The Culture Enthusiast

Are modern artists substituting talent for social criticism?

It happened again. I saw the painting above, didn’t particularly like it, but then I heard an amazing explanation for it. In the audio guide explanation, the artist himself, Luis Gordillo, said things like: “Man has become an infantilized clown (…), man sits in an alien environment that gives us television and magazines, like that’s all we need.”

The criticism is very accurate and I actually agree with him, but what about the painting? Does it convey what he is trying to say? Is it interesting nonetheless? That’s up for debate, but this trend of big explanations poses a problem. I would rather read what the artist has to say than hang his painting in my house.

The reality is that many artists are more concerned with social criticism than they are with art. Not that criticism should be excluded from art, but there must be a balance and in many cases the criticism is stronger than the painting itself.

Now, throughout history artists were always more or less concerned with their public. So, why is this a modern tren? It’s not only from the 20^th century onwards that society needed criticism.  Weren’t artists dissatisfied with things in Ancient Greece? Didn’t people have problems in Ancient Egypt? Sure, but artists probably felt that it wasn’t their job to show it to people.

I’m not saying that the artist taking the role of critic is bad. However, he needs to maintain a distance from the object he wants to criticize. Most artists feel like criticizing bourgeois society and its biased values. But aren’t they a part of an equally biased society themselves? Aren’t they a part of a group that shares the same marxist, nihilistic and atheistic ideas?

Edward Albee, the playwright, said that arts should hold a mirror up to society1.  And who is going to hold a mirror up to artists and show them that they criticize other’s prejudices using a set of ready-made ideas?

What do you think? Should artists be more concerned with criticism than actual aesthetic or moral values?

Image: Caballero cubista aux larmes by Luis Gordillo - Source

1“The function of the arts is to hold a mirror up to people, to say, ‘This is how you are. Take a hard look; if you don’t like what you see, change.’ - Edward Albee, playwright - Source  

A little bit of history

Date: 1877

Located in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, Russia.

The woman portrayed in the picture is Jeanne Samary, a very famous actress who worked in the Comédie Française. She posed for many paintings and was admired for her beauty. In this painting she is in her 20’s. When hearing about her death Renoir said: “Her skin! It illuminated everything around it.”

A little bit of technique

The painting has a strong impressionist aesthetic. You can see that color is very important to transmit how luminous her face was. Renoir’s brush strokes are also swift and not very defined. It is considered one of Renoir’s masterpieces and it’s from the period where he created his best impressionist works.

A little bit of enthusiasm

Seriously, I could look at this painting forever. We have the impression that Jeanne Samary must have been that beautiful. By the way, if you see her portraits done by other artists you won’t have this impression. 

The little flowers on her dress and her simple bracelet make her so stylish without looking too dated, (something that unfortunately happens a lot in portraits).

I know I say this a lot (specially about dead famous people), but I wish I could have been her friend. Plus, I can’t get by the fact that she was in the Comédie Française. Ever since I saw “The shop around the corner” I think working there must have been the most glamourous thing ever (maybe I’ll discover, like Clara, that that’s not true).

Well, if I can’t be Jeanne’s bestie, I’ll just admire Renoir’s amazing portrait and try to copy her delicate demeanor.

How do you feel about this painting? Do you like any other paintings by Renoir?

“What I paint is addressed to those who “live” in the present, or rather, for it… An artist who paints for posterity has an intention that I do not have. In my opinion, he is doing something idiots understand very well – those who do not concern “living” men. The man who seems to be alive, whom one refers to as “alive”, is an enigmatic reality that need not be lent a meaning that would interpret that reality as one that is concerned with posterity.” 

Letter from René Magritte to Louis Scutenaire, February 24, 1955[1]

Wagner has a similar quote on working for the present:

“I have felt the pulse of modern art and know that it will die! This knowledge, however, fills me not with despondency but with joy, for I know at the same time that it is not art in general which will perish but only our own particular type of art—which stands remote from modern life—, whereas true—imperishable—constantly renewed art is still to be born. The monumental character of our art will disappear, we shall abandon our habit of clinging firmly to the past, our egotistical concern for permanence and immortality at any price: we shall let the past remain the past, the future—the future, and we shall live only in the present, in the here and now, and create works for the present age alone.”[2]

Magritte’s ideas continue to baffle me. Now, I don’t actually think that an artist needs to aim for posterity.  There’s nothing wrong with painting for the present, but after that, you might no longer be relevant.

I’m no artist, but I would dread that this happened to me. As a matter of fact, it’s like what the guy from Gladiator said: what we do in life echoes in the eternity. If you aim for greatness it will count, whether you achieve it or not. If you aim for the present – it will also count - badly.

Why?

Because what these artist are not saying is that making works that will last years, centuries, millenniums is hard. It is actually extremely hard to have enough talent, creativity, ambition and faith (not to say guts!) to paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Doing all this without encouragement from art critics, art dealers and the media is even harder. It’s also quite difficult to be able to make a sculpture as marvelous as the Pietá when you are only 24 years old.

What’s implied in this contempt for immortality is that it’s much easier to cater for today’s fashions, ideologies and caprices. Besides, if you are living in a time that what matters most is to be original, shocking, subversive and revolutionary – the better!

The word obsolete is used a lot in technology but I think it might be useful here. Do you know when movies get old and the technology in them gets obsolete? Take the movie Vacation for example. The family’s computer is huge and has no screen, so it’s connected to the Tv and to the boy’s videogame. We see these objects now and we laugh and make fun of them. But they weren’t funny in the late 80’s.

However, you can still watch Vacation and find it funny because its premise is not specific of a certain time. The humor they get out of the horrors of family vacations is pretty much the same in the late 80’s and now. What’s specific from this decade (the computer and videogame) doesn’t affect the movie so much because it’s merely a detail.

Now, Wagner and Magritte were doing art - something light years away from Chevy Chase’s antics (which I love, by the way). So how come they seem less concerned than Chevy about making their works last?

How do you interpret Wagner’s and Magritte’s quotes? Is despising immortality valid?

Don’t care much for architecture? I didn’t too. Until I learned that architecture is the type of art that concerns even those who proclaim to have no interest in art. After all, we all need houses, bridges, universities and so on. The ideal is that we have buildings that are both beautiful and fit for their purposes. We are getting neither, according to John Silber in his book Architecture of the Absurd.

This great book analyses the attempts of some architects to make their “genius” prevail over the clients’ needs, desires or budgets. Filled with illustrations and personal examples (the author was the President of Boston University and is a member of the American Institute of Architects) the book dares to question these delicate genius* who are making our cities so ugly and our lives less comfortable.

The author also invites us to look at these modern buildings with a challenging and critical eye. (It’s Ok not to like the Pyramid in front of the Louvre). He reassures us that we don’t need to accept what’s new and different (not to mention crazy and ugly) just because architects are bullying us to.

What do you think of modern architecture, such as the pyramid in Louvre’s courtyard?

* This is not my expression, nor the author’s. It’s George Constanza’s. I know he is referring to doctors, but I think it applies here too – not on George’s side who always pretended to be an architect.

A little bit of history

Date: about 1340 B.C.

Nefertiti was an Egyptian Queen whose husband, the Faraoh Akhenaten, broke with all religious and artistic traditions of the time. The Egyptians had many deities, but Akhenaten started worshiping one god above all the others. This god, called Aten, was represented in the shape of a sun. However, Egypt went back to being polytheistic and adopting the so called Egyptian style when his successor was still alive.

A little bit of technique

The queen wears a colorful necklace and a crown with a ribbon. A serpent, the prerogative of royalty, used to adorn the crown. We can still see two of the serpent’s coils, but the head is gone. (Source: Catalogue of the Egyptian Museum in Berlin (1982) p. 97)

A little bit of enthusiasm

It’s amazing how an ancient bust (3300 years old!) can convey so much beauty. Not only beauty but also power and elegance.

When we look at portraits from older times we sometimes get a little shocked because the clothes are so different and unusual. But not here. Her crown only contributes to elevate her, to show that she belonged to royalty.

Do you like Egyptian art? Does the bust still embody our ideal of beauty?

"My latest picture began with the question: how to paint a picture with a glass of water as the subject? I drew a number of glasses of water, a line always appeared in these drawings. Then this line became deformed and took the form of an umbrella. Then this umbrella was put into the glass, and finally the umbrella opened up and was placed under the glass of water. Which I feel answers the initial question. The picture so conceived is called Les vacances de Hegel. I think Hegel would have liked this object that has two contrary functions: to repel and to contain water. Wouldn’t that have amused him as we are amused when on vacation?"

René Magritte in a letter to Maurice Rapin dated May 1958

Source: "Magritte: the true art of painting" by Harry Torczyner

Magritte’s letter proves rather useful to explain the intentions behind his painting “Hegel’s Vacation”. Before reading this letter, the painting was rather baffling to me. But his “explanation” makes the painting seems like a puzzle or a guessing game. The painting only makes sense after it is explained to us.

Besides, the motives sound random and subjective – only relevant and meaningful to the artist. I confess: I would never guess the intention was to paint a glass of water as a subject. Actually, I might haven’t guessed anything at all.

This feeling of “not getting it” is also there when we observe most of modern and contemporary art. Seriously, I feel like one of the judges from Project Runway asking the painter to give fewer explanations. “Let the painting speak for itself!”

How do you feel about the painting in question? Is it possible to like it without any explanation? 

A little bit of history

Date: 1601

Located in the church of Saint Maria del Poppolo, Rome, Italy

As the name says, the painting portrays the Biblical scene of Saint Paul’s conversion. Before his conversion, it was his job to persecute people who believed in Christ and he was on his way to the city of Damascus to do precisely that.

“As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” “Who are you, Lord?” Saul asked. “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” he replied." (Acts 9:3-5)

In the picture we see the shocked Paul fallen on the ground, his eyes closed due to the light coming from Heaven.

A little bit of technique

A lot of people see flaws in this picture, such as the horse being scrunched in the composition and such, but I have to disagree. The picture only has three “characters”: Saint Paul, the horse and the groom. Saint Paul looks extremely amazed and in awe due to the fact that Christ has just talked to him. He is on the floor,  temporarily blind, his arms incredibly expressive. The horse is very important too. Now, the Bible doesn’t say anything about Saint Paul falling from his horse, but it was incredibly smart to put the horse in the middle looking at his master kind of confused, wondering what just happened. So Saul who was determined and conceited on the top of his horse is now on the floor, blind. The focus, then, is on the fact that Saint Paul in the floor, the focus is on the human aspect not on the supernatural aspect.

A little bit of enthusiasm

I love this painting because the conversion of Saint Paul is one of my favorite episodes of the Bible. Visualizing Saint Paul falling from his horse with his arms pointing to the sky only increases the dramatic aspect. However, Caravaggio has another painting with the same theme:

The Conversion of Saint Paul - Caravaggio 

Source

I prefer the first one, because there's too much going on here. You almost don’t notice the horse or the light. And I prefer Saint Paul motionless and static.

Maybe I’m off topic here, but I just remembered this looking at the angel in the picture. There was this tv show called Touched by an angel and in one of the episodes, an angel says that God has this incredible gift of turning something initially bad or sad into something good and beautiful. Isn’t this the case with Saint Paul? He was the person who persecuted believers the most. God could have punished him or could have advised the others apostles not to trust him, but He chose to talk to him and to turn him into an apostle.

Of course, none of this has strictly to do with the painting. But the way the scene is painted always reminds me of humility, of getting off our high places on top of our horses and being amazed by the light of God. You can’t see it, but I’m applauding right now.

Which painting do you prefer? What other works from Caravagio do you like?