In this article a case is made for the consideration of Twentieth Century art as a scientific analysis of the work of art.

The avant-gardes develop an analysis of the work of art in order to determine the essence of art. The variety of styles that the three main trends generate, are a consequence of the absolute necessity to determine the elements involved in the creation of a work of art. Because the avant-gardes were generated through a technical analysis, we consider that their origin corresponds to a scientific tendency of art.

Just as we understand that the orbits of the planets are determined by their own characteristics, and that, inversely, the character of our children is determined by the order of their birth, Twentieth Century art trends occupy a place and hold certain properties imposed by one law: that of applying philosophical principles to art, something that philosophy or criticism has not even imagined about.In his book “On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason”, Schopenhauer explains that nothing occurs without a cause. A cause is all that necessarily produces an effect. The knowledge we derive from a phenomenon occurs thanks to three abilities the human being possesses: sensibility, instinct and reason. Sensibility allows us to know a priori the qualities of an object: its position in space and time. Instinct allows us to know physical phenomena, what is identified through experience or perception of the senses. And reason allows us to draw conclusions by the use of judgment and concepts. Therefore, a person has at its disposal three different kinds of information to understand each phenomenon, which is known as the Principle of Sufficient Reason (P.S.R.) of being, becoming and knowing. The fourth root that Schopenhauer studies are motives, which only exist together with consciousness, and therefore are only possessed by humans. When we applied this theory to Twentieth Century art, we realize that it can explain it, and this is because scientific analysis has been widespread within the subject and therefore manifested in his actions.

The definition of art, which comprises idea, matter, figure and technique, corresponds with the forms of knowledge: geometry, transformation, knowledge and action.

The artistic styles developed at the beginning of the Twentieth Century were completely determined when art accepted the principle that “everything has to be understandable in order to be understood”¹, once the artist applied the scientific principles to art. As we have already mentioned, the study focused on the visible aspects of the work of art, i.e., matter, form and technique, and on to which the P.S.R. of becoming, acting and knowing would be applied. At the same time, the application of the three principles of reason to the first of those qualities, matter, has a philosophical foundation, thus the P.S.R. of knowing would permit us to understand the object as a materialistic phenomenon which gave rise to Conceptual art. Through the P.S.R. of becoming we know the current state of matter, whose essence (or substance) is analyzed by Materialistic art. Finally, the P.S.R. of being, which studies space and time considerations, would deal with the transcendental aspects of matter giving rise to Abstract art.

Likewise, the artist of the Twentieth Century will apply these three principles to the second material aspect of the work of art: the technique of representation, whose objective is to assure that the work of art has a real connection to the reality it attempts to depict and that it is captured as faithfully as possible, so that it can be identified. In order to do this, the artist will first study in depth the position of the figure in space and time, secondly, the present configuration of the figure, and thirdly, the composition of the figure; all this according to the P.S.R. of being, becoming and knowing. We have solved the enigma that has preoccupied Twentieth Century intellectuals, the ultimate meaning of cubism: Trying to determine how the artist develops his representations is therefore the application of the principle of reason of knowing to the technical phase of the material construction of the work of art. According to the principle of reason, its forms of knowledge, i.e., the geometrical, analytic and synthetic, correspond to the study of each of the cases being developed.Both the study of the matter and that of the technique of representation deal with the same issues: geometry or the position in space; changes in the matter or its current limits; and through the object which it is depicted or by the elements that conform it. Each study does it in its own convenient way but always concerning the same issues.

The third aspect studied by scientific art is the figure it represents. This would be the application of the P.S.R. of acting, of the motivation in its outer meaning, since what is perceptible of this type of motivation is expression, which is what is perceived and depicted. The act that carries out and that produces the image that is transmitted, that is to say what is known through empirical perception, is the consequence of motives. The result of applying theory to art is the expressionism, laden with social content. We can also identify, but because of different reasons, its three forms in the French fauvism, the Blue Rider and the Bridge; that would become the ultimate expressionism.

Therefore, the avant-gardes resulting from a scientific tendency, because they constitute a rational approach to art, have generated three different movements according to the constructive qualities contemplated in each work of art. When the artist has dealt with matter, he has done so unconsciously within a trend we could call “material” trend. When the technique of representation becomes the object of the analysis, then we are dealing with a “technicist” trend. And when we analyze the attitudes adopted by the depicted figures, then we are dealing with a “figurist” trend, in which an authentic representation seems to exist. Even though this trend, under closer examination, is also the theoretical study of such attitudes and not the representation of a scene.

1. Note: F. Nietzsche, “Socrates and Tragedy”:

When the Greek tragedy begun declining, Euripides begun looking for a transformation in his work since his prior works were not being understood. Therefore he invented well defined characters but not as profound as those of Aeschylus and Sophocles. His heroes were depicted just as they were, but they were not more than this representation.

THE FOUNDATIONS OF TWENTIETH CENTURY ART: 1.- THE ORIGIN OF THE AVANT-GARDS

In order to understand Twentieth Century Art today, it is necessary to consider two issues: the subject who develops it and the definition of art.

Regarding the creative works, we can consider the subject of that time in two aspects: firstly, because of the need for more accurate definitions, that is to say, an increasing faith in science and reason, and secondly, because it considers formal issues before its content.

As for art, we can provide the following definition: in its external aspect, it is the transformation of matter through the use of a technique in order to represent something, and in its internal aspect, it is the aspiration of presenting us with an idea.

When Maurice Denis established that a picture, before being a depiction of a scene, was a flat surface covered with colors, he was not referring to a definition of a work of art, but to the necessity of studying the work of art according to the principles of his contemporaries, namely based upon rational and ideological principles.

Abstract painting appeared during the same period as cubism and fauvism, but it caused more commotion than these other styles in which one could observe representation, and it was possible to see a certain continuity with the history of figurative painting. This is why expressionism and cubism seemed to have been historically justified. Abstract art did not make reference to any object from reality, and it was not possible to understand a type of art that did not consider the world surrounding us.

But in reality, these three new styles had nothing to do with the history of painting, which had just made a break in the evolution of art, in which the original interest of painting – that of representing reality surrounding us – was abandoned in order to study how that representation was produced through the work of art.

Abstract painting deals with the first of the aspects we included in the definition of a work of art: the matter, and particularly with one of its qualities, the color. Just as its name indicates, it is an abstraction of painting, which does not take into account the other aspects of art: object and technique. Abstract painting focuses on just one aspect, and as any science, it has to focus on one aspect in order to be analyzed without the influence of other qualities, which would alter it, thus making it difficult to identify the particular properties of the color.

We have mentioned that cubism, in some way, seemed to be part of tradition due to its slightly figurative content. But the foundation of this style is still a mystery, until now that we will discover that it deals with the second condition of a work of art: the technique of representation. Representation had been for many years the mere grouping of figures until perspective was discovered during the Renaissance. But at the beginning of the Twentieth Century representation was not a technical difficulty, it was possible to represent anything in any style. Now it was a scientific issue, because now the problem was not how to carry out the representation but to know the elements that make a representation possible: form, elements, and the relative positions of the bodies. Therefore cubism is the study of the techniques of representation.

We include fauvism as part of the expressionist movement because they are closely related (it is not other than the French interpretation of expressionism), and it is necessary to do so because this style, along with The Bridge and The Blue Rider constitute the ways to represent the overcoming of the drama of life through the application of social issues to problematic situations, thus showing us that society provides the answers we are looking for. As it is understood, we are faced with the analysis carried out by the artists from the beginning of the last century of the attitude put forth by the figure depicted in the work of art.

In addition to Hegel’s definition of work of art (idea, matter and figure), we have added the technique, and to the three material conditions needed for the existence of a work of art (matter, technique and representation), it corresponds them precisely three different studies that the artists unconsciously carried out methodically according to the needs of their time: science and society.

The study to achieve this conclusion was carried out by the artists by unconsciously applying the most evident philosophical principles, those principles of reason put forth by Schopenhauer in his work “On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason”. From all of this, what is more evident and simple to understand is that nothing occurs without a cause, and thus we have come to realize the causes of the artistic trends that developed the first avant-gardes, demonstrating that they conform a whole, and explaining the need to develop all of these trends almost simultaneously, since they were analysing the creation of a work of art from a scientific perspective.