2.9 Epilogue: Hals’s particular art
Like all creations which we categorize as ‘artworks’, Hals’s paintings are more than just images of certain noble personages or amusing types from ordinary folk. Within the framework of conventional portraiture they render unusually direct observations of people from the past, captured by a painter who worked with accuracy. They are images either made as commissions or for the open market and yet not just ‘photographs’ or reportage. They are neither caricatures nor embellishing but rather images of experience, where the human condition could be encountered as amusing and exhilarating, admirable and imposing, but also harrowing and disturbing, with an afterlife continuing to the present. How is it possible for an inanimate two-dimensional representation to achieve this?
The philosopher Nelson Goodman (1906-1998) coined the formula of ‘representation as…’ in order to describe the meaningful context of visual creation.1 Visual creation in pre-modern eras did not just represent a person, but conveyed an impression of its role, characteristics or importance. No Old Master portrait and no painting of any other subject was intended as a simple reproduction of visual appearance, like a mechanical copy. Rather, meanings were revealed which are no longer relevant for us today, as can be demonstrated in the shapes of former clothing and historical buildings. Artistic representation aimed at this visually imaginable spiritual sphere and selected motifs, aspects, and qualities which transcended everyday life symbolically, pointing above and beyond it. As Samuel van Hoogstraten (1627-1678) put it: ‘The art of painting is a science, which can represent all the ideas, or concepts that are provided by visible nature’.2