The North American historian Hayden White very aptly conceived of history as a burdensome species whose traditional positivist methodology has interfered with the necessity of the realisation of present existence. As White points out in his 1966 article 'The Burden of History', the writing of history is synonymous with the creation of myths. History is subject to the interpretation of the author. And interpretations of history are themselves posited as truth, a truth which incites nostalgia for a 'better time' which those living in the present were unfortunate enough to miss. This forces the living consciousness to disregard the realities of the present; its ideas, material conditions and, most importantly, its spirit, the Hegelian zeitgeist.
Consciousness, as Theodor Adorno writes, is a faculty of the thinking subject. Thought must be active and responsive for consciousness to exist. Passivity is a condition implicit to the dormancy of a consciousness subordinated to ideology; ideology being a construction of truth imposed on human beingness. One of the primary links between history and ideology is their intrinsic nature to effectively act as truth mechanisms. As Dr. Giuseppe Schembri Bonaci writes 'meaning, interpretation and assessment are historical-power concepts, which are imposed structures of thought.' (Notes on the birth of modern art. Gustave Courbet, Realism and the duel between Parrhasius and Zeuxis)
Traditional historicism adds weight to, even regulates, our thinking, consequently retaining a mode of thought fettered to the past which wedges a barrier between ourselves and our present condition. Time itself acts as a filter. As it passes it purifies memory by straining out the harsh realities which we yearn to forget, which we often time need to forget in order to preserve our sanity. Such an act of purification is an unavoidable paradox; on the one hand our mental wellbeing depends on it, on the other it provokes a nostalgia for the past, of going back to the way things were before the present corrupted the innocence and sentimental beauty of a bygone age.
This is why several modern artists and authors resisted history and challenged the representation of historical time in their works. Artists, being individuals who make real experience as objective form, are likewise administrators of historical knowledge. They have the power to manipulate or embody the image of time, to influence our imagination of time past, present and future, which is why political regimes have always sought to regulate artistic production, either by means of patronage or legal practices.
Awareness of this ability of the image is explicitly present in Maltese art of the 20th century. Faced with radical social shifts which altered everyday life; industrialisation, technological innovations, economic expansion, urbanisation and several other novel factors, it is indubitable that artists felt the need to respond.
Edward Caruana Dingli's paintings are iconic examples of art's capacity to shape historical remembrance. The 'burden' which White speaks of is illustrated by Caruana Dingli's nostalgic portrayals of the simplicity of rural life which imagine the Greek idea of arcadia on Maltese soil. These utopic visions of an idealised time past were presented to the public as actual truth, and are in fact still favoured by Maltese taste today due to their desirably realistic effect. The nostalgic character of this work was effectively compared and contrasted to the poetry of Dun Karm Psaila by Dr. Schembri Bonaci last year in an essay which will be published in the near future.
On the other side of the fence is the art of painter Carmelo Mangion who, like the modernists, created an aesthetic language which embodied the particularities of his contemporary environment. He was not interested in the utopian escape to pre-industrial Malta, quite the opposite. He played with the element of truth in art by repudiating Caruana Dingli's convincing realism for a manifestation of painterly values which are utilised as able communicators of real experience. In other words, the anti-naturalism of Mangion's landscapes, street scenes and industrial scenes grasped the veracity of the present which Caruana Dingli's realist manner wanted to escape.
Similar to Mangion's approach were George Fenech's interpretations of the rural Mellieħa landscape, which in their reduction of detail, expressivity of colour, and overall naïve simplicity say more about the artist and his condition than any figurative detail could.
Although depicting the rural, as did George Preca's apparently comical representations of farmers, peasants and their ilk, no feeling of nostalgia is transmitted by Fenech's or even Preca's paintings. The latter two artists and Mangion all refrained from the illusion and idealisation of reality in their depictions, releasing art of its historical burden to elicit the desire to be what is no more. The art historical and social implications of their acts of resistance to Caruana Dingli's dominant shadow and legacy need to be studied in order to be understood more profoundly and concretely.
One thing is amply clear in their work: History is subject to standard external to itself, consisting of a multitude of constellations (as conceptualised by Walter Benjamin) which all together constitute an impossibly conceivable whole. This is why ideology manufactures the truth as a non-existent totality, because it provides assuredness and clarity, whilst the thinking subject is bound to a perpetual state of doubt which the human mind is not programmed to tolerate.
Nikki Petroni is a doctoral student in the Department of History of Art, University of Malta.