Category Archives: Art

Art

Johannes Vermeer’s The Milkmaid (c. 1658)

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Johannes Ver­meer is right­ly con­sid­ered one of the great­est painters of the Dutch Gold­en Age, but it wasn’t always so. Although mod­est­ly recog­nised in his life­time in Delft and The Hague, he quick­ly slipped into obscu­ri­ty after his death, and it remained that way for near­ly two cen­turies, until his redis­cov­ery in the 19th cen­tu­ry by French art crit­ic, Théophile Thoré-Bürg­er, who was so impressed when he came across Vermeer’s View of Delft that he spent years seek­ing out oth­er paint­ings by this vir­tu­al­ly unknown artist. Today, Vermeer’s paint­ings are of course laud­ed as mas­ter­pieces and worth mega-mil­lions; should you ever come across his paint­ing The Con­cert, which was stolen in 1990 and remains miss­ing, do grab it — it’s worth about $200M.

Although “launched” by a cityscape and par­tic­u­lar­ly famous for a tron­ie (Girl with a Pearl Ear­ring), Ver­meer paint­ed most­ly domes­tic inte­ri­ors. As his biog­ra­ph­er put it: “Almost all his paint­ings are appar­ent­ly set in two small­ish rooms in his house in Delft; they show the same fur­ni­ture and dec­o­ra­tions in var­i­ous arrange­ments and they often por­tray the same peo­ple, most­ly women”.

A prime exam­ple is today’s choice, The Milk­maid, paint­ed around 1658 and show­ing a domes­tic kitchen maid, suit­ably attired and pour­ing milk into an earth­en­ware pot (and thus pos­si­bly mak­ing bread pud­ding, judg­ing by the amount of bread on the table). Vermeer’s care­ful design (there were sev­er­al revi­sions) result­ed in a mas­ter­piece of light and shad­ow, colour, con­tours, and shape. He restricts his palette main­ly to the pri­ma­ry colours of red, blue, and yel­low, and the pig­ments are rich and vibrant — Ver­meer is known to have used only the very best, and most expen­sive, pig­ments. Above all, the skill of the artist has wrought a remark­ably real­is­tic scene, with quirky but authen­tic fea­tures such as the foot warmer, low­er right, and the hang­ing bas­ket, upper right.

Art

Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks (1942)

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If I ever get to Chica­go, one of the first things on my list will be to see the icon­ic mas­ter­piece of Amer­i­can art that is Edward Hopper’s oil on can­vas, Nighthawks, housed at the Art Insti­tute of Chica­go. It has been there ever since the Insti­tute bought the piece from the artist, for the sum of $3000, just a few months after its com­ple­tion in 1942.

The pic­ture shows a late-night, sparse­ly pop­u­lat­ed down­town din­er, some­where in New York. Many peo­ple have spec­u­lat­ed and tried to work out where the din­er actu­al­ly was but it is far more like­ly to be a com­pos­ite of var­i­ous joints from around the artist’s home patch of Green­wich Vil­lage, Man­hat­tan, cob­bled togeth­er in Hopper’s imag­i­na­tion.

Hop­per and his wife Jo kept metic­u­lous notes about his work, and they pro­vide a rare glimpse into this oft-uncon­sid­ered aspect of the artist’s life: the plan­ning and thought behind a planned work. This excerpt, in Jo’s hand­writ­ing, describes Nighthawks:

“Night + bril­liant inte­ri­or of cheap restau­rant. Bright items: cher­ry wood counter + tops of sur­round­ing stools; light on met­al tanks at rear right; bril­liant streak of jade green tiles 3/4 across canvas–at base of glass of win­dow curv­ing at cor­ner. Light walls, dull yel­low ocre [sic] door into kitchen right.

Very good look­ing blond boy in white (coat, cap) inside counter. Girl in red blouse, brown hair eat­ing sand­wich. Man night hawk (beak) in dark suit, steel grey hat, black band, blue shirt (clean) hold­ing cig­a­rette. Oth­er fig­ure dark sin­is­ter back–at left. Light side walk out­side pale green­ish. Dark­ish red brick hous­es oppo­site. Sign across top of restau­rant, dark–Phillies 5c cig­ar. Pic­ture of cig­ar. Out­side of shop dark, green. Note: bit of bright ceil­ing inside shop against dark of out­side street–at edge of stretch of top of win­dow”

The pic­ture was clear­ly not thrown togeth­er, and indeed for all this atten­tion to detail, the fin­ished art­work adds up to more than the sum of its parts. It exudes a sense of lone­li­ness, of sep­a­ra­tion, of eery silence and thus dis­qui­et. Who are these peo­ple? What sto­ries of qui­et des­per­a­tion (since we some­how sus­pect that the pro­tag­o­nists are not of a hap­py and sta­ble dis­po­si­tion) have brought them to this late-night ren­dezvous? Nighthawks allows the viewer’s imag­i­na­tion to fill in the blanks.

 

Edward Hop­per 1941
Art

Jan and Hubert van Eyck’s Ghent Altarpiece (1432)

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Jan and Hubert van Eyck’s Ado­ra­tion of the Mys­tic Lamb of 1432, bet­ter known as the Ghent Altar­piece, ranks among the most sig­nif­i­cant works of art in Europe. Housed at Saint Bavo’s Cathe­dral in Ghent, Bel­gium, this large and com­plex altar­piece has suf­fered a var­ied his­to­ry over the cen­turies, hav­ing been dis­man­tled, stolen, dam­aged, reassem­bled, recov­ered, cleaned, and restored sev­er­al times over. Thank good­ness that it is cur­rent­ly in good and safe con­di­tion, and open for view­ing by the pub­lic, at St Bavo’s.

I stum­bled across this great work of art on a TV pro­gramme just days before I was due to take a week­end break in Brus­sels. It seemed too serendip­i­tous not to arrange the short side-trip to Ghent, and thus I have been for­tu­nate to view this piece up close and per­son­al.

The van Eyck broth­ers, and Jan in par­tic­u­lar, were sig­nif­i­cant artists of the North­ern Renais­sance, oper­at­ing out of Bruges and leav­ing to pos­ter­i­ty such var­ied works as the Arnolfi­ni por­trait, the illu­mi­nat­ed man­u­script known as the Turin-Milan Hours, and this great altar­piece in Ghent.

Jan van Eyck, the younger and more famous of the two broth­ers, was a mas­ter of nat­u­ral­is­tic detail. He pays as much atten­tion to earth­ly beau­ty as he does to the reli­gious themes in the altar­piece. The folds of the clothes, the jew­els, the foun­tain, the flow­ers and veg­e­ta­tion, the church­es and land­scape in the back­ground – all reveal a sys­tem­at­ic and dis­crim­i­nat­ing study of the nat­ur­al world.

Com­pare with the ear­li­er, “flat­ter” Inter­na­tion­al Goth­ic art of the 14th cen­tu­ry. Although artists like Duc­cio and Simone Mar­ti­ni had begun to explore depth, per­spec­tive, and space, van Eyck takes it to a whole new lev­el and we recog­nise, for the first time, an unques­tion­able real­ism in the fin­ished art­work.

See here for the whole altar­piece and below that for a selec­tion of some of the won­der­ful details.

 

 

Art

Michelangelo’s Pietà (1499)

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The Vir­gin Mary has fea­tured prodi­gious­ly in Chris­t­ian art for many cen­turies. There are numer­ous gen­res of her depic­tion includ­ing the famil­iar Madon­na and Child, and the Madon­na Enthroned, the Ador­ing Madon­na, the Madon­na of Humil­i­ty, and sev­er­al oth­ers.  One such, the Pietà (Ital­ian for “pity” or “mer­cy”), is a sub­ject that depicts the sor­row­ing Vir­gin Mary cradling the dead Jesus, and is most often found in sculp­ture. Today’s sub­ject is the Pietà of Michelan­ge­lo, com­plet­ed in 1499 and resid­ing in St Peter’s Basil­i­ca, Vat­i­can City.

There is no doubt­ing the sub­lime genius that cre­at­ed this piece. Carved from a sin­gle block of Car­rara mar­ble, Michelan­ge­lo cre­at­ed, with con­sum­mate skill, a coher­ent and mov­ing piece of art incor­po­rat­ing both Clas­si­cal and Renais­sance ten­den­cies.

The fig­ures are delib­er­ate­ly out of pro­por­tion owing to the dif­fi­cul­ty of depict­ing an adult man cra­dled full-length in a woman’s lap. When design­ing Mary’s mea­sure­ments, Michelan­ge­lo could not impose real­is­tic pro­por­tions and have her cra­dle her adult son as he envi­sioned, so he had to make her body over­sized. To ame­lio­rate this com­pro­mise on her form, Michelan­ge­lo carved out cas­cad­ing sheets of drap­ing gar­ments, cam­ou­flag­ing her true full­ness. The result is a tri­umph of form; observe the mon­u­men­tal drap­ery, the youth­ful face of Mary, the anatom­i­cal treat­ment of Christ’s elon­gat­ed body…

Michelan­ge­lo was 24 when he com­plet­ed this sculp­ture, and his fame became assured long before he com­plet­ed his oth­er mas­ter­pieces such as his David (com­plet­ed 1504) and the Sis­tine Chapel ceil­ing (com­plet­ed 1512)

 

Michelan­gelo’s Pietà
Art

Ilya Repin’s Barge-haulers on the Volga (Volga Boatmen) (1873)

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Just as in France where paint­ing and sculp­ture were con­trolled and influ­enced by the Salon, in 19th cen­tu­ry Rus­sia, the equiv­a­lent was the Impe­r­i­al Acad­e­my of Arts in St. Peters­burg. And just as in France, where the Impres­sion­ists rebelled against the con­ser­vatism of the Salon, in Rus­sia a group of artists who became known as the Pered­vizh­ni­ki (Itin­er­ants or Wan­der­ers) rebelled against the Academy’s clas­si­cal ten­den­cies. Instead of the mytho­log­i­cal theme pro­posed for the annu­al paint­ing com­pe­ti­tion in 1863 (“The entrance of Odin into Val­hal­la”), the Pered­vizh­ni­ki were far more inter­est­ed in explor­ing themes of real life in Rus­sia: the Russ­ian peas­antry, the Russ­ian land­scape, the Russ­ian cler­gy. Thus, the Itin­er­ants broke away, cre­at­ed their own group, and paint­ed as they pleased.

A lead­ing mem­ber of the Pered­vizh­ni­ki was Ilya Repin (1844–1930), and here we look at his sub­lime mas­ter­piece, the Vol­ga Boat­men. Repin takes the phys­i­cal labour and fatigue of the com­mon man as his sub­ject, and it’s hard to imag­ine a more phys­i­cal­ly demand­ing and oppres­sive labour than that car­ried out by burlaks, the men (and women) who hauled barges along the riv­er Vol­ga.

The eleven fig­ures in the group have been called metaphors for Rus­sia itself, and there is alle­go­ry aplen­ty for art schol­ars, but the piece is pow­er­ful enough on a straight­for­ward read­ing: Life for the down­trod­den is tough; and there is no hope…

…or is there? In the mid­dle of the dark and beat­en-down fig­ures of the haulers, a young man has lift­ed his head and is star­ing off out of the pic­ture. His is the only vis­age to be illu­mi­nat­ed. The mean­ing is clear: he is rais­ing his head in an act of defi­ance, a sym­bol of hope and the promise of a bet­ter future.  With the ben­e­fit of hind­sight it might even be seen as a fore­shad­ow­ing of the Rev­o­lu­tion that would free the pro­le­tari­at near­ly fifty years lat­er.

For a lit­tle extra atmos­phere, how about lis­ten­ing to this 1936 record­ing of Russ­ian opera singer Feodor Chali­apin singing the dirgy folk song, Song of the Vol­ga Boat­men?

Repin, Self-por­trait