Aesthetics and Marketing
Nocturne in Black and Gold – The Falling Rocket, by James Abbott McNeill Whistler
How could a tiny work like Nocturne in Black and Gold – The Falling Rocket have such an enormous impact on the art world? In a series collectively called Nocturnes, James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) seemingly deviated from his normal work but it became a natural evolution of his oeuvre. In 1877, Nocturne in Black and Gold – The Falling Rocket became the center of bad criticism which resulted in a court trial, generating more ridicule from the public. Although this essay will attempt to clarify a complicated change of social-artistic thinking, it is impossible to separate the culture of the mid-to-late 1800s and the life and experiences of the artist from his work. It is also impossible to isolate the exact influence of Whistler’s aesthetic philosophies, which he interrelated with creative and eventually effective marketing, from the effects on contemporary art. Suffice to introduce that, to the unconditioned public eye of the time, the Nocturnes were some doodles with paint and were considered unfinished. Even though Nocturne in Black and Gold had a bad reception in the late 19th century, Whistler’s work made a lasting impact on the art world because of the publicity around the infamous Whistler vs Ruskin Trial, Whistler’s subsequent and ongoing defense of his modern aesthetics, and his purposeful use of mass media.
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| Nocturne in Black and Gold – The Falling Rocket. James Abbott McNeill Whistler. 1875. Oil on Canvas. 60.3 cm × 46.6 cm (23.7 in × 18.3 in). Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit. |
The Artist
James Abbott McNeill Whistler was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, on July 11, 1834. At the age of eight, the family moved to St. Petersburg, Russia, where he started his art education. While his father worked on the railroad in Russia, he went to stay in England for a year with family where he must have been influenced by the works of James Mallard William Turner (1775-1851). Shortly after, his father died and the family moved back to Connecticut. As a young man, he applied to the United States Military Academy in West Point and was accepted only to find out that he abhorred authority and his sarcasm collected many bad marks. After moving around a little more in the US, he departed for France where he established himself as a Bohemian artist. While copying paintings in the Louvre, he self-studied with Old Master works by European Baroque painters like Rembrandt (1606-1669) and Caravaggio (1571-1510). During his three years in France, he became friends and was influenced by many artists in the impressionist crowd, including Courbet, Manet, Wilde, Baudelaire, and Gautier. In 1859, he settled in London and his impressionistic work evolved through experimentations with tonal harmony. Justified by his worldly experiences and inherent eccentric flair, Whistler’s artistic evolution culminated in his Nocturne series, sparking a public and cultural upheaval.
The Trial
In a sense, the Whistler vs Ruskin Trial was the first official argument on aesthetics and one of many to follow. After a suspected criminal adventure in Chile with his brother, Whistler started painting land and waterscapes by night, conveying evocations brought about by the lack of direct light, expressing the atmosphere with limited colors and vagueness of subject. The artist was s staunch believer in artistic freedom, which came to fruition in the Nocturnes. Especially Black and Gold – The Falling Rocket was ill-received by the public and John Ruskin.
Although acclaimed art critic John Ruskin previously had praising words for the expressive works of William Turner, he wrote a critical article in 1877 about Nocturne in Black and Gold. David Craven tells us in his essay “Ruskin vs Whistler: The Case against Capitalist Art” in an Art Journal from 1977 that Ruskin sneered, “I have seen and heard much of cockney impudence before now, but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask 200 guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face,” (Craven, 1977). And Robert Aitken informs us in his article “Whistler vs Ruskin,” published in the 2001 edition of Litigation that Ruskin was of the opinion that “art should have a moral purpose, that it should be carefully crafted, and that it should be finished … art should appeal entirely to the eye, not to the imagination” (Aitken, 2001). Ruskin was convinced that he needed to defend certain aesthetics of art, and Whistler’s work was an insult to the public. This criticism seriously hurt Whistler’s reputation and income, so he decided to file a libel case against Ruskin in 1878, seeking monetary compensation for damages. This case became the first court battle between two artistic philosophies on aesthetics.
Even though Ruskin wrote in his book, Modern Painters, that unfinished work was often superior to finished paintings and that he approved of Turner’s fast work and design, he thought that Whistler’s work was hastily made in two days, unfinished like a sketch, and thus inferior. Ruskin underbuilt that opinion with saying that “[a] completed work was deemed superior to a sketch only when the color and other means of realization were employed to amplify the impressiveness of the thought” (Craven, 1977). Ruskin stuck to his opinion related to the Aesthetic Movement of the time.
Ruskin used a divergent meaning of the word “finish”. On the one hand, he meant a technical finish and complained about many classical and academic works being too detailed and photographic. On the other hand, he refers to conceptual finish, meaning the intellectual relations with the paintings based on nature or literature, and he claims Whistler’s work did not have that, but Turner’s work did. Ruskin greatly admired Slave Ship, for example, Turner’s expressive comment on the violence of nature and slavery, and he found it the ultimate sublime work. Based on the thought that “the relative value of a picture is contingent on the greatness of its ideas,” Ruskin found that Whistler had compromised quality for tasteless commercial intentions because the Nocturnes did not possess any intellectual or literary references.
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Slave Ship. James Mallard William Turner. 1840. Oil on Canvas. 90.8 cm × 122.6 cm (35.7 in × 48.3 in). Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
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At the inquiry of the correct presentation of the bridge in Nocturne in Blue and Silver Chelsea and Nocturne in Blue and Gold – Old Battersea Bridge, Whistler defended with, “My whole scheme was only to bring about a certain harmony of colour” (Craven, 1977). He later complained about people only appreciating the drama of local interest and said, “[a]s music is the poetry of sound, so is painting the poetry of sight, and the subject-matter has nothing to do with harmony of sound or of colour” (Craven, 1977). Ruskin also felt he was defending the art world against the rising industrialism and profitability of art: Where Turner condemned commercialization, Ruskin felt that Whistler embraced it. The critic’s sense of aesthetics had become entangled with his politicized idealism of art but even there Whistler failed in his eyes, as the work was neither social commentary nor in any other idealistic way significant.
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| Nocturne in Blue and Silver – Chelsea. James Abbott McNeill Whistler. 1871. Oil on Panel. 50.2 cm × 60.8 cm (19.8 in × 23.9 in). Tate Collection, London. |
Whistler testified that “a picture is a problem to solve, and I use any incident or object in nature to bring about a symmetrical result” and that Ruskin was wrong in his assumptions (Aitken, 2001). Whistler went on to explain that Nocturne in Black and Gold was a scene with fireworks and that it “is not a view of Cremorne. It is simply an artistic arrangement of colors” (Aitken, 2001). Ruskin continued to prove that the work was unfinished because it was not a realistic picture nor a narrative and that 200 guineas were a lot of money to ask for two days of work. Whistler retorted that the recompense was not for the work but for the knowledge of a lifetime. He also defended his impressionistic arrangements of colors by saying that the work was not intended to be a realistic representation but rather “my aesthetic impression of the scene” (Aitken, 2001). Witnesses stated that his work “represents something indefinite” and that “the atmospheric effects are marvelous” (Aitken, 2001). The innovative point of view was still not accepted.
Even though the attorney general of England could not resist saying that he did “not know when so much amusement has been afforded to the British public as by Mr. Whistler's pictures," Gustav Kobbe tells us in his article “An Epoch-Making Picture: Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket” in a 1910 edition of The Lotus MagazineI that the jury eventually granted Whistler the win after more deliberations and hilarity between the two opponents and witnesses (Kobbe, 1910). But the damages were only for one farthing. Ruskin had friends who rallied to organize fundraisers to cover his court expenses, but Whistler went bankrupt soon after because he was not able to pay his court costs. But while Ruskin retired from art criticism, Whistler’s entrepreneurial sense of survival was spiked, and he started to defend the modern, impressionistic ideas in general, and his own unique perspective on aesthetic with a passion that lasted until he died.
The Motivations
As a reaction to the Trial, Whistler explains in all of his writings how his ideas fully evolved with the modernization of art and culture, and he elaborates on the aesthetic subjectivity and the developing concept of the unconscious. In this century of the Aesthetic Movement, Whistler took the 'art for art’s sake’ credo a few steps further and showed that invisibility, that which cannot be seen, deeply resonates with ideological sentiments. His Nocturnes were not a social commentary or made for social change but merely attempt to invoke the participation of all the senses, together with the psyche, and not just the eyes. The fact that he worked with thinned layers of muted colors, letting the canvas show through, only emphasizes the reality of the thought-provoking image on a vulgar piece of hardware. In that same sense, he also let paint wander onto the frame, as can be seen on Nocturne in Black and Gold, to compact the influence of the image into a small window of an impression of the night. For a long period, the nights were what attracted Whistler and set him to contemplate the expression of inner perception and outer technical appeal.
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| Nocturne in Blue and Gold – Old Battersea Bridge. James Abbott McNeill Whistler. 1872. Oil on Canvas. 68.3 cm × 51.2 cm ( 26 7⁄8 in × 20 1⁄8 in). Tate Collection, London. |
Whistler denounced those who could not see past the color and techniques of his work to look for the atmospheric quality and essential meaning. For him and the artistically sensitive viewer, the concept of that-which-cannot-be-seen was what mattered most. He also did not like to show any traces of the labor efforts that went into his Nocturnes. In his essay “James Whistler as the Invisible Man: Anti-Aestheticism and Artistic Vision,” published in the Oxford Art Journal, Slifkin says that Whistler claimed that “[a] picture is finished when all trace of the means used to bring about the end has disappeared” but rather contemplates the significance of nature as uniquely artistic (Slifkin, 2006). He revealed that the subjective clarity of the Nocturnes will only be seen and appreciated by artistically sensitives and that because of the blindness of “philistines looking ‘through’ the work, the picture figuratively becomes invisible so that what they see is not the work itself but what they have been conditioned to look for, namely narrative, sentiment and anything obvious” (Slifkin, 2006). He had also found parallels between painting and music and renamed many of his works “arrangements”, “harmonies”, and “nocturnes”.
Whistler explains that he started to use musical terms for his works because of the artistic ways of arranging line, form, and color. Arabella Teniswood-Harvey tells us in her article “Whistler's Nocturnes: A Case Study in Musical Modeling” published in Music in Art in 2010 that the use of shimmering marks representing figures was only used to organize the pictorial space “just like the composer organizes time” (Teniswood-Harvey, 2010). The term ‘nocturne’ was never used for his figurative work but only for night scenes, whereas, on the other hand, not every night scene is a nocturne. The night series painted by Whistler in the 1870s and 1880s definitely belonged together in a set and were purposely composed on a small scale because the artist found it important that “the image should be the size that he actually saw the subject, that is, if placed in front of the real scene and viewed from the painting distance the painting would match it in size"(Teniswood-Harvey, 2010).
The genre of landscape painting had been growing in popularity in France and musical processes and references influenced Whistler’s work in a light portrayal of industrial London. Whistler would stand at the scene for any length of time and study the elements. He would then go home and arrange and rearrange his interpretations of nature, sleep on it, and recreate the impressions on canvas the next morning. He would later explain that “[n]ature contains the elements, in colour and form, of all pictures, as the keyboard contains the notes of all music. But the artist is born to pick, and choose, and group with science, these elements, that the results may be beautiful — as the musician gathers his notes, and forms his chords until he brings forth from chaos glorious harmony” (Teniswood-Harvey, 2010). The nightly scenes appealed to Whistler, and he composed his designs like Beethoven’s (1770-1827) Moonlight Sonatas and Chopin’s (1810-1849) slow and melancholy nocturnes.
In the Nocturnes, Whistler depicts the haziness of the night by using a limited palette of colors and a restricted range of tones. There is an obvious absence of subject matter, but the translucent figures can be interpreted as people roaming the night by the water. By leaving out many details and purposely narrowing the elements, the viewer’s eyes and mind will automatically fill in imagery and thus seeking deeper within for significance. He even started to sign his work with a butterfly monogram, again not as an image but by painting into a negative space, leaving out the actual butterfly. This exclusion of specificities made his work ambiguous, and it could be argued that Whistler created Nocturne in Black and Gold with precisely that in mind, or as Slifkin mentions, “It was an instrumental strategy to create desire in elite audiences” (Slifkin, 2006). He was looking for understanding in affluent circles. Whistler worked with the psychological concept of secrets being irresistible and in need of finding out. In this manner, he enticed not only the modern aristocratic society but also the evolved version of that society of our contemporary culture.
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Whistler’s signature and Butterfly Monogram.
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The Genius
James Whistler was very much in tune with the exponential growth of newspaper and magazine distribution in the late 1800s. He made full use of the mass media outlets with lengthy and relentless elaborations on aesthetics, interspersed with antagonistic remarks regarding an ignorant and unsophisticated general public. According to Slifkin, the artist wrote letter after letter in a “wilful [sic] manipulation of public reception,” after the Whistler vs Ruskin Trial (Slifkin, 2006). The letters were gathered in Whistler’s self-published and self-promoting book “The Gentle Art of Making Enemies” in 1890. Even though his prime days were over, and to keep from financial disaster, the artist kept himself in the public’s eye and imagination for two more decades. He intentionally disconnected himself as the producer of his work, so that he could associate it with the new field of advertising a product in public media. He understood the new concept of branding and the appeal of illusionism to consumers in the 19th century. His writing paid off when regarded writer Henry James eventually saw merit in the innovative philosophies on aesthetics of the impressionistic work of Whistler and started writing public praises by the 1890s. Whistler’s publications were antagonistic but far ahead of his time.
In the ongoing defense of his modern aesthetics, Whistler subtly lays out the distinction of his superior aesthetics from the general public’s opinion in tandem with his artistic, perceptive output in his Nocturnes. Slifkin says that Whistler “was often able to manipulate his powerful gift in his favour, actively engaging in the apparently [sic] antagonist force of the marketplace. Whistler transformed the stereotypical avant-garde bohemian into a successful brand with his Aesthetic ideals arguably intact” (Slifkin, 2006). The Nocturnes were largely a perception of reality and would appeal to the viewer depending on his or her inner paradigms of visual beauty. Whistler subtly conveys that only the aesthetically aware elite can appreciate his exclusive and modern efforts in the impressionistic culture. He manipulates his public into desiring to belong to this elite and to see him as a misunderstood genius.
Conclusion
Whistler’s Nocturne in Black and Gold, a near abstraction of a nocturnal scene, was ill-received in the 1877 exhibit and caused the first trial on aesthetics in art. Ruskin compared the work with an accident involving a spilled pot of paint and thought it unfinished and overpriced. Whistler, who sued Ruskin, fought for his right to express his modern impressions in his creative outputs in his own unique view on aesthetics. Through years of unrelenting verbal defense of his series, addressed as Nocturnes, and elaborations on aesthetics, his work became the most important authority on the expression of perception and the precursor for future expressionism and abstractionism in art. Indeed, while Whistler’s Nocturnes were not accepted and even ridiculed by the mostly unenlightened 19th-century general public, his work made a lasting impact on the entirety of the art world. As aesthetic standards and social-artistic cultures are always changing through physical, material, or intellectual innovations, it leaves us to wonder who in our contemporary world will have as much confidence and persistence to confront issues on the art scenes of today.
Aitken, R. (2001). Whistler vs Ruskin. Retrieved from Litigation, no. 2: https://login.dax.lib.unf.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsjsr&AN=edsjsr.29760200&site=eds-live&scope=site.
Craven, D. (1977). Ruskin vs Whistler: The Case against Capitalist Art. Retrieved from Ar Journal, no.2.
Kobbe, G. (1910). An Epoch-Making Picture: Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket. Retrieved from The Lotus Magazine, no.4: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20543204.
Slifkin, R. (2006). James Whistler as the Invisible Man: Anti-Aestheticism and Artistic Vision. Retrieved from Oxford Art Journal, no.1: https://login.dax.lib.unf.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsjsr&AN=edsjsr.3600493&site=eds-live&scope=site.
Teniswood-Harvey, A. (2010). Whistler's Nocturnes: A Case Study in Musical Modeling. Retrieved from Music in Art, no. 1: https://login.dax.lib.unf.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsjsr&AN=edsjsr.41818607&site=eds-live&scope=site.
