Thanksgiving at The Jade Sphinx

It seems that I have penned a special Thanksgiving holiday note since the inception of this blog; but, somehow, I missed last year.  My diaries are currently in storage, and my memory is not up to the task of going back a whole 365 days.  What the devil was I doing last year?  So, now the pressure is on to be particularly memorable this year…

In reviewing what I wrote in previous years, I seem to always say that the country is in a perilous state, that things seem particularly dire this year, and that I don’t know how we’ll overcome it all.  But, it’s our responsibility to be happy, to be thankful, and to fully realize the quiet miracle of our lives every day.

Not doing that this year, and here’s why.

News flash:  we are always on the brink and things are always trending to disaster.  I’ll be jiggered if I’m going to haul that hoo-haw out again this year, because I think pointing out the negatives in our lives doesn’t do us a whole lot of good.  So, yeah, things are terrible, it seems no one is happy with the election (even the winner), and the world as we know it is changing so fast, no one knows what to hold onto.  It was much the same last year and will be much the same next year.  Been there, wrote that.

Instead, I’m going to tell you what I’m happy about. 

I’m happy to be an American, and delighted to now be a Californian.  We may not always be satisfied with the way our government and institutions work, but they do work and that is more than can be said of many countries.  The sunny little beach town I now call home after more than four decades in Gotham has reminded me again and again of the simple decency of most people, of forgotten arts of friendliness and neighborliness I had lost in the Big City, and demonstrated that nature has the upper-hand on us, and not the other way around.  I am surrounded by good people, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I am happy that I continue to be moved by beauty.  The dangerous thing about spending too much time with people who make a career of the arts is that one can stop feeling an emotional response to them.   I am delighted to say that I still gulp before masterful paintings, am still heady after great novels, and can laugh or cry at music.  (My taste tends to run towards the Great American Songbook, which always puts me in mind of Noel Coward’s wonderful putdown: Strange how potent cheap music is.)  I am delighted that this blog has everything from Michelangelo to Charles Schulz, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Finally, I’m glad to have faith in America and Americans.  Patriotism was never popular among most of my friends; any positive sentiments towards the country are mostly met with ironic dismissal or sneering condescension.  (A gift from the 1960s.)  But I think we are a great people, or, at least, we try to be.  I don’t know the future of our land any more than you, but I do know that Americans are capable of great things, great kindness, and unity.  That last quality – unity – has been in fairly short supply in recent years, but I think it will make a remarkable resurgence in the months and years to come.  We can but hope, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

This Thanksgiving, make it a point to greet your family, friends and neighbors as people, and not as units of some political philosophy.  Love and nurture each other, and remember to be kind and ethical.  And, finally, remember to be thankful.  Thanks for the many blessings in your life, the bounty of the world around you, and for the quiet, ineffable mystery of your own existence.

Hector Reproaching Paris, by Pierre Claude Francois Delorme (1824)

We close our brief visit with painter Pierre Claude Francois Delorme (1783-1859) with his 1824 picture, Hector Reproaching Paris, which now resides in the Amiens Museum.

Your Correspondent must confess to never having seen this picture in person, and the photographic representations I’ve been able to find online are not great.  But, it is so interesting that I couldn’t let our look at Delorme pass without a few thoughts on it.

We had written about the very formal Neoclassical Empire style, and how Delorme seemed to separate himself from that tradition a bit, thanks to the influence of his love for Italian Renaissance painters such as Michelangelo and Raphael.  This picture here, with its rigid formalism and tableaux-like staging, is more in line with the style of Delorme’s time, but he still manages to incorporate some Renaissance-Mannerist thinking.

Those who remember their Iliad, recall that the whole disaster was predicated on Paris falling in love with, and taking away, the beautiful Helen of Troy.  Her defection leads to a cataclysmic war, one that takes the life of Paris’ brother, Hector, who is killed at the hand of Achilles.

Delorme’s picture illustrates the scene where Hector breaks into the lovers’ apartments to call Paris to war.  (In the text, Paris is already preparing for battle when Hector enters, but Delorme creates more drama with his staging.)  Delorme’s craft perfectly captures the differences between Hector, the warrior, and Paris, the lover.

The world of Paris and Helen is one of love and sensuality, presented in a pale, golden light.  A statue of Aphrodite (Goddess of Love) holding a dove (symbol of peace) stands in the background, while fragrant blossoms are strewn about the floor and the table is set with food and drink.  On the floor is the lyre that Paris has dropped; he stands partly on it, as if burying his worldly pleasures.  The sensuality of this realm is underscored by the nudity of Paris and Helen; particularly that of Paris, who is caught between the opposing worlds of love and war.  In an ironic touch, Paris grows more naked still – he is removing his wreath – before donning his helmet and armor.

Paris is in marked contrast with the placid and serene beauty of Helen.  She is the lynchpin of the entire tragedy, but remains a passive object to the passions around her.  More important, this perfumed world of love and pleasure is rightly her realm, and she is perfectly at home in it.  It is the figures of Hector and Paris who are the aliens or partial visitors to this space.  (Indeed, note how her pose is similar to the statue of Aphrodite in the background.)  The peacock feathers strike a note of vanity, while the leopard skin on the bed adds a bit of wild carnality.

Hector, depicted largely in shadow, appears as a representative of war, complete with red mantle.  The shield and spear are near-black outlines (the spear being particularly phallic) – this darkness announces the darkness of war.  Indeed, the right-hand side of the canvas, where Paris reaches for his armor, is also dark; the lovers exist in the shadow of war.

Delorme relies on chiaroscuro, more a Renaissance than Neoclassical technique, to provide the contrast between the worlds of love and war, of indulgence and discipline, and of pleasure and duty.  More important, the shadowy figure of Hector is supremely out-of-place in the world of Paris and Helen.

As we saw with Hero and Leander and Cephalus and Aroura, Delorme clearly always sides with the lovers.  I’m with him.

Cephalas Carried Off by Aurora, by Pierre Claude Francois Delorme (1851)

Here is a wonderfully (and unexpectedly) tender painting by an artist we have not covered before, Pierre Claude Francois Delorme (1783-1859).  He is not as well known in the United States as he should be, but his relatively small oeuvre is replete with delicacy and grace.

Delorme was born in Paris and was a student of Anne-Louis Girodet-Trioson (1767-1824) – who was, himself, a student of Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825), whom we have covered many times in these pages.   The influence of both Girodet-Trioson and (once-removed) David are readily apparent.  Delorme was, in many ways, an exemplar of the classical style of painting of the Empire period.  He painted a number of significant works, including pictures for the palaces of Versailles, Fontainbleau, Neurilly and Compiegne, as well as various Parisian churches.

Like his masters, Delorme produced pictures featuring monumentally sculpted figures in a posed, almost tableaux-like composition.  His interests were historical and mythological, like others of the period, and he sought to tell universal truths about people through evocations of a more sublime ideal.

However, Delorme parts company with his contemporaries because he also carries within his worldview an earlier, Renaissance ideal.  Following his apprenticeship, Delorme spent many years in Italy, where he became enamored of the works of such later Renaissance figures as Raphael and Michelangelo.   The influence of these painters – more human, more emotional, more fluid -- lent his work an added depth; almost as if the Mannerist experiment added a touch of humanity and emotion to what is a technically brilliant, but emotionally cold, school of painting.

The story of Cephalus and Aurora is told in Book Seven of Ovid's Metamorphoses. Cephalus, an Athenian hero, falls in love with Procis, and marries her. Shortly afterwards, while hunting deer, he catches the eye of Aurora, Goddess of the Dawn.  Though a Goddess, Aurora was sexually adventurous and was frequently attracted to young mortal men.  Descending from her mountain home, Aurora carried Cephalus off with her. However, on finding that he remained faithful to Procris, she allowed him to return home, privately swearing vengeance. She caused a spirit of jealousy to infect their marriage and this eventually resulted in the accidental death of Procris who suffered a wound inflicted by Cephalus with his enchanted hunting spear. 

For a story with such a tragic ending, this is an exceptionally sweet and affecting picture.

Let’s start with Aurora.  The debt to Raphael is particularly strong in this picture, as is evidenced by the serene beauty of Aurora, and the delicate pansexuality of the putti.  The gossamer quality of her hair, along with the placidity of her gaze, mark Delorme’s Aurora as a Renaissance figure.  Look, too, at her delicately drawn feet, and the diaphanous quality of her dress, which renders her leg visible.  This is draughtsmanship of a high caliber, and the subtlety of the lighting effects are clearly influenced by Late Renaissance (or Mannerist) painting.

Cephalus also looks more like a Renaissance figure than a figure from the French Empire era.  Delorme paints a male figure of heart-breaking beauty.  Look at the graceful lines of the body and the angelically handsome face; it’s impossible to look at Cephalus without a sense of awe at his transformative beauty.

Delorme achieves this with strategic lighting effects:  his strong brow and sensitive line of nose are well lit.  The light then accentuates the wide, capacious breast, lilting down to the stomach and growing darker, darker around the powerful legs.  The artist also hints at the width of his body by the hot, white light of the right knee, popping up behind the shadowed foreleg.

But the real heart of the picture is Aurora’s hand, placed lovingly on the breast of Cephalus.  This component, if nothing else in the picture, is the work of pure genius.  That one touch denotes romantic love, sexual passion, possession, gentleness and protection.  The impression transcends the emotional and moves into the range of the elemental.

Artist Leon Kossoff (born 1926), would often look at the paintings of great masters, sketching his own conceptions of the art before him.  He would often sit before a painting of Cephalus and Aurora (though, the one he gazed at compulsively was by Poussin).  One day, he had a transformative experience before the painting, which he remembered thusly: It seemed as though I was experiencing the work for the first time.  I suppose there is a difference between looking and experiencing.  Paintings of this quality, in which the subject is endlessly glowing with luminosity, can, in an unexpected moment, surprise the viewer, revealing unexplored areas of self.

That is exactly how I react to Delomre’s depiction.  That glowing quality of luminosity completely takes me by surprise, and I feel as if I’m keying into some extraordinarily powerful emotional undercurrent.

“Artist” Jeff Koons Scams $8 Million for Coloring Book #4

"Artist" Jeff Koons (left) and Owner of the Sacramento Kings, 

Who Will Go Unnamed to Save Him Further Embarrassment

The latest Jeff Koons (born 1955) assault on public taste and mores just arrived in sunny Sacramento, CA.  And in doing so, he made a cool $8 million.  Nice work if you can get it.

The sculpture, Coloring Book #4, was just set into place outside the Golden 1 Center, standing on a pedestal near what will be the main entrance of the arena’s northwest corner. 

Coloring Book #4 is 18 feet tall, and is part of his Coloring Book collection, a series the artist said was inspired by the (hardly Renaissance-worthy) notion of a child coloring out of the lines of an image of Piglet.

Just take a moment to let both the money involved and the inspiration to sink in.  Good?  Let’s proceed.

As the huckster artist explained to The Sacramento Bee in 2015: I hope that a piece like Coloring Book can excite young children who are going hand-in-hand with their mother and father and with their sisters and grandparents to a sporting event (at the arena), that all generations can find some contemplative interaction with the piece.

Or something.

Most of this latest attack on public taste was funded by the Sacramento Kings; the city of Sacramento also threw away $2.5 million for its share of the public financing of the Golden 1 Center.  (This money came from the Art in Public Places program, which clearly has a very loose definition of both “art” and “public places.”)

I must make it clear that my disgust with this has little to do with city fathers spending $8 million on art.  Actually, I think city, state and federal governments should increase arts spending, not cut them.  Art spending increases, say I!

What I find so clearly offensive is spending money on bad art, or worse still, non-art.  Think, for a moment, about “public art projects” (for want of a better term) of earlier times, and compare them to the rubbish pushed down our throats today.  Where are projects with the sobriety, seriousness and artistic virtuosity of the Jefferson Memorial, the Tower of Pisa, Notre Dame … good heaves, we could even make a case for Mount Rushmore… 

But we do not create public work like this, mainly thanks to Modernity’s flight from beauty, the decadent and debased language of contemporary art criticism, and the sick influence of money by uneducated, tasteless collectors.

Let’s look at this $8 million piece of “art.”  It says … nothing.  It is a towering, misshapen mess, made of reflective material that mirrors its surroundings, but does not comment or improve upon them.  Even for the sake of argument, Piglet is invisible (for those Pooh fans hoping to salvage something from this debacle); and the contours and colors have no power of suggestion or reference.

Had Koons spent $1.95 on a bellows to blow color-tinted bubbles, the result would be much the same.  Here is a work without intelligence, without virtuosity, and without any internal coherence.  Simple human ethics should shame him out of the field of artistic endeavor, and make his name a byword for chicanery, hucksterism and bad taste.

Our feelings about Koons are best summarized by the late, great art critic and humanist Robert Hughes (1938-2012), who wrote (about including Koons in a new program on art): Jeff Koons [is included]: not because his work is beautiful or means anything much, but because it is such an extreme and self-satisfied manifestation of the sanctimony that attaches to big bucks. Koons really does think he's Michelangelo and is not shy to say so. The significant thing is that there are collectors, especially in America, who believe it. He has the slimy assurance, the gross patter about transcendence through art, of a blow-dried Baptist selling swamp acres in Florida. And the result is that you can't imagine America's singularly depraved culture without him. He fits into Bush's America the way Warhol fitted into Reagan's. There may be worse things waiting in the wings (never forget that morose observation of Milton's on the topography of Hell: "And in the lowest depth, a lower depth") but for the moment they aren't apparent, which isn't to say that they won't crawl, glistening like Paris Hilton's lip-gloss, out of some gallery next month. Koons is the perfect product of an art system in which the market controls nearly everything, including much of what gets said about art.

The United States is filled with artists, great artists, doing great work.  Work that really is about transcendence, connecting us with the sublime, and fostering the better parts of our basic humanity.  Why do we reward the Jeff Koons of this world, and not them?  When will art replace hucksterism, and when will the public rise in a body and reject this junk?

We have recently arrived on the West Coast, having left a New York where countless people spend a significant amount of time urinating on public art.  It may be the most base and unhygienic mode of criticism I have come across, but they were doing they best they could.  And looking at Koons’ latest ‘masterwork,’ the memory brought a warm, yellow glow.

The Artist’s Sketchbook

Let us first consider what a sketch is not.  A sketch is not a finished drawing; a finished drawing is often a work of painstaking effort and an artistic product in-and-of-itself – a drawing is its own thing.  A sketch is not a preparatory drawing for a larger work per se; preparatory drawings during the Renaissance, for instance, were works that were made to be used to transfer finished compositions to larger canvases or onto the wet plaster of a fresco.

No.  A sketch, simply, is an artist’s first draft, a rough idea, the idle result of his drawing implement(s) and spare paper.  They are not finished works of art, but, rather, places where he is thinking on paper.  Most every artist of any importance (and most who are not) have kept sketch books – Your Correspondent has been guilty of this, as well.  Artists carry sketch books on vacations, on the subway, at the café or restaurant, at the concert or to the market.  In short, wherever there is life (or landscape!), the working artist takes his sketchbook, ready to think on paper.

And that’s what an artist’s sketchbook is – thinking on paper.  Sketches are not made for the general public, or even for small audiences – they are reference works for the artist as he is working out his ideas, planning out his compositions, or explaining his ideas.

Artists will also add sketches to the darndest things.  Much to the horror of restaurateurs everywhere, I am an inveterate tablecloth sketcher.  Can’t help it – but I do make sure that I doodle in pencil, so as not to ruin the cloth.  I have also added little sketches to the bottom of bills and receipts, and in letters.

Many artists, in fact, have loved to put little drawings in their letters.  Here is a typical letter from Van Gogh:

These are not finished drawings, and are just tossed into the text as an illustration.

Look, here, at Thomas Eakins, who sought to illustrate his letter about furnishings he admired with some quick sketches:

What I find most interesting about the sketches of even the greatest artists is that they are not often all that good.  And that’s the point – a sketch is simply the artist thinking pictorially, because that’s the way artists think.

That was what came to mind during a recent visit to Rome, where I saw a sonnet Michelangelo wrote to a friend (essentially, a poetic letter), about the experience of painting the Sistine Chapel.  (See above.)  The sonnet also has a very loose sketch of himself, arms overhead, brush in hand, performing an impossible task of artistic creation.  The sonnet reads:

Here like a cat in a Lombardy sewer! Swelter and toil!

With my neck puffed out like a pigeon,

belly hanging like an empty sack,

beard pointing at the ceiling, and my brain

fallen backwards in my head!

Breastbone bulging like a harpy’s

and my face, from drips and droplets,

patterned like a marble pavement.

Ribs are poking in my guts; the only way

to counterweight my shoulders is to stick

my butt out. Don’t know where my feet are -

they’re just dancing by themselves!

In front I’ve sagged and stretched; behind,

my back is tauter than an archer’s bow!

This is not an impressive sketch (and, perhaps, not an impressive sonnet), but it is a perfect example of the artist working out his ideas on paper.

More on sketches tomorrow!

Percy Bysshe Shelly by John Addington Symonds (1978)

We here at The Jade Sphinx are always interested in the lives of great artists; and if the biography is written by one of the preeminent aesthetes of his day, all the better.

Sadly, outside of a handful of devotees, few remember the great writer, biographer, poet, essayist and aesthete John Addington Symonds (1840—1893).  Like most aesthetes, Symonds had a personal and emotional connection to the Italian Renaissance.  He would write a masterful, seven volume history of the era (Renaissance in Italy, 1875-1886), a splendid biography of Michelangelo (1893), and translations of Cellini’s autobiography (1888) and Michelangelo’s sonnets (1878; the first English translation of the painter’s poetry).

Symonds was also deeply devoted to Hellenism, writing Studies of the Greek Poets (1873-1876), which more closely aligned him with the Aesthetic Movement, and he wrote several volumes of poetry, as well.

A mind and aesthetic so protean, however, ranged across history to find congenial subjects.  He wrote of Ben Johnson (1886), Sir Philip Sidney (1886) and Walt Whitman (1893).  However, one of his more interesting biographies is of the Romantic poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley (1878).

It may seem strange that we are emphasizing more the biographer than the biographee, but for Symonds biography and criticism were merely a mode of autobiography.  While we learn a great deal about Shelley (1792-1822) in this volume, we learn even more about Symonds.

Shelley was one of the greatest of Romantic poets.  He was a political radical and champion of the underdog.  He was an important part of a circle of poets and writers that included Leigh Hunt, Lord Byron, Thomas Love Peacock and his wife, Mary Shelley (author of Frankenstein).  He was also involved with other politically progressive thinkers of the day, including William Godwin (Mary’s father), and influenced the political thinking of Henry David Thoreau.  After his death, Shelley became the idol of figures as diverse as Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw and W. B. Yeats.

Though he died just before his 30^th birthday, Shelley’s literary output is remarkable for its virtuosity, its lyricism and its breadth of intellectual scope.  What might have been had he lived longer must remain a mystery, as the poet drowned in a sudden storm off the Gulf of Spezia in his sailing boat, the Don Juan.  The boat had been custom-built for the poet, and sank.  Shelley’s body was cremated on the beach near Viareggio.  Surprisingly, the poet’s heart would not burn, no matter the degree of heat and flame, and his widow took it away with her.

The Funeral of Shelley

Such a Romantic figure would be irresistible to a sensibility like Symonds’, and it is clear that the later aesthete falls, to some degree, in love with his subject.  Here is Symonds on Shelley’s boyhood:

Such as the child was, we shall find the man to have remained unaltered through the short space of life allowed him. Loving, innocent, sensitive, secluded from the vulgar concerns of his companions, strongly moralized after a peculiar and inborn type of excellence, drawing his inspirations from Nature and from his own soul in solitude, Shelley passed across the stage of this world, attended by a splendid vision which sustained him at a perilous height above the kindly race of men. The penalty of this isolation he suffered in many painful episodes. The reward he reaped in a measure of more authentic prophecy, and in a nobler realization of his best self, than could be claimed by any of his immediate contemporaries.

Here Symonds describes the physical appearance of the poet:  His eyes were blue, unfathomably dark and lustrous. His hair was brown; but very early in life it became grey, while his unwrinkled face retained to the last a look of wonderful youth. It is admitted on all sides that no adequate picture was ever painted of him. Mulready is reported to have said that he was too beautiful to paint. And yet, although so singularly lovely, he owed less of his charm to regularity of feature or to grace of movement, than to an indescribable personal fascination.

It is clear that Symonds was besotted by Shelley, and that his feelings for the poet cloud his vision.  He blithely excuses some of the poet’s most egregious behavior, and sponges away sometimes deadly effect he had on others.  Shelley becomes, for Symonds, an ideal; a swain of infinite beauty and even greater promise.  Near the close of the book, Symonds writes:

Shelley in his lifetime bound those who knew him with a chain of loyal affection, impressing observers so essentially different as Hogg, Byron, Peacock, Leigh Hunt, Trelawny, Medwin, Williams, with the conviction that he was the gentlest, purest, bravest, and most spiritual being they had ever met. The same conviction is forced upon his biographer. During his four last years this most loveable of men was becoming gradually riper, wiser, truer to his highest instincts. The imperfections of his youth were being rapidly absorbed. His self-knowledge was expanding, his character mellowing, and his genius growing daily stronger. Without losing the fire that burned in him, he had been lessoned by experience into tempering its fervour; and when he reached the age of twenty-nine, he stood upon the height of his most glorious achievement, ready to unfold his wings for a yet sublimer flight. At that moment, when life at last seemed about to offer him rest, unimpeded activity, and happiness, death robbed the world of his maturity. Posterity has but the product of his cruder years, the assurance that he had already outlived them into something nobler, and the tragedy of his untimely end.

Like many who value art above mere fact, Symonds was incapable of resisting Shelley’s romantic charm.  The book remains a revealing portrait of both subject and author.

Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane

There are probably more rumors and tall tales about Michelangelo Merisi or Amerighi da Caravaggio (1571 – 1610) than any other pre-modern artist.  Stories of his being everything from a highwayman and freebooter, to gay renegade and street fighter have made the rounds, and, really, after all this time, who can say for sure what story of his life is the truth?

Well … Andrew Graham-Dixon (born 1960) can.  In a book that took more than 10 years to write, Graham-Dixon was able to access criminal and city-records that had not been referenced before, and provide a more complete picture of this complex and brilliant painter than ever published before.

It is not an exaggeration to say in an age when brilliance was commonplace, Caravaggio changed the way people think of genius.  Born some 50 years after his namesake Michelangelo, Caravaggio came of age when the high ideals and artistic techniques of the High Renaissance had become stilted and ossified.  Bucking a near 100-year trend, Caravaggio sought not to move art forward, but to move it back to a more medieval ideal.  His goal was the meld the simple piety and poverty so closely aligned with the Middle Ages to the artistic techniques of chiaroscuro and perspective achieved in the Renaissance. 

Caravaggio painted not for the collector, but for the peasant.  His holy figures were visibly poor: weighted down by life and care, often barefoot and dirty, experiencing religious transcendence in usually grungy environments.  Paradoxically, the public by-and-large did not know what to make of his work, and it seemed to appeal best to such cultured aesthetes as Cardinal Scipione Borghese (1577 – 1633), nephew of the Pope and noted art collector.

What kind of man was Caravaggio?  Well, as an artist, no one could touch him.  As a human being, no one wanted to touch him.  Though roughly born, he had pretentions to the purple – this left him so prideful that he resorted to fists, knives or swords if he thought his pride was insulted.  His adolescent studio-aide was probably his lover, and Caravaggio seems to have abandoned the moment it was convenient for him; finally he murdered a man in a duel, probably involving prostitutes.  He fawned before the great and powerful, and often repaid them with bad behavior, and he spent enough time in prison to qualify as a rock star.

But… well, yes… but.  Caravaggio’s pictures are unlike any other painted in his era.  His figures are often in dramatic close-up, the light source unknown.  And where most Baroque painters reveled in brilliant coloration and fantastic scenes of heavenly beauty, Caravaggio’s palette consisted mostly of earth-tones and his saints were very earth-bound indeed.  What Caravaggio had that many artists of his era did not have was a true sense of Catholic suffering and an almost primal religious ecstasy.  That this ecstasy was so closely associated, in his mind and in his work, with pain is one of the many things that make his work touch the mystery of religion.

In short, Caravaggio’s sensibility was both “sacred and profane.”  As chronicled by Grahman-Dixon, Caravaggio’s life was always balanced between acts of brutality and ugliness and the creation of deeply felt art.  Critic and historian Robert Hughes (1938-2012) has called Graham-Dixon “the most gifted art critic of his generation,” and this book alone would be enough to cement that reputation.

The historical research on view here is remarkable; but not more so than Graham-Dixon’s work in making it accessible and sensible to the modern reader.  Moreover, he parts company with contemporary critics who seek to align Caravaggio to more modern sensibilities by underscoring how completely alien to our frame of reference Caravaggio’s historical moment actually was.  Finally, he is not afraid to use deductive reasoning to connect recently unearthed facts to make a case for the most probable sequence of events of several of the most significant moments in the artist’s life, including the murderous duel that marked his downfall.

More importantly, few writers look at, and understand, pictures better than Graham-Dixon.  His explanations and explications of Caravaggio’s oeuvre are masterful.  If you are to read only one book about this fascinating, divisive and strangely contemporary painter, make is Andrew Grahman-Dixon’s Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane.

The Card Players by Jean-Louis Ernest Meissonier (1872)

We continue our look at some of the work by Jean-Louis Ernest Meissonier (1815-1891) with The Card Players, painted in 1872.  This is a smallish picture, 12x15, and it possesses all the Meissonier trademarks of wit and technical wizardry.

People looking to learn more about Meissonier would do well to read The Judgment of Paris, by Ross King.  (We positively reviewed King’s Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling some time back.)  While pointing out that Meissonier was one of the great losers in art history because his reputation suffered drastically following the rise of Impressionism, Modernism and other “progressive” modes of art that ultimately proved to be our aesthetic, intellectual and cultural downfall, King also rendered the painter as sympathetic and unjustly neglected (and denigrated) by later generations of art historians. 

Here is how King opens his book:  One gloomy January day in 1863, Jean-Louis Ernest Meissonier, the world’s wealthiest and most celebrated painter, dressed himself in the costume of Napoleon Bonaparte and, despite the snowfall, climbed onto the rooftop balcony of his mansion in Poissy… Ernest Meissonier had occupied the Grande Maison for most of the previous two decades.  In his forty-eight year he was short, arrogant and densely bearded: “Ugly, little and mean,” one observer put it, “rather a scrap of a man.”  A friend described him as looking like a professor of gymnastics, and indeed the burly Meissonier was an eager and accomplished athlete, often rising before dawn to rampage through the countryside on horseback, swim in the Seine, or launch himself at an opponent, fencing sword in hand.  Only after an hour or two of these exertions would he retire, sometimes still shod in his riding boots, to a studio in the Grande Maison where he spent ten or twelve hours each day crafting on his easel the wonders of precision and meticulousness that had both made his reputation and his fortune.

Makes the contemporary art world of Damien Hirsts and Tracey Eims seem bloodless and pusillanimous by comparison, doesn’t it?  Ah, at one time the romance of being an artist!

Today’s picture, The Card Players, shares many of the same virtues as yesterday’s picture, The Sergeant’s Portrait.  Both take place in front of brick buildings, complete with windows that are rendered in astonishing detail and realism.  (I especially like the open window, visible through the length of the building from the foreground window!)  Note, too, the ornate carving of the chairs, the tabletop and supports, and the careful delineation of the window shutters and sills.

Again, Meissonier takes particular delight in the clothing of his figures.  Folds of garment, buttons, gauzy cravats and boots are all depicted with great virtuosity and realism without seeming fussy or showy.

But again where Meissonier triumphs is in directing his actors of paint and canvas.  It is clear that that hatless figure on the left has not only lost this game of cards, but that he has lost a great many others previously.  He looks at his opponent with disbelief, sullen resentment and resignation.  Meissonier also places a glass beside him, and a tankard near his hat – implying that he was drinking, as well.  (Is it my imagination, or does resemble the late Boris Karloff?)

His opponent has clearly had better luck with the cards, and gleefully is about to splay them upon the table.  And look at his face:  not only a note of triumph, but the gloating that often comes when we have someone in our power.  It is not a pretty picture of human nature, but it is a masterful painting.

More Meissonier tomorrow!

  

Portrait of Alessandro Vittoria at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Here is one of my favorite pictures at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art: the portrait of sculptor Alessandro Vittoria by Paolo Veronese (1528-1588).  Vittoria was one of the most celebrated sculptors of the Venetian Renaissance, and he is shown in the painting holding the model for his statue of St. Sebastian, carved in 1561-2 for the church of San Francesco dell Vigna in Venice.  Vittoria’s Sebastian was so successful that he later cast it as a bronze statuette, which can be seen at the Metropolitan.

 

Like many a great artist, Vittoria was not shy – he has multiple portraits of himself painted by the leading artists of the time, and five of them hung near the studio in his home where they could be seen by clients and visitors.  This portrait dates to c1580, when the sculptor was 55 years old.

The easy collaboration between sculptor and painter may be inferred not only by the sympathetic depiction, but also by the fact that Vittoria collaborated with Veronese on the decoration of Palladio’s Villa Barbaro at Maser some 20 years earlier.

Veronese ranks, alongside Titian and Tintoretto, as the greatest of Venetian Renaissance painters.  He is celebrated for his work as a colorist, and for his ability to create teeming, multi-figure canvases on a heroic scale.  His taste for ornamentation and excess got him into a bit of trouble with the Holy Inquisition, which was appalled at the excesses to be found in his representation of The Last Supper.  After questioning by the church, Veronese was ordered to fix the picture to something more decorous and within the austere teachings of the church over the next three months.  Instead of touching the picture, he simply renamed it The Feast in the House of Levi, sidestepping obsessive – and dangerous – ecclesiasticals.  (See below.)

Vitorria was born in Trent, son of a tailor.  He was heavily influenced by Michelangelo (who was, in turn, heavily influenced by antiquity and the Belvedere Torso); he was trained in the atelier of architect/sculptor Jacopo Sansovino. 

It must be remembered that the Renaissance was not just a reawakening of human potential and artistic and intellectual ideals, but a rediscovery of the ancient world.  The broken statue next to the sculptor represents a fragment of our Greco-Roman heritage, and serves as a bridge between the ancient world and the modern.

Why do I love this picture so?  On one hand, it is one of Veronese’s more quiet pictures.  A sense of serene and studied mastery pervades both the pose and the execution.  Vitorria’s delicately depicted hands (especially the strong and tapering fingers) are significant, of course, but not more so than the look of bland sophistication and … sprezzatura on the sculptor’s face.  One can well imagine Vitorria murmuring, “Oh this?  Yes, it’s a little something I put together.  Do you like it?”

Veronese’s love of decoration can be seen in the elaborate tablecloth and is barely hinted at in the faint traces of wall decoration over the sculptor’s right shoulder.  The expression on Vittoria’s face is much like the one the sculptor later used when depicting himself in three dimensions.

Bernini: Sculpting in Clay at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

There are perhaps few things more frustrating than missing something that will not return in the near future, if ever.  So, it’s with a heavy heart that I report that last Sunday (January 6) was the final day for Bernini: Sculpting in Clay at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art.  Despite some real flaws in the presentation, it was an excellent show.

Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680) was the greatest sculptor of the Baroque era.  Perhaps the finest collections of Bernini sculptures are to be found in the Villa Borghese and the Vatican; look for upcoming articles on both in The Jade Sphinx.  We looked at Bernini in a previous post when examining representations of the Biblical David; his David is more determined, more fierce, more … scrappy than the confident, gorgeous youth of Michelangelo or the fey aristocrat of Donatello.

Bernini is often considered to be the successor of Michelangelo, as he married both the heroic monumentality of his predecessor to a greater realism and dramatic motion.  He was also, like Michelangelo, a multi-faceted genius, able to write plays, paint, design metalwork and create stage sets.  In addition, he too was possessed of that peculiar religious fever that consumed Michelangelo, believing that his art was a manifestation of his love for God.  (One has only to look at the disturbingly orgasmic Ecstasy of St. Teresa to see how deeply rooted were his religious beliefs.)

Like many sculptors (and, often, some painters), Bernini created mini-sketches in terracotta of what would be larger, more demanding works in marble.  It is a terrific boon to a sculptor to think out the challenges of movement and pose on a small scale before committing to the larger, less-forgiving work.

The three-dimensional sketches in the show detailed a magnificent creative mind at work.  There were drawings along with the three dimensional sketches – including a stunning self-portrait in chalk – and there was very much the sense of being inside of an artist’s workshop.  The text accompanying the exhibition was also usually clear, concise and informative.  The figures on hand were, to your correspondent, surprisingly large – the Renaissance mind did not think small.  Nor where the figures quick or rough in any way – these were superbly executed ‘first-runs’ and were beautiful works of art in-and-of-themselves.

Sadly, once again the Metropolitan used spectacularly poor judgment in lighting and positioning.  Many of the figures were too high for patrons to see the details, or behind plastic viewing walls that seemed to do nothing but reflect ambient light, making it near impossible to see the things within.  Why a multi-million dollar operation with a world-class reputation cannot do better is one of the deeper mysteries of the New York art world.

For those who missed the show, there is a fabulously illustrated catalogue, including not only articles on view, but interesting new research on Bernini and his working methods, as well.  It is a pricey $65, but of unusual interest because of the insight it reveals into this great artist.

Johann Friedrich Overbeck: Christ in the House of Mary and Martha (1815)

We return this week to the Nazarenes, a group of artists who sought to bring art back to the time of the early Renaissance, free from the influence of the later masters, such as Michelangelo and Raphael.  Just why the early Renaissance was held up as an ideal is an interesting question.

The leader of the movement, Johann Friedrich Overbeck (1789 – 1869), believed that art had been corrupted by Enlightenment-era thinking.  He thought that painters in the Academy were spurred by visions of artistic excellence, and not by divine inspiration or love of God.  He wrote a friend during his training to say that he was losing his faith in humanity while studying art, and was forging a closer connection to God as a way to cope with the rigors of contemporary life.  Overbeck was, in short, much like many people terrified by the real world:  looking for comfort in an idealized past or seeking solace in the myths of religion and the supernatural. 

Overbeck was born in Lübeck, the product of three generations of Protestant pastors.  Overbeck left Lübeck in 1806 to study art under Heinrich Füger in Vienna.  Füger was a teacher steeped in the Classical tradition (he had trained under Jacques-Louis David).  Overbeck absorbed the lessons taught in the Academy, but found the lack of religious focus inimical to his views on art.  He created a following of his own while at the Academy – eventually calling themselves the Nazarenes.  After four years, he and his followers would be expelled. 

Overbeck went to Rome in 1810, where he stayed mostly for the next 59 years.  (He became a Roman Catholic in 1813.)  He was joined by other artists attracted to his way of thinking, including Peter von Cornelius, Friedrich Wilhelm Schadow and Philipp Veit.  They lived in an old Franciscan convent, San Isidoro, where they worked hard and prayed harder.  A Holy Order of Artists is an idea not without charm, but I believe the Nazarenes rejected too much that was good and embraced quite a bit that was retrogressive.  They believed firmly in a hardness of outline which robs many of the figures of any feeling of being within their space, and used light, composition and color mainly as a means to further an argument rather than to create images of beauty. 

Today’s picture, Christ in the House of Mary and Martha, was painted in 1815.  The story can be found in Luke 10: Jesus visits the home of Martha and Mary.  Mary sits at His feet and listens to Him speak while Martha proceeded to "make all the preparations that had to be made."  Martha becomes upset that Mary did not help, and Christ says: "Martha, Martha ... you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her."  In short, one could call it a summation of the entire Nazarene philosophy.

There is much to admire in this picture but, to my mind, very little to love.  The attempt to reimagine an early Renaissance aesthetic is admirable, but it never looks like anything other than a pastiche.  Worse still, Overbeck’s high mindedness seems to rob the picture of any drama it might have: instead of sitting at Christ’s feet in raptures, Mary looks rather bored by it all.  And Martha, the scold, looks more like a harried house frau than a lost soul.  Christ seems rather patrician and formidable in profile – more Basil Rathbone than Prince of Peace.  And who is that standing behind him – looking for all the world as if she wished that she, too, were seated?

But … what Overbeck gets right he hits in spades.  The trio behind Jesus are depicted with the gentle lines of the early Renaissance Masters, and the room and furnishings reflect that period’s love of detail for its own sake.  The folds of the clothes are lovingly detailed and at the same time flat – aping the sometimes unsure sense of depth found in early Renaissance pictures.  Also present is an out-of-window view, another favorite trope of the early Renaissance, featuring something that comments on the foreground action.  Though I can’t be sure, it certainly looks to my eye like Jesus bringing Lazarus back to life … which justified the faith of both Mary and Martha.

Move Overbeck tomorrow.

Leda and the Swan by Heinrich Lossow

Knowing what we do of German artist Heinrich Lossow (1840-1897), it is perhaps not surprising that he would eventually tackle one of the most sexual myths of antiquity: the story of Leda and the Swan.

According to myth, Zeus seduced (or raped) Leda on the same night she slept with her husband King Tyndareus (King of Sparta).  The union bore several children, including Helen and Polydeuces, the children of Zeus, as well as Castor and Clytemnestra, the children of her husband, Tyndareus.  In some versions of the story, Leda laid two eggs from which the children were hatched.

The tale seemed to fire the Renaissance imagination.  Leonardo da Vinci (1452 – 1519) painted a picture illustrating the story – a painting which no longer exists.  (There is a copy, though, by Cesare da Sesto [1477–1523], which gives us a good idea of what it was like.)  Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475 -1564) painted it in tempera – it, too, no longer exists, though copies were made from the cartoon.  It is not beyond supposition that both of these pictures were deliberately destroyed by later generations who found the story (and its graphic depiction) wince-inducing.

The power of the story outlasted the Renaissance – W. B. Yeats (1865-1939) wrote a version of the story in verse, and the image has also been coopted by Cezanne and other Modernists.

Lossow’s painting is not going to erase any daydreams we may have of lost Leonardos or Michelangelos, but it does have points of interest.  The composition is simple, but effective.  Starting with Leda’s boots, the central figure forms an impressive S, leading all the way to the bend in the swan’s neck.  The quality of the swan’s feathers is rendered with a few deft strokes in the dark hollow of the wing, and the animal’s head is (thankfully!) mostly obscured by Leda’s throat.

Leda, for her part, is clearly enraptured by the disguised god’s attention, and it is no mistake that a blossom buds directly overhead.  Perhaps what I find most interesting is that it seems probable that the model for Leda was the same model for the monstrous, sexually rapacious Enchantress that we looked at in a previous post – even the headdress is similar.

Again, I’m not quite sure that I am entirely comfortable with Lossow’s grasp of anatomy.  Surely Leda, when standing, would have dumpy piano legs for a glamour-puss; nor am I sure where the one visible wing of the swan drops to when obscured by her leg.

But Lossow wears his erotic obsessions on his sleeve.  In addition to the profusion of blossoms, it is not too much of a stretch to liken the rolling fields of grass to pubic hair, and Leda’s outstretched right hand is not warding off her attacker, but taut with ecstasy. 

Lossow’s Leda is an easy picture to study, but a hard one to like – which, in in the final analysis, may be my ultimate summation of his entire body of work.  There is a great deal going on in much of it – but not much of it is interesting or admirable.  My initial choice to close out this look at the artist was to examine A Precarious Game in some depth (see below); but looking at it closely, I didn’t think there was anything to say about it worth saying.

Alexandre-Évariste Fragonard Part III: The Lesson of Henry IV

Alexandre-Évariste Fragonard’s accomplishments spanned a remarkable range of artistic endeavors, including paintings, sculpture, book illustration, Sévres porcelain and architecture.  His first listing in the livret of the Paris Salon was as an exhibitor in 1793, when he was only 13.  His work in the 1790s reflected revolutionary republican subjects in the neoclassical style, a dramatic break from the Rococo style of his father, Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806).

Alexandre-Évariste Fragonard really came of age during the restoration, when he changed his subject matter to suit then-contemporary tastes.  He ventured into new territory in 1819 when he attempted history painting.  He specialized in pictures featuring themes and images of the Middle Ages, in many way anticipating the works of later Romantic artists.  He also received important commissions for painted decorations for the Louvre, Versailles and numerous churches including Strasbourg Cathedral, the Church of Ste. Geneviéve, and Saint-Etienne-du-Mont.  He also exhibited easel paintings through the 1842 Salon and worked for the Sévres Manufactory, including both the design of porcelain forms and the decoration.

I must confess that I love today’s picture, the Lesson of Henry IV.  Henry IV (1553 – 1610) was one of the most beloved of French kings.  He managed not to take sides during the terrible Religious Wars, using politics and politesse to ultimately save the day.  He was also, by lights of those times, quite liberal, often working for the betterment of the common man.  It is to Henry IV that we owe a key phrase of our political language when he said, “If God keeps me, I will make sure that there is no working man in my kingdom who does not have the means to have a chicken in the pot every Sunday.”  Sadly, Henry IV was murdered by a Catholic fanatic.  A statue to the monarch was erected just four years after his death.  It was destroyed during the later French Revolution, but Henry IV was the first king to be immortalized by a statue following the Revolution.  It would seem that even the French Revolution could not expunge the memory of an aristocrat so dedicated to the common good.

I think one of the reasons that Alexandre-Évariste depicted Henry IV during his school lessons is because of the truism that liberality, kindness, tolerance, courage, empathy, and good will are more often than not the products of education.  Even in our own world this is evident – a quick look at the kind of people who flock around dangerous anti-education demagogues like Rick Santorum demonstrates that a lack of proper schooling creates monsters.

I love this picture – mainly for its marriage of Neoclassicism and Romanticism.  Alexandre-Évariste digs into a remote and romantic past to show us the education of one of the great figures of French history.  Here, young Henry IV clearly astounds his professor by taking pen to parchment and recording the learnings from the large text.  The open window and the globe seem almost to add a Dutch flavor to the proceedings, as if Alexandre-Évariste were thinking of the great works of Vermeer while composing the picture.  And, again, Alexandre-Évariste shows himself to be the painter of light – see how the light on the floor and the wall where Henry writes trails the line of sun from the window.  The figure of the professor has a particular monumentality – as if Alexandre-Évariste were paying unconscious homage to Michelangelo (did he consider that Renaissance master one of his ‘teachers’?), and look at the line of calf and the modulation of the hands on Henry VI.  This is a beautiful and sensitive command of anatomy, particularly the anatomy of a child. 

Again – little things: the feather in the cap, the knot at the back of Henry’s waist, the white shirt cuff of the professor; these are the kinds of grace notes that can be hit only by the most sensitive and gifted of artists.  Not only is it a very accomplished picture, but it is very touching, as well.

More tomorrow!

The Doom Fulfilled by Edward Burne-Jones

It was such a pleasure to close last week with artist Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898) that I decided to spend this week with him, as well.

We have established that the Victorian mind found solace, inspiration and identity in a robust nostalgia.  This was not a personal nostalgia as much as a national depth of feeling: by looking at myths of the past, the Victorians sought to remake themselves in a more heroic manner.

Burne-Jones was commissioned to paint a series of pictures depicting the feats of the mythological hero Perseus by conservative politician (and Prime Minister) Arthur Balfour (1848-1930).  Burne-Jones created several large-scale paintings in the series, but, alas, did not finish the entire cycle.  The completed paintings can be found in Stuttgart’s Staatsgalerie.

For inspiration, Burne-Jones turned to another artist: William Morris (1834-1896).  Morris, aside from starting the Arts and Crafts Movement (and, hence, aestheticism), was also an instrumental force in the creation of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.  Morris was also a poet and medievalist.  His most celebrated work was The Earthly Paradise (1896), a collection of poems bound in a leather strapbound book.  The Earthly Paradise chronicled a group of medieval wanderers who set out to search for a land of everlasting life.  At length, they come upon a colony of ancient Greeks, still alive, who tell them a series of stories, including the myth of Perseus.

The Doom Fulfilled details a later moment in the sequence.  As you may remember, Perseus rescues his lover, Andromeda, from a sea monster called the Kraken.  Most artists go overboard in depicting this undersea threat, creating monsters 50 feet tall and looming like one of Ray Harryhausen’s creatures.  (Indeed, Harryhausen had a crack at the Kraken himself with his Clash of the Titans in 1981 – one of the most enjoyable bad movies ever made.)  Here, Burne-Jones creates a Kraken that is more bejeweled anaconda than giant sea monster.

Let’s look at this remarkable picture.  Burne-Jones had a wonderful and subtle gift – to render figures in action in attitudes of repose.  Look at most of his corpus and you will find figures engaged in physical activity (or about to engage in it), but delineated in a manner that is almost dream-like.  This gives much of his work an other-worldly quality, almost as if he were painting pictures first seen in our subconscious.

Burne-Jones stages his spectacle in a stony grotto, placing Andromeda on her own pedestal and creating a pyramid around Perseus and the Kraken in order focus attention on them.  The cool blue of both Perseus and the Kraken keep them in the background, while the bright flesh tones of Andromeda push her closer to us.  It is curious to me that both Perseus and the Kraken are the same shade of blue.  Perhaps Burne-Jones thought, if Andromeda was merely a prize, that there was little difference between Perseus and the Kraken. 

While Perseus cuts a heroic figure in his blue armor, Burne-Jones does not create a muscled man-god out of Michelangelo.  Rather, the heroic contours of his body are created by the armor he wears.  Perseus’ face is like many of those you will find in Burne-Jones’ work – introspective, intent, and locked in the gaze cast upon someone else.  Look at The Beguiling of Merlin from last week – rarely has an artist ever been so effective in exchanging charged emotions between subjects through the power of a glance.

Andromeda is beautifully drawn and painted.  Could she, too, have been modeled by his lover, Maria Zambaco (1843-1914)?  Possibly.  The Andromeda of Burne-Jones is not a screaming hysteric; instead, she watches the battle of Perseus and the monster with a cool detachment.

“Cool detachment” may be the perfect way to describe the Perseus series.  I am filled with admiration for the mastery of Burne-Jones, but it strikes me as a cold genius.  There is passion but no mess, lots of fire but little heat.  It is a genius that chills the intellect – a wintry blast of virtuosity that is just what is needed in the dog days of summer.

Tomorrow – more of Perseus!