I’d Like to Thank the Academy: theories on climbing the intellectual ladder

What does it mean to be a cultural intellect? How does knowledge exhibit social status, privilege, and in any case, importance? I’d like to point back to a rather unlikely source…Flemish curiosity paintings from the 1600-1700s. Rather unexpected…but nevertheless it can possibly be connected to the emergence of the music “mash-up”, the likes of GirlTalk and the Hood Internet.

Painting in the Netherlands from 1600-1700 saw growth in two very different directions: large scale religious iconography, and small curiosity paintings. The resurgence of religious iconography had a lot to do with the Catholic Counter-Reformation in response to Lutheran criticism of iconoclasm in the late 1500’s. Catholicism was re-instated as a religious power due to Catholic Spain’s takeover of Southern Netherlands.  Small scale paintings and woodcuts in general were seen as a forte of Netherlandish artists…Italians controlled the market for large-scale ceilings and altarpieces. Southern Netherlands saw an increase in trade and international exposure due to their relation with the Hapsburg Dynasty, which accounts for two developments: the increased appeal and value of traditional Netherlandish “small-scale” art, and the development of a new social class, the merchants.

The merchants, now with their sufficiently increased wealth due to international trade, were interested in using their wealth to elevate their social status. Merchants began to commission artists as early as 1614 to depict intimate paintings of their material wealth, which would then be discussed and displayed with guests. Why not just set up a room with all of your rare possessions? Because they wanted to show they were well-connected and wealthy enough to pay for a famous contemporary artist from their time, such as Peter Paul Rubens or Willem van Haecht.

Now, for how this connects to intellect: the ‘curiosity’ painting, though occasionally meant to illustrate an encyclopedic, indexical record of the merchant’s belongings, also included other paintings by famous artists from the time, even if the merchant did not own it himself. So, the painting of paintings became a game: just how many of the miniatures will you be able to name?

Willem van Haecht. Collection of Cornelius van der Geest. 1628.

Every painting and sculpture in “Collection of Cornelius van der Geest” is a recognizable masterpiece, and it was considered a symbol of status, intellect, and privilege to be able to name them all. Also, what should be mentioned about this painting is the fact that every person’s face is a miniature, recognizable portrait of a courtier/merchant/royalty who had visited van der Geest at some time in his life. (So not only is the painting a commodity, but the friendship of nobility was as well). For example, the man in the large crowd, to the right of the painting (and gesturing with his left hand) is Cornelius van der Geest himself.  While I recognize, personally, several of the statues from the Villa Borghese in Rome (which points to the fact that van der Geest did not own all of the artwork depicted) the only other painting that sticks out at the moment is the Battle of the Amazons by Rubens in the far left corner. Here is a larger example:

P.P. Rubens. Battle of the Amazons. 1618.

Naming paintings/people/sculptures within another painting was a courtly game. The Spanish king and queen had paintings done of their vast collection. Being able to participate in the game elevated you to an intellectual status of nobility, and also inducted you into a guild specifically for intellectual and appreciative art supporters, the Guild of St. Luke’s.

After a very long winded history lesson…now how does this relate to pop culture knowledge today? For starters, an ability to catch “references” in films, television, advertisements, and music has become a mark of cultural mastery. Being able to identify duplications and origination is valued even more, such as recognizing that a song is a cover of an original song from the 80’s, or an advertisement that uses the signature Warhol 4-paneled silkscreen effect. And let’s not forget the music mash-up…artists like GirlTalk have been especially masterful at whittling a recognizable song down to just two or three bars of accompaniment, overlaying it with several other bursts of songs, and then moving on to the next. While always fascinated with the technical skill and composition of these pieces, we always find ourselves trying to name the songs that we recognize, and search for the songs that we don’t. And because it is near impossible to look up the songs that GirlTalk uses based on one or two beats, the only way to become a well-rounded, pop culture intellect is to expose yourself to as much music as you possibly can outside of the song, and then return to it. We have it easier, with the help of the internet…in 17th century Netherlands the equivalent of a wikipedia search for “Borghese” meant an actual trip to Rome. Not saying that’s a bad thing…