions as aesthetic signs, that is, as visible and constant elements dominating the nonconvulsive movement of the face. He claims that these aesthetic signs are universally and unconditionally true for all men, hence the title of the book.[6]
Humbert creates three eloquent types, which he identifies with the goddesses of the Judgment of Paris - in fact, with what he sees as the three basic human drives: pleasure, wisdom, and power. The Juno Ludovisi represents the almost solemn reflection of egoism, namely, the concentration of energy within. Her polar opposite is typified by the Venus de Medici, characterized by a voluptuous smile. Occupying the intermediate position is the Pallas of Velletri, indicating the calm of wisdom. Humbert associates with the serenity of the latter the concepts of order, equilibrium, dignity, stability, and duration. The Queen of Cythera embodies passion, movement, agitation, beauty, inconstancy, and change. The pride and egotistical power found in Juno also relate to meditation, profundity of thought, grandeur of soul, gravity, and the sublime.[7] The mythic temperaments of the goddesses permit Humbert to siphon the disposition contained in their individual traits into his disembodied lines. For example, what Venus symbolizes in her entire Gestalt, as read from her features, is now summarized by an expansive diagonal direction. Indeed, as we shall see, Venus, Pallas, and Juno are merely the products of allegorical personification.
At this point it should be noted that there is a theoretical ambiguity that runs throughout the book. The practical experiment of submitting the three schematic faces to instinctive judgment resulted in their being interpreted as representing laughter and tears, with the middle face producing an indeterminate effect. These faces show the traces of transitory passions, the pathognomy. However, when Humbert relates this schema to the goddesses, he converts them into representations of temperamental types-permanent physiognomic models.[8]
To return to the theory: after having placed his lines within these facial types, Humbert is now in a position to deduce their significance, which is based entirely on the precepts of human physiology. The principle that he establishes is wholly subjective, drawing its conclusions from signs inscribed on the human face and interpreted by a purely human faculty located within the human psyche.
Subsequent to the consideration of theuniversal meaning adherent to vertical and horizontal directions, including the two variants of the latter, the author asks whether one can also determine the unconditional signs of color, abstracted from any bond with surface, figure, or plane.[9] Because colors have been associated with numerous objects, it appears as if they do not belong exclusively to any specific shape. Hues are often detached from a particular context and metamorphosed into symbols, and thus they function as absolute signs, having meaning apart from the surface to which they adhere. Humbert cites the example that, since time immemorial, a floating white banner has been used as a symbol of peace among Hindus and South Sea Islanders. Implicitly Humbert rejects the Newtonian system of seven colors to return to an older, symbolic tradition. He postulates that black and white, or light and its negation, have always affected us in the same way. Such analogous customs as those found in the mysteries of Sabeanism, which made white the symbol of innocence and sanctity, and in Plato's Republic where he envisioned a luminously robed legislator, have their origin in a single and identical sentiment. Humbert implies that if man's anatomical structure is the source of linear signs, then nature provides the foundation for our reactions to the phenomenon of color. The peace of moonlight and the purity of snow are evoked by white. The darkness of night or the somber entrails of the earth caused black or any dark color to become emblematic of silence, sadness, solitude, death, and annihilation. Thus black and white serve as stimuli for a series of primitive associations to which all men respond alike. To these two "colors" Humbert adds red:
Instinctive hieroglyph of life and movement, of heat and refulgence, the color red is the excess of the luminous ray just as black is its absorption and its annihilation.[10]
Such natural wonders as darkness, light, or fire can never be integrated with a specific shape, thus their distinguishing characteristics are due solely to color.
Nonetheless, Humbert's three primaries may be made to correspond with certain lines complementing one another in the same unconditional language. White is placed in the central position between red and black. Similarly wisdom, embodied in the horizontal direction of Pallas Athena's serene lineaments, occupies the juste milieu of the triple scheme just as red ( on the left ) and black ( on the right ) are mirrored by ascending and descending diagonals. Intermediary colors link the three primaries. Yellow is placed between white and red, constituting orange or straw yellow, depending on its proximity to either pole; azure, with its variants of indigo and pearl blue, forms the bond joining black and white. Apparently, even perception is not free from sexuality. Man, the possessor of virile intellect, judges linear attributes, and woman, "la femme sensible," pronounces on the moral value of colors.[11]
One of the striking facts about the Essai is its exclu siveness. Humbert is preoccupied by man, upright, frontal, and displaving the symmetry of his limbs. The animal, by comparison, is a limited phenomenon and does not address itself unconditionally to our feelings. When it does enter his theory it is only by virtue of its face. He claims that, without already knowing the character and habitat of a beast, it is extremely difficult to comprehend the language that its countenance addresses to even the most acute observer. The brute is incapable of exhibiting the three varieties of expression at their moral maximum, that is, as regular, undistorted states of mind. Anything to do with rage, anger, or despair finds no application in this theory, because these passions are essentially subhuman.
The eyes of the major quadrupeds are riveted in permanent immobility. If only an animal had its intelligence rooted between the eyebrows, located in some Cartesian pineal gland, then it, too, would have been endowed with freedom of expression. Two animals, however, form an exception to this physiognomic rule, the horse and the lion, whose physical and moral qualities, as far as can be determined, seem perfectly attuned. Humbert launches into a panegyric dedicated to the horse, distinguished by the parallelogram of a long and beautiful head containing the expansive direction of nostrils and eyes; it is without rival and constitutes the most noble, elegant, and fiery of quadrupeds. The magnanimous and generous lion has glittering and obliquely set eyes, and a head crowned by a superb mane, offsetting anything that his face might have in common with the tiger or, worse, the malicious cat. Humbert is delighted that Winckelmann pointed out the similarity between the hair of Jupiter and a lion's mane on the basis of expressive analogy. It is only appropriate that the most regal animal should bestow its attributes on the father of the gods.[12] Humbert even regrets the suppression of wigs during the French Revolution and admires the perukes worn at the court of Louis XIV, despite their ridiculous size, because of the leonine dignity that they imparted to the face. Because of its physiognomic implications, he expresses considerable disdain for the "Zopfstil" in fashion at the end of the eighteenth century.[13]
The plant kingdom is also introduced into this theory, but with numerous restrictions. The linear directions are altered in each example according to the arrangement of branches around a central trunk. Depending on the season, the sparse or prolific leaves obscure the clarity and invariability of the directional signs. However, three major varieties of trees can be classified according to the direction of their branches. The austere oak, with its horizontal boughs that brave all tempests, is symbolic of the calm enjoyed by great souls. [ fig. 2 ] The quick-growing pine displays uplifted branches indicative of a desire for life, an eagerness for light and warmth. [ fig.3 ] The enormous height and pendant boughs of the great northern fir possess something imposing, lugubrious, and solemn. [ fig. 4 ] This tree often grows where other vegetation has disappeared and thus seems to mark the border between existence and nothingness, the finite and infinite.[14]
The color green is now introduced into Humbert's symbolism. Green is relegated to the sphere of nature, where it becomes the emblem of life. When it appears in the human body it can signal only decay and corruption, man's dissolution into organic dust.[15] In this connection he feels that it is important to note that neither mammals nor birds have green as their dominant hue. Certainly it is absent from the plumage of such impressive animals as the eagle and the swan, just as it is lacking in the pelt of the fiery lion, whose radiating mane inspired its selection as the emblem of the solar disk, and from the hide of the dramatic horse.[16] Green does predominate in the serpent's skin, but this creature is less animal than "animated line."[17] It has no unconditional expression, but instead admits, by its devious movements, all possible directions and colors. The brilliance of its scales lures one into forgetting its moral and physical hideousness and tempts one to transmute it into a whimsy of the imagination, an arabesque in art.
Up to this point Humbert's speculations belong within the eighteenth-century tradition of palingenesis. The famous biologist Charles Bonnet raised the question of sentiency in animals and plants. According to him, reptiles, fish, mussels, and insects exhibit feelings, but in an increasingly obscure fashion. The difficulty with analyzing the expression of an animal is that the sign that it exhibits is so unclear. Basically, all animal sentiments can be reduced to pleasure or pain, often separated only by imperceptible degrees.
There are species in which affect manifests itself by a larger number of signs, by signs that are more varied, more expressive, less equivocal; and these species are the most nearly perfect, those which have the closest affinity to us.[18]
On the contrary, the plant kingdom shows no sign of sensibility: "Its life appears to us less as life than as mere existence." [19] However, in the manner of a true scientist, Bonnet qualifies this statement by claiming that everything in nature is a matter of degree and one still cannot determine precisely where sensation begins.[20] [next chapter: Exposition of the Essai sur les signes inconditionels dans l'art, The aesthetic signs (2)]