Tag Archives: 20th Century

The Purpose of Public Art – Broken Chair, Daniel Berset and Louis Geneve, 1997

Posted on August 1, 2018 | Leave a comment

Broken Chair, Geneva

In this post I’ll look at some of the ideas raised by ‘Broke Chair’, in Geneva.  Public art is a fascinating area to consider, it prompts so many thoughts about audience, purpose, function, even material, and so on.  I may well follow this up with other essays on public artworks, so if this is something that appeals to you, let me know in the comments, and keep an eye out!

This artwork raises questions about the ‘function’ of art, particularly public art, and especially non-narrative art.  This was, unlike most sculptures, created for a very specific and active purpose: to remind those at the UN of the horrendous impact of land mines and cluster bombs in the run up to the signing of two significant agreements, the Otaowa Treaty in 1997 and the Oslo Treaty in 2008.  It was first installed in 1997, and reinstalled in 2007.  Originally commissioned by Paul Vermeulen, co-founder of Handicap International Suisse.  It reaches 12 metres high, and is made from 5.5 tonnes of wood.  Artist Daniel Berset created the idea, while it was constructed by carpenter Louis Geneve.  It is bolted to the ground, and it is clear to see how it is made from numerous pieces of wood.  It serves an essentially commemorative purpose, the torn leg an allegory for the physical destruction these horrific devices cause.  One could compare it to the Cenotaph in London.  Though it does not commemorate a specific conflict, but rather the victims of global conflicts, it acts a warming to future generations: ‘do not let this happen again’, in a similar way.  However, the abstract form the work takes goes some way towards obscuring this reasoning.  It has, predictably and understandable, become one of ‘the sights’ on the Geneva tourist trail.  It has become a fun photo-opportunity for the selfie-driven masses.  Much like the ‘leaning tower of Pisa’, it has become the focus of fun and cutesy, optical illusion shots, people raising their hands to complete the broken leg, or simply demonstrate its great size by their failure to do so.  This is quite understandable, it is a fun thing to do, and the resulting photos are a silly memento of the trip, the more serious photos being saved for poses in front of the UN flags.  But one can’t help but consider whether the work is achieving its awareness-raising function.  An advantage that works like the Cenotaph has is that they are extremely simple to understand – war memorials depicting tombs, brave and injured soldiers, and so on, clearly demand a sombre tone, and one can’t help but consider the issues they depict.  By contrast, the Broken Chair, while having the advantage of being a striking a simple image, demands an imaginative leap (and indeed some prior knowledge) on the part of the viewer.

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This leads one on to a question of audience.  Who is the audience for this work?  Who is supposed to understand it?  Maybe the woman taking photos of her two dogs in front of the work isn’t really the target viewer.  The physical context of the piece is carefully chosen, it stares down the alley of flags, in an almost intimidating fashion.  It holds these collected nations to account; taller than the flags it faces, it represents the universality of the issue, of the threat.  It is greater than any one nation, than, indeed, the idea of nationhood.  It speaks to the universal important of recognising the shared humanity of the world’s inhabitants.  Angrily looking down upon those small, insignificant individuals who will nevertheless make world-changing decisions in the UN, it is raised to a higher purpose.  So perhaps it does not matter that tourist and locals alike have embraced it as a source of humour and pleasure; in taking on one role, it has not necessarily abandoned the other.

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Highlights of the National Gallery – Part One

Posted on November 25, 2017 | Leave a comment

It’s always immensely difficult to choose ‘favourite’ paintings (and one is often asked to do so when people discover you’re an art historian!), but it can’t be denied that there are some works that keep drawing you back.  One of my favourite galleries, not least because of the sheer variety of the collections, is the National Gallery, London.  So I’ve decided to do the unthinkable and attempt to select some of my ‘favourite’ works of art from its hallowed halls.  It can be quite overwhelming being faced by such a large and spectacular collection of art, so it’s sometimes nice to pick just one or two works, and devote your full attention to them.  In this spirit, read on for some of my personal recommendations for those most worthy of your attention.

Vincent van Gogh, Two Crabs, 1889

One of Van Goh’s most famous works, Sunflowers hangs in the National Gallery, but it also houses a number of less well-known, but nonetheless fascinating works by the Dutch artist.  Two Crabs one of these.  The work was painted shortly after van Gogh’s release from hospital in Arles, in January  1889.  It is probably one of the still lifes he told his brother Theo he was planning to paint to ‘get used to painting again’.  The thick brushwork creates a sense of realism we are perhaps unused to in his work, with carefully modelling really putting across the shape and texture of, for instance, the crab’s claws.  The use of tick, short brushstrokes on the legs again emphasises a sense of texture, and brings an almost animated feel to the image.  This is enhanced by the liveliness of the background, with the flatter, wider strokes lending turbulence, and recalling the rocky shallows of the crab’s marine home.  The current title is slightly confusing, as this is probably in fact a single crab, viewed from different angles.  Van Gogh keys into a long artistic tradition of artists practicing by drawing a single object from multiple viewpoints, to examine how surfaces and shapes respond to light, and how to represent this.  His choice of subject was likely inspired by a Hokusai woodcut, ‘Crabs’, which was reproduced in a magazine, ‘Le Japon Artistique’ which Theo had sent Van Gogh while he was in hospital.  It is quite a touching image in a way, as Van Gogh takes a traditionally quite clinical form and brings to it his usual sense of humanity and empathy, all in an attempt to reconnect with his own artistic skill and expression.

As this image is on loan to the National Gallery from a private collection, I have been unable to reproduce an image, but you can see one on the National Gallery’s website here.

Titian, Bacchus and Ariadne, 1520-23

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Titian, active about 1506; died 1576 Bacchus and Ariadne 1520-3 Oil on canvas, 176.5 x 191 cm Bought, 1826 NG35 https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/NG35

And now for something completely different…Titian brings an exuberance to this image of Greek mythology.  Ariadne, abandoned on an island by her ex-lover Theseus, is discovered by the god of wine, Bacchus, who immediately falls in love with her.  Bacchus has a somewhat jovial and jolly image in the pop-culture of the present day, but in Greek and Roman mythology he and his followers (the maenads and the satyrs) were associated with at times violent frenzies.  It is this aspect that Titian has chosen to emphasise, bringing a sense of drama to the image.  The followers are depicted as wild, with one holding a disembodied (and crucially un-butchered) calf’s leg, while the calf’s leg is dragged along at their feet.  It is thus understandable that Ariadne is turning tail to flee.  Theseus’ ship is visible on the horizon to her left, showing how hopeless her situation is.  Titian hides most of her fame from us, creating an image of a terrified young woman in fear for her life.  The painting really appeals to the senses, with the maenad’s clashing cymbals, and the stampede of frenzied figures, treading on the carefully realistic flowers.  This madness and business is contrasted compositionally with the stillness and grace of its opposing corner of the image, with its calm blue skies.  Bacchus acts as a link between these two elements, and the hyperactivity of his followers is juxtaposed by his single-minded gaze, which meets Ariadne’s.  His pose offers a dance-like retort to that of Ariadne, creating a harmonious visual link between them as he leaps energetically from his chariot.  Though it is hard to imagine quite what wind would result in the tight and intricate folds of his garments, it cannot be denied that they give an impression of the speed and suddenness of his movement.  The coy little satyr looks out at the viewer, pulling the calf’s head behind him on a rope, the flowers in his hair and his otherwise cherubic face perfectly putting across the intimidating unpredictability of a bacchant in full swing.  The snarling dog, looking up at him and backing away, perhaps reflects the viewer’s response to this unsettling display.  However, for all the darkness of his depiction, Titian gives us a hint at the story’s happy ending: Bacchus raised Ariadne to the heavens, making her into a constellation.  An alternative version (and perhaps one in which she gets a slightly better deal) is that on marrying her, Bacchus turns her wedding crown into the constellation.  The scale of the painting further emphasises the emotional weight of the image, and the viewer’s reaction to it.

Georges Seurat, Bathers at Asnieres, 1884

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Georges Seurat, 1859 – 1891 Bathers at Asnières 1884 Oil on canvas, 201 x 300 cm Bought, Courtauld Fund, 1924 NG3908 https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/NG3908

This painting was one of the first that I ‘officially’ studied, as part of my A-level in Art History, and it seems that I have been studying it ever since but I still find so much of interest in it, and can’t say I’ve ever got bored of it.  I intend to write a longer post about this, so watch this space, but I couldn’t not mention it as one of my favourite works in the National Gallery.  Begun before he has developed his famous Pointillist technique, it does represent his engagement with what he called ‘chromoluminarism’ (also called Divisionism), the use of contrasting colours in an attempt to create optical mixing, the mixing of colours in the eye.  He hoped to mimic Nature, and to bring a brightness and vivacity to his works.  Thought it is debatable how effective this is, and how much he truly engaged with scientific theory, it represents a radical move and a desire to improve upon the Impressionist’s depiction of light.  But the painting is not merely interesting on a technical level, it also gives us an insight into Seurat’s political, specifically Socialist, leanings.  Asnieres was an industrial district, and Seurat depicts the factories in the distance, and their workers in the foreground.  It was a time of labour reforms that enabled factory workers to have time to engage in leisure in a new way, and have a greater degree of freedom.  The boating, bathing, and relaxing that was once the preserve of the middle classes (and was still undertaken by them in more fashionable areas along the River Seine), but was now opening up to the Parisian majority.  While some met these changes with distrust, Seurat and his friends welcomed them, and saw it as an important step towards a more egalitarian future.  He celebrates this by raising the workers to a level, and a physical scale more commonly associated with the grand subjects of history paintings, the highest genre in the official scale endorsed by the academy.  He thus combines his scientific experimentation with his interest in the politics of his time, and presents his own political optimism and hopes for the future.

Also of interest in the National Gallery are the preparatory drawings he produced for the painting, hung alongside it, which give a real sense of how it developed, and how he experimented with both the composition, and how to represent the light in the scene.

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Georges Seurat, 1859 – 1891 The Rainbow: Study for ‘Bathers at Asnières’ 1883 Oil on wood, 15.5 x 24.5 cm Presented by Heinz Berggruen, 1995 NG6555 https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/NG6555

Three is clearly far too few to choose from such an extensive collection, so this will be part one of a series.  I would be fascinated to hear if you have any favourites in the National Gallery (or anywhere else for that matter!) which you just can’t stop yourself from going back to.

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Finding Your Way In: Tips for approaching an artwork you’ve never seen before

Posted on May 13, 2016 | 1 comment

One of the things people assume about you when they learn that you’re an art historian (and one of the things that we jokingly say about ourselves!) is that we make brilliant dinner party conversation.  People will throw out their favourite artists (or simply the last one they heard of), and assume that we’re not only familiar with their entire output, but have an insightful and fully-formed opinion on them.  But one of the exciting things about art history, whether you choose to officially study it, or simply indulge a passion for it, is discovering new works of art, artists, and even entire movements you’ve never before encountered.  But this can be a slightly intimidating experience.  It can be difficult to figure your way into a work that feels unfamiliar.  There are however a few things that you can look out for to help you find your way into a new work of art which I’ll be exploring in this new series.  These suggestions are in no way proscriptive, it’s important that you embrace your own response to the work, but if you’re ever stuck when looking at a new work, these tips might be worth bearing in mind.

Material

The artist’s choice of medium can make a huge difference to the overall effect of the artwork.  Often museum labels will help you with this, but it satisfying to be able to identify the materials yourself.  Some are really easy to identify, with oil or watercolours perhaps, but this can sometimes be difficult; often the material of sculpture can be hard to pinpoint.  But with a little practice you start to gain a familiarity with the materials, and build up a knowledge of what they look like and how they’re used.

Once you have an idea of what the material is, it’s worth thinking about the qualities and constraints of that material.  The development of oil painting allowed artists in the Northern Renaissance to create amazingly realistic images, using are fully layered pigments and glazes to bring a vitality to their works unmatched by the frescoes of their Southern cousins.  It is thought that these new paints were created in part in response to the damp climate of the North, which made the plaster-based techniques of Italian artists implausible. Centuries later, the vivid colours of the Impressionists were made possible by the development of new, chemical pigments. The bright yellows and blues seen in so many of their works was made possible by these new pigments.  Their en plain air techniques were also made possible by the invention of tubes of paint, making the materials far more portable.

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Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Pont Neuf, 1872

Sculpture is perhaps even more dependent on its materials.  The physical qualities are of key importance, having a fundamental effect on what one would be able to sculpt.  The poor tensile strength of marble is the reason why so many sculptures are supported by ugly props, with bars of the material holding up their arms or legs.  This is why so many Greek gods are leaning against a conveniently positioned tree trunk.  The opposite quality enables the fantastical creations of the sixteenth century, such as Giambologna’s Mercury ( which positively flaunts the tensile strength of bronze with its outstretched limbs.

Giambologna Mercury

Giambologna, Mercury, 1580

The sculpture’s material isn’t just of interest form the point of view of its physical qualities.  Many materials also take on a symbolic quality, or accrue connotations that can impact on the meaning of the finished work.  In his seminal work The Limewood Sculptors of Renaissance Germany, Michael Baxandall explored the way in which cultural associations about limewood came to be attached to the sculptures that were carved from it.  The special, pseudo-magical qualities that folklore attached to the tree itself impacted on how the sculptures were understood by contemporary viewers.  This book also contains Baxandall’s examination of the different woods on a cellular level, and the implications of this for the forms it was sculpted into.  Far later, modern sculptors such as Henry Moore would lead the ‘truth to materials’ movement, which sought to exploit the inherent qualities of the material to create sculpted forms that somehow reflected the nature of the material itself.

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Henry Moore, Recumbent Figure, 1938, image credit

In painting too, materials could gain their own symbolic meanings.  The most famous example of this is the use of lapis lazuli in depictions of the Virgin Mary.  The high cost of the pigment, due to it being imported all the way from Afghanistan, where it still only occurred in relatively small quantities, meant that it came to be seen as appropriate for depicting this holy figure.

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Massacio, The Virgin and Child, 1426

The price of the material is thus also worth considering.  While it is obviously often the case that materials are chosen for their expense, they can also be deliberately inexpensive.  For instance, Russian Constructivist artists such as Alexander Rodchenko chose cheap, readily available materials such as plywood, in a deliberate attempt to make their art more accessible, and to strip it of the bourgeois connotations of more conventional materials.  In other cases, the material may be chosen specifically for such connotations.  Mark Quinn’s Alison Lapper Pregnant, created for the Fourth Plinth at Trafalgar Square, made use of Carrara marble (Michelangelo’s David was able made from Carrara marble), placing it in a tradition of nude sculptures dating back through the Renaissance to Roman art, which in turn imitated Greek art. By using this material Quinn makes a bold and positive claim for the beauty and importance of his subject, and forces his viewers to reconsider the negative effects of the bland uniformity of sculpture in the Classical tradition.  Quinn himself commented on his choice of material, ‘Marble is the material used to commemorate heroes, and these people seem to me to be a new kind of hero – people who instead of conquering the outside world have conquered their own inner world and gone on to live fulfilled lives. To me, they celebrate the diversity of humanity. Most monuments are commemorating past events; because Alison is pregnant it’s a sculpture about the future possibilities of humanity’.

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Mark Quinn, Alison Lapper Pregnant, 2005, image credit

So there are lots of aspects to the choice of material in artworks.  These certainly shouldn’t be treated as a tick-list of things to go through, but thinking about material in this way can offer a new perspective on a work of art, and can be an interesting approach to take when you find yourself in front of a brand new (to you, or the world) work of art.

 

 

Mark Quin quote excerpted from: http://marcquinn.com/artworks/alison-lapper.

Images unless otherwise stated are sourced from wikicommons.

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Alexander Rodchenko, Oval Hanging Construction No.12 (1920)

Posted on April 6, 2016 | 1 comment

This seminal work by Rodchenko (1891-1956) is a key example of the Constructivist Movement.  Dating from 1920, the sculpture is a demonstration of the ways in which artists such as Rodchenko sought to make themselves ‘useful’ in a post-Revolutionary Society.  The birth of Soviet Russia brought about fundamental shifts in attitudes towards culture.  There was a strong inclination to see both art and artists as part of the bourgeois society that the 1917 Revolution had swept aside.  With works like this, Rodchenko and others took up the task of justifying their existence in the new society that they had played a part in bringing about.

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Alexander Rodchenko, 1935

A major part of this was to try and establish art as relating to some sort of practical purpose.  Artists had to be useful members of society, no longer the peddlers of decorative fluff, but workers, with a role to play in perfecting the new nation.  The choice of material for this sculpture can be characterised as almost ‘anti-art’, rather than being made of exclusive and expensive traditional materials, bronze or marble say, it is made from plywood, which was cheap and readily available.  This sense of democratisation is carried through to the crafting of the object – it is deliberately simplified, and straightforward.  The process of creation has been demystified, so that any viewer might be able to understand how the sculpture has been put together.  Constructivist art was supposed to be educational, and we see this reflected in the methods of construction.  This piece of sculpture actually went on tour, but not, as one might expect, to museums or galleries, but to factories, and other centres of industrial production, where it was used as an example of different ways of construction.  To this end, the sculpture is designed so that it can be folded flat in on itself, making it highly portable, something that would have been particularly necessary given the relatively flimsy materials it is made from.

Overall the sculpture thus gives a sense of bringing an egalitarian air to art.  Moving away from both the ‘decorative’ bourgeois art of pre-Revolution, and the more obscure ideas of many early twentieth century avant-garde movements, it expresses a sense of purpose and clarity.  Though one might argue that something is lost by this desire to demystify, to simplify, the sculpture, and its creator, seem to work with the idea that knowledge should not be hidden, but instead shared freely with all: the Communist approach expressed in art.  It is new art, for a new society.

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First Impressions: Zhang Xioagang, Bloodlines: Big Family No. 1, 1996

Posted on February 19, 2015 | Leave a comment

As today is Chinese New Year, I thought I’d post a piece I’ve written about a piece of Chinese art.  I must confess that this is something of a cheat as a ‘First Impressions’ piece, as I haven’t actually seen this piece myself, but it was written in the same way as my usual pieces, and I think it’s a great piece, by an artist perhaps not so well known to UK audiences.  I’ve been lucky enough to take the course ‘Art in China since 1911’ as part of my undergraduate degree, which is fascinating, and covers so much art that was unfamiliar to me before, but am glad to have discovered.

You can see a picture of this work here… http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/prints-multiples/zhang-xiaogang-big-family-no-1-from-5050380-details.aspx , complete with the record of it selling for what would now seem a ridiculously small price for such a work.

The work is dominated by three figures, that of a man, a woman, and a small baby boy.  The composition is cropped, we do not view all of the figures, we view the man and woman from chest height, with their shoulders cut off at either side, and the baby is viewed from about ankle height.  The baby seems to hover in the air in between and in front of the two other figures, who the title and convention might suggest are his parents.  The baby is differentiated from the other figures by the bright red hue given to his body, while his clothes maintain the monochromatic tones that are used for the other figures and the background.  This use of colour is suggestive of black and white photography, an association strengthened by the poses of the figures, facing the ‘camera’, or the viewer, looking directly out from the painting.  There is some blurring around the edges of the figures, particularly around the woman’s plaits, and in the background, which is just that in that it does not convey any particular sense of space, or a particular setting, acting instead as a generic background for the figures in front, perhaps suggesting the backdrop of a photographer’s studio, or a rendered or painted wall.  The cropping of the figures adds to this sense of them being in an indistinct space, as we do not see points where they would link with it (e.g. where their feet touch the ground).

 

The surface of the painting is interrupted by a series of red lines, which sit wire-like on the surface of the painting, joining over the baby and the figures behind it.  Thus a sense of flatness is created, the depth created by the over-layering of the figures is negated, and we again are given the sense of this being a photograph.  Their clothing is carefully detailed, with precise brushwork to denote crisp collars and neat lapels, while we are given some idea of the man’s profession or status by the pen tucked into his jacket pocket, suggesting that he is a ‘white collar’ worker, while glasses were accepted as a sign of the intellectual, or at least educated, individual.  The figures do not seem to acknowledge one another, except in the woman’s slight lean into the centre, and the slight turn of both figures’ outside eye in towards the centre.  Aside from the baby’s red hue, there are also patched of slightly brighter colour on the other figures, with patches of pinkish tones over their faces and neck, but again, the way in which the colours cut across them, covering the glasses, and her clothes, for instance, suggest that this is supposed to evoke the effect of a fading photograph.  However, its meaning could be multiple, and it could be present to suggest the humanity behind these monochromatic facades.  The eyes of all three figures are picked out in precise lines, contrasting with the blurring of their other features, and are painted in a darker, shinier shade of black, which gives them an unnervingly piercing quality, and which immediately draws the gaze of the viewer.  The baby’s slightly furrowed brows are the only hint of definite expression in the figures, the adults have expressions that are hard to read, deliberately open to interpretation.

 

The title, ‘Bloodlines’, could be a specific reference to the importance of one’s family connections during the Cultural Revolution, be they harmful or helpful, and can also link to the thin red lines across the canvas.  The Bloodlines series is usually large in scale, emphasising the striking and unnerving qualities of the figures.  The red chosen for the child could relate to a number of different ideas, the most obvious being the red of Communism, but red was also traditionally associated with good luck, which coupled with the child’s troubled expression, leads one to wonder the significance of the connection between these two associations.  The inclusion of a single child could bring to mind the one child policy in China, but I think it’s important to recognise the potential for a multiplicity of meaning.

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Self Portraits: Exploring artist’s use of the Self-Portrait

Posted on November 11, 2011 | 2 comments

The self-portrait has an enduring appeal for giving us an insight into how the artist perceives him or herself, or how he wishes to be perceived by viewers.  Here I will consider a number of (largely modern) self-portraits, in a bid to explore the possible uses and aims of the form.  Those included are by no means comprehensive, with some notable absences (I don’t mention a single van Gogh), but have been chosen as I feel they can be interestingly linked, and provide an insight into the varying and developing role of the self-portrait painting.

Rembrandt: Self Portrait with Two Circles, 1665-69

How an artist depicts himself relates closely to the common perception of what an artist is, and what constitutes a great artist.  Older portraits, pre-19th century, tend to focus on the artist as a craftsman, and his technical skill.  For instance, Rembrandt’s self-portrait famously depict him in front of the perfect circle, the ultimate expression of an artist’s skill.  Later artists depicts themselves out of the studio setting, as the definition of ‘great artist’ came to be understood as one with a unique view and understanding of the world around him.  So these later portraits often have blank, non-specific backgrounds, and focus on the artist’s expression, not on pointing out his skill.

This general move away from depicting oneself in the studio setting can be traced alongside the desire by some artists to picture themselves as a continuation of the great tradition of painting, maintaining high standards rather than pursuing any new styles.  Ingres, an artist consumed by the desire to relate himself back to the great classical tradition, depicts himself in the typical setting, draped with a sort of cloak, stood before the easel.

Ingres: Self-Portrait at age 24, 1804

The German Expressionist painter Ernst Ludwig Kirchner first depicts himself in the studio, with brush and model, a typical subject.  He is depicting himself as a master of his craft, his authority over the viewer expressed through his wild, staring eyes, and his dominance over the picture space.  But here he seems to use this traditional setting to emphasise the radical differences in his style.  He uses this touch of the familiar to shock the viewer, it is a provocative piece.  But we maintain the emphasis on him as a painter, there is little sense of introversion, we are not being presented with an insight into his mind, rather a manifesto of his movement.  This piece is particularly interesting when compared to his later self-portrait ‘Self-portrait of the Artist as a Soldier’, painted after he was invalided out of the First World War.  Now we see all the introversion, his loss of confidence in himself and his artistic vision.  His hand was not really blown off, but it is the hand which would have held his brush, expressing his loss of artistic voice (although we see that his style is little changed, and no less technically skilled).  This is almost painting as therapy; through it Kirchner is able to express his inner turmoil and trauma.

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: Self Portrait with a Model, 1910

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: Self Portrait as a Soldier, 1915

This second self-portrait is more typical of the 20th and 21st century approach, when the artist’s world view has become at least as important as his technical skill, and the self-portrait becomes a means of self-exploration.  Munch followed his usual unsettling lines of thought in his self-portrait, his head white, floating in the blackness above the skeletal arm and hand.  We cannot help by search for meaning within the man himself.  He was a deeply troubled man, terrified of feminine control, his family mostly killed by TB, one of his two remaining sisters resident in an asylum.  This is not hard to guess from the portrait, but it remains mysterious and enigmatic, it’s meaning unspecified.  This sense of mystery is often apparent in modern portraits, which sometimes act almost to imbue the artist with a sense of gravitas and mystery, rather than simply being used as a display of wealth and skill as they had been previously.

Munch: Self Portait with a Skeleton Arm, 1895

Exploration of identity is another common theme in modern self-portraits.  Picasso’s self-portrait with ovoid eyes strengthens his Spanish identity at a time when he was one of only a few Spaniards in Paris (particularly among the art scene).  Frida Kahlo has perhaps explored this use of the self-portrait more than any other artist.  The vast majority of her painting are self-portraits, in which she explores her identity as a woman, threatened by her inability to bear children, as an artist, and as an individual.  Although not technically a member of the Surrealist movement (in the European or American form), her work is often called Surrealist due to her exploration of dreams and dreamlike scenarios.

Frida Kahlo: The Two Fridas, 1939

‘The Two Fridas’ explicitly explores her feelings regarding her Mexican identity, after the split between her and her husband Diego Rivera.  The daughter of a Mexican mother and a European father, the piece expresses her feelings of being torn between the two cultural identities.  ‘My Nurse and I’ of 1937, also explores her relationship with her mother, and her Mexican roots, the nurse’s face substituted for a proto-American mask, suggesting the way in which cultural heritage is passed down through the generations, and the strength that it has given her.

Frida Kahlo: My Nurse and I, 1937

Kahlo’s frequent self-portraits highlight another more pragmatic side which has made them popular with artists throughout history: they are cheap.  The model is free, and available whenever the artists wishes.  Kahlo began painting whilst bed-bound, recovering from the bus accident which nearly killed her and robbed her of her ability to mother children.  She was thus the obvious subject for her works.  Taking a short aside further into history, this ready availability seems to have made self-portraits popular amongst female artists.  Largely un-professional, women artists were often constrained by social requirements.  There could be no question of impropriety if the woman were not aiming to paint for material gain, and even better, did not hire models, of either gender.  For instance, Sofonisba Anguissola, active in the 16th and early 17thcenturies,

Sofonisba Anguissola: Self Portrait, 1554

was highly acclaimed during her time, but stuck to portraits, with self-portraits, and portraits of family and close friends making up the majority of her output.  From an aristocratic background, painting such close associates could not raise any suspicions, and she was in fact encouraged by her family to pursue her enthusiasm, albeit at an almost amateur scale.  She did however go on to paint portraits of the Spanish court, including Phillip II and his family.  Modern female artists have not been so restricted, but still return to the self-portrait.  Tracy Emin’s 1998 ‘My Bed’ reads as an auto-biographical piece; a portrait of herself and her feelings seen through the objects with which she surrounded herself.

Tracy Emin: My Bed, 1998

So we see that the self-portrait form is continuing to develop, even to include the abstract forms and installation art of the modern world.  I have considered only a few ideas, any comments or thoughts would be greatly appreciated, it is an area which really fascinates me, and I think will continue to fascinate audiences due to the insight it gives us into the mind and feelings of the artist depicted.

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Pablo Picasso: ‘The Charnel House’, 1945

Posted on August 30, 2011 | 2 comments

This is a piece I wrote for the art history based public speaking competition ‘Articulation’, which I took part in earlier this year.

The Charnel House, painted by Pablo Picasso between February and May, 1945, and perhaps his most disturbing painting.  He did not name the piece himself, simply calling it ‘my painting’ or ‘the massacre’.  Its title was given by a public still reeling from the events that inspired its creation, and Picasso refused to go against this by renaming it.  The large scale of the painting belies the perversely humble subject matter.  Picasso had watched a short documentary detailing one event in Spain during the course of the war, the story of a Spanish Republican family killed in their kitchen. It was also at this time that the first photographs of concentration camps were being released to the Western media.  It is this macabre mixture of brutality and domesticity that creates the underlying tension of the piece.  He has returned to a style most closely associated with his epic piece Guernica, as here he is also reflecting the black and white of contemporary photography, although this time not newspapers, but the film reel of the documentary.  This gives the painting a stark sense of contemporary documentation – Picasso revives the history painting genre in such a way that the viewer cannot help but be drawn into an emotional stake in the events.  Picasso’s use of colour bravely strips the piece back to the elemental.  This is reminiscent of the Analytical Cubist treatment of colour; he forces us to consider the forms, giving us no distraction with bright colours.  He also removes the emotive possibilities of colour; we understand the scene for what it is, not how we are made to perceive it.  We should perhaps also take into account the spiritual significance, black representing evil, white purity and innocence.  Picasso thus demonstrates the interplay between good and evil by placing these colours adjacent, the grey perhaps representing how ambiguous this interplay can sometimes seem.  This monochrome colour scheme makes objects easier and simultaneously harder to understand: they are laid bare in front of us, but they barely seem to make sense.  We can see parts of feet, hands, a pupiless eye stares at us from the bottom right corner.  Then in the background, or perhaps above these objects, we see a table, with a still life.  Picasso has applied a mixture of both Analytical and Synthetic Cubism to the piece, with the table being viewed from several different angles, confusing but almost reassuring, we are drawn away from the atrocity by contemplation of this form.  But it seems also to act as a message for how we should view the painting, we must examine what has happened as strictly as we try to understand the composition of the table.  Synthetic Cubism is applied through the layers of colour and line, with the whole family almost seeming to blend together in the foreground of the painting.  This too could read as an aid to understanding, we must view the massacre as part of a build up of events and circumstances.  Thus the idea is first introduced that this is a universal image, one that had occurred before, and would be repeated.  The piece contrasts most clearly with Guernica in that it is quite clear that we view this after the event, it has not got quite the same sense of violence in action.  The mouth of the woman, depicted by a simplified set of lips, with the teeth protruding in what might in other circumstances be interpreted as a snarl, and the compositional arrangement that means that we view her head upside down, with her hair hanging down, clearly demonstrates the deaths are in the past tense.  This is contrasted by the depiction of the child, whose presence is deeply imbued with pathos.  While the mother’s fate is all too clearly expressed, the child could only be sleeping, hands drawn up to the chest, and with a serene expression achieved by the depiction of simple oval eyes, closed, although facing the viewer.  Moving towards the right of the painting, it becomes almost impossible to discern where one family member ends and the other begins.  The bound hands of then male figure embodies and makes explicit the idea of the family as victims, innocent and without the power to defend themselves.   The interplay of the harlequin pattern, particularly beneath the tied hands, suggests that Picasso has tried to include a depiction of his own sorrow and sense of loss in the painting.  Picasso lost many friends during the war, and was deeply affected by the afflictions of his fellow countrymen, and in the harlequin, so often symbolic of his own character, we can see his subtle homage to the suffering of his friends, symbolically placing himself alongside them, at a time when he was unable to really help.  He remained neutral throughout both the First and the Second World Wars, resident in France rather than his own country, but the year before the work commenced on The Charnel House Picasso joined the French Communist Party, and remained a member until his death in 1973.  In this piece he makes a tacit, but powerful statement against Fascism.  So it is with a deep sense of personal involvement that Picasso is able to create a piece in which he so strongly conveys emotions to the viewer.  Still Life, often used in the Renaissance to depict dead animals, draws unsettling comparisons between the household objects, and the dead family who own them.  They themselves have become objects in their house, but through an atrocious act of violence and brutality.  Picasso said he left this part of the painting unfinished deliberately, as to finish it would be the same as to end it, or to kill it.  Thus he has stopped himself from the final moment of creation that he saw as the end of a painting, its death.  He has not followed the example of the perpetrators of the crime he depicts.  Progressing again towards the right of the panting, Picasso has furthered the sense of confusion of space through his depiction of the corner of the room.  It is difficult to tell whether or not this recedes or protrudes within the picture place, so we are unable to console ourselves even with a set measure of space.  Thus Picasso creates a sense of awkwardness that pervades the painting, confronting the viewer with the ugly truth of human nature.  What is striking is how little he has needed to represent in order to convey such a deep and universal message.  We do not need to know about the documentary, or the historical events.  Picasso has been able to present a basic, rhetorical question of man’s brutality towards his fellow human.  He forces the viewer to contemplate this on a more universal level than in any other of his paintings.  Apart from the contemplation of the table, which still acts to educate the viewer’s understanding of the painting, he offers no relief.  By uniting colour, composition and subject matter for one cause, Picasso has created a piece distinctly born of his own emotional responses, and the events of his age, but which remains disturbingly relevant in our own time, and, as no answers are given to the question he poses, will continue to be so in the future.

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