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A rare art history classic that The New York Times calls a “delightful, scholarly and gossipy romp through the character and conduct of artists from antiquity to the French Revolution.”
Born Under Saturn is a classic work of scholarship written with a light and winning touch. Margot and Rudolf Wittkower explore the history of the familiar idea that artistic inspiration is a form of madness, a madness directly expressed in artists’ unhappy and eccentric lives. This idea of the alienated artist, the Wittkowers demonstrate, comes into its own in the Renaissance, as part of the new bid by visual artists to distinguish themselves from craftsmen, with whom they were then lumped together. Where the skilled artisan had worked under the sign of light-fingered Mercury, the ambitious artist identified himself with the mysterious and brooding Saturn. Alienation, in effect, was a rung by which artists sought to climb the social ladder.
As to the reputed madness of artists—well, some have been as mad as hatters, some as tough-minded as the shrewdest businessmen, and many others wildly and willfully eccentric but hardly crazy. What is certain is that no book presents such a splendid compendium of information about artists’ lives, from the early Renaissance to the beginning of the Romantic era, as Born Under Saturn. The Wittkowers have read everything and have countless anecdotes to relate: about artists famous and infamous; about suicide, celibacy, wantonness, weird hobbies, and whatnot. These make Born Under Saturn a comprehensive, quirky, and endlessly diverting resource for students of history and lovers of the arts.
“This book is fascinating to read because of the abundant quotations which bring to life so many remarkable
individuals.”–The New York Review of Books
- Sales Rank: #1290430 in Books
- Published on: 1969-04
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 7.75" h x 5.00" w x 1.00" l, 1.00 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 368 pages
Review
"The Wittkowers' entertaining and micro-informed study dissects the pervasive image of the moody, alienated artist. Cautious and provocative, presuming to balance theory and anecdote by happily indulging the latter, Born Under Saturn reads like Vasari's Lives of the Artists rewritten as an appendix to Burton--a colorful tour of eccentricity and genius, populated by all manner of rogues, gentlemen, pennypinchers, hypochondriacs, and enduring masters. Every page has a diverting tale, and the cumulative effect sets the reader's mind reeling." --Modern Painters
“[The authors] have had a wonderful time and so should the reader…Their feat is impressive enough as it stands in this giant popcorn-ball of a book, where surely all the anecdotes and existing documents about artists over a period of some 2,000 years have been stuck together with the syrup of scholarship…into a mass at once unusual, tasty and nourishing...Born Under Saturn is good reading…”–John Canaday, The New York Times Book Review
“Artists are just like people, only more so is the implied conclusion of this delightful, scholarly and gossipy romp through the character and conduct of artists from antiquity to the French Revolution.”–The New York Times (Review of Notable Books of the Year, 1963)
“The Wittkowers…have filled this authoritative contribution to the understanding of creative man with dozens of good stories about great artists and freaks, fools and men of destiny…The blatant, the incomparable, the boorish, the bland and the bizarre pass under review here in an enormously interesting parade.”–Charles Poore, The New York Times
“[F]ascinating to read because of the abundant quotations which bring to life so many remarkable individuals”–The New York Review of Books
About the Author
RUDOLF WITTKOWER (1901-1971) was a German-American art historian. He was on the staff of the Warburg Institute, London, and became professor at the University of London. He then headed the Department of Fine Arts and Archaeology at Columbia. His highly original works in English include Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism, Art and Architecture in Italy, 1600—1750, Essays in the History of Architecture, Essays in the History of Art, and Baroque Art: The Jesuit Contribution.
MARGOT WITTKOWER (1902-1995) was born in Berlin and established herself as an interior designer. After moving to London with her husband, she became an expert on neo-Palladian architecture. She collaborated on a number of books with her husband, including Born Under Saturn and The Divine Michelangelo.
JOSEPH CONNORS is past Director of the American Academy in Rome, and currently is Professor of Art History, Columbia University.
Most helpful customer reviews
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
If only academic books were always this engaging
By GiovanniGF
Despite the authors' insistence that they don't want the book to be a collection of meandering (and contradictory) anecdotes, it's largely what it is. And that's what makes this hilarious, gossipy, and slightly cracked book so great.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
The commenter who writes that the book is boring misses that this is a very exciting book--not to ...
By Laurie Austen
The commenter who writes that the book is boring misses that this is a very exciting book--not to mention misses the fact that the "bits and pieces" of information are not something to complain about, but to enjoy. More, they support the general thesis that artists come in all stripes. Rather than there being a constant artistic temperament or constitution that transcends the ages, artists have ranged from being mad as hatters to being astutely calculating businessmen. This may sound obvious to some, but it needed proving, and the Wittkowers do it. They soundly rebut the unacknowledged modern and contemporary assumption that artists as a class are somehow weird or at least radically different from everyone else. A truly great book--one I have enjoyed simply for pleasure and, as a university professor, a book I've used as a course textbook, on multiple occasions, with great success.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
thought streams running counter to the ideology of Anglo-American scientific reductionism
By Avid
Note: This review was originally written to address "Born Under Saturn - The Character and Conduct of Artists: A Documented History from Antiquity to the French Revolution" by Rudolf and Margot Wittkower (described by the N.Y. Times as “a delightful, scholarly and gossipy romp"). However, a significant space in this review is also given to Kay Redfield Jamison's very popular "Touched With Fire - Manic Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament". Mentioned also is "Soul Hunger: The Feeling Human Being and the Life Sciences", 2010, by the Swiss psychiatrist Daniel Hell - a book which deserves, in this reviewer's mind, far more attention than Jamison's best-seller. Daniel Hell's "Soul Hunger", like many "foreign" thought streams running counter to the ideology of Anglo-American scientific reductionism employed by Jamison, simply never appear in English translation to begin with; or if they do, like Hell's "Soul Hunger", remain nevertheless obscure to the English speaking reader. "Daniel Hell has written a book that is a true scientific and philosophic masterpiece." - Raymond Battegay, M.D., emerited professor of psychiatry of the University of Basel, Switzerland. (from reviews found at: "Soul Hunger: The Feeling Human Being and the Life Sciences Daimon Publishers")
____________
I have my copy of "Born Under Saturn" since the late 1960's - and consider it one of the few important texts I've encountered in my specialized field of art history. So, unlike many who like to be entertained by books, I usually consult books for the information and insights I find in them which are not to be found in exactly the same form in other books. This is especially true, for example, for the chapter in "Born Under Saturn" with the title: "Genius, Madness and Melancholy". I want to quote from the beginning of this chapter in order to illustrate just how "gossipy", "fun", "hilarious" and "entertaining" art history can REALLY be:
"Plato differentiated between clinical insanity and creative insanity - that inspired madness of which seers and poets are possessed. ... [real "gossipy" - right?]
It was Marsilio Ficino, the great Florentine philosopher and commentator on Plato's Dialogues, who paved the way for the diffusion of Plato's thought. [CAUTION: here comes some more "gossip"] Ficino summed up his ideas on inspiration in a letter of 1457 addressed to his friend Pellegrino Agli. A few passages from this long statement may here be paraphrased: The soul, which tries to grasp through the senses as much as possible [hey, I can't BELIEVE this gossip!] of divine beauty and harmony, is enraptured by divine frenzy. Plato calls celestial love the unattainable desire, which drives us to recognize divine beauty. To see a beautiful body arouses [...Ho, Ho, Hooo!...] the burning desire after divine beauty and, therefore, those who are inspired and transported into a state of divine madness."
...and here the plot thickens a bit.
"Thereafter the idea that the true artist created in a state of inspired madness was much discussed and widely accepted. [but this is just "gossip", right?] We need not probe further into the pervasive influence of Plato's furores, but shall turn to another tradition according to which genius was not far removed from real madness. Seneca's often quoted dictum ... 'there never has been great talent without some touch of madness' - would seem to express this point of view. In actual fact, Seneca's further comment leaves no doubt that he referred to the Platonic fire of divine inspiration rather than to insanity. BUT WHEN THE PASSAGE WAS QUOTED OUT OF CONTEXT, AS IT OFTEN WAS FROM THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY ONWARDS, IT SUGGESTED A DIFFERENT MEANING. [my emphasis] Dryden's 'Great wits are sure to madness allied, / And thin partitions do their bounds divide, [great gossip! - I'm sure we can ALL agree] and even Schopenhauer's 'genius is nearer to madness than the average intelligence' echo the MISINTERPRETED LINE FROM SENECA." [again, my emphasis]
... and here is where we start getting "close to home", so to speak.
"During the nineteenth century clinical diagnosis confirmed the previous assumption of an alliance between genius and madness. Early in the century Lamartine already talked of 'cette maladie qu'on appelle génie' [yet more gossip: 'this illness is called genius'] by the end of the century the idea of the disease was so firmly established that a popular magazine declared 'evidence is not lacking to warrant the assumption that genius is a special morbid condition'. Meanwhile a school of professional psychologists, represented by ... Moreau (1804-84) ... Lombroso (1836-1909) ... Moebius (1853-1907), had correlated psychosis and artistic activity. Their findings had a considerable influence on twentieth century psychiatrists. ..."
"Psychiatric opinion conquered large sectors of the public. A writer like Proust maintained that 'everything great in the world comes from neurotics. They alone have founded religions and composed our masterpieces.' And Lionel Trilling regards the supposed connection between mental illness and artistic genius as 'one of the characteristic notions of our culture'. " [WOW! I have rarely read such a fun and entertaining book!]
... or, you can just read the highly dangerous book by Kay Redfield Jamison: "Touched With Fire - Manic Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament" (1993). Jamison is no artist and doesn't know beans about art - or exhibit the slightest concern for art's broader history as a history of ideas (found in "Born Under Saturn"). But this is completely OK because Jamison herself is diagnosed with manic depressive illness and inhabits the higher levels of the medical establishment. Or, to phrase it another way, Jamison KNOWS PERFECTLY WELL all there is to know about art: it's all just a lot of beautiful and/or pioneering stuff in the "useless" field of aesthetics ... wonderful and thrilling, but wholly dispensable when set against the "real world" - plus what currently gets called science on the one hand and "health and material well-being" on the other. This is THE essence of philistinism, which pays lip service to the "beauty" of art while keeping art from ever being a living force in life. In the words of composer Morton Feldman, "I feel that music [art] should have no vested interests, that you shouldn't know how it's made, that you shouldn't know if there's a system, that you shouldn't know anything about it ... except that it's some kind of life force that to some degree REALLY CHANGES YOUR LIFE ... if you're into it."
At one point in her book (pp. 55-56) Dr. Jamison mentions "Born Under Saturn" - but in no meaningful way engages with the HISTORICAL / SOCIAL CRITICAL material presented by the Wittkowers. Why? Because the latter is too diametrically opposed to Jamison's Anglo-American reductionism on the scientific plane and her abysmal philistinism on the cultural. By remaining essentially silent regarding the material presented in "Born Under Saturn", Jamison banks on the continuing, total ignorance of her English-speaking readers of the fundamental opposition of contemporary European psychiatric / medical thought (see: "Soul Hunger: The Feeling Human Being and the Life Sciences", 2010, by the Swiss psychiatrist Daniel Hell) to her Anglo-American reductionism - a time-proven propaganda technique; and this is not the only example of Jamison's careful cherry-picking when it comes to sources which could contradict her opinions... but this review is already long enough without going into more detail. Then, in a spasm of seeming "conscience motivated thoughtfulness", Jamison muses on her final pages:
"What remains troubling is whether we have diminished the most extraordinary among us - our writers, artists and composers - by discussing them in terms of psychopathology or illnesses of mood. Do we - in our rush to diagnose, to heal, and perhaps even alter their genes - compromise the respect we should feel for their differentness, independence, strength of mind and individuality? Do we diminish artists if we conclude that they are far more likely than most people to suffer from recurrent attacks of mania and depression, experience volatility of temperament, lean toward the melancholic and end their lives through suicide? I don't think so. Such statements seem to me to be fully warranted by what we now know [within the confines of the Anglo-American medical establishment, that is]; to deny them flies in the face of truth ..."
Whatever "truth" exists in what Dr. Jamison thinks (or better, "believes in" when it comes to the dogmatic reduction of everything to material cause and effect), we can, however, count on one certainty: a multi-billion dollar criminal enterprise (the shorter term being "mafia"), a.k.a., the international pharmaceutical industry ("drug every 'problem kid' in sight; you never know - they might grow up to be authority-questioning artists") working in close conjunction with the medical establishment to achieve a zero-tolerance-for-deviance-vision of our blooming future as a species.
P.S. Here's another quote from "Genius, Madness and Melancholy" which I really shouldn't omit:
" '... the painter or writer is not unique and no more in need of personality understanding than is the greengrocer or the banker or the man on the street, all of whom have their own peculiar manner of dealing symbolically with psychic forces whether they deal with money (manna), power, painting, or politics.' [Pasto, T.A., and Kivisto, P.: 'Art and the Clinical Psychologist', Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, XII (1953)]
Objectively unassailable, this truly democratic psychology, which obliterates value judgements, realigns once again (as in medieval times) the artist with the common man and effaces the specific traits of character often associated with creative minds in the last five centuries."
... but WHO NEEDS TRUE DEMOCRACY (or even art) when you can have almost unlimited amounts money and power instead?
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