At the same time, Frye began to teach art history at Slade Academy of Fine Arts, University College London. 1906 was appointed as the director of painting department of Artin Metropolitan Museum in new york. In the same year, Frye discovered Paul Cézanne's paintings and began to shift his academic interest from Italian classical painting to French modern art.
19 10 and 19 12, Frye held two "post-impressionists" exhibitions in grafton Art Museum in London, which made the closed British Isles art world keep up with the pace of modern European art, but at the same time it was severely criticized by the public, the media and critics. They think French modern art is rubbish and call Frye a "liar" and a "liar". Frye had to write a series of papers and speeches to defend the post-impressionist painters. These defenses have now become the most outstanding modern art defense documents in the history of art and criticism. As an independent critic, Frye organized and held art exhibitions with independent aesthetic ideas, which also played a pioneering role in the modern art curatorial system and critical system. (See my book The Golden Age of Modern Art Criticism: From roger fry to Greenberg, Art Times, No.8, 2009; For the details of two post-impressionist exhibitions and the general historical facts defended by Frye, please refer to the first chapter of 20th Century Art Criticism, roger fry and Formalism Criticism, China Academy of Fine Arts Press, 2003, pp. 54-80. )
19 13, Frye founded the "Omega Workshop". This is a design company and an enterprise art creation studio. Members include Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant.
From 65438 to 0920, Frye re-edited and published Vision and Design, which was composed of his most famous art criticism articles, and achieved unprecedented success. This further consolidated his leading position in British criticism. This book is still considered as one of the most outstanding contributions in the development of modernist theory.
In this book, Frye emphasizes that "form" is more important than "content", that is, the visual characteristics of a work of art are more important than its theme. He believes that artists should express their thoughts and feelings with the arrangement of colors and forms, rather than the theme. And such a work should not be judged by whether it accurately reproduces reality.
From 65438 to 0926, at the invitation of the French magazine l'Amour de l'art, Frye wrote a review about Cezanne's works collected by the great collector Pellelin, and published the English version the following year. This is his masterpiece Cezanne: A Study of His Development.
This book is a classic study of Cezanne's art by roger fry. It is clear, sensitive and original, and now it has been recognized as a model in this field. Frye himself is a painter. He abandoned the popular criticism mode at that time, and proposed that form rather than content is the most basic expression element of art, and Cezanne's works are most in line with Frye's ideal of giving formal expression to all aspects of nature. In this book, Frye not only tries to explore the development process of Cezanne's artistic style, but also carefully examines the internal structure and mechanism of individual works. The result is a wonderful and vivid book, which is of technical value to painters and students studying painting. It also provides insightful opinions for ordinary readers and shows the incredible charm of Cezanne's art. Virginia Woolf, Frye's best friend before his death, thought this book was Frye's greatest work.
1933, Frye was appointed as the long-awaited Professor Slade of Cambridge University and began to give a series of lectures on art history in Cambridge, but he died tragically before the lecture was over. Later, under the arrangement of Frye's successor, Sir Kenneth Clark, a famous British art historian, the lecture was published in 1939 with the title "The Last Lecture". Roger fry is one of the founders of the internationally recognized formalism criticism theory, and formalism is one of the foundations of modernist art view. Frye's own theoretical sources are slightly three: one is the formal analysis method in the history of German-Austrian art, mainly from Wolflin (Heinrich W &:ouml；; lff Lin)； The other is the art appraisal method in Italian art history, mainly from Moreri; The other is the oriental aesthetic resource, which comes from Frye's friend and famous sinologist Lawrence Binion. From Wolflin, Frye learned to analyze the style structure, style evolution and evolution of artistic works with strict visual formal terms; Frye learned almost as rigorous identification techniques as surgeons from Moreri, and was especially good at capturing the technical information and formal features of the picture from places that the general audience ignored, usually the painter was unconscious. From Bin Yong, Frye learned the understanding of oriental artists (especially China artists) on the texture, properties, brushwork and calligraphy value of painting.
Combining these different academic resources, Frye formed a systematic formalism-modernism critical theory system. However, Frye's ideological system is not monolithic and there is no evolution, but it can obviously make people feel two stages. In the previous stage (from 1906 to the publication of Art and Design), Frye emphatically defended modernism represented by Impressionism. In the later period (from the publication of Metamorphosis to his later years), when formalism (especially pure abstract art) became the mainstream at that time, he tried to repair its theoretical basis, thus trying his best to save his theory from dogmatism and academic thoughts.
The main idea of the previous stage is especially focused on Frye's defense of two post-impressionist art exhibitions and art and design. We might as well sum up as follows:
The main purpose of art is to express the deepest and most universal feelings in human nature, so it will inevitably resort to human knowledge (or understanding) on the basis of human senses (vision), thus tending to design or shape to some extent. However, since the Western Renaissance, art has been pursuing accurate replication science at the expense of the expression of more important aspects in human mind, and the latest form of this replication science is Impressionism. Post-impressionism represented by Cezanne insists on the importance of personal expression, thus creating the modeling language of modern art: replacing photographic realism with a certain degree of deformation or even abstraction, and replacing light and shadow with pure color and line modeling. (See Shen: How Formalists Intervene in Life: Frye and His Times, Art Nouveau Magazine, No.6, 2009)
However, in the last stage of Frye's life, he questioned the formalism principle as the basis of modernism more and more strongly, or it can be said that he actually reached the opposite degree to that simplified formalism theory. Even before the war, Frye's modernism never gave up the traditional heritage of art history and emphasized "classicality". Frye himself gave up-or at least modified-the formalism principle that was once very important to him, which was clearly reflected in the Introduction to Transformation published by 1926. When defining the meaning and purpose of reproduction in plastic arts, Frye said: "This is always the crux of such a puzzling nature. I am not ashamed to admit that I have put forward different solutions at different times. My position at that time was definitely different-I insisted on the absolute importance of pure modeling at that time, almost implying that there was nothing else to consider. At this time, I emphasized the dramatic possibility that we might call painting. " (roger fry, transformation, London: Chato & ampWindus, 1926, p. 13. )
After giving up this strict formalism, Frye admitted that he was prepared to "reconcile, or at least explain, these two seemingly contradictory attitudes". Therefore, this became Frye's later writing plan: without giving up the ideal of pure aesthetic experience, modernism was reintegrated into a wider tradition of art history by combining representation with formalism paradigm.
Frye's most important work Cezanne: A Study of His Development in his later years constitutes the peak of his career. This work is very subtle and difficult to summarize. But judging from the general trend of Frye's later writing, we may describe the characteristics of this book as a psychological analysis based on formal analysis. In this book, Frye explores Cezanne's personality through a detailed analysis of painting forms. At the beginning of the book, Cezanne's career is presented as a process of "discovering his own personality", and those descriptive words-"Cezanne is so cautious ... he is so humble"-can be used to describe Cezanne's personality and his basic creative methods of painting. Witschel, an American scholar, said: "Through Frye's text, people see a heroic and almost existential image, although Frye focuses on a large number of psychological descriptions of Cezanne's early years. The words he used to describe or analyze his works and their forms, colors and compositions can often be used to describe Cezanne's attitude. The description of Cezanne's unique psychological state and emotion shows his strong sympathy for the painter, and implies that he even found a similar situation between them. Cezanne's humiliation and disappointment in surrendering to Sharon, as well as the hardships, self-esteem and loneliness he felt when his works faced misunderstanding and hostility, can be found in Frye's own life. Frye seems to have realized the parallelism between his position as a formalist critical messenger and Cezanne's works in front of him. " (Beverly Twichell, Cezanne and Formalism, Ann Arbor, UMI Research Press, 1987, p. 1 18. )
In order to understand this, we only need to mention a few facts in Frye's biography: as the son of Quakers, Frye chose art as his lifelong career against his father's will; As the most outstanding art appraiser in Europe, he faced a dilemma between the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the British Museum, but found nothing. As the most famous art critic in Britain at that time, he held two exhibitions of post-impressionism, but became the volcano center of celebrity and public censure. As one of the youngest and most promising scholars in Cambridge University, he didn't get the coveted position of history professor until his later years. (For Frye's life, see Virginia Woolf, roger fry: A Biology, London: Huo Jiasi Publishing House, [1940] with Francis Spalding's introduction, London,1991; Frances Spalding, roger fry: Art and Life, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1980).
It has been 20 years since 1906 first saw Cezanne's paintings and 1926 wrote the book Cezanne and the Development of His Painting Style. Thus, Frye's Cezanne monograph became the opportunity he had been waiting for for most of his life. A scientist's Cambridge study career, a painter's skill training, an appraiser's keen eye, an art historian's knowledge accumulation, an art critic's insight, and finally, a Cezanne art enthusiast and learner are all natural (for a brief introduction of Frye's life and his critical theory, see my book Critical Theory in roger fry's Art Research 2000). The development of Cezanne and his painting style is the peak of Frye's artistic career, and it is his summary and will left to the world. Although his works have been published one after another since then, they cannot be compared with the present book in terms of their height and influence on later generations. Although Cezanne and the Development of His Painting Style is only a pamphlet (translated into Chinese with less than 60,000 words), it has set up an insurmountable monument for Cezanne studies. From the style, we can also recognize the homogeneity between it and Cezanne's paintings, that is, it is a crystal, and all levels are glittering and translucent. The narrator can enter from different angles: either from his phased study of Cezanne's painting style or from his exploration of Cezanne's painting media (oil painting/watercolor); Or by its analysis of the macro-structure of Cezanne's art world (Byzantium opposed baroque and classically suppressed romance), or by its concrete and subtle analysis of Cezanne's personal works; Or choose a way to approach his main critical skills from his most idiosyncratic formal analysis, or take his analysis of Cezanne's life, temperament and psychology to explore his super-formal method, and so on. All these angles are undoubtedly possible. In fact, these possibilities constitute the main trend of Cezanne's research after Frye (for details, see my humble book "A glimpse of Cezanne's research after Frye", published in the third issue of World Art in 2008; And included as an appendix in Cezanne's Chinese version and its painting style development.
Cezanne's still life paintings constitute the climax of Frye's fierce comments on Cezanne in Cezanne and the development of his painting style. Readers can see that in this chapter, Frye has completely analyzed Cezanne's life, background, interest, fashion and aesthetic thought, leaving only a high-density formal analysis. These formal analyses are extremely ingenious and can be regarded as the highest model of formal analysis in western art history and art criticism without hesitation. It has attracted the praise of countless latecomers. "This is the first pure formal analysis of this master's works." (Eugene Kleinbauer's Modern Perspective in the History of Western Art, new york: Holt, Reinhardt and Winston, 197 1, page 7) "It is essential to study Cezanne and catalog the works of Luo Nai Venturi in Lyon ... for his comments. (Meyer Schapiro, Cezanne, new york: Harry N. Abrams, 1952, p. 30) "Frye first coined the term' post-impressionism' in 19 10, covering Cezanne and other painters, and it was in10. It also reveals the development of Cezanne's style with the polar opposition between primitive and baroque, classical and romantic, color and sketch, and lays the central concept of studying Cezanne, becoming the first must-read book to understand this master. " Fan Jingzhong: Comment on the back cover of Cezanne's Chinese translation and the development of his painting style. Frye's position as a critic and aesthetician has long been recognized all over the world: "Frye, as the de facto founder of English modernism around 19 10, and his great influence on the way the public watched and understood art in the first half of the 20th century, made him one of the spiritual leaders of that century." (John Murdoch, Preface, edited by Christopher Green. Art becomes modern: roger fry's artistic vision, London: Courtaud Gallery, 1999, p. 5) and, "Frye has enough insight to realize that the significance of modern art is twofold: it not only brings a thorough revision to aesthetic theory, but also brings. (Solomon R. fishman, Interpretation of Art: Essays on john ruskin's Art Criticism, walter pater, clive bell, roger fry and Herbert Read, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1963, p.1kloc-0/0).
However, Frye was not satisfied with merely laying the foundation for western formalistic art history and art criticism. In his articles from 19 18 to 1934, he also excluded many things in his original critical theory. However, this critical theory was founded only after he experienced hardships before the war. However, we have to think that the final effect of Frye's whole career is far from changeable and fragmentary. On the contrary, some factors run through his critical career.
Frye never gave up his attention to post-impressionist painting, especially Cezanne's "classicism", even when he defended modernism under the siege of hostility. When he further deepened his critical theory, what he did showed his deep participation in all fields of social life. In the later period, when adjusting and repairing the original theory, his early thoughts were not overthrown, but refined and precise: what should be abandoned should be abandoned, and what should be highlighted should be more prominent. In fact, a new generation of readers can find a more sympathetic figure in Frye's doubts, in his sense of social purpose, or in his contempt for all authority, rather than a masked "father of formalism" image.
At present, the author is sorting out, compiling and translating Selected Works of Frye's Art Criticism (Jiangsu Fine Arts Publishing House, 20 10 will be published soon). The anthology includes not only Frye's famous defense articles for two post-impressionist art exhibitions in his early days, but also his important papers in his later years (such as Lines as a Means of Expression of Modern Art, The Dual Nature of Painting, Rembrandt: An Interpretation, etc.). I hope that through the publication of this anthology, on the one hand, we can improve our understanding of the diversity and scope of Frye's writing, on the other hand, we can also realize the diversity of modernism in the so-called post-modern context, and its evolution and development from birth to being declared dismissed.
In particular, we should realize that Frye's ideological reorganization in his later years has not weakened our respect for this great founder of modernist theory. On the contrary, while realizing what an idol destroyer he is, we naturally admire him as a sincere seeker of knowledge and a lover of beauty. After all, it is much more important for him to defend the pursuit of true beauty than to provide a closed and seemingly perfect system at the risk of being academic and dogmatic. In the final analysis, Frye is a real person, a critic who relies on the feeling of the scene, a painter who believes in his own intuition and experience, and a scholar who despises all external authority and believes in his own rationality and internal laws. Even after he was 60 years old, as he himself said, when he stood in the Louvre, he could "forget all my theories, everything I wrote and thought, and try to follow his impression completely". (quoted from Jacklin V. Falkenheim's roger fry and the Beginning of Formalist Art Criticism, Ann Arbor, Michigan: UMI Research Press, 1980, p. 127). At the same time, his strong belief and heartfelt rational power finally made him a great intellectual who changed his ideological process and aesthetic taste in the 20th century.