Gabriel Von Max:Moneys as Judges of Art

I visited the Neue Pinakothek to see some 18^th and 19^th century works as we had studied the sublime in first year. There was a fantastic range of works from Casper David Friedrich right up to post impressionism. One artist in particular stood out in relation to theory of the uncanny. The development of the science of evolutionary theory in the nineteenth century posited a radical reappraisal of creationism and the human animal relationship. The notion of a direct relation of humans to apes was a radical proposition. In this painting Gabriel Von Max literally ‘exploits’ this territory and produces a fascinating yet ambiguous painting. A collector of anthropological artefacts and in fact living amongst monkeys at his home, Von Max studied and photographed them in order to achieve the level of realism we see in the painting. Obviously he was very fond of them. He painted monkeys in human dramas and activities, personifying them.  In Monkeys as Judges of Art 1889, I wonder if Von Max is asking us to look at the culture of image production and consumption itself. Looking at the faces and posturing of his monkeys, we inevitably project human qualities on the figures. This resemblance produces an uncanny effect. The ambiguity of the monkeys as monkeys and monkeys as human’s dichotomy produces an ambiguity that plays with the human centred thinking of the enlightenment. The organisation of the creatures looks very unnatural and staged, the one looking to the viewer returns our gaze, as if he is in on the joke. I don’t think he is necessarily suggesting that critics are ignorant or stupid. I think he is more interested in the fact of art as a phenomenon and the capacity to make judgements based on illusions and linguistic devices. Art is possible because of the capacity for the human subject to believe, to imagine and to think in abstract terms. An anthropological position on Art might look at community; the world of the social which both produces and consumes art. I think this is what he is opening us up to. In the nineteenth century the evidence for the possibility for a shared ancestry introduced to the culture a whole new theoretical field for science, philosophy and theology. The monkey as cousin or family opposes the idea of the animal as a discreet creation of the divine. Naturally this challenged the prevailing paradigm. Interestingly research has shown that apes do have a sense of the uncanny. When shown bad computer models of apes they react negatively, looking away in horror. I wonder if they do the same with bad art?