A Rogue and Peasant Slave

Legend has it that Pieter Bruegel the Elder would disguise himself as a peasant and crash peasant weddings and other gatherings to collect material for his depictions of that simple way of life. Born sometime in 1525, Bruegel became the greatest painter of the sixteenth century’s Netherlandish Renaissance before his death on died September 5, 1569. In works such as The Hunters in the Snow (above, from 1565), part of a larger series showing peasant life in different months, Bruegel shows hunters returning to their village after a long, hard slog in the January snows. Bruegel painted during the time now known as the Little Ice Age, when seemingly endless winters made an already tough existence even tougher. The matching green ice and sky breaking up the expanses of pure white snow enshrouds the entire scene with the sense of death, against which the tiny dark figures and their homes seem but futile efforts at life. Despite such hard times, Bruegel found a dark humor in life itself and painted both the pain and joy of the peasant life.

Bruegel traveled to Italy in the 1550s and saw the work of the great Italian Renaissance masters, but the greatest influence on his aft after 1556 or so was Hieronymus Bosch. Bruegel’s The Triumph of Death (above, from 1562) shows a shared demonological interest with Bosch, but maintains focus on the natural landscape and the everyday life of peasants. Malevolent skeletons mow down the living with scythes as a wasteland of withered trees and grass stretches to the horizon. Like Bosch’s works, Bruegel’s The Triumph of Death doesn’t leave much for the faithful to believe in. Living in the unforgiving, brutish world of the time, Bruegel refuses to depict a heavenly host arriving from on high trailing clouds of glory. The Protestant Reformation enflamed the religious passions for almost half a century by the time Bruegel painted The Triumph of Death, but the pessimism born of such religious conflict seems remarkably fresh.

Bruegel painted many conventional religious scenes, still the bulk of the art business in his day, but his The Tower of Babel (above, from 1563) shows that Bruegel could also paint a disturbingly unconventional religious work, too. Bruegel’s tower threatens to topple, just as in the Bible story, but anachronistically it bears a striking resemblance to the Roman Colosseum, a symbol both of the pride of the Roman Empire as well as the site of the religious persecution of the early Christians. Is Bruegel trying to say that the Reformation-era arguments recreate the language barriers of Biblical Babel, thus bringing down the entire “house” of civilization? In evoking Rome, does Bruegel blame the Pope, the bishop of Rome, for Europe’s decay? Regardless, Bruegel chooses the Colosseum, already in disrepair by his time, as a symbol of his time’s dysfunctionality. When he died, Bruegel ordered that his most subversive works be destroyed, fearing repercussions for his family, which included future artists Pieter Brueghel the Younger and Jan Brueghel the Elder. Bruegel the Elder failed to live long enough to teach his sons how to paint, but in the legacy of his works he taught them, and others, how to think.

Random Thoughts

I just wanted to post some random blog- and/or art-related thoughts in one potpourri post, so here I go freely associating like Jackson Pollock painting Number 1, 1950 (aka, Lavender Mist) (above, from 1950):

(1) Many thanks to everyone who’s been reading and commenting. I always find it amazing that I have any readers, let alone 300 visitors every day. My goal from day one has always been to learn more about art and myself, but if anyone else wants to come along for the ride, you’re more than welcome. I’ll always try to find interesting things to (hopefully) write interestingly about even if I’m the only one in the audience.

(2) Speaking of commenting, thank you for all the kind words and encouragement. I was especially happy to get feedback regarding my review of Rhythms of India: The Art of Nandalal Bose from people of Indian descent who already knew how great an artist Nandalal Bose is. As proud as I am that my hometown museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, opened doors with that exhibition, I take pride in being able to spread the word and contribute to the greater understanding not only of art but also of other cultures. Like The Monkees once sang, “Love Is Understanding,” and (as Dionne Warwick and others once sang) “what the world needs now is love, sweet love.” (Please note that a double schmaltzy song quote is the blogging equivalent of a Scrabble triple word score.)

(3) Speaking of commenting and love, please remember when commenting that this is an open forum and to be respectful of the host. I don’t delete comments unless they’re profane, spam, or both. However, people who question my integrity, intelligence, patriotism, etc., shouldn’t read my lack of response as an inability to respond. Some testy comments in reply to my more politically charged posts tested my ability to be civil, but, thankfully, I found my Zen and decided that a novella-length diatribe won’t open a closed mind no matter how artfully argued. I refuse to engage in a dispute over the socioeconomic equivalent of what color the sky is. (It’s blue.) That being said, I can’t guarantee I’ll resist the urge to write a liberal rant or two between now and November 4th, so those so inclined will have their opportunity to comment again, hopefully with more tact.

(4) Speaking of making friends, if you’re a Facebook user, please check out my Facebook page (search for “Art Blog By Bob”). While you’re there, consider becoming a friend of the blog and meet others who have become friends. (Or more than friends. If anyone gets married thanks to the Art Blog By Bob “love connection,” please let me know. Alex can be your ring bearer.) Join Haikoo Zoo, one of Facebook’s quirkier applications, and you can pet the Art Blog By Bob pet/mascot, Utley the Hedgehog, who’s usually napping peacefully in his art gallery environment after a delicious bowl of udon. (Why Utley? Phillies phans know.)

(5) As always, many thanks to the museums and publishers who provide me with review copies of the latest art books and catalogues. As part of the larger death of the American newspaper, the book review finds itself on the endangered list. While extinction looms over the print book review, I think the last, best hope for good writing about good writing is online. I’ve chosen art-related books because that’s where my bliss lies, but there are plenty of other blogs and websites out there filling other niches. Art books rarely found column space when newspapers actually did run book reviews of any kind, so I like to think I’m performing a long-needed public service—while getting to read and enjoy and learn in the bargain.

(6) And, finally, no, Jeopardy! hasn’t called me yet to appear on the show. I’m in the pool of potential contestants for filming through the end of 2009, so I may have a lot of waiting ahead of me. If I ever get on television, I’ll be sure to let everyone know so they can tune in and pray along with me for lots of arts and literature categories and as little geography (my Achilles’ heel) as possible. Watching the recent Tournament of Champions, I agonized on the sofa as question after question stumped all three contestants despite my yelling the answer at the television 3,000 miles away and months after the actual filming. God (and Alex Trebek) willing, I’ll get my chance someday.

One Hit Wonder

Is there any major artist so identified with a single amazing work and that work alone as the artist we know as Matthias Grunewald is with the Isenheim Altarpiece? The only biographical fact that we know for sure about the artist is that his name was most definitely not Matthias Grunewald, which was the error of the artist’s first biographer Joachim von Sandrart in the seventeenth century. Grunewald, whose name was most likely some combination of "Mathis," "Gothart," and/or "Neithardt," died on August 31, 1528. Born sometime around 1470, Grunewald’s life paralleled that of Albrecht Dürer but his art diverged from Durer’s in rejecting the Italian Renaissance’s lofty humanism and embracing an earthy, dark view of life, as seen in the unforgettable Crucifixion from the Isenheim Altarpiece (above, from 1515). Grunewald painted this Crucifixion for the hospital chapel of St. Anthony’s Monastary. The patients, most of whom suffered from horrific skin conditions, could raise their eyes and see Christ similarly afflicted in addition to his customary suffering. Saint Sebastian, the patron saint of the plague, also appears on the altarpiece, whose many panels testify to the greatness of Grunewald as a painter. Although he enjoyed fame during his lifetime, Grunewald slipped into obscurity after his death, with many of his paintings amazingly being attributed to Durer until nineteenth century scholars finally attempted to unearth Grunewald’s memory but were much too late.

Other works, often shakily attributed to Grunewald, share dark religious themes, usually surrounding the Crucifixion, such as another altarpiece detail known as The Lamentation of Christ (above, from 1523). In this long, rectangular panel, Grunewald crams the body of the dead savior into the space. This figure shares the same gruesome, grey skin of the Isenheim Altarpiece Christ. It’s hard to understand today how any work by Grunewald could ever have been attributed to Durer. Durer delves into the dark side from time to time, but his amazingly detailed draftsmanship overpowers any kind of gothic element. Grunewald, by contrast, marries gothic content with gothic technique beautifully. Hieronymus Bosch, a slightly earlier contemporary of Grunewald, may have Grunewald beaten in terms of sheer inventiveness, but Grunewald more than holds his own with Bosch when you talk about making the nightmarish seem tangibly real. Working within the constrictions of Christian iconography, Grunewald still manages to inventively depict the darkest corners of the human psyche as well as the most agonizing physical ailments that generation could endure.

Grunewald, however, wasn’t all doom and gloom. His Resurrection scene from the Isenheim Altarpiece (above, from 1515) shows the risen Christ gleaming with the light of life itself. I’ve always wondered if William Blake knew anything of Grunewald, whose reputation was on the rise in the nineteenth century. This Resurrection scene, so colorful and so kinetically alive in the twisted figure of the risen Jesus and his drapery, reminds me of so many of Blake’s paintings not only of Christian themes but also of his own mythological creations. Grunewald continues to capture the imagination of art lovers even today with his strange difference. Paul Hindemith’s 1934 Mathis der Maler Symphony, inspired by Grunewald’s art, remains one of my favorite modern classical pieces connected to art history. (Hindemith also wrote an opera based on Grunewald, but I’m not familiar with it.) Listening to Hindemith’s musical interpretation of Grunewald’s art, it seems as if Grunewald fits in as well with the modern world than his own. Such is the universality and timelessness of Grunewald’s art, struggling against oppression and giving a visual “voice” to that struggle. If Grunewald were alive today, he’d be painting scenes of Abu Ghraib or Darfur, as unconcerned about being “out of step” as he was centuries ago.

Big Time

I find grand ceiling frescoes to be, frankly, a big pain in the neck. As much as I appreciate the intended effect of majesty and scale, the distance between me and the work as well as my frustration at not being able to take the work in as a whole interfere with my enjoyment of the work. Giovanni Battista Tiepolo painted some of the greatest and biggest frescoes of the eighteenth century—the last of the “grand manner” artists before Neoclassicism showed Rococo the door. Born August 30, 1727, Tiepolo painted the largest ceiling fresco in the world, The Allegory of the Planets and Continents, for Prince Bishop Karl Philipp von Greiffenklau’s New Residenz palace from 1750 through 1753. (A detail from the mural showing Apollo, the star of the show, descending from on high appears above. A picture of the full fresco appears below.) With the assistance of his two sons, Tiepolo painted an allegory of Apollo, the god of light, making his daily rounds of the earth, illuminating the globe continent by continent. Consistent with the geography of the time, Tiepolo depicts only four continents—Europe, Asia, Africa, and America. Despite the grand scale of the fresco, the insular world that it represented—dominated by wealthy royalty—was quickly getting bigger and tougher to control.

I’m not sure who got this photo of the fresco, or how. Photos taken from the ground show only that you really can’t see anything from the ground. The Allegory of the Planets and Continents stands above a grand staircase that is the architectural showpiece of the palace. As you climb the steps, different pieces of the fresco become easier to view, but you never get to see the whole thing. Just like Apollo, you tour the continents one by one. The intent is to make you conscious of your limitations before the power of nobility, who literally control your access to the world—their world. The center of the fresco is almost exclusively blue sky because it’s too far away for anyone to see anything painted there. Always conscious of how his art worked with the environment, Tiepolo wasted only this wasted space while filling up the rest with lavish detail to entertain the powerful repeatedly viewing it and to impress the powerless with a vision of riches beyond their reach.

In 1761, Charles III of Spain commissioned Tiepolo to paint frescoes for the Royal Palace in Madrid. In the Queen’s Antechamber, Tiepolo and his assistants painted Apotheosis of the Spanish Monarchy (a detail from which appears above, from 1762-1766). The Queen appears surrounded by several of the gods of Greek mythology, including, once again, Apollo. By the 1760s, Tiepolo was one of the last artists working on such a gigantic scale. Jealous, Anton Raphael Mengs conspired against Tiepolo to keep him from gaining any more commissions, hoping that the grand fresco would soon die with him, which, for all intents and purposes, it did in 1770. Tiepolo expired just as millennia of monarchy approached its expiration date in the upheavals of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Today, thanks to innovations in photography and reproductions in books, we can finally see such grand frescoes in detail if not as a satisfyingly comprehensive whole, thus bringing the age of kings and queens down to a democratized rightful size. Tiepolo still rarely fails to impress by sheer scale and creativity, but it remains hard to embrace his art—so huge and high above us, reigning godlike.

Industrial Revolution

Impressionism, thanks to the seemingly endless string of blockbuster exhibitions circling the globe, often seems a tired, exhausted vein of art gold. Too-often relegated to the soft-focus, pretty pictures of calendars and gift shop items that rake in profits for museums, Impressionism and the Impressionists too often seem toothless. The disconnect between the bite of later Modern art movements and our present understanding of Impressionism leaves us wondering how those later schools rose from that first revolution. In Impressionism and the Modern Landscape: Productivity, Technology, and Urbanization from Manet to Van Gogh, James H. Rubin gives Impressionism teeth again and reconnects the rebels of Impressionism with their unruly descendents. Rubin recovers the lost roots of Impressionism, explaining why, for example, Paul Cézanne included a railway bridge off to the right of many paintings of Mont Sainte-Victoire (above, one example from 1885-1887). Opposing the common view of Impressionism and industrialism as diverging paths, Rubin sets both revolutions on parallel tracks and “places images of industrial waterways, trains, and factories… at the heart of Impressionism’s pioneering artistic enterprise of the late 1860s and the 1870s.” For too long, critics have condemned Impressionism as a primarily aesthetic revolution. “Grounding Impressionism in socioeconomic, technological, and political modernity,” Rubin counters, “makes it possible to reevaluate and strengthen the movement’s claim to avant-garde status on far more than aesthetic grounds.” Rubin allows the “effete” Impressionists to rejoin the modern, Industrial Revolutionary world and finally get their hands dirty again.

Rubin builds a highly convincing case by presenting piece after piece of evidence, going back to the very beginning of Impressionism with the work that gave the movement its name—Claude Monet’s Impression: Sunrise (above, from 1873). Monet’s painting shows the busy industrial harbor of Le Havre. Sunlight plays upon the water, but tugboats spew bluish smoke into the air as well. “In many of his paintings of industrial scenes Monet exercised aestheticizing options, such as blurring detail in fog,” Rubin responds to those who don’t “see” the industry in such Impressionist work. “But that does not necessarily mean he was suppressing such elements; rather, he seems to have been trying to capture what for him was their invigorating beauty.” “Believing profoundly in the value of productive labor,” Rubin later writes, the Impressionists try to make even the pollution beautiful. Even more interestingly, Rubin argues that the Impressionist style itself expresses that faith in labor. “Impressionism’s representation of a modern naturalistic landscape in an ostentatiously proactive style is inextricably bound up with the metatheme of productivity,” Rubin believes. Whereas photography captured the image faithfully, Impressionistic painting not only reproduced the image but added the reproduced the act of labor itself through labored brushstrokes.

Rubens paints an Impressionist movement far more engaged with their time and place than ever done before. “Impressionism’s pleasing imagery is not value free, even though it implies disinterested freedom and enjoyment,” Ruben writes. For Rubin, the Impressionists present an “essentially urban, upper-middle-class, consumer-oriented vision of the world” chafing against the repressive establishment of 1870s France. The Impressionists complete culturally the renovations that Napoleon III and Georges Haussmann began when they modernized Paris into the city we still know today. Rather than fight progress, the Impressionists embraced it as the quintessential aspect of their age. The Impressionists praised figures such as industrialist Henri Rouart, who patronized the Impressionists and even tried his own hand at painting. Edgar Degas returned Rouart’s friendship and patronage with the affectionate portrait titled Henri Rouart in Front of His Factory (above, from 1875), which links industry with artistic sensibility beautifully. Rubin’s revival of the industrial roots of the Impressionists makes them seem much like the American Ashcan School of Robert Henri, and vice versa. Henri imbibed the spirit of Impressionism during his time there in the late 1880s and brought it back to America, where he adapted it to his increasingly industrialized and urbanized homeland. Thanks to Rubin’s argument, such (re)connections between the Impressionists and later movements not only become possible but, perhaps troublingly so, blur many of the lines of distinction between Impressionism and later developments.

Ruben centers his argument on the Impressionists’ embrace of progress, so it’s understandable that he falters momentarily when dealing with conservative dissenters such as Pierre-Auguste Renoir, who bemoaned Haussmann’s renovations to Paris that introduced new buildings “cold and lined up like soldiers at a review.” In the catalogue to last year’s PMA exhibit Renoir Landscapes 1865-1883, Christopher Riopelle argued in an essay titled “Renoir in the City,” that Renoir willfully painted out many of Haussmann’s new additions in works such as The Grands Boulevards (above, from 1875), focusing instead on the parks and private gardens also introduced by Haussmann. “That such islands of privacy and peace” that were Paris’ many private gardens “were still to be found in the metropolis,” Riopelle writes, “was, for Renoir, a beguiling feature of city life.” For Riopelle, Renoir’s blurring is a “corrective” or “subtle, utopian statement,” whereas I assume Rubin chooses to read it as just another aestheticizing choice. The dichotomy in Renoir’s attitude and how it plays out in his painting, however, does not take away from Rubin’s larger argument but, instead, attests to just how passionately involved these artists were in everyday life in late nineteenth-century France—enough to march along with progress but never in mindless lockstep.

Rubin uses the work of the Post-Impressionists and Neo-Impressionists as a bridge between the Impressionists and twentieth-century Modern art. Georges Seurat and Paul Signac develop a more scientific style that mimics technological progress in an updated way when the Impressionists’ style no longer fit in with the changing industrial world. Even an old hand such as Camille Pissarro tried to keep up with the times and paint in the new fashion. The popular print media began to generate more images of industry and progress, inspiring artists such as Vincent Van Gogh to see industrialization in a whole new light. In Factories at Clichy (above, from 1887), Van Gogh responds not only to popular print culture but also the Post- and Neo-Impressionist works he saw in Paris, while simultaneously updating his own sympathy for the common man. “Van Gogh’s leftist sympathies for the working man led to his interest in urban and industrial imagery,” Rubin writes. Such faith in progress seems naïve today, but we must remember that the Impressionists worked before the Robber Barons and the grand failure of technology in the cataclysm of World War I. Living in our post-Enron world, the Impressionists’ belief in the power of industrial progress to do good seems not only naïve but dangerous. Perhaps that difference in mindset is the highest hurdle to overcome in accepting Rubin’s premise, which revitalizes the Impressionists as active participants in their time and not just timeless, disengaged makers of pretty pictures.

[Many thanks to the University of California Press for providing me with a review copy of James H. Rubin’s Impressionism and the Modern Landscape: Productivity, Technology, and Urbanization from Manet to Van Gogh.]

Timeless Beauty

For the August Art Poll By Bob, in honor of Annie, Alex, and my annual trek to the New Jersey Shore for sun, surf, and fun, I offered the following question: “Which of the following works brings the beach home to you?” You responded with the closest poll yet. Roy Lichtenstein’s Girl With Ball (1961) won by a nose with 9 votes just ahead of a four-way tie at 8 votes a piece for Gustave Courbet’s The Wave (1869), Katsushika Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanagawa (1829-1832), Winslow Homer’s Sunlight on the Coast (1890), and Claude Monet’s Etretat: The End of the Day (1885). Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s The Wave (1879) brought up the rear with just 2 votes.

For the September Art Poll by Bob, I thought I’d do a little time travelling. If the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood somehow transported themselves to the twenty-first century (perhaps thanks to H.G. Wells) and forgot to bring their models with them, who would they paint? (Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Lady Lilith, from 1868, appears above.) In other words—“Which of the following modern actresses do you consider the most Pre-Raphaelite worthy?”:

Helena Bonham Carter

Angelina Jolie

Nicole Kidman

Keira Knightley

Julianne Moore

Natalie Portman

Charlotte Rampling

Kate Winslet

I’ve taken some liberties with my list to represent the whole range of the Pre-Raphaelite woman. I stretched things age wise to include the 1960s version of Charlotte Rampling as well as younger actresses such as Natalie Portman and Keira Knightley. A certain type of “British” beauty also appears in the faces of Rampling, Helena Bonham Carter, and Kate Winslet. Angelina Jolie fills in the femme fatale role. I’ve tried to include only actresses that I think are particularly Pre-Raphaelite-esque and not just the most beautiful or interesting faces out there. I’ve also tried to find particularly Pre-Raphaelite-esque photos of each woman to help you visualize what a painting of them by one of the Brotherhood would look like. Looking around for photos of these stars that put them in a Pre-Raphaelite light, I realized just how much that period’s sense of beauty still informs ours today, especially in terms of movies and advertising photography.

As always, please feel free to include other nominees in the comments, with a link to a photo you think helps make your case.

Unfinished Business

May you live in interesting times, goes the old Chinese curse. Jacques-Louis David lived in the interesting age of the French Revolution and served as the great icon-maker of that failed experiment in democracy. Born August 30, 1748, David witnessed firsthand many of the landmark events in the Revolution, including the Oath of the Tennis Court, when the French people pledged for the first time unity in opposition to Louis XVI. David sketched the scene on a small scale, but later planned a grand painting to match the importance of the event (above, from 1791). After sketching in the figures and the main points of the composition, David began working on highly finished portraits of the important revolutionaries. The chaos of later events, including the guillotining of some of those heads, prevented David from finishing his epic work, leaving those portraits atop muscular nude bodies upon which David later planned to add clothing. In many ways, David’s incomplete painting of The Tennis Court Oath symbolizes the lofty aspirations of the revolution and the failure to complete that mission.

David traveled in the most glamorous circles of Parisian society. When Antoine Lavoisier’s wife Marie-Anne wanted a portrait done of them, she asked David, who had once taught her painting. David’s Portrait of Antoine-Laurent and Marie-Anne Lavoisier (above, from 1788) shows the father of chemistry at the height of his powers alongside his also formidable wife. A true renaissance man, Lavoisier worked not only in the field of science but was also highly active in politics, proposing moderate reforms that he and others hoped would ease France’s transition from a monarchy to a democracy. Unfortunately, such moderation gave way to the violent excesses of those who wished not only for change but revenge. Lavoisier himself died on the scaffolding under the blade of the guillotine. In contrast, David rose through the political ranks, eventually calling for the beheading of Louis XVI himself at the gathering of the National Convention while sitting beside his influential friends, Maximilien Robespierre and Jean-Paul Marat.

By most accounts, Marat was a monster, a bureaucrat who coldly condemned others to death. Suffering from a horrible skin disease, Marat sat in a bath daily to ease his affliction. When a woman named Charlotte Corday entered Marat’s home on the pretext of providing a list of enemies of France, Marat blithely condemned everyone on the list to the guillotine. Corday pulled a knife from her clothes and stabbed Marat to death. David commemorated his friend’s death in his greatest painting, The Death of Marat (above, from 1793). David elevates the objectionable Marat to the status of sainthood, generating the necessary propagandistic energy to fuel calls for revenge against the group with which Corday sympathized. As a painting, The Death of Marat works amazingly well, spotlighting the fallen figure against a deep Caravaggio-esque black while invoking the Pietà of Michelangelo in the (false) marble smoothness of Marat’s naked skin. David rode the wave of violence to the coattails of Napoleon himself, providing the necessary visuals for Napoleon’s rise to power. After Napoleon’s fall, however, David found himself lost and fled France. For his involvement in the death of the king, David could never return, not even after his death in 1825. David’s body rests in Belgium, but his heart eventually was buried in Paris’ famous Père Lachaise cemetery—one last incomplete act in a lifetime of unfulfilled promise.