All posts by Norma Smith

Los Fusilamientos del Tres de Mayo, 1814. Francisco de Goya Lucientes.

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tresDeMayo

Goya was born in a village in northern Spain in 1746, his family then moved to Saragossa. He went to Italy to study art, returning to Spain when thirty one years old where he married the daughter of a painter. He painted frescoes in the local cathedral and went on to paint designs for royal tapestries in Madrid in the rococo (ornate) style prevalent at the time. This was an important time in his development as an artist. He soon was to become influenced by neoclassicism and studied the paintings of Velasquez, this led him to use a more spontaneous painting technique. Soon he was asked to paint portraits of the Spanish aristocracy. Following a serious illness he became deaf when forty-six which had the effect of making him less sociable.
These were turbulent times in Spain, Napolean had invaded Spain, Madrid was occupied by the French and then between 1808 and 1814 there raged the Spanish War of Independence, the population rebelled against their occupiers, which is when this painting was commissioned. Goya was a Spanish liberal who disliked Charles IV’s authority and was at first not against the French, he in fact became the court painter for French royalty and took an oath of loyalty to Jospeh Bonaparte. He was forgiven by the French authorities. He expresses his horror of armed conflict in etchings and in a series of paintings, he experienced dark visions. One of his paintings, The Naked Maja landed him before the Spanish Inquisition. He went into voluntary exile in France in 1824 and died there in 1828 aged eighty two,
In this painting Goya has portrayed his impression of an historical event which took place in 1808 in Madrid, when the French retaliated against the Spanish rebels. He used oil on canvas to paint this dramatic scene that is so real and vivid. Kenneth Clark wrote ‘Goya was not simply a high speed camera,’ he drew from memory ‘it took shape in his minds eye as a pattern of lights and darks.’ This is a work of Goya’s imagination. The impression on viewing the scene is one of shock, the action takes place right in front of us, there is little space between us and the men. We see the background colour of the sky, using black, sombre greys and browns are used to paint the cathedral and other buildings, while the foreground is lit by a square lantern placed near the feet of the firing squad, this area is full of colour, light covers the figures on the left, creating a stark contrast. The colours here are glowing whites, gold and blood red. We see the terrified faces of the rebels, onlookers cover their eyes in horror, the faces of the soldiers, on the other hand, are hidden from us. The essence of the brutality of war is embedded in the whole work, Goya does not hold back from expressing his abhorrence. Shot men are sprawled on the ground, the man dressed in white and yellow looks at the firing squad, he is next, his eyes are wide open, arms raised in the air, he has no escape.
Fifty years later Edward Manet , who had seen this painting, painted The Execution of Emperor Maxilmillian in 1867, similar in composition, but perhaps without the same impact on the viewer.

Barry kindly suggested this painting.

Image courtesy of Wikipedia commons

Spring. ( La Primavera ) 1482, Sandro Botticelli.

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In the late spring of 1967 I visited Florence in Italy, it was several months after the devastating flood that had engulfed Florence in November the previous year. I saw stains like plimsoll lines on the walls of buildings and in the churches I visited, huge dehumidifying machines were drying their interior walls. Life was slowly getting back to
normal.
Having greeted a copy of Michaelangelo’s sculpture of David outside of the Uffizzi Gallery, I went in to look at paintings. I came to Botticelli’s ‘ Spring’ it was exciting to see the original that had been painted nearly five hundred years earlier. Botticelli was a painter working in Florence during the era which has become known as the Renaissance; several schools of painting flourished, situated throughout much of Italy, the Northern and Venetian Schools, the Florentine and Central Schools being the most important, each put an emphasis on different aspects of painting.
The painting ‘Spring’ is an allegory. The work was painted with tempera on panel, tempera consists of ground pigments mixed with egg yolk, honey or glue and water, it is permanent and fast drying. I have experimented with egg tempera mixed with gouache paint, it is more suitable for painting on a panel rather than on canvas, because the paint tends to crack if not kept flat.
The setting for Spring is an orange grove, with plants scattered around, five hundred different varieties and one hundred and ninety different flowers, so I read, a botanical dictionary! Six mythological characters are situated across the space. The work is thought to resemble a Flemish tapestry, popular at the time.
The work was probably commissioned by Lorenzo de Medici for one of his cousins. Lorenzo Medici was an important patron of the Arts and left a lasting legacy of work. Much has been written about the Medici dynasty, mostly unfavourable, but the Arts did flourish during their time in power.
In the painting we see on the left hand side, a male pointing a wand towards the sky, three women are dancing in a circle next to him, in the centre is a female, dressed in a diaphanous white dress, around her is draped a red gown, her gaze is towards the viewer, her figure is framed by an archway of trees, a blind-folded putti is seen holding an arrow, hovering above her, next to her stands, almost floats, another female, her dress is decorated with plant designs and she wears a necklace of flowers. The wind we can see is blowing the flowing dresses from left to right. On the right of the painting we see another female character, also dressed in a diaphanous white gown with a garland of flowers flowing from her mouth and looking down intently at her is the second male figure, he has puffed up cheeks, he clasps her waist, the cold wind if March is now blowing in the opposite direction, I’m not sure what the significance of this change of direction signifies, perhaps the warming of the atmosphere as spring approaches?
There have been several interpretations of this painting, we know that Botticelli was interested in portraying Greek and Roman myths in addition to religious scenes and characters. If we think about the Roman myth, the male on the right would be the god Zephyrus, his cheeks full of wind, the god of wind, Zephyrus marries Chloris, she is shown in the painting with the flowers flowing from her mouth, after they marry Choris becomes the goddess Flora, goddess of flowers, she is next to Chloris. Venus the goddess of Love and Beauty is the central figure, an archetype who can be traced as far back as Paleolithic cave paintings and sculptures. In Helen Benigni’s book The Emergence of the Goddess, she writes ‘Venus appears to be part of what Carl Jung calls the transformative character of the primordial archetype where her image is seen as a regenerative force for change connected to the celestial order.’ To quote Robert Ellis in his book The Integration of Meaning he writes ‘the other way that art might relate more effectively to archetypes is in depicting them as symbolic forms rather than as objects in the world. In western art I find this particularly in the religious and mythological art of the Renaissance.’ To return to the painting, above Venus is Cupid who blindly points his arrow at Chastity, one of the three graces we see dancing in a circle, (the dance of time maybe?) the two other graces are Love and Pleasure. On the left hand side we see the god Mercury, he is pointing his wand to the sky, to brush away the wind, while Chastity looks at him.
Botticelli belonged to the Florentine School of painters, for them form and movement were their main objectives. Botticelli used a paint brush like a pen, his line work gave a feeling of movement, a linear rhythm. He was indifferent to representation, but was intent on presentation. Bernard Berenson wrote, ‘Botticelli was almost as if haunted by the idea of communicationg the unembodied values of touch and movement.’ He may have rivals in the East and Japan writes Berenson, but not in Europe, ‘his work possesses qualities that are life-enhancing and life- communicating, with quivering feeling containing values of touch and values of movement.’
Rober Ellis wites in the chapter The Integration of Meaning, when discussing the integration of visual art ‘ The central conflict within art reflects the tension within meaning in general – between representation and expression.’ Representation was not of primary importance to Botticelli, he was preoccupied with expressing the renewal of life and growth in this work, but he reaches a balance between the two. For Botticelli colour is less important than line, unlike the Venetian painters for example where the use of colour was very important. Berenson thinks that he is the greatest artist of linear design that Europe has ever had. His work went out of favour and was not appreciated again for a long time. He didn’t paint during the last ten years of his life, he died in 1510..Botticelli 002

Maternity. Marc Chagall. 1887-1985.

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Since Christmas is approaching, I have chosen a mother and child portrayal to discuss, Maternity, by Marc Chagall.
Marc Chagall was born as Moishe Segal in a Russian village called Vitebsk in Belarus. His parents were poor Hasidic Jews and Chagall himself remained a devout Jew throughout his long life.
Since Jesus was born of Jewish parents, I think this work may be relevant and an interesting change from the madonna and child works to be found in the Christian tradition. Chagall was encouraged by his mother to follow his dream to become an artist. After becoming engaged to a local girl called Bella, he set off to live in Paris, which was the hub of artistic activity at that time, in 1914 he returned to his native village to marry Bella and found himself stuck there during WW1. I think it was in 1923 he returned with Bella to Paris, there he painted memories of his village, dreams and experiences, in which proportion and gravity played a very minor role. He created colourful patterns, where his interior world is just as real as everyday reality. In this lithograph, we see a picture full of nostalgia and joy, it is a loving scene of mother and child, set outside a pink house with an unknown man in the background, a strange purple and green tree and a donkey on which sits a bird, by coincidence donkeys are often portrayed in nativity scenes. He used bright, warm colours to express emotion and feeling. Chagall was a ‘one off ‘ artist, a painter-poet, a Slav expressionist, whose work was to influence many Surrealist artists, although Chagall would resist analysing his work. He gathered together colour, line, shape and texture and by doing this he brings about balance, ‘he brought back the forgotten dimension of metaphor into French formalism.’Maternity by Marc Chagall.

The Goal of Integrating Art and Everyday Life.

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Pierre Bonnard, 1867 – 1947.

Pierre Bonnard belonged to a group of painters who were known as The Nabis. The word nabi is Hebrew for prophet ‘inspired to speak the word of God’ The group worked together from 1900 to 1906, when they split up.
I have admired the work of the French painter Bonnard for many years, long before I learnt about the Nabis and their contemporaries. I would walk from our home south of the river, to visit the Tate Gallery and would gaze at The Bonnard painting he did of his wife Marthe in her bath. Pierre Bonnard is accessable as a painter, which is probably why I liked his work so much, but in fact these painters in the group were to influence Cubist painters who worked later. He borrowed lightness from the Impressionists, the bold colours of the Post Impressionists and the Fauves, he filled his work with his own intensity.The group was aware of Japanese prints, as were many painters at the time, such as Van Gogh, they also liked Art Nouveau, which was especially popular in Paris for a short time, until Art Deco arrived on the scene.
One of the group, Maurice Denis, worte that ‘the canvas is a flat surface covered with colours, assembled in a certain order’, while Eduard Vuillard wrote ‘who speaks of art speaks of poetry’. What concerned them was individuality, using pure colour organisation and form. Denis said he didn’t paint portraits, he painted people in their home. I understand the difference.
The Nabis explored the daily scene, using symbols we understand, not in the way the Impressionists had when they captured ephemeral light, but they looked back to traditional values, for a static and unchanging conception of reality. Their critics thought the work was a regressive form of painting, which ignored the achievements of the Impressionist painters. The Nabis rejected the painting theories of their tutors, which they considered to be materialistic, the Nabis aimed to use colour and design, to bring about harmony and balance – the goals of Classicism.
Bonnard spent his working life ‘exploring and analysing the process of seeing and looking and so translating ways in which visual perceptions interlock with the process of memory.’ Nicholas Serota.
To return to the painting of Marthe in the bath, the painting glows with yellow, the bath is a ‘porcelian tomb made incadescent by the gold and violet light, reflecting off the surfaces of the tiles and the water’. The use of complementry colours makes them zing, Matisse and Van Gogh, to name two painters, used the same technique.The subject matter in Bonnard’s work is I find, comforting, not sentimental though, their dog would often feature in his work, every day situations were captured, sitting in the garden drinking tea, laying a table for a meal, three generations painted in a triangular composition, grandmother, Bonnardmother and baby. His self portraits were different, searing and strong, to be compared favourbly with those of Van Gogh and Rembrandt. Bonnard would often mix up perspective, a table for example would be on a different plane, to show what lay on it more fully, he used geometry and perspective in order to obtain the effect he sought. I think he succeeds in integrating art and every day life.

Die Brucke…. continued.

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In response to Robert’s reply, I have read more about the work of the Die Brucke group of artists. I’m not sure in which way their work brings to us to integration, perhaps the new symbols, violent images, in their work, send a prophetic warning of the horrors to come in two world wars. The new symbols created became a language of violence. Nolde was a visionary, he felt the inter -dependence of art and nature, his stormy sea paintings were filled with energy,
E L Kirchner, 1880-1938, wrote that the group aimed ‘ to eschew the prevalent traditional academic style…..’ He used old techniques like wood cuts in a dynamic way, while always remembering the old Masters like Durer, Cranach and Grunewald and the art of Africa and Oceanic art, which were becoming more widely known in Europe. Kirchner was deeply affected by the first World War, though too sickly to fight, he did driving work, when a new war loomed in 1938 he shot himself, he feared war so intensely. The Nazis confiscated his work. He understood the dark side of life and yet he inhabited the intensity of colour he used in paintings, the reds, yellows and blues, primary colours, and light, as did Van Gogh.
I can see how depression comes about by having an ‘isloated, unintegrated left hemishphere’, I facetiously equated unintegrated with unhinged! Munch had a childhood which seemed to be filled with dying relatives,it must have impacted on his thinking.
Art as a preventative practice against mental breakdown makes sense to me, I also think that the work which art therapists do with prisoners, also shows how people can channel their destructive, anti -social behaviour into positive behaviour, so diverting energy in a more beneficial way.
Herbert Read in his book ‘The Meaning of Art’ writes, ‘expressionism is a distinct movement in modern art, it arose spontaneously as a manifestation of artists and a group of artists in Germany ,in the decade before the first world war, was it a sign of the times? In France, the Fauves were not as violent in expression, but the need for change also existed.
I listened to Robert Plinsky reciting Donne’s Nocturnal on St lucie’s Day, beautiful sombre and emotionally charged. I can see how an isolated left hemisphere has a detrimental effect, art to avoid mental breakdown seems right to me.
I’m aware of the vast difference between depression and melancholy, having experienced both. With help, depression became a thing of the past some decades ago , but when one of my twin sons died in a paragliding accident in 2000, I knew melancholy all too well. Four Golden Shapes 001Without being barely conscious of what I was doing, I painted about twenty canvases over the following few months, geometric patterns, using mostly staight lines, concentrating on the mixing of colours, to fill the shapes, totally absorbed me. I also was reminding myself of Impermanence and the Four Truths, I painted a canvas with four coffin-shaped images, when I finished it I realised that the painting was an expression of my grief.
I then went on to paint more abstract images. The ferocity of pain became integrated, I found myself in a calmer place. Writing, visual art and music all have a similar role I think.