I recently had the chance to visit Copenhagen and Amsterdam for the first time, and of course that means new museums. Following on my previous post on the Portland Art Museum, which not only was a delightful exercise in writing but helped draw out of me thoughts I did not know I had, I want to continue this habit, starting with a two-part on one of my favorites of the trip, the Statens Museum for Kunst (SMK) in Copenhagen.
I love seeing the "special effects" of previous eras. In this case it is the trompe l'oeil, or a painting that tricks the viewer into confusing it as real by exploiting the then-new technology of naturalistic perspective painting. I can't say I find any of them great pieces of art, designed to be parlor pieces and conversation starters for guests, but they are delightful in their own little way as a reminder that people have always made clever use of the tools at hand.
The primary collection at the SMK was by the Flemish painter Cornelius Norbertus Gijsbrechts, a favorite of the Danish royal family whose collection formed the basis for the museum. Aside from the run-of-the-mill letterboard impersonations, he had a few particularly fun works. One was a painting of the back of a painting on the floor (seen in the corner of the picture to the right), done so convincingly that I was fooled just as intended. Another was a painting of a full easel with all its accompaniments, cut out so as to look like the real thing. The picture doesn't convey how well it accomplishes this, as when entering the room your first thought is to wonder why the museum thought to put this easel display in the corner. It's like those nature videos that zoom in on the camouflaged animal; it's obvious when pointed out, but without warning you're thoroughly fooled.
My favorite of them all was, appropriately enough, a false favorite. While I was visiting there was a special exhibit concerning the Baroque, with an emphasis on how that era captured its sense of change and rhetoric in its art [1]. At the end was Giljbrechts'
, a two-for-one demonstration of not only the visual tricks but the dominant message of the era. But when I first saw it, I mistook the intent: I saw the peeling corner of the painting-within-a-painting not as a newly-finished piece being removed but a sign of curling age. In other words, I thought it was a statement that even the
is temporary, a self-referential reflection that even the issue of life and death passes away. For a moment I was slightly elevated by the thought... but on reading the accompanying plaque I had my mistake rectified, and was left to wonder on how to credit a piece of art for an experience it did not intend.
Reubens
Rubens paints men better than women. I admit I had always wondered about his fame, because I found nothing he painted appealing. He had no spiritual power, and the full force of Baroque emotionalism seemed to have inflicted itself on him, to the point that his historical and mythological paintings appeared to me so much a mass of contorted flesh. The women in particular... at least Ingres and Renoir, who also have a habit of not knowing when to stop with the girls, could hit some genuine high notes. Rubens was a clean miss despite how large he painted his targets. All this skepticism felt quite summed, and vindicated, when I read J.S. Mill's feelings earlier this year:
"Who would not prefer one 'Virgin and Child' of Raphael to all the pictures which Rubens, with his fat, frouzy Dutch Venuses, ever painted? -though Rubens, besides excellent almost everyone in his mastery over the mechanical parts of his art, often shows real genius in grouping his figures, the peculiar problem of historical painting. But then, who, except a mere student of drawing and coloring, ever cared to look twice at any of the figures themselves?" - Thoughts on Poetry and Its Varieties
This seemed like a satisfactory place to leave the subject: that perhaps some greater appreciation awaited my gaining a greater comprehension of technical details, but otherwise I wouldn't seek him out [2]. But at the SMK they had paintings containing what I had never seen from him: male portraits. What a contrast! His Franciscan Friar (unfortunately high up on the wall) is startling in its frank conveyance of the sitter's character. No theatrics, just a clear observation of a not-so-spiritual member of the cloth, Rubens' feeling for fat now put to good use in the rolls under his subject's chin. It reminded me of the Italian sculptures of their churchmen that were also on display: under the influence of Roman verism, one could be quite forgiven for mistaking Bellini's pope for a mafia don.
Though it would not be true to characterize Rubens as critical of religion, as his portrait of abbot Matthaeus Yrsselius shows. The painting as a whole isn't quite the best. The crosier and miter are utterly unconvincing, occupying the same non-space which also contains the incorporeal coat of arms, and there is little enough to guide the eye over the expanse of white ferraiolo that fills most of the frame. But these details only come to light on further examination because it is once again the flesh that dominates a Rubens. The head and hands are two islands of perfect study in the aged human form, capturing in full the meandering vein at the temple and
the concentric wrinkles that date his fingers like tree rings. Even the expression is one I could linger on for some time, one that contained enough solemnity to be convincing but did not devolve into a sappy caricature of devotion. Is the wateriness around the eyes rheumy old age or emotion? That it quite comes to neither seems to me a fine balance that speaks to how subtly Rubens could paint expression when he wanted. It ends up, I just saw all the wrong Rubens.
 |
Matthias Grünewald, c1516
The Isenheim Altarpiece |
German Artists
If my impression of Rubens was adjusted, however, my feeling toward the German artists was cemented. Years ago now I saw The Isenheim Altarpiece by Grünewald in a book and my immediate sense was: this came out of a dark place. This isn't grand suffering like the Italians would portray it, or even the blood-spattered relish the Spanish seem to take in their martyrs, but a screeching, screaming human torment portrayed against a black abyss of a world. Abandon all hope, ye who dwell here. Since then I have reflected that I have never found any truly moving Christian art coming from Germany. It is as though an imagination capable of that kind of darkness is hampered in its capacity for joyous exaltation, and I suspect that much of this finds its roots in an attitude that refuses idealization.
First, let us start with the most obvious: Bosch. If there is an artist who has more luridly cataloged human perversity, I don't want to know of him (although Goya may come close). The SMK did not have any paintings by him, but there was one listed as being by his "successor" and you could have convinced me it was an original. Here we have a Biblical scene of
Christ driving traders from the temple, but despite his centrality Christ looks rather bored. Or I should say unconvincingly benevolent, because one only has to gaze around him to see an invective against human sickness and stupidity. The merchants leave in an orderly way, the old money changer still clutching his moneybag, while a man at the head of the train points off-canvas, as though to say, "We'll just go set up shop over there instead." No lesson learned here. And the the only person who seems to be affected has a look of baffled idiocy, as though it's not possible to teach these dolts, just drive them around like livestock.
Which that's what the rest of the sick and the wretched appear as. Even if there is intended a moralizing against the rich trading while the poor suffer outside, it fails in the face of a thoroughly unsympathetic portrayal of those masses. Shuffling, crawling, and half-naked, the myriad of pathetic incidents is overwhelming but not moving; they wouldn't know divinity if it walked up and beat them. There is nothing here that would inspire divinity to suffer and die for their sake, and it is left up to the statue on the right to sum it into a single image: a donkey-headed devil sitting on a pedestal of human asses.
Next is Lucas Cranach the Elder. I admit, I associate him with two things: Martin Luther and nubile girls (what a combination). The museum had an example of his Martin Luther portraits, and it held up well enough, but it was really the latter topic that seemed to delight him the most.
There was one of his many
Judgement of Parises, a series whose primary function appears to be an opportunity of illustrating the female figure from the front, behind, and at an angle all in the same painting, and therefore asks the viewer as much as Paris, "Which of these excites you the most?"[3] However, I did not take a picture of this one as it was far from the best example, but his nearby
Venus with Cupid Stealing Honey will do just as well.
From the outset it is obvious that the focus is on Venus; the associated story of Cupid is really a rationalizing excuse, and even his own mother isn't paying attention to him in this painting. The moral of the story, that just as small bees can inflict great pain in exchange for a small delight, so too can falling in love swiftly turn to heartache, seems particularly flat when Venus herself is beckoning us. Cranach really does have a sense for the female form, and though it is more Gothically ovoid than we are used to he still makes it compelling.
Yet when it comes to his Madonnas and saints, it all fails him. Like with Bosch's Christ above, the closest Cranach seems to be able to approach divine serenity in his faces is something akin to sleepy boredom. Perhaps that's just what he saw on all the faces of people at church when people wanted to look interested. While I do believe it is fair to admit my own suspicions that I am not perfectly qualified to interpret his expressions, given that his Venus above appears to smirk rather than invite to me (
the same sort of expression that appears on Gothic Madonnas), I truly struggle to find any pathos in this painting. Cranach just has no idea what morally perfect people look like.
I would end Cranach there (and it would certainly be better writing) but there is one more painting I feel must be included if just to make the point: Christ Blessing the Children.
It is the most compelling religious painting I have ever seen from him. His Jesus here
does have a believable expression toward the child he holds. But it's almost as though that sufferance relies on the chaos of the rest of the painting, which has a truly accurate depiction of what the scene would have been like: one girl obnoxiously pulling on his robe, another being dragged by her mother for her own good, and a baby being fed while waiting in line just so Cranach can sneak a boob in. Yet it works because unlike adults, children can be pardoned for their fleshly ignorance, and so Cranach can at least envision forgiveness for them. It's the exception that proves the rule, that only when people can be reconciled without being perfected can these Germans artists depict unconditional love.
Finally, there is Pieter Bruegel the Elder. While the museum did not have much by him, and he is not even German, I feel the need to include him as an example of the Northern mindset before commercial success.
 |
Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1565
The Harvesters (at The Met) |
What he is justly known for are his landscapes littered with people going about their lives. It is the closest I feel the West has ever approached the Taoist style of painting, where despite acknowledging a kind of supra-human immensity of the world, Bruegel still finds that people have a
place in it. That they are particularized, engaging in the often-difficult tasks appropriate to time and season, adds to the effect that this is not Arcadia but a real lived experience. No idealization is required to make us just what we are, and having achieved this Bruegel extends a sort of all-embracing sympathy to humanity that cannot be found in the above paintings.
Yet Bruegel was a fierce moralist as well, and when given license to his unfettered imagination something truly awful crawls out in
The Strife between Carnival and Lent. Gone is the gay covering of
The Peasant Dance, leaving us only with an image of concentrated revulsion. Carnival, the time before the religious holiday, is no well-earned joy but a fat imbecile, gorged on his cravings, using approaching holiness as an excuse to indulge rather than prepare. And Lent... when she arrives the painting does not get one wit less profane. Practically toothless, she yet attaches herself like a leech, making little impression on her victim. It is as though Bruegel has reimagined the Furies, except so decrepit that they cannot even exact revenge and so have no future as life-giving Eumenides. They can only watch as each year the religious calendar is debased as reliably as the crops are harvested and the peasants skate on the ice.
...
 |
Dürer, 1526
|
There is a line in
The Brothers Karamazov where an old doctor recounts that, "The more I love mankind in general, the less I love people in particular." This seems to me the dilemma of the German artists. In every aspect they are resistant to idealization; they must portray what is before their eyes, and when it comes to human beings that disgusts them physically and morally. It is a reminder that Christianity was an import to the North, a non-native species forcibly transplanted from the light-filled Mediterranean to a more hostile climate [4]. Like how Dürer was forced to abandon his attempts to draw the human body after the Classical style and invent his own schema anew, the long centuries of the Middle Ages were not just about spreading Christianity to the North but attempting to find within it solutions to the needs of these new converts. I'm not sure it ever entirely succeeded in Germany:
"There lives no man upon earth who can give a final judgment upon what the most beautiful shape of a man may be; God only knows that... 'Good' and 'better' in respect of beauty are not easy to discern, for it would be quite possible to make two different figures, neither conforming with the other, one stouter, the other thinner, and yet we might scarce be able to judge which of the two excelled in beauty." - Dürer
This is for the physical shape, but in the Mediterranean nude the shape was the soul, and a frank observation of humans cannot help but conclude that we are all deformed. Without idealization, without the belief in a Perfect Man that somehow exists beyond the senses but within us, the hopeful aspect of Christianity could never take root. All that was left was gargoyles and damnation, and a Protestant Reformation that believed only in grace and not in works.
At the end here, I want to indulge a bit in speculation at the edge of my knowledge. Returning to Grünewald's altarpiece, when it is folded open it reveals Christ risen. Except this is no human Christ but a supernatural specter who does not belong to the same plane as the rocks and soldiers below him. It makes me wonder whether this attitude, this inability to reconcile grotesque matter with ideal spirit, is what prefigured German Idealism: one can never find true perfection in the world so one must see through it to get at what is transcendently Real. It is not the senses but the light of the mind that will perceive the true order, for while Christ broken on the cross is a believable human reality one will never locate Christ Divine among us with the eyes. It was not until they started over, fashioning in sublime Romanticism that same archaic worship of the power of nature and of great men that seems to be the origin of so much religion, that they had something they could call their own.[5]
Antidote
Originally I had intended to conclude the first half there, but despite its power I do not like to leave darkness as the last word in my posts. Instead, I want to counteract it with pathos.
This painting,
The Holy Family, The Rest on the Flight into Egypt by Giulio Cesare Procaccini (1613), hardly qualifies as a religious painting. At least, I felt that any thought of theology merely got in the way of what otherwise is an exquisite application of Baroque emotion. Something awful is happening, a displacement that has afflicted so many throughout history, and though the child turns to the mother she has no comfort to give in return. In this moment they are linked in sorrow. Yet something in the painting is not despairing; perhaps it is the knowledge that this flight is not the end in the original and that greater things are to come, an optimism latent in the beauty of the bodies, the clothes, and the fruit. Pain can not only be acknowledged but
dignified when seen in its place. This is what Christianity offered: the possibility of seeing one's own suffering reflected in
the central story of the world, and so an acknowledgement that one is part of it too.
----
Footnotes:
 |
| Museum handout with rhetorical forms |
[1] Originally I had planned a large section on this special exhibit, but I found that despite my good intentions it was dull because, truthfully, I found little of it moving, and my best writing comes from responding to the art rather than recounting its historical value. The header image of this article is a nice example: it was the flagship painting for the exhibition but despite the explanation of what it meant I didn't like it any more than before. However, I do want to expand on the delightful fact I learned: Baroque art was copying oratory.
Rhetoric had been considered one of the fine arts since Greece but painting and sculpture had not. After all, rhetoric could move people, and it was seen not just in the vulgar way we view it as convincing people, but as the power to move and elevate them as well. To put the spirit of the speaker into the crowd. When after the Renaissance painters and sculptors were seen increasingly as artists, they naturally copied the model that they had. As a result, Baroque art is full of posed theatrics, but they are often precisely-defined theatrics that had come down from the tradition of the body language of oratory. When combined with the renewed emphasis on the transitoriness of the world and religion as the counter, we yield Baroque art: emotional and full of motion, wobbling along the fine line between sincere feeling and exuberant sentimentality.
[2] Since writing this I have read through part of Kenneth Clark's The Nude and been rather backhanded by my idol (who almost seems to be responding to Mill's quote):
"Why do we burn with indignation when we hear people who believe themselves to have good taste dismissing Rubens as a painter of fat naked women and even applying the epithet 'vulgar'? What is it, in addition to sheer pictorial skill, that makes his nudes noble and life-giving creations?"
It causes me to realize, as I hope to touch on in a future post, how much my own temperament is like Mill's: dutiful, moralizing, and as a result Puritanical even without a religion. I simply do not have that same unblemished delight in the life of the flesh, and it reliably causes me to prefer Rembrandt to Rubens, Rome to Venice, and, frankly, almost anything to the playfully erotic French Baroque and Rococo. As a result, Clark's interpretation of Rubens, that he was a soul who saw the bounteous good of God's world in the fertility of his well-provisioned women, is one that is perhaps forever closed to my enjoyment. But my appreciation of his men here does give me some pause that if he is so capable in a realm I do comprehend, I perhaps just don't understand his message elsewhere.
[3] It is worth noting that Cranach's trios seem to fall into the mold of the Three Graces, a motif of a triplet of nude women that had been used since antiquity. However, that usually has an alternating front-back-front with interlocked arms, whereas Cranach never does such a thing with his goddesses.
[4] In A History of Western Philosophy, Bertrand Russell writes:
"The success of Bacchus in Greece is not surprising. Like all communities that have been civilized quickly, the Greeks, or at least a certain proportion of them, developed a love of the primitive, and a hankering after a more instinctive and passionate way of life than that sanctioned by current morals."
I have a feeling that this is applicable to the Germanic tribes as well.
[5] Later in the trip at the EYE film museum in Amsterdam I toured an exhibit on Werner Herzog. Several monitors had clips from his movies playing and when writing this piece I was reminded of one from Burden of Dreams:
"Taking
a close look around us there is a some sort of a harmony. It is the
harmony of overwhelming and collective murder. And we in comparison to
the articulate vileness and baseness and obscenity of all this jungle,
we in comparison to that enormous articulation, we only sound and look
like badly-pronounced and half-finished sentences out of a stupid
suburban novel. A cheap novel. And we have to become humble in front
of this overwhelming misery and overwhelming fornication. Overwhelming
growth. And overwhelming lack of order. Even the stars up here in
the sky here look like a mess. There is no harmony in the universe, we
have to get acquainted to this idea that there is no real harmony as we
have conceived it. But, when I say this, I say this all full of
admiration for the jungle. It is not that I hate it. I love it. I
love it very much. But I love it against my better judgment." (link)
Underlines
mine, for Herzog comes after the Darwinian disillusionment. Extracting
these highlighted sentences, one can still see the same sentiments:
pathetic ill-formed humans in a world defined by its chaos and brutality, and a longing after a type of primitiveness that throws off the shackles of suburban mediocrity.
