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{Material from the dust jacket.]
This interdisciplinary study deals with certain seminal ideas concerning the nature of expression formulated in the Essai sar les signes inconditionnel dans L'art, a book published serially between 1827 and 1832 on the subject of physiognomy and sign theory -- so modern an endeavor in light of current semiotic studies--that reveals the intellectual interests of an entire period. It is a work by the Dutch artist-theorist D.P.G. Humbert de Superville, whose ideas on line and color correspondences were subsequently to exert a profound influence on the formation of fin-de-siecle Symbolist aesthetics.
Humbert is acknowledged as being one of the first and finest connoisseurs
of primitive or Pre-Raphaelite art. He traveled throughout Tuscany
copying in a delicate and sensitive manner the works of key trecento
masters, absorbing their principles of composition. This taste
for the beginning of art led to his later exploration of the origin
of the creative act itself, and to the fathoming of the very nature
of expression. Long before Jung, he perceived that the primal
and universal experiences of man were rooted in a collective unconscious
that is best revealed by a study of comparative mythology. Hence
Humbert's efforts should be seen within the context of the great
Romantic quest for the objective correlative.
Humbert, like his generation, was fascinated by the art of primitive
cultures: the Egypt of the Napoleonic expedition, the Persia of
Chardin, the South Sea Islands of Cook, and even the lost Atlantis
of Roggeveen's Easter Island. For the artists, writers, and philosophers
of the period these enigmas raised the question of the inception
of the arts and of civilization, and of the reasons behind their
eventual development and expected decline.
Because of the language problem Humbert de Superville has until
recently been the subject of only a scant Dutch biography. This
carefully documented study, illustrated with 104 figures (many
of them hitherto-unpublished drawings and photographs), will,
because of its art historical content and theoretical bent, appeal
to a wide range of scholars interested in the cultural history
of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
L.C. 76-19842
ISBN 0-87413-120-0
Printed in the U.S.A.
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