Poetry and Prose inWestern Painting
A ceremonial lecture given byWin Labuda on the occasion of the 70th
birthday of Manfred Oehmichen
Your Magnificence, Your Excellencies, Dear Friends,
It is a great privilege for me to be able to hold this lecture in this place
that I have come to love, the Institute for the History of Medicine and
Science of the University of Lübeck, on the occasion of the 70th birthday
of Manfred Oehmichen, a scientist recognized throughout the world, and
my personal friend. The fact that Manfred Oehmichen devoted himself
entirely to painting after receiving emeritus status in 2005 served as
inspiration in selecting the topic for this lecture.
Introduction
First, I would like to say a few words about how the term poetry has
evolved in the course of the history of ideas and contrast it with the term
prose. Against the background of the multiplicity of terms used to classify
works of paintings and graphic art (Table 1, 2) – a multiplicity which has
become unbearably excessive – I will then suggest a simplified system.
With this system which consists of only six categories, works of painting
and graphic art can be clearly classified and described. On the first level
of such a classification structure the three terms representational,
expressive abstract and constructive abstract shall be applied. In
addition, the terms poetic and prosaic shall be assumed and applied on
the second level. Before I conclude, I will briefly touch on the mutual
enrichment of painting and lyric poetry. In my closing remarks I will give
my views on the meaningfulness of simplified classification systems in
the visual arts.
What is poetry?
Various encyclopaedias relate the term to the spoken and written word.
However, the interpretation of poetry as lyric poetry is not the sole
meaning of the term in the understanding of German-speaking people
today. The term poetry is derived from the Greek poiesis which is
described by Plato (Fig. 1) in his dialogue “Symposium” [1] as follows:
“All creation or passage of non-being into being is poetry or making…”.
Martin Heidegger, 1889-1976 (Fig. 2) also translated this passage from
Ancient Greek into German:
“Every occasion for whatever passes beyond the nonpresent and goes
forward into presencing is poiesis, bringing-forth.”
[2]
One may conclude from this that poiesis did not merely refer to the art of
rhetoric or of poetry, but rather to what was brought forth for the
enrichment of the existing in general. And in the art of Greece of that
time this included poetry, sculpture and painting. In this sense, in my
lecture I would like to share some of my thoughts with you regarding the
essence of art, and in particular the essence of painting.
It was the German philosopher Georg Friedrich Hegel, 1770 - 1831 (Fig. 3)
who made a categorical separation between the poetic and prosaic
thought [3] in his Lectures on Aesthetics (posthumously published in the
years 1835-1838). Here the world of thought, inspired by the holistic,
artistic perception, is compared with the world of reality, the world of
differentiation, or as Hegel puts it, outwardness and finiteness.
1
1 - Plato, 428 – 348 B.C.
2 - Martin Heidegger,
1889 - 1976
3 - Friedrich Hegel,
1770 - 1831
