Strangely Acceptable Conversations Overheard in a Museum: Part I

Man to his friend: "I've heard that people can still see when their heads are chopped off. There is oxygen in the brain, which makes the head able to see. I bet they could see the basket that their head was falling into."

Friend: "I guess we will never know for ourselves."

Yes, I hope so.

Considering the conversation was happening in the Baroque gallery of the National Gallery, it wasn't so strange. Had I overheard the same in a coffee shop, I would be worried.

All of the following paintings are Baroque:

Caravaggio, David and Goliath 1609-10

Guido Reni, Salome with the Head of St. John the Baptist 1639-40

Artemesia Gentileschi, Judith Beheading Holofernes c.1615

My Best Impression

Impression Sunrise, 1872 via wikipaintings

In 1872 Claude Monet (unintentionally) created the Impressionist movement with his work, Impression Sunrise. Painted in the harbour of Le Havre, the artwork attempts to capture the fleeting 'impression' of a sunrise. It was painted quickly with the intention of translating the visual, physical 'effect' light has on a landscape, but more specifically on our individual perceptions of colour. It was criticised as unfinished. It was ridiculed as amateurish. Yet, it began a painting revolution, a reassessment of painting that claimed perception was more evocative of reality than was the precise mimicking of nature.

So, this morning it came to me that I would like to recreate my impression of light, landscape and perception. I was walking though a park in South West London just after sunrise. Although I instinctively reached in my pocket for my mobile, I had no camera to capture the moment (I had consciously left my phone at home). Without my camera I was able to actually experience the moment. I let go of the need to document and realised that whenever you take a photo of something you find yourself saying to the viewer 'oh, this photo doesn't do it justice.' That's because with the quick capture of a camera-phone we rarely capture our perception of the moment, our subjective experience, the impetus that drove us to take the photograph in the first place.

My thoughts turned to Monet. When he re-created his perception of these fleeting moments of light he did not do so to reproduce the presumed exactitude of vision, rather he intended to paint through the subjectivity of his temperament. Therefore, the precision is inherently flawed, but the finished work is far more emotive and revealing of his experience (he reveals his interest, himself as an artist, by what he chooses to focus on).

I am no painter, but I would like to try to re-create my impression of sunrise through what I can do as an art historian, write.

Impression, SW Park, London, 10 December, 2013, approx. 8:00

A dense layer of white fog clings to the frost-lined green grass. The cold damp gently embraces and encloses all life in its scope. As it rises from the ground it transitions to a smokey blue dew, fading as it reaches the tips of bare, needle-thin tree branches. Its heaviness returns to enhance the gray sheet of clouds and, together, they diffuse the early morning sun, making it glow and glisten like a soft, breakable, orange yolk. The whole of the light is what I have always imagined late autumn to be.

Not as good as Monet, but worth the experiment.

Invisible Photography

Whatever it grants to vision and whatever its manner, a photograph is always invisible: it is not what we see.

Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida[1]

Unlike painting or sculpture, mediums in which we can clearly see (in most cases) the shift between world and re-presentation, we rarely notice the media of a photograph; the frame (paper or screen) does not break the ‘reality’ of the image. 

Naples, Italy 1960

For example, in the work surrealist-cum-photojournalist, Henri Cartier-Bresson, we marvel at the 'decisive moment' he is able to capture rather than the literal 'nature' of the photograph: light captured through a lens, impressing itself through bits of chemical and metal solution.

Photographs ‘annihilate’ their medium; they are no longer the sign, but the thing itself.[2] A photograph is an image of what never really was, yet the essence of the photograph is to “ratify what it represents,” certificating presence, and authenticating the existence of a certain being (whether photographer or photographed).[3] The photograph is not of a subject, it becomes the subject, the being/the moment it has captured. 

Montmartre, Paris c.1931

When reading a photograph we give primacy to subject and narrative over form and media. We take for granted that it is, like any other art form, a construction after nature, not nature itself. As the medium of photography finds itself based more and more in the virtual, its medium becomes invisible. Photography becomes reality.

Mexico, 1934

The aesthetic action of the 'click' is subjective, filling the photograph with its captor’s presence and authority. The purpose of photography is to dominate what is seen, within a frame, controlling its fleeting existence. Presuming invisibility, we permit the photograph to frame our perception of reality.

For more on Henri Cartier-Bresson, check out this amazing exhibit at MoMA. And incidentally, I had no idea Cartier-Bresson knew Barthes, but I should have. . .here is his portrait of the author:

Barthes, 1963

---

[1] Barthes, 6.

[2] Ibid., 45.

[3] Ibid., 85, 87, 107. 

What I can remember about Picasso inspires me

Lights dimmed. Projector on. Dim glow. Expectant faces. I never let anyone into my lectures late, so the room was always full. I resigned my post to build a life in London.

I miss teaching. I miss lecturing about what I love. What I miss most though is art history.

Art history is a dark room illuminated by an artwork, literally and figuratively. We share in the dark and it is as if the art becomes more precious and more powerful.

I have not lectured on art history in over a year and a half. I began to study cultural studies (philosophy, economics, sociology. . .) and I disconnected myself from the topic that made my heart sing because I falsely came to believe it was irrelevant - that my work was not contemporary, informed on the conceptual, the technological. I believed this lie and it took me a year of studying contemporary subjectivity at Goldsmiths to realise history is never irrelevant. We live history in the contemporary - we are the result of our history.

I feel sometimes so disconnected from art history that I don't know where to begin to reconnect. I pray that it is like 'riding a bike' but I fear that the stories, the analysis, the passion I had have been simplified into the superficial things one might remember from any survey course: that what was my knowledge is no different than any other abstract memory I think I feel I experienced.

Picasso moved to Paris in 1900. He was a young artist (19) trying to prove himself in the avant garde capital of the world. He had come from his home in progressive Barcelona just after perfecting his study at the School of Fine Arts in Madrid, graduating with the equivalent of a BA by the time he was 16. He had mastered the technical skill of the academy, now it was time to un-learn all of it so that he could push art forward.

Picasso, First Communion, 1896 via Pictify

Picasso's first years in Paris were marked by poverty, loss, fear, depression and the suicide of his best friend (Carlos Casagemas). He continually fled the city back to the comforts of Barcelona where he would gather courage and artistic capital (i.e. knowledge of Iberian sculpture) to come back and conquer The City of Art.

Picasso, Death of Casagemas, 1901

To move forward Picasso studied history. He imitated Monet, Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec, Gauguin - the previous generation of modernists that had forged the path away from academia into individual expression. From the study of history he made style of his own; he found his voice.

Picasso, Desmoiselles d'Avignon, 1907 

I recall this all without consulting notes or other sources. This is from memory. Has my memory distorted the 'truth'? Has my memory made something seriously nuanced simple and superficial?

What I can remember about Picasso (here) inspires me. Persistence, study, work, regroup, belief that in time it will come. Pushing past doubt and building upon strength is what made Picasso. I am not Picasso, but I can gain from his history.

To regain what I have resigned I have to cast aside the fear and doubt - the distorted thought that I will never assimilate into my tough city, London. To make my memory present and factual I must regroup, re-study and re-immerse into the consciousness of art. I have to return to (mine and art) history to move forward.

So, who wants to hire me as an art history lecturer?

Façade: Curious Ramblings Inspired by Viennese Portraiture

Klimt, Unfinished Portrait in the Facing the Modern exhibition space (blurry Instagram view)

My specialty is fin de siècle France, which is wholly different from fin de siècle Vienna. Vienna as a cultural centre is place that has continually triggered my curiosity - it is dense and complex, many times too complicated to interpret. After my recent visit to the National Gallery's 'Facing the Modern: The Portrait of Vienna 1900' I found myself reflecting on the general meaning of portraiture in art history - also the petri dish that was Vienna in 1900.

This is the context of Freud. It is a time when a sophisticated middle class recognised the inspired power of the avant garde and allowed them to participate more freely in creating the cultural landscape of the city. There was a reconfiguration of the artists' academy. Klimt, Schiele, Kokoschka were its modernist superstars.

Klimt, Portrait of Helene Klimt (his niece)

This is also a time of political tensions: the creation and subsequent dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the onslaught of World War I, the rise of antisemitism, and the birth of Adolf Hitler.

How does all of this result in the proliferation of portraiture?

What is the significance of portraiture? There are so many implications held within this genre, but what does the proliferation of portraiture in a certain time and place mean, generally? In art history the patterns of middle class portraiture accompany eras/geographic regions of confidence, both economic and humanist, at times when the importance of religion in society is surpassed by the achievements of man.

We find the first emergence of middle class portraiture in the Italian Renaissance (1400-1550). The next is during the Dutch Golden Age (c. 1600-1700). Then again in late 18th century England and, finally, the turn of the century in Vienna. Portraits were typically reserved for royalty and the aristocracy, but during these times, in these geographic regions, it was the middle class who held the power and who dominated cultural trends. This is not a new assertion by any means, but it simulates my curiosity. . .the middle class assert their power collectively through individual representations of themselves. The collective is based on individualism.

Schiele, Portrait of Paris von Gutersloh (via wikipaintings)

Additionally, portraiture is the most psychologically revealing genre. It is the artist's psychological interpretation of who they are experiencing. Portraits are as much reflections of an exterior as they are of a personality, an interior view of the sitter. They are as much a reflection of the individual subject as they are of the artists who re-create them.

And in the National Gallery's 'Vienna, 1900' the portraits overtly explore the psychological nature of the subject. This notion propels me in the direction of Freud who is a product of this context. He was not the only one to explore the inner workings of the mind at this time - scientists had been doing it for decades - but seeing all of these works emerging from Vienna makes me thing that Freud was truly a product of his city. This confident, aware, open-minded, avant-garde atmosphere was essential for his success. Able access to a city filled with subjects who wanted to be explored/exposed for their individuality surely pushed him to the forefront of psychoanalysis. Silly question: maybe to use psychoanalysis is to reflect on 1900 Vienna's cultural trends?

Portrait of Freud (image via wikipedia)

We often take for granted psychology and psychiatry as sciences that have always been there, that exploration of who we are as being a given part of our lives. This is simply not true. It was not until Freud that humanity was able to explore how they felt as individuals without being subject to ridicule.

Schiele, Self-Portrait in the Facing the Modern exhibition space

Egon Schiele's portraits respond to this context as well; they are as raw as portraits get. He is the first artist to truly distort the body of his sitter to reveal their psychological state and his perception of that experience. Had he painted his subjects photographically real (as he was taught to and could do), the state of their/his energy would have been suppressed.

So many tiny threads for future learning were unlocked for me in this exhibition. It also made me reflect on our own time, the endless selfies, self-documentation through the images of Instagram. What do these portraits reveal about our psychological state - surely not economic confidence.

When we face ourselves, we become representatives of our context. No matter how individual we attempt to be, we are still the product of our time and place. When we face those at the start of modernism (over 100 years ago) we can still see ourselves - how the individual asserts themselves as a part of their context.