 (AS I SEE IT) by John McGregor The Celts were probably the first people to develop abstract art. At least they were the first in Europe to do so. The Celts looked at Greek and Roman art and thought them silly to worship gods that had a human appearance, and the Greeks in turn, declared that the Celts had no art whatsoever. To the Celts, art done with a sense of realism was just not art, but to create an abstraction that could still be recognized as the intended object took a genuine talent. In Figure 1, we see a Greek Tetradrachma minted ca.320 B.C. in the city of Aphipolis, that features a portrait of Zeus on the obverse and a young man riding a horse on the reverse. In Figure 2 we see the Celtic version of this coin minted soon after the Greek piece, by one of the Celtic tribes that inhabited the banks of the Danube near what is today, the city of Belgrade.
In addition to the abstract, their art was also geometrically balanced, based on mathematical sequences, and often very intricate. Figures 3 and 4 are two examples of Celtic art found on beer steins.
The Celts applied their art to everything in their lives, their household items, their wagons and chariots, their weapons, money, religious objects, jewelry, and even their bodies. The Celts were not a unified people. They were clannish, and often fought among themselves, even to the death, over nothing more than a piece of meat, called the "Hero's Portion." Individual prowess in battle was often more important than the common good. When it came to art however, regardless of the time in history, 300 B.C. or 500 A.D., or the location, Austria, Spain, or Ireland, they were a united people in that their art was consistently the same, almost as if it were something genetic. It is the art from this period that this article concerns itself with, not the later, more intricate styles. Celtic art, like the language (Gaelic), never really died away. However by the 5th century A.D., it was confined to Brittany in France, and the British Isles, primarily the West of England (Wales and Cornwall), Scotland and Ireland. Today, Ireland, and to a lesser degree Scotland, are the last outposts of the Celtic people. It was primarily in Irish monasteries beginning about the 9th century that Celtic art was further developed for use as illumination in books and on manuscripts (Figures 5 and 6).
Whether it was intended or accidental, there was a continental revival of the Celtic style of rendering birds and animals. This revival took place in the Westerwald ca.1750-1800. We find numerous steins, depicting birds, boar, rabbits, deer and horses, done in an abstract style similar to that of the Celts. Many of these steins, although not done in an intricate style, are abstract and geometrically balanced. See Figures 7, 8 and 9. My personal opinion is that this revival was intentional, and in rendering a style from the past, they had started the process that eventually came to be called the "Historismus Movement."
This "movement" appears to be a sequential string of events that reproduced styles from the past; that is, from the Celts through the Renaissance to the Baroque. Interestingly, it was during the Baroque Period, ca.1750, that the Westerwald potters began to copy the Celtic style. Unfortunately the demand for stoneware started to decline around 1800, and there was a hiatus in stoneware manufacturing that lasted for some 35 years from ca.1830-1865. When the demand for stoneware made a resurgence at the height of the industrial revolution, ca.1865, the manufacturers began producing wares in the style of the 16th, and 17th centuries (Figures 10 and 11) and this is when we normally consider the Historismus Movement to have begun.
By the end of the 19th century, the movement caught up with itself, and was producing steins in Baroque style (Figure 12). Having come full circle, the Historismus Movement died from a lack of anything old to copy, and the manufacturers were forced to move on to something new. That something new was Jugendstil, or Art Nouveau. See Figures 13, 14 and 15.
If this reasoning is correct, the Historismus movement, at least as far as steins are concerned, did not begin ca.1865, but in fact, much earlier, ca.1750.
At least one factory in the late 19th century felt that the Celtic style was important enough to use it on a number of their steins. The remaining elements in Figures 16, 17, 18 and 19, along with those in Figures 3 and 4, are found on steins produced at the Freising factory during their first three years of operation, 1876 through 1878, and it is highly probable that it was Max Borho, the factory's co-founder and chief designer, who had the interest in things Celtic. Figure 20 has some style similarities to Figure 18 and if you look closely, the handle appears to represent either a bird or a plumed serpent. This piece is from the Regensburg factory where Max Borho also designed and was a co-founder. Celtic art has continued to flourish and has enjoyed a revival of sorts. Today, you can patronize your local tattoo parlor and if you are into that sort of thing, become a Celtic work of art yourself.  to Table of Contents. |
