daydreams of conformity: dante gabriel rossetti

Everybody's life is pervaded by daydreams: one part of this is just stale, even enervating escapism..., but the other part is provocative, is not content just to accept the bad that exists, does not accept renunciation. This other part has hoping at its core, and is teachable. It can be extricated from the unregulated daydream and...can be activated undimmed. Nobody has ever lived without daydreams, but it is a question of following them deeper and deeper and in this way keeping them trained unerringly, usefully, on what is right.

Ernst Bloch, The Principle of Hope I (1959)



Dante Gabriel Rossetti, "The Day Dream" (1880)

there has always been an element of contradiction to the work of dante rossetti. one of the founding members of the pre-raphaelites, he had enthusiastically embraced the romantic ideals that the group called a return to nature. they wished to portray events as they might happen, in their natural light and setting and in more natural poses. what this involved for a great many of the pre-raphaelites, and what they became very well noted for, was the extreme detail that appeared in their works, their determination to work from nature and the narrative content of their work. but rossetti was never as technically proficient as a millais or hunt and after one early failure, never showed his paintings in the official settings provided by victorian society. instead, for rossetti painting was a way of reimbuing the world with mystery. he painted medieval tales or highly catholicized religious images, allowing him to depict a world which married nature and grace.

in general, like most of the other pre-raphaelites and those who were influenced by them, rossetti searched for a way to resist the increasingly industrialized world, its coldness and mechanization....and along with it the modes of production that determined art and artistic production, with a consequent loss of quality and increasingly alienation from 'nature'. yet as he gained in popularity and success, rossetti's lack of any real committment to truth (which was assumed in the other pre-raphaelite's turn to nature) began to tell upon his work. his path of resistance became one of autonomous beauty: paintings of isolated women, with no narrative context, idealized and divinized (in some cases literally: astarte syriaca, proserpine). the romantic ideal of beauty becomes rossetti's only goal. but as a result, his works begin to take on a mass-production quality that mirrors the industrialized world he wanted so badly to escape. figure after nearly identical figure comes out of the rossetti studio (again just compare this painting with his famous image of proserpine or astarte syrica or almost any of the others for which jane morris was his model). rossetti became a brand; an easily recognizeable something to own, and the rossetti-brand catered to the need of the newly wealthy industrialists to advance their way up the status ladder. rossetti's beauty-without-truth-content proved easily assimilable to that which it once rejected. and what was once the day-dream of hope, resistance to capitalist industrialization, became escapist fantasy living off of and supporting that same industrialization.


Dante Gabriel Rossetti, "Proserpine" (1877)

-LoA

G. Willow Wilson on NPR

As some of you know I was a contributor for several months over at eteraz.org, as that web site was going through some transitions. During that time I had a brief overlap and was a fellow blogger with G. Willow Wilson, a young journalist and writer, and one of the original writers at eteraz. Having lived in Egypt for some time, she has recently returned to the states and has published a graphic novel entitled Cairo.




She was interviewed today by Neal Conan on NPR's "Talk of the Nation". If you missed her, I encourage you to go over to npr.org and check her out, or to check out the graphic novel itself which is on sale at amazon as well as a comic shop near you.

We wish you the best and continued success GWW,
LoA.

the carnival of the arts

Well I think my interest in art, in various forms, is fairly well attested on this blog, so just for fun I present to you, for your pleasure, The Carnival of the Arts.


Television and Film

In case some of you have forgotten there was this little show called the Sopranos that spent several seasons on HBO and ended last month. I believe I was one of only 3 people in the English speaking world who did not watch the show, but even I heard the controversy that followed the final episode (any show that ends with music from Journey gets my vote. I am child of the 80s). With that in mind, Rickey Henderson presents Rickey's Obligatory Sopranos Post posted at Riding with Rickey. He provides a thoughtful review of the final episode.

Conan Stevens presents Powerkids Movie posted at Conan Stevens Online. Here the author reflects on how he got into the Thai film industry and tells about his role in a "new movie about to be released in Asian Cinema and US DVD".

Interior Design

Sarakastic presents The Modern Master Bedroom posted at Home Decorating Princess. This particular post is simply one example of a number of posts in Sara's blog that deal with interior design and providing what are usually very simple ideas about how to improve the aesthetics of a home. I encourage those do-it-yourselfers out there, who clearly have more energy than I do, to check out her blog.

Mark Cutler presents Voices of Design: Scott Flax posted at Mark Cutler Design, saying, "I hope you like this posting I did of an interview with Scott Flax, an architectural colorist". Culter is himself a well established architect with some pretty high profile work to his credit. His discussion here with Scott Flax on coordination of color with space and function is fascinating. And who knew there was such a thing as a professional colorist?!


Literature

So, I am sure that there are many persons other than She waiting for the final installment of Harry Potter to arrive this weekend. In the meantime I will point you towards a couple other reading options.

Aspeth presents A Review of The Professor and the Madman posted at Twelve Years Of Being Annoyed By Chloe Sevigny, calling the novel "Perhaps the best novel I've read this year. I would have easily passed this one by had a friend not wholeheartedly recommended it." The post provides a thorough and thoughtful review.

First of all let me just tell you, there is such a thing as Christian Chick Lit. Now that you have processed that bit of information, I can tell you that Camy Tang is the queen of CCL bloggers. She is on the verge of being a twice published writer herself (Sushi for One, anyone?), but she also has interviews and bookgiveaways from other CCL-ers. There were a lot of choices but I decided to link to her interview with Jenny Jones concerning Jones's debut called In Between.

Painting and Photography

I think we all know this is the area closest to my heart, and I will refer you my own posts on Han-Wu Shen. But there are other people out there painting.

Among those persons is Susan Borgas who presents her own work entitled Water's Path - Willochra Creek posted at Arts & Stuff. She says "My work as an realist artist promotes the Flinders Ranges and I hope that viewers of my work will consider visiting this region. There is nothing like sitting under a gum tree with a cool drink in one hand and a camera or drawing tool in another along with some flies for company. What more can anyone want!"

Henk ter Heide presents Stained Glass Window posted at See me draw. His blog is a collection of numerous sketches and this is his most recent post. He says that it does not have any religious significance, but a stained glass window of a tree with apples fallen around it...maybe its just me but I think I could get a lot of theological mileage out of that.

Ruth Mitchell presents Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art posted at Buy Outside the Box. She brings our attention to a "New American Art Museum being built by the Wal-Mart heiress" and some of the controversy around it. The Crystal Bridges Museum is likely to a necessary stop for those interested in the history of American painting.

If you have never followed the link in my sidebar to Umm Ibrahim's blog, With One Eye, you are not only missing out on a very interesting woman, but a very talented artist and photographer. And I am not the only one who thinks so since her work has been put on show in France recently. Go over and check it out. I provide one example, that accompanies her post entitled Simplicity?


And now for a bit of fun. Kilroy_60 presents The Power In The Eye of the Beholder posted at Fear And Loathing - The Gonzo Papers. Follow the link and let Kilroy bring out your inner-Jackson-Pollock.


Sculpture and Craft

Samir Bharadwaj presents Rediscover The Pure Pleasure Of Paper Crafts And Pop Up Cards posted at SamirBharadwaj.com. Samir walks the viewer through the steps of designing this elaborate little paper sculpture and shares the rather beautiful result of his own work. Enjoy.

Meanwhile, Lori Greenberg provides us with An Introduction to Polymer Clay over at her blog, BeadNerd. Here she introduces us to some rather remarkable jewelry designs and provides further links to the artists.

a letter and some background

in case you were not already convinced that this is a nerdy blog, i bring you todays post.


"John of Damascus"

in what was purely a coincidence, both vassili and i referenced the seventh great ecumenical council held in nicea in 787. i added an important section of the council as an epigraph in my elaboration on a post that i had originally sketched out a couple of months ago on the place of the holy in art (see "saying the impossible"), while vassili mentioned the council as he addressed some of his critical concerns with the philosophical position underlying my two posts on han-wu shen (part 1 and part 2 can be found at these links). i wish simply to provide a little bit of background to the reader before i provide vassili's letter because while the council is very important for the development of the understanding of art within the christian world, it is not particularly well known.

the early ecumenical councils were the gathering of christian bishops from all over the world and really centered around disputes over what it meant to say that jesus was god. these resulted in mature formulations of the doctrine of the trinity (god is a dynamic unity: father, son and spirit), the doctrine of the incarnation (christ is one person, the divine Logos, fully human and fully divine), and culminated in the controversy over the appropriateness of artistic images, icons, for representing christ, etc. one of the main challenges that christianity always faced was dealing with the ban on images and the association of all images with idolatry. the opponents of icons recalled this ban and the transcendence of god in refusing to allow artistic representations to be associated with churches and christian worship. the proponents of the icons, on the other hand, argued that god's identification with the created order, already mentioned in the earlier councils, meant that god itself had taken up created images, icons of god and thus justified their use. god's revelation had shown that god could be revealed in and through the material order and that indeed the reconciliation of humanity with god required it ("what is not assumed cannot be saved"). and this ultimately was the position of the seventh ecumenical council represented primarily in the writings of john of damascus and maximus the confessor. his references to athanasius, gregory of nyssa and gregory palamas refer to important figures in the history of christianity dating from the 4th c. to the middle ages.

vassili's letter should be read as a response to my earlier use of hegel and especially the quote from lukacs that serves as the starting point for my first post on han-wu. as i understand it, vassili wishes to deny the adequacy of concepts to the being or essence of their objects without denying the possibility of a kind of realism that acts iconographically to point you beyond the image (this would be the point of the distinction mentioned in the quote from theodore the studite and his use of walter benjamin at the end) [n.b., benjamin and lukacs had a long and often contentious dispute over the role of art and especially expressionism in the 20th c.][one might also recall adorno's strenuous insistence on maintaining the non-identity of concept and object]. my own response will follow soon.

finally...i bring you vassili's very thoughtful letter (the original can be seen here):
__________________

Dear 'Lawrence',
i think you will agree that in order to hope of any realism in visual arts we first have to have an answer to epistemological problem of what is really real and how that is known to us. I do not want here neither to open an extensive discussion of that onerous (especially since Kant's time) matter, nor to jump into any final statement; but I would like to offer a point of view. Let me start:

It is quite known the controversy about the icons—the capability of depiction of Christ mainly—during the mid-Byzantine era which resulted into the 7th Ecumenical Council and destroyed Byzantine State’s unity for ever. What is not very known is the subtleties of arguments of both sides as a result that this controversy was nothing but the pick of the iceberg which was the old (and never ending) debate about the possibility of knowledge of God and the nature of man’s salvation. (In fact the whole theology of Greek Fathers from Athanasius to Gregory Palamas is nothing but an epistemologic struggle for asserting man’s potentiality of participation into God’s uncreated energy/-ies and, hence, God’s eternal life.) What recapitalized Church’s answer was Theodore Studite’s aphorism that “what is depicted in an icon [of Christ] is not [his] nature but hypostasis.” (Of course that needs a lot of discussion, since the distinction between hypostasis, or person, and nature, or substance, is a very old and fundamental issue in Greek Patristic theology which in fact it goes back to Aristotle, and, in my opinion, farther back to Greek Archaic thought; but here and now this discussion is not possible; so, i will avoid it and i will use Studite’s aphorism just as an Archimedean point.) This aphorism has a more general value for visual arts since it keeps open the possibility of a true image without, at the same time, falling into the vicious circle of trying to find a way out of total-realism’s labyrinth. To make it a bit more straightforward: Gregory of Nyssa gives a nice account about matter and perception; he says that the matter is the concurrence (out of the divine will and power) of all of matter’s features, which each-one-in-itself is nothing but a mere name or concept (PG 44, 69C), and that nature’s idiom is her state of continuous changing out of her constitution (ibid, 108A) and of her immanent creative reason [κτίσεως λόγον=reason of being] (ibid, 88D). And how can we perceive natural reality? He says, through hypostasis, which is nature’s manifestation via her specific idioms (PG 32, 328). Gregory Palamas similarly says: a substance without a distinct-from-it energy is totally non-existent [ανυπόστατος=without hypostasis] and a mere speculation of mind (Works, vol.5, 112).

So what i try to say is that the only possible and honest realism in visual arts is the depiction of what is commonly accepted as naturally idiomatic in our art’s object —that is, to create a visual name, as a real name-sign for a real thing. (As W. Benjamin says, “The name is the analogue of the knowledge of the object in the object itself.”) Can we see it somewhere? Yes, it is seen in folk art, in icons, in many works among the great poets of painting (e.g. Fra Angelico, Greco, Caravaggio, Giacometti and others).

What really appalls me in illusionary realism and in Lucacs’ naïve statement is their utopian will for man’s consciousness’ final dominion over nature —and every utopia, i think you will agree, is nothing but violence.

I hope i managed to give to you an idea of what i had in mind.
You have my best wishes for your “journey”.
/vassili

saying the impossible

"We define that the holy icons, whether in color, mosaic, or some other material, should be exhibited in the holy churches of God, on the sacred vessels and liturgical vestments, on the walls, furnishings, and in houses and along the roads, namely the icons of our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ, that of our Lady the Theotokos, those of the venerable angels and those of all saintly people. Whenever these representations are contemplated, they will cause those who look at them to commemorate and love their prototype. We define also that they should be kissed and that they are an object of veneration and honor (timitiki proskynisis), but not of real worship (latreia), which is reserved for Him Who is the subject of our faith and is proper for the divine nature, ... which is in effect transmitted to the prototype; he who venerates the icon, venerated in it the reality for which it stands."

The Seventh Ecumenical Council, Nicea (787)



Sandro Botticelli, "Madonna of the Magnificat" (c.1483)


Let us take two portrayals of the Virgin Mary.

For the first let us use Botticelli's "Madonna of the Magnificat" as an example. We choose it not because it is somehow exceptional – it is that, widely admired at the time of its composition, it remains an impressive display of skill and composition – but because the themes by which the Virgin is portrayed are in many ways quite typical. It is not known who commissioned the piece, but whoever it may have been, they were extremely wealthy. To begin with, the panel is extremely large, and each of the characters is nearly life-sized. Given the expense of gold paint, artists were generally very sparing in its use. But here Botticelli uses it in extravagant fashion. Mary's robe and dress are very intricately embroidered in gold. The crown that is being lowered upon her head is likewise of a very delicate gold design. The halos are of course of gold paint, and there is gold embroidery on some the minor characters as well. Perhaps most amazingly, Botticelli even used gold paint to supplement and achieve the overall hair color that he desired the Virgin to have.

Likewise, Mary bears the marks of royalty. She is being crowned Queen of Heaven as she writes, by two angels (she is penning the Magnificat found in the gospel of Luke). There are a number of stars in the crown adapting one typical portrayal of the Queen of Heaven with stars at her feet in a manner more appropriate to the tondo. Her clothes are likewise rich and lush. The royal blue is almost a mandatory Marian color, as is the deep red dress underneath. The angels gather round her as attendants, two of them holding the book open for her as she writes, their own clothing testimony to the wealth of the one on whom they wait.

Now while it is true that these traits lead us to an appreciation of the wealth of the commissioner, to think that this is the only function would be not merely cynical, but to fundamentally misunderstand the message of the painting. Botticelli's Christendom is a great chain of being that stretches from the lowliest depths of creation up to the heights of the divine. In order to analogously express this the artist takes those things which are most beautiful, those things which signify power, royal authority and grace to humanity here below, and uses them to express to the benevolent rule of the Queen of Heaven (in this case). Thus, it is not only the picture itself which, in iconic fashion, directs the viewer beyond themselves toward a greater understanding of Mary, but in fact the viewer is likewise directed towards the aristocratic family who commissioned the painting; they are understood by all to analogously portray the divine through the beauty of their lives and the benevolence of their rule. Thus the magnificent expenditure is not merely a decadent display, but a recognition that their wealth is at the service of something that transcends them. The image of royal power rebounds back upon the commissioner to measure and judge them – are they a dim but adequate reflection of the power of God in their use of earthly power?



Chris Ofili, "The Holy Virgin Mary" (1996)

For our second example, let us examine Chris Ofili's controversial "Holy Virgin Mary".

Here the composition is extremely simple. Mary, who has seemingly African features (Ofili is himself a Roman Catholic of African origin), looks out at the viewer. She is not Botticelli's aristocrat. There is no finery here. Simple earthy tones are used. The painter used both paint and elephant feces to achieve the effect he wanted with Mary. The beings that seem to flutter around her like butterflies, what one would traditionally identify as cherubs, turn out to be the buttocks and genitalia of various black women, cut from pornographic magazines and various blaxploitation films.

Obviously Ofili is addressing his audience in a much different way than Botticelli. He does nothing to invoke wealth and power. Mary is very common. But assuming that Ofili's purpose was not simply to piss off Mayor Guiliani, what purpose does the inclusion of scatological and pornographic elements serve. Why portray something he calls holy by means of so-much-shit?

The fact is that we no longer live in Botticelli's world. While gold may still indicate power, the sources of power are no longer considered as benevolent as they were. They are no longer, even in theory, interested in the human good, nor the common good. The powers represented by gold, by big blue, are the market, governments and corporations: the instruments of capitalism. These are things that exert their control over the audience, penetrate every sector of their lives, and allow no escape. Capitalism remains, at best, neutral with respect to the human good, and judges things only as commodities, reducing everything that falls within its grasp (which is nothing less than everything). Thus Ofili turns to waste, literally to shit. His voice is speaks according to that which is not valued by capitalism - whether it is to feces or to those parts of humanity which society views as so-much-shit - because that is what capitalism does not value; it is that which at least has a chance of escaping capitalism's control. Shit becomes the way of negating the demonic influence of the culture industry which embraces every part of human life and denies humanity any escape. Only shit, in the closed world of capitalism, might represent something beyond capital, can represent the holy, because shit is what is given off and left behind after the consumer consumes.

Yet one is left to wonder if Ofili can accomplish his purpose. Does not this negation of the values of capitalism not really just affirm them by turning them on their head. The use of shit only has meaning because of the value-system it is negating. Thus the painting itself is tied to, and is worthless without, capitalism. It needs capitalism to have value and to mean anything. Has Ofili done anything more than show capitalism a way of valuing that which it had previously excreted as worthless, further increasing its range of influence and control? Is this not what Dalí foretold when he exposed Liberal-Capitalist society's unconscious in bluntly scatological terms. Ironically Ofili's painting ended up in the hands of a wealthy collector before it was lost in a fire. Ofili's problem is not unique; the problem is, how does one speak of the Beyond, of the divine, given that our language is always earth bound? Is it possible, or is capitalism's closure of life within its all encompassing web the truth of who we are?



Mark Rothko, Untitled (1968) [Acrylic on Paper]

Perhaps the best way to think of the relation between Botticelli and Ofili is in these linguistic terms. They are both attempts to speak about that which is holy. In the theological tradition there is a distinction made between positive speech about the holy (cataphatic language) and negative speech (apophatic language). Botticelli is clearly cataphatic language. Living in the middle of a Christendom which, according to its own self-understanding, attempts to direct the human person towards the divine, Botticelli not surprisingly uses those things that his culture values in order to express that impulse toward the holy. Ofili on the other hand resorts to an apophatic language, denying that the things which we value are holy at all. This is again, not surprising, since the culture in which Ofili speaks no longer sees a connection between its actions and the religious, which is granted a private and interior existence if it is affirmed at all.

But it is important to note, in order that BOTH forms of language not fall into idolatry, that the two forms must (and do) work together. It is not simply that every Botticelli needs Ofili's corrective (and vice versa), but that both elements are at work in both painters. The cataphatic and apophatic are correlates of one another which together attempt to open language onto a horizon which transcends it.

One should not be naive and think that Botticelli actually believes that his positive portrayal of the Virgin Mary in some way represents a realistic representation of her. He is well aware she is not a European noblewoman, nor was she someone who lived her life in wealth (nor let us be naive and think that Botticelli is not privileging a European, noble, Mary for the same reasons that he uses golds and blues). There is a negation, a falseness, that is built into the language itself that allows the viewer to see through, to see beyond what is merely said. In so doing, Botticelli not merely affirms but negates that which he speaks. As already mentioned, the commissioners, no less than the painting itself, can be at best, dim images of the holy towards which their eyes are turned.

Likewise, Ofili's negations cannot function without something to negate, something of value, something that is good: even if one realizes, in the negation that the things we value as good are nothing but shit, fallen and broken.

Trapped as we are within the prison-house of language, that language must be taken beyond its limits in order to express something beyond the prison. If there is to be hope for the future, we must crucify language, ignore Wittgenstein, and stake a claim on the Impossible – speak the unspeakable. This conjunction of the cataphatic and apophatic reminds us that we are not-yet what we desire to be, even though we do not yet know what it is that we desire. It reminds us not to settle for idols, but also to hold fast to hope.


-LoA

the possibilities of realism, part 2: han-wu shen's daydreams of conformity

Some time ago, Alaleh Alamir, who is herself a painter, asked, in response to the post on Han-Wu Shen (see 'The Possibilities of Realism: a Case for the Art of Han-Wu Shen'), "Could hyper-realism in painting still make sense in the age of fotoshop and its like? realism can represent a technical challenge do the doer; I am not sure it brings anything more to the viewer or to world consciousness..."

One can also see, in the comments to the post on Han-Wu Shen, Vassilip, who has also worked in paint, making somewhat existentialist objections against realist painting and especially against the quote from Lukacs which serves as the epigraph for the post: I wonder, do you really believe that a realism in art (any realism) is possible? I mean, do you really believe that is possible to translate true experience (if ever we be fully able to be her masters) into icons? ...Can you not see how outrageously utopian is Lukacs’ statement (even in his upside-down Hegelian …Platonism)?"

As appears in my reply already to Vassilip, I categorically reject the idea that somehow Reason is unable to contain experience as philosophically absurd. This does not mean that rationality is whole or complete as yet, but it does mean that the breaks and gaps, the contradictions that are present within the Real, are experiences of Reason coming into contradiction with itself, not of Reason coming into contradiction with some Other which is uncontainable. This position serves as a good benchmark to judge the limits of my sympathies with typical expressions of (post-)Marxism, which is often quite extensive. But it seems to me that figures like Sartre and Adorno betray the dialectic when they contrast Reason with Matter. This makes matter into the Real which Reason can never fully comprehend (this is expressed in both as a kind of "priority of the object"). But certainly, to echo Hegel, if Reason can experience itself in contradiction with Matter, then it has somehow already seen beyond the supposed limit of Reason in order to experience itself as grinding against its own Other: it has transcended the supposed limit. As such the contradiction is transformed into a conflict between two moments of Reason itself. This leads to a position I have articulated on a number of occasions: namely that the Whole conditions everything we do and that we all act for the Whole in some form or another (see most recently 'Freedom', but also 'Dialectic' and, negotiating the relationship between Hegel and Adorno, 'The Struggle, Part 6').


Now, these philosophical issues do not by any means address the larger issues being raised here against realism, and I think the issues are very serious. I would agree that if all that is left to 'realism' is the demonstration of technique then it is ideologically dead, and has nothing more to contribute. And that is certainly the danger right now: a camera and foto-shop is a much more appropriate mode of production than oil and canvas. But if, somehow, realism can incorporate the lessons learned from 'modern art' then maybe it can have some future. I suggested that possibly Han-Wu Shen had tried to incorporate some of these lessons through his comparison of his work to industrial painting within the genre of decorative figure painting (it is admittedly very difficult to foresee a revival of historical figure painting). This would allow the genre within which he is working to transcend itself. To put it another way, it would allow abstract art to recover a certain amount of explicit narrative content without giving up its central truth: form and color.

That said, I have to admit that is not clear that Han-Wu Shen's project is truly sustainable, judging by his own work. He recently left China for the west coast of the United States and since that time has generated a number of 'decorative' paintings in the worst sense, which only seems to the feed the blindness of the art-consumer. I include three examples below:


Han-Wu Shen, "Reverie" (2004)


Han-Wu Shen, "Reflection (Reverie #2)" (2004)


Han-Wu Shen, "Daydream (Reverie #3)" (2004)

Here one quickly notices that the lack of content is present as much in the subject as in the over-all object itself. The reader is rendered as intellectually inert and mindless as are these (notably caucasian) women caught up in their various reveries. Finally, one can see immediate parallels with Dante Rossetti's own "Daydream" etc. I believe a similar critique can be leveled at Han-Wu Shen in these paintings as was leveled at Rossetti in an earlier post (see 'Daydreams of Conformity').

-LoA

the possibilities of realism: a case for the art of han-wu shen

Great realism, therefore, does not portray an immediately obvious aspect of reality but one which is permanent and objectively more significant, namely man in the whole range of his relations to the real world, above all those that outlast mere fashion. Over and above that, it captures tendencies of development that only exist incipiently and so have not yet had the opportunity to unfold their entire human and social potential. To discern and give shape to such underground trends is the great historical mission of the true...avant-garde.

Georg Lukács, "Realism in the Balance" (1938)



David Camp, "Blue Maiden's Gaze" (2005)

Despite the work of groups like the Art Renewal Center to assert the need for contemporary Realism against the bankruptcy of modernist painting, it is not terribly clear that contemporary Realism is itself ideologically solvent. Instead, too much of contemporary realist painting has no real ambition beyond decorative art. Individual figures, most often female, quite often nude are placed in settings that do little to provide any real context or provide one with narrative clues. Instead of being timeless, they are ahistorical, like the capitalism to which they are capitulations. They are commodities provided for consumption to an audience that has itself lost any sense of history. Thus realism regresses back to the earliest moment of Enlightenment aesthetics: art as entertainment. It becomes a completely private event that does nothing to challenge the viewer with respect to the place and form of art, or their own relation to the means or mode of production of works of art or any other form of labor. The universal human experience, by which it provides its own self-justification, is nothing more than that of the isolated, alienated, objectified individual who is unable to relate or comprehend themselves as part of some larger whole, and so disapproves of any art that does more than provide an unspeakable feeling to be enjoyed. Thus realism, in the contemporary moment, most often presents itself as nothing but a mirror in which we view our own fate. It provokes a sentimental gaze which quiets any need for real thought so that one can save all one's energy for the labor which is needed to sustain the growth of capital, experienced as the real truth of nature.



Han-Wu Shen, "Mother and Child by the River" (2002)

It is not hard to understand why realism gradually fell out of fashion. It is more than fad that drives art. The Pre-Raphaelites were inspired, at least in part, by the truth of nature. They, unlike their contemporaries, often went outside to paint their landscapes directly, etc. Perhaps with some exaggeration, Ruskin claimed that Millais could spend the day working on a spot of canvas that was no larger than a large coin. And indeed, Millais in his Pre-Raphaelite days paints in exquisite detail. But as the mode of production changes, so does art. As photography becomes increasingly available, certainly Millais's painstaking style becomes inefficient, but realism itself begins to lose its purpose. What is it that painting can do that a camera can not? Gradually the answer became clearer, though Whistler had already grasped the idea. Painting is to color, what music is to sound. The real content of painting, as the need for 'realist' content is historically displaced, is the relation of colors: harmonies, dischords, chaos and order, lights and darks, etc.

This need not mean that there cannot be a legitimate and contemporary Realism. But any realism that wishes to be true, not merely to its object, but also to its form, must never forget that painting is not either glorified or simplified photography, just a photography is not film. When painting does this, the difference in labor is lost and the painting itself becomes an image of what it ought be. Photography is a different media, one that deals in image, one that is increasingly able to bring us images from every aspect of life, often staged to communicate the truth of what happened (even more than the truth of what happened would), and which compensates, for better/for worse, for its lack of depth by providing an ever increasing barrage of those images. The concrete effect is the degeneration of realist (figure) painting into decorative and portraiture forms. Only a decorative piece can contain the simplicity that might vaguely make its completion an efficient possibility relative to some photographic comparison, while portraiture lives on, again without any real context, as a sign of status. A true Realism then cannot forego the study of color in order to be true to its form; in this historical moment, the form is the content.



Han-Wu Shen, "Co-Workers" (2000)

One contemporary realist who has developed this idea is Han-Wu Shen. Han-Wu, in important ways, already shows a superior grasp of realism relative to many of his contemporaries in that his work as whole develops its own narrative intellectual content and makes demands upon the 'reader'. Despite the fact that many of his paintings, taken in isolation, have the same decorative effect as one sees in the realists about whom I have been complaining, taken as a corpus, what one has in Han-Wu Shen is, on the one hand, a fairly sustained look at the tension between the Communist ideals/goals for China and the life of the rural peasantry who are still extremely common in the Chinese countryside, and on the other, an examination of the tension between those same peasants and their urban peers (and these are not two completely unrelated tensions of course).

But in and of itself, one would have to conclude that this would not be enough. A photo-journalist could accomplish this, not only with more ease, but with more power and narrative sophistication, than could someone limited by the labor time invested in oil and canvas figure painting. Yet Han-Wu Shen indicates he is quite aware of this problem and that indeed the labor of painting is not simply or even primarily about the rendering of figures. Its truth is no longer strictly found in its narrative content. Content and form must coincide. By far his most popular urban subject is the blue-collar painter. Here Han-Wu meditates on the nature of the art itself, and asks his audience and himself, "What is painting?". These 'common' painters, these laborers, these are his fellows and their art is not so very far from his own. Painting is about color. About providing a harmony of colors (and when one does not, it is always the possibility of harmony that makes the disharmony striking and meaningful). If one will, the proletarian painters are, not surprisingly, the ones who show in their practice the truth in painting. They have always known, says Han-Wu, that the color is the thing! But this is itself a narrative content one might reply. This takes us one final step further into his paintings of the painters. They themselves become explorations of color, canvases for Jackson Pollock to envy. They are built up like a mosaic so that as one is taken into the painting one loses sight of the painters and are drawn to what they want you to see, the beautiful arrangement of color, questions of harmony and form that lead back out to an evaluation of the whole work and ultimately the world of those painters and the painter himself. It leads to questions of Truth.

If and only if contemporary Realism can grasp the ideas that are being explored by those such as Han-Wu Shen can it possibly compete with the varioius (post-)modernisms as a truly meaningful form of painting/art, and indeed if it learns its lessons well, it may have the power to unite form and content in a manner beyond that of more abstract explorations of color. Great works of art, Adorno tells us, are those that not merely grasp the spirit of their age, but do so in such a way that the contradictions of that age are likewise allowed to appear. By allowing an apparently decorative realism to speak beyond itself Han-Wu Shen has perhaps done just that.

-LoA




Han-Wu Shen, "Young Red Guard" (c.2000)

Appendix
The first painting by Han-Wu Shen I saw was "Pregnant Worker." I was overwhelmed and awed; overjoyed almost to the point of tears. Here was such a powerful display of color and harmony. Han-Wu had consumed and consummated abstract art right there in that one jacket, that one denim work coat. I was stunned: oranges and browns and rust, blues, greys and steel, and that one touch of pink that is so perfect for being so out of place. This was justice: no glamour shot, no objectified subject for me to consume; this was real. It was the most real painting I had seen.....in.....I could not think when. Rapture!


Han-Wu Shen, "Pregnant Worker" (2000)

dalí; or, same shit different day

Bryan Larson, "Just the Beginning" (2001)

in the end, dalí proved to have a better grasp of surrealism and what it was than did breton and the others who were at the origins of the movement. they fantasized it as a force of liberation to be aligned with communist political aims. to breton and the others, surrealism's attempt to thematize the unconscious, to bring to light those dark drives which were hidden from humanity, was going to somehow free that humanity.

but as dalí saw, when others did not, the unconscious was not a haven of paradise where the edenic humanity could be rediscovered in all its natural glory. the irrational was not salvation from an increasingly rationalized world, rather, what was being uncovered by surrealism was the anglo and continental unconscious (for lack of a better term) which was never absent from the conscious drives of technological expansion and domination of the world (both as industrialization and colonization), was never absent from any act, no matter how mundane, decadent or benevolent. thus the surrealists were not showing the way to the future, but were merely revealing the truth of the present: the unsaid in everything that persons, society, and culture did.

it is not surprising, then, that freud was impressed by dalí upon meeting him. dalí alone of the surrealists had understood him: this was freud's assessment; and it was dalí alone who could make him reconsider surrealism as something more than art without understanding.

dalí's understanding has indeed been vindicated by the fact that the anglo and continental culture was able to absorb surrealism so easily and make it part of its cultural currency. and dalí was glad to be its superstar, while never forgetting that he was merely returning our own shit to us for us to enjoy: the scatological innards of that which the ego always presents with a clear and shiny face.

-LoA



Salvador Dalí, "The Visage of War" (1940)

10
Memory says: Want to do it right? Don't count on me.
I'm a canal in Europe where bodies are floating
I'm a mass grave I'm the life that returns
I'm a table set with room for the Stranger
I'm a field with corners left for the landless
I'm accused of child-death of drinking blood
I'm a man-child praising God he's a man
I'm a woman bargaining for chicken
I'm a woman who sells for a boat ticket
I'm a family dispersed between night and fog
I'm an immigrant tailor who says "A coat
is not a piece of cloth only" I sway
in the learnings of master-mystics
I have dreamed of Zion I've dreamed of world revolution
I have dreamed my children could live at last like others
I have walked the children of others through the ranks of hatred
I'm a corpse dredged from a canal in Berlin
a river in Mississippi I'm a woman standing
with another woman dressed in black
on the streets of Haifa, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem
there is spit on my sleeve there are phonecalls in the night
I am a woman standing in line for gasmasks
I stand on a road in Ramallah with naked face listening
I am standing here in your poem unsatisfied
lifting my smoky mirror

1989-1990

Adrienne Rich, #10 from "Eastern War Time", An Atlas of the Difficult World: Poems, 1988-1991




Edward Hopper, "Cape Cod Morning" (1950)

dreams of rebirth (imagined entries in the the diary of romaine brooks, 1911-1914)

"It fixes itself in the mind."
-Romaine Brooks, on Ida Rubinstein's face, after their break-up

Romaine Brooks, "La Venus Triste" (1914)

I

And then I dreamt that you and I were no longer who we were. Not myself, I did not know you, and passing you on an otherwise empty street, I did not recognize you. Without your words of greeting, the creation of that space we have inhabited for so long together, the warmth of a home created by that nightmarishly absent rejoinder, you were nothing to me, or more appropriately, without your words to tell me who I was, I was as nothing to me, and in my traumatics, I could not, upon not seeing you as you on an otherwise empty street, do anything except violence. I hurt you to be who I am, to constitute myself as self, to make, to find again the home we had made in a once upon a time (the confusion of dream for reality and reality for dream – I was no longer sure I was not awake). By destroying you, by seeing you no longer as you, I had a dream I would be me again, home again, warm again, not exhausted by the ceaseless wear of not-being-real.

So I attacked, negated and finally annihilated you, so that I could be home again. But still I was left with not being myself and the more desperately I destroyed, the deeper I was lost in the nothingness of who I had become – wide awake now in the dream of not-being. You as not-you reappeared at every turn and this time I thought – I knew – that your subjection would mean my completion. But each time your annihilation did not create space for me but expanded the terror of not-being without escape. Until finally, you were gone and not having recognized not-you, I finally was gone in the spaceless prison of my own indistinction, unable to slumber in the abysmal reality I had created in my dream.

Romaine Brooks, "Le Trajet" (1911)

II

I had a dream that we were reborn, you and I: you no longer you, and I no longer I. To be reborn, it is a dream; to be caught up, not in the consciousness of desire, where I would consume you and destroy you, but that we be made something new by something more holy, more damning, but oh thereby more deifying than fire. I had that dream, that we were reborn, and all our struggles, the many violences that we waged against one another, wars to conquer the space of peace that we brought one another, were ended: our bodies beaten into plowshares and our tongues prophesying only for one another.

Romaine Brooks, "Spring" (1912)

III

I dreamt we were reborn, you and I

Caught in the torrent; raindrops dancing on the ground

Water running past our feet, frenetic past our ankles

Hard into our face, stinging into our eyes

Until we were pulled under and washed away

Who we were, now completely past

Lost in the river of life

Beyond a flood, a force more than mere drowning

And behold, all things are new

I dreamt the rain, dancing all along, called out to us

Constantly speaking but one name

Romaine Brooks, "La France Croisée" (1914)

IV

I awoke with a prayer for rebirth on my lips

But every invocation is an evocation,
and the solicitude of slumber is lost at the first sign of waking

I am trying to capture stars for you

Walking to the moon

But the very prayer I speak creates the impossibility of its fulfillment

I am Eleazer with censer in hand: strange incense!

As always I seek only the instantiation of my own dreams.

Forgive me: can I ask that out without demanding,
setting out the terms of your internment, the limits,
the how and why of your actions, attempting to hold them in my hands.

Forgive me/ I will make you mine

Help me/ I know what I need

-LoA

Romaine Brooks, "Esquisse d'Ida Rubinstein" (1912)

sweet nothings

John William Godward, "Dolce Far Niente" (1904)


In the earliest days of recorded music, the goal was to produce something perfect, something better than reality. Thus the old joke where a veteran pianist is invited to come hear a new and promising talent play as the youngster records a piano concerto. Over the course of numerous takes the task is completed. As they sit and listen to the playback at the end of the day the veteran pianist turns to the younger colleague and says, "That is a beautifully played piece; don't you wish you could play like that?" The fear then was that the finite would pretend to more than it was, that the experience of time, the guarantor of our 'mere' humanity, would be circumvented. The so-called democratization of consumption, the ability to reach a mass audience with arts that had once been available only those of privilege, whether through radio or recording, would lead to a democratization of production as well, so that the true possessor of artistic gifts would be lost in a sea of mediocrity. Finally there was the worry that the new media, with its illusory perfections would invite people to flee reality. The arts would become a source of fantasy and escape.

But now we have gone full circle, and the media, having penetrated every aspect of life, has left nothing real. Recording media no longer aspire to fantastic perfection; this is in fact achieved with increasing ease and consumed readily, but no longer with any suspension of disbelief: everything from pop vocals to the action thriller is seen to be the nothing that it is by the public that consumes it. The escapist aesthetic of the Enlightenment and instrumental reason, here, reaches its culmination in a sense of universal meaninglessness, as persons gradually are made aware of the extent to which life is art. In order to compensate, the media, whether one talks about film, writing or music, etc. attempts to manufacture an experience of spontaneity and even reality for those who have forgotten what that is. 'Imperfections' are themselves very carefully planned in order to give the feel of reality (e.g., Eminem telling us he can't hear his snare; inviting you to feel like you are there when he was recording; the very thing the pianist in the earlier example was trying to avoid). Reality t.v. tries to turn everyday life, the very thing from which humanity once needed to escape, into something to be solved, like a puzzle, stressing the priority of instrumental reason in all aspects of life: one ought no longer to think one's work hollow and unfulfilling, since the business-rationality is no different from that which is present everywhere. We are entertained, comforted by the brutal monotony of it, the hollow 'sponteneity', which assures us that those last vestiges of the Real – the work place, love/dating/sex, friendships, etc. – are all vacuous, commodifiable, and need not be taken too seriously.

-LoA

the decision of the sabine women

why don’t you flee? They ask us -
smile.
You wrapped freedom in death, we say
in whispers no one understands.

Shabana Mir, from "Mute Freedom"

Nicolas Poussin, "The Rape of the Sabine Women" (1635)


Plutach tells us the myth of the Sabine women. Following the founding of Rome, the city increased its strength and population by granting citizenship to criminals. While this was very effective as a short-term plan, the leaders of Rome recognized that without wives with whom they could reproduce the city would not last. So they proposed to the nearby tribe, the Sabines, that the men of Rome marry their women, thereby binding the two groups together. The Sabines refused. So by means of a treacherous ruse, the Romans instead kidnapped the women in order to have them as their wives. This is the background for the many artistic portrayals of the “Rape of the Sabine Women”. The Sabine men did not stand idly by and prepared for war against Rome and eventually marched on the city. But when the two sides met for combat, the Sabine women intervened between their blood relatives and their new husbands in order to enforce a peace.

It has been suggested, more than once, that what one sees in this story is the male of fantasy of the woman falling in love with her rapist. Such fantasies are indeed common even, or perhaps, especially, today: one need only think of “Tie Me Up; Tie Me Down”. But is that really what is going on in the case of the Sabine women?

I would suggest that one need not think of the peacemaking efforts of the Sabine women as a masochistic capitulation to their rapists, or another example of neuroses, e.g., Stockholm Syndrome, but instead the recognition that the shedding of blood that was about to take place between their husbands and their brothers, no matter what the result, would not change the brutality of their situation. They would either return to being the property of their birth-families, or remain the property of their husbands; the men were fighting, not to liberate the women, but to guarantee their property rights. After all, the crime of rape perpetrated against these women was not one of sexual violence or even a violation of their will, but, in the language of the day, was really a crime against the owners and guardians of the women. The women were trade goods, vital for economic and political exchange and they had been raped, i.e., carried off without their men’s permission. Even a woman who had left voluntarily, for instance, who had eloped, would have been said to have been raped, for the crime had nothing to do with the person or the desires of women, and everything to do with the rights of her family to control her will.

And so the women made a decision to protect the one thing in which they were allowed some say and with respect to which they had some freedom: their children. David quite rightly puts the children in the center of the conflict alongside the women. Here, for the first time, the women had real intimacy beyond the community of women, a bond with men in which they were not merely economic machinery. While the biology of reproduction had been used against them to define their destiny and value, they embraced the living relations created by motherhood in order to create a space within which they were indeed allowed some love and autonomy. The intervention of the Sabine women was not, then, a pathetic refusal of liberation, but a recognition that what liberation that was available to them, limited though it was, would never be delivered by the sword of any man, and that neither their Roman husbands nor their Sabine brothers were fighting for their interests, let alone their freedom.

-LoA



Jacques-Louis David, "The Intervention of the Sabine Women" (1799)

nostalgia (a reflection on irving berlin's white christmas)

"Irving Berlin's White Christmas" (1954)


we watched irving berlin's classic 1954 film, White Christmas, today on the big screen. it was a delightful experience: the theatre was packed; there were many families there with their kids; and many of those kids, even in their early teens, had never seen the movie before. they laughed at the melodramatic acting, the dance sequences, and often applauded at the end of musical numbers. the whole audience applauded at the end of the movie. and that includes me; i love White Christmas. it is sappy and, to borrow a word from the movie, schmaltzy, but it really doesn't matter; i have to watch it at least once during the season or the year just is not complete.

but something struck me this time that i had not really given a great deal of thought before. the film is a nostalgia-piece. but what is berlin nostalgic for? there remains, today, a large segment of the american population which looks longingly to the 1950's itself as an idyllic age, before the sexual revolution really took hold, before the country lost it's innocence in viet nam, before stonewall, before no-fault divorce destroyed the american family, before the kennedys were murdered, before watergate, and one can go on and on. the 1950's are the "good ole' days". but berlin's film is itself set in the 1950's and he is very clearly already nostalgic for something lost.

this shows up at several points throughout the film. the song and dance number entitled "choreography" mocks the changes that had taken place and the innovations of modern dance. several other numbers recall vaudeville style shows and another large number explicitly harkens back to the "minstrel shows" of the previous generation. but the nostalgia is not simply expressed with respect to the arts; of course artistic and social changes go hand-in-hand. the movie dwells on the theme of the ambition of younger women and how it serves as a destablizing social influence as they pursue careers, refusing to settle down and get married as they used to do. the wacs are praised extensively in another musical number for their dedicated entertainment of the men-folk in a time of war, and care is taken to remind everyone what a great job it was because it was so easy to find a husband.

berlin is nostalgic, then, for the values of the era that predated world war 2. he longs for a return to the glory days of what some have referred to as "the greatest generation". before the war changed everything: snatched youth away from so many young men, snatched women out of their appointed roles and into the work force, turned the world into a place where "everyone has an angle" (the self-interested nature of modern life is also a running theme). and this raises an interesting point. the norman-rockwell-1950's-idealized-americana that remains the dream of many (euphemized under the term "family values") is already a false hope according to berlin. the 1940's had introduced technological and economic innovations that would change the social structure of liberal society irrevocably. the nostalgia for the 1950's is nostalgia for an era that is already itself nostalgic (White Christmas was the top money maker for 1954). one cannot rush back to eden when the supposed-eden has itself, at least according to berlin, already fallen.

the fact is that nostalgia can never reach back far enough to fulfill its desire: to abdicate one's freedom, one's responsibility towards the Future. it is not just an emotion or a whistful feeling, nostalgia represents a fundamental intentionality that one possesses towards the world - one which frees us from responsibility and decision. one no longer needs to make a decision, one no longer needs one's freedom, the decisions were made for us in a previous time. we need simply repeat them anew.

of course nostalgia is undermined by its own desire because it is itself a decision: a free attempt to annul one's freedom, a hope against-hope; it denies faith in History by projecting an anti-Future as the Truth-which-is-our-Future. the dream of a white christmas is the dream about the past; nostalgia longs for that which is dead, instead of turning in hope towards new life.

-LoA

standing outside the mosque in lahore: the modesty of edwin lord weeks

Jean-Leon Gerome, "The Dance of the Almeh" (1863)


First Delacroix and then his protege, Jean-Leon Gerome, had set the standard for orientalism in the first two thirds of the nineteenth century. What had begun as curious perusals of Arabians and Indians (both Asian and American) in Delacroix, had been elevated to the level of masterpiece size interpretations of Arabia. It was thus no surprise that as the French and English political bodies delved more deeply into this unknown world, painters, fascinated by the stories and colors of the orient turned to Gerome, not only for instruction and guidance but, as the rule by which to judge their own achievements.

And Gerome was indeed a challenge to live up to. Arabia opened up to him and he rendered that Arabia from vantages that had never been seen before: portraying private worship (especially a number of Cairo scenes) both in and outside mosques, the interior of royal courts, and topping Delacroix's lonely odalisques, Gerome was granted entry into the sanctuary of the harem and the baths. These scenes were alive with color and charged with barely contained energy and sexuality. Gerome's Arabia was an exotic and erotic playground for the European imagination. Even as Rousseau had argued for the beauty of a more natural world a generation before, Gerome was portraying the European vision of what nature would look like, absent the civilizing impulse.


Jean-Leon Gerome, "Whirling Dervishes" (1895)


This visual claim to have laid the Arabian world bare was a key element of Gerome's success. But it was largely a lie. As i have argued before, Gerome does not really grasp Arabia as a whole, but instead divides it into easily consumeable bits, isolated realities that lack a historical or social context. This trend would be followed by the next generation in painters such as Mowbray who unabashedly lays out the orient as a fantasy world lacking depth.


Henry Siddon Mowbray, "Oriental Fantasy" (1887)


The Bostonian, Edwin Weeks, was also among those who sought to learn about the orient and its portrayal from Gerome, but a painter can only learn so much sitting in the studio. So after a time with Gerome and Gerome's close friend Leon Bonnat, Weeks and his new wife decided to venture into Arabia, beginning with Morocco in 1878-79. Weeks rapidly realized they had entered a place which "Gerome had never rendered": confronted by disease (his own and others), famine and hostility, Weeks' work would never be the same.


Edwin Lord Weeks, "The Gate of Shehal, Morocco" (1880)


There is something about Weeks' body of work which reveals that he understood he could not lay bare this world to which he was so totally a foreigner. It begins with the modesty with which he described his work. He was a colorist, not an orientalist. He was not someone who could expose the orient to the viewer no matter how long he travelled there (and he did spend a good deal of the remaining twenty years of his life traveling through Persia and colonial India). He demonstrates this both positively, through his chosen subjects and negatively, by what remains unpainted.


Edwin Lord Weeks, "Open-Air Restaurant, Lahore" (1889)


On the one hand, Weeks generally approached his oriental subjects from the exterior. Weeks has market scenes reminiscent of Gerome's time in Cairo, but also palaces that are viewed from their courtyards, or from outside their walls, and heads of state, but only as they travel through the city. This self-enforced vantage point can be seen in two of Weeks' paintings of the mosque at Lahore. In the first, "Riders in front of the Mosque in Lahore" there is a gathering of men around the steps of the mosque. They are immersed in conversation, some of them moving either into or out of the mosque itself, others sitting in the sun and of course the gathering of riders. The European viewer toward whom the painting is directed is not granted the intimacy of entering this circle; one is neither included nor given clues about what the gathering portends. One is outside, not only the circle of men but the world itself. The mosque towers above, leaving the top edge of the canvas in a manner that suggests its overwhelming character. In the second painting, "An Open-Air Restaurant, Lahore", Weeks places the viewer in a more accessible setting. The need for food, cooking and selling, are all realities the viewer can make sense of, but once again, the mosque still looms in the background. Weeks emphasizes that even with the help of greater perspective, a touch-point in something recognizeable, the mosque, and all it symbolizes, is still uncontainable by his gaze, and it once again overwhelms the viewer in its majesty. One cannot completely grasp the world one has entered here, and Weeks refuses to provide the illusion that one can.


Edwin Lord Weeks, "The Interior of the Mosque at Cordova" (1889)


The exceptions to this general practice by Weeks only confirm this idea. Weeks' great mosque interior, which shows men at prayer, is "The Interior of the Mosque at Cordova". Here a few things must be pointed out. First, Weeks chooses to render the interior of a mosque that is on European soil. And while the painting is historical in its content, the title is minimalist. Weeks uses the title to call attention only the mosque interior, reminding the viewer of the history of the building now known in another form. His historical renderings of the Moorish period in Spain, of which the mosque at Cordova is a part, show him willing to enter into hypothesis concerning the interior of Muslim life only at the point in which that life overlapped with European history. And there is no better icon of that overlap than the mosque at Cordova as his viewers would have well known. The historical scenes he renders must be set between the 10^th and 11^th centuries for once the Christians re-occupied Cordova, the mosque itself was transformed into the city cathedral. Moreover, when need for a larger cathedral arose, they built a magnificient gothic structure that rose dramatically out of the center of the mosque, melding Christian and Muslim architecture and history together in a unique manner. Here is a place, if there is such a place, says Weeks, where one can enter into a mutual understanding with Islam because Europeans share in this moment as a piece of their own history. There is a part of this story he has the tools to understand and render.

This brings us to the final point concerning Weeks' modesty. Unlike Gerome's work, Weeks' is striking in the lack of harems, baths, prostitutes, courtesans, and even the interior of royal courts with the fanciful animals that Gerome portrayed. This cannot be attributed to lack of access. As Weeks notes, the Muslim world was so open and friendly to his arrival in northern colonial India that he had to flee his friends in order to get work done. They showered him with models (human and animal) to paint at his request, to the point where it was necessary to hide to get them sketched and painted. Weeks' decision then is a conscious one. The drama of the private lives of the men and women of the orient were, once again, mysterious to him - not in the manner of being something fantastic, but in the sense of having their own ethic and language in which he could not pretend to be fluent. These were pieces of a puzzle that Gerome had been content to take individually, but which Weeks recognized as part of a whole which he, as yet, could not see. Their lives were not the stuff of European exoticism, but had a reality and depth that Weeks did not know how to penetrate and about which he refused to lie. As he expresses again and again in his paintings, Weeks knew he was standing at the exterior and that the exteriority must remain; there had to be modesty, if there was ever to be a real intimacy of understanding.

-LoA


Edwin Lord Weeks, "Riders in front of the Mosque at Lahore" (1889)

notes on elizabeth nourse's arabia (the mosque at tunis)

Elizabeth Nourse, "The Mosque, Tunis" (1897)

It is widely observed that Elizabeth Nourse's portrayal of women in real social settings marked a break with her contemporaries, especially men such as, her mentor, Jules Joseph Lefebvre. In Lefebvre aestheticism combined with the male gaze to produce abstract portraits of mostly nude women, absent any setting, without meaning, emptied of their content and of their very person. This allowed the female form to be taken in solely as an object of pleasure. Nourse's women, on the other hand, usually existed in household scenes, often with their children, in a manner that resisted the easy reification of the female body for the male viewer because they were embedded within social narratives that affirmed their vitality and humanity.


Jules Joseph Lefebvre, "Girl with a Mandolin" (late 19th c.)

I would like to suggest that we should read Nourse's "The Mosque, Tunis" in a similar fashion, once again against the tendency of the Orientalist tradition of most of her colleagues. If one takes her near contemporary Gerôme as an example one quickly sees the extremely dis-integrated vision of Arabia that he possesses. Apart from his fantasies of the Oriental harems and a few pictures of prostitutes, Gerôme's Arabia is nearly absent of women, revealing the extent to which the Orient was a playground for the European male's imagination of exotic and rampant sexuality. There are likewise portraits of isolated men: guards, merchants, traders, soldiers, or rulers. And finally there are a set of paintings that focus on Islamic prayer. These are particularly noteworthy relative to our theme as one compares Gerôme's vision to that of Nourse. Gerôme's pictures are either tightly framed or enclosed within the interior of the mosque which provides a backdrop to emphasize the alien nature of the event to the European viewer. He fails to make any connection between these religious acts and any other aspect of the society which he is "realistically" portraying, just as he fails to integrate the persons, both male and female, into their society. These are isolated objects, commodified persons and events packaged for easy consumption and playing to the tastes and expectations of the viewer.


Jean-Léon Gerôme, "The Call to Prayer" (1866)

Nourse's painting operates at a much different and more ambitious level than any thing Gerôme dared attempt. She encompasses a much fuller breadth of Islamic society within one vision and likewise understands the direction or goal that provides the interior dynamic to social life. A large group of people are portrayed going about a variety of tasks, men and women, spread throughout the square, walking to different parts of the city, as the larger city looms behind the market. Over it all, the mosque draws one's focus from the market higher toward that which stands at the center and pinnacle of the social and political life of its inhabitants and defines the rhythms of their day.

Mark Rothko, Untitled (1953)

And just as she produces a picture of an integrated society, she also integrates her use of color into the overall purpose of the painting. One is led upward from the darkness of the lower corner to the height of light. The painting is essentially organized into three fields of color. The lower right corner ranges from very dark to earth tones (this placement of the market within shadow is itself possibly a bit of critique). The top third is a gray-blue sky that extends as one long band. Finally one is led by the light strip at the far left out of the dark shadows of the market upwards through the city until the dome of the mosque pierces through the gray and into transcendence over everything else. The transcendence of the mosque is only emphasized by what might count as a fourth field of color, the small band of pink stone that secures the preeminence of the mosque over all else. In this way, while the concrete content of the painting provides the panorama of an integrated world, it is the use of color itself that provides the narrative direction. Here, Nourse anticipates not only the social realist movement (for which she is often given credit in her paintings of women), but in her use of vast fields of color to invoke the movement towards transcendence she likewise anticipates later abstract expressionists such as Rothko.

-LoA


Elizabeth Nourse, "The Sewing Lesson" (1895)

the gaze and (islamic?) women

For those of us who, by force of circumstance actually live the
pluri-cultural life as it entails Islam and the West, I have long felt that a
special intellectual and moral responsibility attaches to what we do as scholars
and intellectuals. Certainly I think it is incumbent upon us to complicate
and/or dismantle the reductive formulae and the abstract but potent kind of
thought that leads the mind away from concrete human history and experience and
into the realms of ideological fiction, metaphysical confrontation and
collective passion. This is not to say that we cannot speak about issues of
injustice and suffering, but that we need to do so always within a context that
is amply situated in history, culture and socio-economic reality. Our role is to
widen the field of discussion, not to set limits in accord with the prevailing
authority.

Edward Said, Orientalism (2003 Preface)

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, "The Grand Odalisque" (1814)


Ingres's "Odalisque" is an outstanding example of the way in which the Western disfiguring of women is merged with and projected as fantasies of the Islamic world, disguised as historic portrayal, curiosity about, or even criticism of the Islamic treatment of women. Ingres is often noted for the manner in which he portrays the "ideal" and here he uses the occasion of the female harem slave to project his fantasized ideal. Is it any accident to begin with that the woman is enslaved? She is unfree, held in place for the viewer toward whom she turns, with an empty, emotionless look, to meet his (sic) gaze. The framing of the picture is tight, allowing little possibility or hope of imagining the movement of her figure. She is inert and languid. But even more disturbing, in what appears at first glance to be a realist painting (he pays great attention to the details pertaining to every "thing" that appears in the painting), Ingres actually disfigures the woman to achieve the effect he desires in his idealized sexual object: most strikingly, the spine is unnaturally lengthened and twisted to achieve the long back coupled with the look back over the shoulder, and one arm is lengthened as well to make it proportionate with the back. Thus, what is presented to the viewer as a realistic portrayal of the sexual enslavement of women in the Islamic world, actually carries in it the sinister nature of the deformed Western ideal of the female which is no less violent to the female-self.

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appendix
the three major anatomical distortions that are normally mentioned are:

1. the lengthening of the spine by 3 to 5 vertebrae, depending on who you ask. this can actually be seen by the non-biology-lab-inclined, such as myself, if you will observe where the curvature of the spinal column ends, then the dimples above the buttocks and then the placement of the buttocks themselves and compare them too your own spinal column (the other way of framing the complaint is that she doesnt have bones there at all, which is an observation that many make about the curvature of her right arm as well)

2. right arm is LONG, and while it matches the back to some degree, it is the right arm alone that has been lengthened. it is a little hard to tell due to perspective, but the left arm is fairly normal.

3. finally, and the one i didnt really mention earlier...notice the poor woman's legs. the left leg is actually on top of the right leg in a very unnatural and arguably impossible fashion (adding to those who complain about her not having bones at all).


the readings of the "odalisque" fall into several categories.

1. ingres's odalisque is the most important painting (some do actually go that far!) of the 19th century because he is the first (or among the first) to mess around with reality, forshadowing later modernism.

2. ingres paints ideals. to be concerned with the concrete matter, is to miss the fact that the matter only points to the form of the beautiful (the beautiful woman, or is woman herself simply something to be seen through as so much matter?). this then is a classic portrayal of female beauty, where the classicists have never been all that concerned about natural poses (or lighting, or if little tiny fat babies fly around their paintings). im willing to buy that this is what was going on in ingres mind, at least to a point. i certainly think ingres knew what he was doing.

3. there is a positive reading which says that ingres did it to call attention to the twisted nature of harem life: accentuated the buttocks and placed her in an unnatural pose. if there was some evidence for that in his other paintings i would be willing to run with it a ways, but ingres shows little evidence that the harems are more than fantasy lands of the male sexual gaze/imagination. he is an orientalist painter with a typical taste for the decadent and exotic....and so, i offer my reading. which i dont claim to be anything like the last word, but i find the conjunction of the painter's view of this woman as woman, and the painter's view of this woman as a member of islamic society to be a fruitful way of approaching his work.


-LoA