Jan van Eyck fu il più grande pittore fiammingo del XV secolo. Le notizie sulla sua vita sono frammentarie: ignoriamo la data esatta di nascita mentre sappiamo con certezza l’anno della morte (1441). Nativo di una regione al confine tra Germania e Olanda che si chiamava Campine, fu al servizio del Duca di Borgogna Filippo il Buono. Il suo servizio comportava mansioni speciali: non solo pittore e inventore di “effetti speciali” per il castello delle meraviglie nella città scomparsa di Hesdin (1), ma anche varlet de chambre, diplomatico e forse agente segreto. La sua fama fu così grande da essere menzionato ed encomiato da tre grandi storici quali Bartolomeo Fazio (Facius), Giorgio Vasari e Karel van Mander. Proprio i riferimenti a van Eyck di Facio, Vasari e van Mander sono stati un rompicapo per secoli. Il fatto era che tra i dipinti descritti, uno in particolare non esisteva più o, forse, non era mai esistito. Un errore di attribuzione, peraltro, non poteva essere escluso se si considera l’errore del Vasari nell’attestare l’incontro tra Antonello da Messina e Jan van Eyck, mai avvenuto (alla morte del fiammingo Antonello era un ragazzino di dieci anni).  Così il Vasari, nel 1550 riferisce del dipinto (2): 

“Fu una bellissima invenzione et una gran commodità all’arte della pittura il trovare il colorito a olio, di che fu primo inventore in Fiandra Giovanni da Bruggia [Jan van Eyck NdA], il quale mandò la tavola a Napoli al Re Alfonso et al Duca d’Urbino Federico la stufa sua…”.

Il termine “stufa sua” deve essere inteso nel senso di dipinto con figure femminili all’interno di una stanza da bagno. Bartolomeo Fazio, nel 1453, aveva scritto (3) :

“Appartengono al cardinale Ottaviano, uomo illustre, dei magnifici dipinti di Giovanni [Eyck NdA]: si tratta di donne di perfetta bellezza che escono dal bagno, con le parti più riposte del corpo ricoperte di un velo sottile di un magnifico rosso, e di una di esse egli ci mostra solo il volto e il petto, rappresentando invece la parte posteriore del corpo in uno specchio dipinto sulla parete opposta, con una evidenza tale che ti sembra di vedere la spalle proprio come vedi il petto. Nella stessa tavola appare nella stanza da bagno una lucerna che sembra ardere davvero e una vecchia che sembra sudare, un cagnetto che lambisce l’acqua…”.

Karel van Mander, nel 1604 (4) , conferma le indicazioni del Vasari e dal Fazio:

” Den Hertogh van Urbijn /Friederick de ze halde van Iohannes een baed-stove/ die ser net en vlijtich ghedaen was (Il duca di Urbino possedeva di mano di Jan, una stufa dipinta in modo grazioso e ingegnoso)”.

Quell’opera, così vivamente descritta rimase un enigma fino a quando un’attenta osservazione di un quadro del 1628 portò alla luce un dettaglio sensazionale: “La collezione di Cornelis van der Geest“, opera di Willehlm van Haecht, conteneva infatti la prova dell’esistenza del dipinto perduto.

Willehlm van Haecht, La collezione di Cornelis van der Geest, 1628. Olio su tavola, 100x130. Antwerp, Rubenshuis

Dettaglio da “La collezione di Cornelis van der Geest"

Jan van Eyck, Ritratto dei coniugi Arnolfini, 1434. Olio su tavola, 82x60cm. Londra, National Gallery.

La scoperta pose – e pone ancora- nuovi interrogativi. Come spiegare infatti i collegamenti con la più famosa tavola di Jan van Eyck vale a dire “Il ritratto dei coniugi Arnolfini“? Simile è l’ambiente in cui si trovano le figure, la sedia e il letto, gli zoccoli di legno, il cane e perfino lo specchio convesso. Qual era dunque la finalità? Erotica? La figura femminile sarebbe dunque Giovanna Cenami, futura moglie dell’Arnolfini, raffigurata sia vestita sia nuda? Se così fosse dovremmo pensare a opere della stessa dimensione, sovrapponibili e montate insieme, come si suppone fossero la Maja vestida e la Maja desnuda di Goya. Secondo alcuni si tratterebbe di un bagno rituale prematrimoniale. “La collezione di Cornelis van der Geest” si trova ad Antwerp nella casa di Rubens. Del dipinto di Jan van Eyck posseduto dal collezionista Cornelis van der Geest si sono perse le tracce.

I thought I’d do a random series of posts looking at one painting in some depth.

Where to start?

Well, what about one of art’s most contested paintings, Jan Van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait, painted in 1434.

What is so contested about this painting? I hear you ask, it is a nice double portrait of a man and woman, and that’s that. The portrait hangs in the National Gallery in London and their official blumph about the painting boils down to it is a nice painting of two people, end of story.

But is it?

Well not really, for a start there is the title, notice I call it the Arnolfini ‘portrait’, it is also widely known as the Arnolfini ‘marriage’. Why? Because for years people thought it was a picture about a marriage, and it was some sort of legal document. This idea gained fame, mainly because it was put about by the art historian Erwin Panofsky, who wrote an article claiming this, and more, in the Burlington Magazine in 1934. Since then various theories have been put forward as what the painting is, and what it is all about, because one thing is certain it is about something, to dismiss it as a nice double portrait is way too simplistic.

A problem that I have written about before concerns historians and viewers trying to second guess artist’s intentions. Broadly speaking no one – except the long gone Jan Van Eyck – actually knows for certain what the painting says. However, there are various intriguing clues in this painting that have led to speculation and counter speculation, so I thought it might be interesting to look at some of these clues and some of the meanings attributed to them, and then you can make your own mind up about the painting.

So who are they? For a long time, it was thought that the couple were Giovanni di Arrigo Arnolfini and his Mrs., but recent research shows it is more likely to be his cousin Giovanni di Nicolao Arnolfini and his wife Costanza Trenta. Mr. A was a wealthy Italian merchant who lived in Bruges. Bruges in the 15th Century was an International centre and home to many a rich merchant.

First of all, let’s look at some of the ‘symbolism’ in the painting, don’t worry we are not into Dan Brownesque territory here, there is no ‘code’!
 First there are the oranges; some say that these are symbols of the biblical forbidden fruit, reminding us to resist temptation and all that jazz. Fruit left lying about like this also features in other paintings of the time, particularly Madonna and child paintings. Others claim that the oranges are signs of wealth, as they would be very expensive items in Van Eyck’s Bruges, to leave oranges casually scattered about you had to be rich. The open window shows us a Cherry tree in the garden; cherries are also used as symbols of the fruits of paradise. In Joos Van Cleve’s Madonna and Child the child holds three cherries depicting the trinity and also the fruit of paradise Christianity promises the believer.

The clothes the couple are wearing depict wealth, they are dressed up for the occasion showing off their best clothes, why else fur lined clothes in summertime ? To own clothes like these one would have to be fabulously wealthy; this is the 15th century equivalent to having a Porsche or two as runabouts for the staff.

Is Panofsky right when he claims this is a clandestine marriage?

First, we will look at what he says, among his evidence of the marriage Panofsky claims that the writing on the wall which says ‘Johannes de Eyck fuit hic 1434’ (this is actually a bit of graffiti and means Van Eyck was here, 1434) is evidence of the artist witnessing a marriage and is therefore, legal document. In 1568 Van Vaernewych claimed that the painting was of an illegal ‘not by faith’ marriage, this idea was then carried on by Karel van Mander in 1604 and picked up again by Panofsky.

He goes as far to state that the gesture of the man in raising his forearm in the picture is part of a ceremony, he calls this ‘fides levata’, a convincing bit of Latin to back up his argument ; except it is fictional.

Panofsky has probably got it wrong.It is unlikely that this is a picture of wedding legal or otherwise. One clue is her hairdo. Many brides are depicted at the time as having their hair down as in depictions of the Virgin Mary. It is unlikely that a bride would have worn her hair pinned up and under a veil as Constanza does.  

Some have suggested that it is a picture of a betrothal, but that is also unlikely as Arnolfini and Constaza got betrothed when she was thirteen, she is much older in this painting. Also, Tuscany family betrothals would not have actually included the woman just the men of the families.

One feature of the painting has caused a lot of interest and that is the question of her being pregnant. It has been shown, by reconstructing the dress, that to hold up a dress of this weight in the way Mrs. A is, any woman would look pregnant. However, other paintings of Van Eyck’s show pregnant women, his painting of St Catherine depicts a woman very much like Mrs. Arnolfini. Childbirth was such a risky business around the 15th century that it was common –for the rich- to have the mother-to-be painted, so there would be a record of her if the worst happened. Is this what the Arnolfini portrait is?

The art historian Margaret Koster and others have put forward the idea that this is actually a posthumous portrait of Mrs A. This is likely as she died in 1433 a year before the painting was completed. It could even be that the painting was started before she died, we do not know if she died in childbirth or not. Was she pregnant some say the inclusion of the carpet by the bed (tradition of time) and the figure of St Margaret near the bed (patron saint of mums to be) all lead to the conclusion that she was in the family way.

Right so let’s look at the evidence of this being a posthumous painting.

The painting shows a mirror in which is surrounded by the Stations of the Cross, the images on Mrs. A’s side depict death. Mirrors are generally memento mori, so the inclusion of a mirror in the centre of the painting is thought by some to show that the painting is posthumous. The candelabra shows one candle lit and this is on the side of Mr. A, the candles above Mrs. A have been snuffed out. Some read this that she too has died.

Panofsky thought the wee dog at Mrs. A’s feet to be a symbol of faithfulness and it fitted in nicely with his wedding theory. Some say it has no symbolic reference at all, whilst others say that it is in keeping with death imagery, in particular female deaths, which depict wee dogs.

Panofsky made much about the hands in the painting claiming that they clearly showed an act of marriage, but look at them again. He isn’t actually holding her hand; her hand is just resting in his palm, as though she is slipping away from him, he has no firm grasp of her hand.

Okay, so there you have it. My own feelings are that Koster is right; this is a posthumous portrait of Mrs. A. It may have been started before she died, and she may have been pregnant at the time of the painting (there is evidence that Van Eyck altered the painting). Mrs. A may well have died in childbirth.

I also think that because the painting is so contested, the National Gallery has attempted to play it safe by claiming that this is just a nice cosy double portrait, but I feel that this sells the work short. However, the viewer must make up their own mind about the painting. Your story about what is happening in this picture is as legitimate as anyone’s. No one knows for certain what the picture is about. If nothing else, the Arnolfini portrait clearly illustrates my point about trying to guess an artist’s intentions.

What the National Gallery says :  http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/jan-van-eyck-the-arnolfini-portrait

E. Panofsky, ‘Jan Van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait’, Burlington Magazine, vol. LXIV (March 1934), pp. 117-27

Eve

Muy cerca de la famosa puerta de Alcalá y de la fuente de Las Cibeles, sobre Paseo del Prado se encuentra este museo que exhibe más de 700 obras del siglo XX; con obras de arte gótico de Duccio y Jan Van Eyck hasta el pop art y los años 80 de Tom Wesselmann y Lucian Freíd. Este edificio fue construido entre finales del siglo XVIII y los inicios del siglo XIX, fue una de las mansiones más prestigiosas de la ciudad, conocida por sus fiestas y veladas artísticas. En ella tocó el piano Franz Liszt. Todo el edificio es un bello monumento arquitectónico el cual uno puede admirar en diferentes ángulos y tomar buenas fotografías. Cerca este sitio uno pude tomar un descanso, beber una coca de 3.00 euros mientras admiras los bellos prados que forman este triángulo del arte: www.museothyssen.org

aus Neue Zürcher Zeitung 24. 6. 06

Das Erscheinen der Landschaft in der Malerei des 15. Jahrhunderts markiert eine Schwelle, die sich weder als Bruch mit dem sogenannten Mittelalter noch als Rückkehr zur Antike zureichend erfassen lässt. Die Landschaft als Ausdruck einer neuen Weltzuwendung beruht auf «mittelalterlichen» Voraussetzungen, die die neuen Landschaftsbilder überschreiten, ohne die sie aber auch nicht möglich geworden wären.

In seinem vielbeachteten Essay «Landschaft» (1974) hat Joachim Ritter versucht, das Wesen der neuzeitlichen Landschaftserfahrung auf den Begriff zu bringen. Der zentrale Satz dieser gedankenreichen Bemühung um das Wesen der modernen Landschaftsauffassung lautet: «Natur als Landschaft ist Frucht und Erzeugnis des theoretischen Geistes.» Darin verknüpfen sich zwei Thesen, die sich wechselseitig erläutern: 1. Landschaft ist eine Erscheinungsweise von Natur im Gegensatz zu Kultur. 2. Natur ist als Landschaft nicht einfach gegeben, sie ist ein Produkt, und zwar «des theoretischen Geistes».

Einsatzpunkt von Ritters Überlegungen ist der berühmte Brief an den Pariser Theologen Dionigi di Borgo San Sepolcro am Anfang des 4. Buchs der «Familiares». Petrarca berichtet von der Besteigung des Mont Ventoux, die er am 26. April 1335 gemeinsam mit seinem Bruder unternommen habe. Für Ritter steht Petrarca, auf dem Hochplateau des Berges angekommen und das faszinierende Schauspiel («spectaculum») der sich bis zu den fernen Horizonten reichenden Landschaft wahrnehmend, in der Tradition der griechischen theoria als einer «anschauenden Betrachtung». Petrarca, wie Ritter ihn sieht, «ersteigt, alle praktischen Zwecke hinter sich lassend, den Berg, um auf dem Gipfel, getrieben allein von dem Verlangen zu schauen, in freier Betrachtung und Theorie an der ganzen Natur und an Gott teilzuhaben».

Die epochale Bedeutung dieses Augenblicks und dieses Akts läge dann darin, dass Petrarca auf der Höhe des Ventoux erstmals Natur als Landschaft erfahren hätte und diese hier erstmals dem theoretischen Geist entgegengetreten wäre. Die Antike machte die Erfahrung der Natur, nicht aber der Landschaft. Deren wahre Stunde scheint Ritter erst gekommen, als die Naturwissenschaft sich der Natur bemächtigt und diese Unterwerfung die Möglichkeit einer interesselosen Naturbetrachtung freisetzt, die sich jetzt als Betrachtung der Landschaft konkretisiert.

Petrarca hat zweifellos am frühesten die Erfahrung von so etwas wie Landschaft gemacht und vielfältig dargestellt. Er markiert damit den Beginn einer Erfahrung, die in der Malerei des 15. Jahrhunderts zu einer triumphal ins Bild gesetzten neuen Erschlossenheit der Welt wird. Aber was sind die gedanklichen Voraussetzungen dafür, dass überhaupt Welt zur Landschaft werden kann? Was musste geschehen, dass Landschaft in den Horizont der Sichtbarkeit trat und diese Sichtbarkeit im Medium der Sichtbarkeit, der Malerei, zu ihrer Darstellung kommen konnte?

FÜLLE UND VIELFALT DES EINZELNEN

Die Panoramalandschaft, auf die von der Höhe des Mont Ventoux Petrarcas Blick fällt, ist nicht, wie Ritter meint, einfach Natur, sondern ein unendliches Zusammenspiel von Natur und menschlicher Kultur. Für Ritter sucht Petrarca bei seiner Betrachtung der Welt Teilhabe «an der ganzen Natur und an Gott». Dies ist Petrarcas Text nicht zu entnehmen. Im Gegenteil, statt des grossen, oben und unten, sinnliche und göttliche Welt umfassenden Ganzen eines der theoretischen Betrachtung sich offenbarenden Kosmos sieht Petrarca vor allem die unendliche Fülle des Einzelnen. Das Eine, zu dem Augustinus ihn im imaginären Zwiegespräch des «Secretum» führen möchte, zerfällt ihm in unabsehbare Vielfalt.

Es scheint, als gebe es eine noch immer nicht zureichend erschlossene Affinität zwischen Petrarca und der von Paris ausgehenden neuen philosophischen Bewegung des Nominalismus, die in Wilhelm von Ockhams philosophischer Legitimierung des Einzelnen und Besonderen ihren eigentlichen Zielpunkt hat. Petrarca, der sich lebhaft für die neuesten Entwicklungen der Pariser Philosophie und Theologie interessierte, hatte wohl keine Mühe, sich mit der neuesten Schulrichtung der Pariser Philosophie vertraut zu machen.

Das Wirkliche ist das Einzelne: «Omnis res extra animam est realiter singularis et una numero.» ( Jedes Ding ausserhalb der Seele ist in Wirklichkeit einzeln und eins an der Zahl.) Der Satz aus Ockhams «Liber sententiarum» ist symptomatisch für eine neue Sicht der Welt. Während aber die sich immer noch in scholastischen Bahnen bewegende Philosophie des Nominalismus die Erfahrung des Einzelnen allgemein postuliert, ist die Signatur von Petrarcas vielgestaltigem Werk die Erfahrung des Einzelnen in seiner unabsehbaren Vielfalt. Petrarcas Welt ist nicht ein wohlgeordneter Kosmos, sondern ein Meer der Kontingenz.

EINZELDINGE IM WIDERSTREIT

Davon legt ein Werk das beredteste Zeugnis ab, das Petrarcas frühester europäischer Erfolg war und das heute so gut wie vergessen ist, sein «De remediis utriusque fortunae» (Über die Heilmittel gegen Fortuna in beiderlei Gestalt). Insbesondere die Einleitung des zweiten Teils, die unter dem heraklitischen Motto «Omnia secundum litem fiunt» (Alles ist im Kampf) steht, ist die grandiose Evokation eines Schauplatzes, auf dem alle Einzeldinge in unablässigem Widerstreit begriffen sind. Die 1532 in Augsburg erschienene deutsche Übersetzung fasst die Essenz von Petrarcas Betrachtung des Kampfs aller Dinge gegeneinander zusammen unter dem Diktum:

Alls was auff Erden schwebt und lebt, Je eins dem andern widerstrebt.

Unüberhörbar ist in dem «je eins» die zentrale Erfahrung der Singularität vernehmbar, die Ockhams Nominalismus zur philosophischen Zentralkategorie gemacht hatte und die bei Petrarca in einem neuen Diskurs der Singularität und Pluralität ihre Sprache findet. Die Freisetzung des Singulären entkleidet die Welt ihrer Bindung an das Exemplarische, in dem Einzelnes und Allgemeines sich durchdringen, aber auch einer vertikalen Seinsordnung, die sich von den niedersten Seinsregionen stufenförmig bis zu der erhabensten Sphäre des dreieinigen Gottes erhebt. Die Priorität des Besonderen vor dem Allgemeinen gibt Ersterem das Faszinosum der bestürzenden Neuheit, aber auch das Bedrängende einer unabsehbar gewordenen Präsenz des Vielfältigen.

Diese radikal neue, durch keine theoria mehr in Schranken gehaltene Erfahrung scheint der Hintergrund zu sein, auf dem erst die Petrarcasche Entdeckung der Landschaft, wie sie im Ventoux-Brief zur Darstellung kommt, ihren akuten Sinn erhält. Was Petrarca jenseits aller Planung und Erwartung von der Höhe des Mont Ventoux erblickt, ist nicht Natur, schon gar nicht eine kosmische Ordnung, sondern Vielheit des Einzelnen, in die Schwebe gebracht als ein sich bis zum fernen Horizont erstreckender Teppich – und zwar vermöge des Blicks, der subjektiv das Einzelne aus seiner Vereinzelung zu einer Kohärenz neuer Art erlöst. Das Unge-heuerliche dieser neuen Erfahrung lässt Petrarca zur stärksten Formulierung greifen: «obstupui» (ich staunte).

ÄSTHETISCHE ERFAHRUNG

Petrarcas Blick auf die Welt ist rein innerweltlich, während er die Erfahrung des Überwirklichen, ganz Augustinus folgend, in die Innerlichkeit oder Ausserweltlichkeit des Gedächtnisses verlegt. Petrarcas Erfahrung der Landschaft geht aber in der blossen Wahrnehmung von Innerweltlichkeit nicht auf. Die Verknüpfung des Einzelnen in der Wahrnehmung verdankt sich nicht mehr der Faktizität, sondern der weltverwandelnden Kraft des subjektiven Blicks. Landschaft ist nie sie selbst, sie ersteht erst in ihrem Wahrgenommensein. Erst der Blick setzt Nähe und Ferne, aber auch den Ausschnitt der Wahrnehmung. In ihm vereinigen sich die Daten des vielfältig Einzelnen zu einer Totalität zweiter Ordnung, die der Macht des welterschliessenden Blicks entspringt.

Nur so, in der je einzelnen Blicknahme, kann aber auch die zur Anblickhaftigkeit zusammentretende Landschaft ein Maximum ihrer Selbstbezüglichkeit erreichen und eine innere Pluralität, ja Polyphonie gewinnen, die die Landschaft erst zu einer ästhetischen Erfahrung macht. Nicht zufällig steht die Wahrnehmung landschaftlicher Polyphonie mit der Erfindung polyphoner Musik in einem epochalen Zusammenhang.

Landschaft im modernen Sinn, wie sie in Petrarcas Ventoux-Brief erstmals in Erscheinung tritt, setzt die Entbindung der Landschaftselemente aus ihrem funktionalen Zusammenhang und damit die Entdeckung der Landschaft als Erscheinung der Vielfalt der Welt voraus. Es ist die zusammenhangsetzende, raumkonstituierende Macht des Blicks vom erhabenen Standort, die dem Erblickten eine Selbstbezüglichkeit neuer Art verleiht. Was geschieht, wenn die Erfahrung des freigesetzten Vielfältigen Bild wird, lässt sich bei dem Maler erkennen, der die Möglichkeiten der Bildwerdung der Landschaft am tiefsinnigsten durchdacht und am kunstreichsten ins Werk gesetzt hat und ohne den die Entwicklung der Landschaftsmalerei im 15. Jahrhundert nicht denkbar wäre, Jan van Eyck.

An Jan van Eycks wohl schon vor 1420 entstandener Miniatur der Taufe Christi durch Johannes den Täufer im Turin-Mailänder Stundenbuch (Turin, Museo civico) und seinem etwa 1430 gemalten Bildnis des Kanzlers Rolin (Louvre) wird die neue Landschaftskonzeption besonders deutlich. Die Darstellung der Taufe Christi, eine Bas-de-page-Miniatur von kleinstem Format zur Miniatur der Geburt Johannes des Täufers, ist für den heutigen Betrachter in ihrer landschaftlichen Tiefenwirkung und ihren im Wasser sich spiegelnden, fein abgestuften Lichteffekten von erstaunlicher Modernität.

MODELL-MINIATUR

 Die Sonne, die als weisse Taube ihre Strahlen auf die Gruppe des Täufers und des im Wasser stehenden Christus richtet, ist zugleich die wirkliche Sonne, deren Licht mit seinen Schatten und Wasserspiegelungen über der ganzen Landschaft liegt. Die Landschaft setzt sich von ihrem Sinnzentrum, der Taufe Christi, frei und gewinnt in Tiefe und Breite ein Eigenleben als Vergegenständlichung eines einheitstiftenden Blicks, der das in mikroskopisch kleinen Einzelheiten sich manifestierende Vielfältige der Landschaft in die Schwebe bringt und das Sinnzentrum wie ein akzidentielles Geschehen inmitten einer dyna-misch bewegten Welt erscheinen lässt. So steht diese Landschaftsminiatur oder Miniaturland-schaft in der unauflösbaren Spannung zwischen einer offenen Landschaft als Schauplatz des Einbruchs des Überwirklichen in die Welt des unendlich Vielfältigen und der Bindung des Vielfältigen an eine Ordnung, deren Evidenz nur noch eine ferne Erinnerung zu sein scheint.

Jan van Eycks Modell einer neuen Landschaftskonzeption aus dem Geist des Nominalismus findet ihre grandiose Einlösung mit dem Bild des Kanzlers Rolin, dem in der intensiven Bibelmeditation die Erscheinung der Gottesmutter mit dem Jesuskind zuteil wird. Auch hier ist, durch eine geniale Bilderfindung, die Epoche machen sollte, das religiöse Sinnzentrum zugleich gesetzt und ausser Kraft gesetzt. Denn wenn der Betrachter sich von dem betenden Kanzler im Vordergrund und der ihm erscheinenden königlichen Gottesmutter mit dem Jesuskind löst, so fällt sein Blick durch drei von zwei freistehenden Säulen abgeteilte Säulen-bogen auf eine weit offene Landschaft, deren ferner Horizont von der im hellsten Licht liegenden Alpenkette gebildet wird. Im mittleren Bogen erscheint ein breiter, von fern her-kommender Fluss, über den eine Brücke führt; sie verbindet eine reiche gotische Stadt mit einem bescheidenen Dorf oder einer Vorstadt auf der anderen Seite.

Hat der Betrachter sich einmal diesem Blick überlassen, wird er wie von einem Sog erfasst, hinausgezogen in eine offne Landschaft, in der er sich in einer unübersehbaren Fülle der Einzelheiten verlieren kann. Er kann sich aus diesen lösen und das Ganze der Landschaft erfassen, doch muss er sich wiederum auch von dieser lösen, wenn er im Blick des betenden Kanzlers die Gottesmutter erblicken will. So macht der Betrachter die Erfahrung inkompatibler Blickrichtungen und mit ihnen des inkompatiblen Verhältnisses von Hinwendung zur religiösen Innerlichkeit und Erfahrung der Erschlossenheit der Welt.

CHRISTUS AUF GOLGATHA

Kaum Zweifel dürfte darüber bestehen, dass Jan van Eyck die Bilddarstellung des gekreuzigten Christus auf Golgatha inmitten einer Landschaft erfunden hat, die sich zur Weltlandschaft weitet. Obwohl das van Eycksche Original verloren zu sein scheint, spricht eine ganze Familie von Bildern des Kruzifixus mit Blick auf eine weite Landschaft eindeutig die Bildsprache van Eycks. Kreuz und Kreuzestod stehen gegen die Indifferenz der Welt in ihrer Vereinzelung, die als Einheit der Landschaft sich allein dem Betrachter darbietet. Er löst sich aus dem Anblick der Vielfalt und vermag dennoch nicht mehr den Kreuzestod als alleiniges Sinnzentrum zu erfahren.

Die in Vereinzelung zerfallende Welt, die der Blick in die Schwebe eines allein noch durch den Blick selbst garantierten Ganzen bringt, wurde von Petrarca erstmals aus der Abstraktheit eines scholastisch-nominalistischen Theorems in die Sphäre sinnlicher Anschaubarkeit gehoben. Aber es ist Jan van Eyck, der als Erster die Erschlossenheit der Welt als Landschaft zur Erfahrung des denkenden Auges gemacht und damit der Malerei des 15. Jahrhunderts ein unerschöpfliches Thema gegeben und aufgegeben hat. Gegenstand dieser neuen Malerei ist die Welt, nicht die Natur. In der Geschichte der Wahrnehmung und ihrer ästhetischen Steigerung ist damit ein Kapitel aufgeschlagen, das über antike theoria weit hinausführt und einen ästhetischen Spielraum eröffnet, dessen Möglichkeiten sich bis heute nicht erschöpft haben.

Karlheinz Stierle besetzte bis zu seiner Emeritierung den Lehrstuhl für Romanische Literaturen an der Universität Konstanz. Zu seinen letzten Publikationen gehört «Francesco Petrarca. Ein Intellektueller im Europa des 14. Jahrhunderts» (2003).

How’s it going folks? I was just sitting here this morning trying to think of a wheelbarrow full of clever words to write for you. Some piercing turn of phrase. But I am afraid that I have failed. I think perhaps the trouble is, I’m not sure what this blog is anymore. I used to do a lot of cultural commentary on here, but how many times can a man point to a tree and yell to his friends, “Hey y’all, there’s a dango tree!”

Maybe I am getting old and have nothing much to say anymore. Or maybe everytime I proceed to write here I get too worked up in my mind about what this site is supposed to be. There was a time when I simply wrote my thoughts out like I am now. And what is funny is, I had probably about twice as many readers then. When I tried to be more professional, the blog turned into a job and I never wrote in it. So perhaps I will run this blog as Micheal Savage does his show…sort of at random.

What is most strange is that I get more readers than one might think by the number of comments. I think the lack of comments makes me not want to write. Perhaps its because I’m a Leo attention whore. Perhaps I simply want a nod that you peeked in here. There were times back on Journalspace (where this blog started a few years ago) that I would get 30 comments a day. Something about that site. But the application was really horrible.

Well this morning I was looking at the Arnolfini Portrait by Jan van Eyck. I don’t really have anything to say about it other than I think it is rather hoss. I am a big fan of older art. I thought about putting it up on Artblog, but I lacked the motivation. I really am a lazy person, in case you didn’t know.

Wikipedia says about it:

It is considered one of the most original and complex paintings in Western art history. Being both signed and dated by Van Eyck in 1434, it is, with the Ghent Altarpiece by the same artist and his brother Hubert, the oldest very famous panel painting to have been executed in oils rather than in tempera. The painting was bought by the National Gallery in London in 1842.The illusionism of the painting was remarkable for its time, in part for the rendering of detail, but particularly for the use of light to evoke space in an interior, for “its utterly convincing depiction of a room, as well of the people who inhabit it”.^[1]

I think that sounds about right to me. I’d probably hang it up on my wall. And despite the argument about the woman in this picture, I’d definitely say she’s pregnant. If you click on it you will see that the detail in the picture is rather amazing, especially the reflection in the convex mirror behind them and other such considerations.

Jan Van Eyck, one of the greatest artists of his time, drew this painting in 1434.

It is one of the first paintings with a signature on. He wrote “Jan Van Eyck was here” on top of the mirror in which we can see the artist as well.

I really like this painting. Not only because it is brilliant but also the symbolism it uses and the questions it raise.

For instance is the lady in the painting pregnant or not? If yes a baby conceived before marriage should have been sinful. What does the dog symbolise? Faithfulness? Or just an ordinary dog. What about the candle? Is it the light of god? Why only one candle? What about the two pairs of slippers?

If a painting depicting such an ordinary scene makes us ask questions after 575 years than for me it really is a piece of art.

Autor: Jan Van Eyck
Fecha: 1434
Museo: National Gallery de Londres
Características: 81,9 x 59,9 cm.
Material: Oleo sobre tabla
Estilo: Pintura Flamenca 

 El Retrato de Giovanni Arnolfini y su esposa es un cuadro del pintor flamenco Jan van Eyck; fechado en 1434, representa al rico mercader Giovanni Arnolfini y a su esposa Jeanne Cenami, que se establecieron y prosperaron en la ciudad de Brujas (hoy Bélgica), entre 1420 y 1472. Al día de hoy, los historiadores del arte discuten exactamente la imagen que el cuadro presenta; la tesis durante mucho tiempo dominante, introducida por Erwin Panofsky en un ensayo de 1934, sostiene que la imagen corresponde al matrimonio de ambos, celebrado en secreto y atestiguado por el pintor. Sin embargo, muchas otras interpretaciones se han propuesto acerca del mismo, y el consenso actual es que la teoría de Panofsky es difícilmente sostenible.

En todo caso, la pintura —desde 1842 en la National Gallery de Londres— se considera una de las obras más notables de van Eyck. Es uno de los primeros retratos de tema no hagiográfico que se conservan, y a la vez una informativa escena costumbrista. La pareja aparece de pie, en su alcoba; el esposo bendice a su mujer, que le ofrece su mano derecha, mientras apoya la izquierda en su vientre. La pose de los personajes resulta teatral y ceremoniosa, prácticamente hierática; algunos especialistas ven en estas actitudes flemáticas cierta comicidad, aunque la extendida interpretación que ve en el retrato la representación de una boda atribuye a  ello su aire pomposo.

El simbolismo

En primer lugar, la representación de los esposos, que es antagónica y revela los diferentes papeles que cumple cada cual en el matrimonio. No olvidemos que hablamos de una sociedad de hace más de 500 años, a caballo entre la Edad Media y la Edad Moderna: él es severo, bendice o, quizá, jura (fides levata) —en cualquier caso, ostenta el poder moral de la casa (potestas)— y sostiene con autoridad la mano de su esposa (fides manualis), que agacha la cabeza en actitud sumisa y posa su mano izquierda en su abultado vientre, señal inequívoca de su embarazo (que no es real), que sería su culminación como mujer. Las mismas ropas que llevan refuerzan este mensaje, a pesar de que la ambientación sugiere un tiempo veraniego o, cuando menos primaveral, lleva pesadas túnicas que revelan su alta posición socioeconómica, el tabardo de él es oscuro y sobrio (aunque los remates de piel de marta resultaban particularmente caros), y ella luce un ampuloso vestido, de colores vivos y alegres, con puños de armiño (complementados con un collar, varios anillos y un cinturón brocado, todo de oro).

Hay, en segundo lugar, multitud de detalles objetos que aparecen sin justificación aparente, como si careciesen de importancia. Todo lo que contiene el cuadro proclama la riqueza de la joven pareja, desde la ropa y los muebles hasta la fruta en el alféizar de la ventana. Lo cierto es que esta pareja parece haber recopilado objetos de muchos países de Europa: Rusia, Turquía, Italia, Inglaterra, Francia… Sin duda, Arnolfini, rico mercader, trabó amistad o negocios con empresarios de toda Europa. Como se sabe, Brujas, donde se instaló Giovanni, era un hervidero de burgueses de todas partes; y este mercader que protagoniza el cuadro se jactaría de sus relaciones con todos ellos. En definitiva, lo cierto es que todos tienen un significado nítido que da una nueva dimensión a la obra:

Las naranjas, importadas del sur, eran un lujo en el norte de Europa, y aquí aluden quizá al origen mediterráneo de los retratados. Conocidas como “manzanas de Adán”, representaban además la fruta prohibida del edén (quizá sean una evocación del paraíso perdido), en alusión al pecado mortal de la lujuria, probable motivo de la pérdida de la gracia.Los instintos pecaminosos de la humanidad se santifican mediante el ritual del matrimonio cristiano.

La cama tiene relación, sobre todo en la realeza y la nobleza, con la continuidad del linaje y del apellido. Representa el lugar donde se nace y se muere. Los tejidos rojos simbolizan la pasión además de proporcionar un poderoso contrate cromático con el verde de la indumentaria femenina. En todo caso, era costumbre de la época, en las casas acomodadas de Borgoña, colocar una cama en el salón donde se recibían las visitas. Aunque, generalmente, se usaba para sentarse, ocasionalmente, era también el lugar donde las madres recién paridas recibían, con su bebé, los parabienes de familiares y amigos.

La alfombra que hay junto a la cama es muy lujosa y cara, procedente de Anatolia, otra muestra de su fortuna y posición.

Los zuecos esparcidos por el suelo —ellos van descalzos— representan el vínculo con el suelo sagrado del hogar y también son señal de que se estaba celebrando una ceremonia religiosa. La posición prominente de los zapatos es también relevante: los de Giovanna, rojos, están cerca de la cama; los de su marido, más próximos al mundo exterior. En aquel tiempo se creía que pisar el suelo descalzo aseguraba la fertilidad.

Los rosarios eran un presente habitual del novio a su futura esposa. El cristal es signo de pureza, y el rosario sugiere la virtud de la novia y su obligación de ser devota. También el cristal del espejo alude a la pureza del sacramento del matrimonio (speculum sine macula).

El espejo es uno de los mejores ejemplos de la minuciosidad microscópica conseguida por van Eyck (mide 5’5 centímetros y cada una de las escenas de la pasión que le rodean mide 1’5 centímetros), y enlaza con el siguiente asunto. En torno al espejo se muestran 10 de las 14 estaciones del Vía Crucis (las paradas del camino de Cristo hasta su muerte en el Gólgota). Su presencia sugiere que la interpretación del cuadro debe ser cristiana y espiritual en igual medida que legal y recuerda el sacrificio que tienen que soportar los esposos.

Por cierto que estos pequeños espejos convexos eran muy populares en aquella época; se llamaban «brujas» y se usaban para espantar la mala suerte. A menudo se encontraban junto a ventanas y puertas, para buscar efectos lumínicos en las estancias. Que se sepa, ésta es la primera vez que se usan como recurso pictórico, la idea tuvo mucho éxito y fue imitada, como hemos visto. El experto Craig Harbison ve en el espejo el centro de gravedad de todo el cuadro, es lo que más nos llama la atención, una especie de “círculo mágico” calculado con increíble precisión para atraer nuestra mirada y revelarnos el secreto mismo de la historia del cuadro: “But there’s the key!”.

La lámpara sólo tiene una vela, que simboliza la llama del amor —era costumbre flamenca encender una vela el primer día de la boda—. Pero también recuerda la candela que luce siempre en el sagrario de la iglesia, la permanente presencia de Cristo.

Giovanna lleva un elegante vestido verde (el color de la fertilidad), propio de un retrato de aparato y un cuadro de boda. No está embarazada, su postura se limita a delatar el vientre, que entonces se tenía por una de las partes más bellas del cuerpo. También cabe pensar que su pose y la exagerada curvatura del vientre sugieran su fertilidad y deseada preñez que nunca resultó.

En el cabezal de la cama se ve la talla de una mujer con un dragón a los pies.
Es probable que sea Santa Margarita, patrona de los alumbramientos, cuyo atributo es el dragón; pero por la escobilla que hay al Lado podría ser Santa Marta, patrona del hogar, que comparte idéntico atributo.

El perro pone una nota de gracia y desenfado en un cuadro que es, por lo demás, de una apabullante solemnidad. El detallismo del pelo es toda una proeza técnica.
En los retratos, los perros suelen simbolizar, como aquí, la fidelidad y el amor terrenal.

Lo único que faltaría es el sacerdote y el testigo, necesarios en todas las bodas, pero ambos personajes aparecen reflejados en el espejo, junto a la pareja: un clérigo y el propio pintor, que actúa como testigo, y que, con su firma, no sólo reclama la autoría del cuadro, sino que testifica la celebración del sacramento: “Johannes de Eyck fuic hic 1434″ (Jan van Eyck estuvo aquí en 1434). El cuadro sería, por tanto, un documento matrimonial. No obstante, es también un cuadro evidentemente intemporal porque se refiere simultáneamente a hechos que tienen lugar dentro del matrimonio, pero en fases diversas a lo largo del tiempo.

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Algunos arículos del blog relacionados eran:

• Papel arte
• Arte con cartón
• Björk Guðmundsdóttir: arte musical
• Arte hiperrealista pintado a bolígrafo BIC
• Impresionante pintiura de Ray Charles
• Coffee Art, el arte de la crema del café

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Nu e desprinsa din mit si nici nu figureaza in cartile de istorie. Nu e personaj de roman, ori subiectul vreunei evocari poetice. Nu e vis, nu e autoiluzionare, nu tine de utopie. Femeia ideala ar putea fi femeia timpului nostru, femeia actuala, femeia care trece grabita pe langa tine si isi lasa amprenta olfactiva asupra ta. Femeia din care mai retii doar aroma, pentru ca, pana te dezmeticesti, tot ce-ti ramane de observat e un colt de esarfa. Femeia care sta singura in fata unei cafele sorbita pana la jumatate si isi savureaza absenta croissantul. Prea ocupata sa remarce ca, de la distanta de cateva mese, incerci sa o descoperi.

Femeia ideala nu e doar trup, dar nici exclusiv ratiune.

Femeii ideale ii e remisibil sa nazuiasca inversunat la standardizarea fizica 90-60-90, doar in masura in care cunoaste si putina aritmosofie. Doar daca stie ca numerele pot avea si altfel de semnificatii, ca sirul lui Fibonacci, spre exemplu, a nascut capodopere, a furnizat ambrozie pentru spirit.

Femeia ideala se verifica, ajusteaza si admira in oglinda, insa atunci cand e tachinata pentru preocuparea sa, poate replica, zambind nonsalant, ca oglinda nu apartine exclusiv frivolului. Ca ea inseamna arta si literatura, magie si simbol. Ca Narcis, romanticii, Jan van Eyck, Tervarent sau Chevalier i-ar sustine, cu totii, cauza.

Femeia ideala isi aduce aminte, atunci cand achizitioneaza cremele omonime sau isi rezerva biletele la celebrul spa de acolo, ca Vichy-ul a reprezentat candva, pentru evrei, anomalie si regim inuman, hecatomba si suferinta.

Femeia ideala devine aramie intr-un costum de baie O’Neill, in timp ce citeste comedia “Ah, wilderness” a lui Eugene, celebrul dramaturg american cu acelasi nume de familie.

Femeia ideala poarta cu charm si senzualitate rafinata creatiile fiicei, insa are acasa intreaga discografie a tatalui, intelegand, astfel, ca in familia McCartney talentul s-a manifestat diferit, dar la acelasi grad inalt. Mai mult, ea constientizeaza ca adevaratele piese de rezistenta nu sunt must-have-urile propuse de Stella, ci discurile vechi ale Beatlesilor, ce mai rasuna, uneori, in gramofonul vintage din sufragerie.

Femeia ideala nu se pricepe doar la moda, ci si la istoria modei pe care e capabila sa o analizaze in context mai larg.

Femeia ideala e ravisanta cand apare invaluita in note de scortisoara si piper roz, dar poate folosi condimentele si pentru a prepara o cina speciala iubitului.

Femeia ideala e jumatate sfanta, jumatate fantezie de alcov.

Femeia ideala poate fi oricine, oriunde, atata timp cat intelege principiile echilibrului, cat nu sacrifica nici fond, nici forma, ci le trage cu indarjire si fara deosebire dupa ea, in drumul spre perfectiune.

Femeia ideala se intrupeaza din realitate si devine vis.

For centuries art historians and academics alike have studied the portrait of the man in the red turban, painted by Jan van Eyck around 1433.  The question festering in the minds of these historians is whether or not this is a self-portrait of the artist.  Although, the real question does not deal with the identity of the sitter, but whether or not he is wearing a turban, or an asshat.

In order to derive the identity of the hat, one must look to the background of the artist and research the cultural and societal values associated with each type of headwear. A turban is a headdress that consists of a long, scarf-like piece of material that is wrapped around the head.  Turbans are usually worn as a religious symbol for men of Middle Eastern, Central and South Asian, as well as Sikh decent in order for them to cover their uncut locks. On the other hand, and asshat can be defined as a person, of either gender, whose behavior displays such ignorance/obnoxiousness that you would like to make them wear their own ass as a hat.

Van Eyck’s life has been relatively well documented, due to the fact that he was the main painter for the Dukes of Burgundy.  Being a northern European artist, we can clearly assume that he was not of a Sikh or any other Arab religion. This begs the question, why would he display himself as therefore wearing a turban? Historians have claimed that by painting a turban, he would of been showing his talent as an oil painter, revealing creases and shadows in the turban through the layering of pigments.  This is a plausible argument, if it weren’t for the fact that all of these attributes define him as an asshat.

Van Eyck clearly displays his ignorance in wearing a religious headdress in order to further his own artistic career, instead of the meaningful relationship that it has with a foreign culture.  The second attribute given to an asshat, obnoxiousness, is clearly seen in any and all of his important works.  Take his infamous work, The Arnolfini Portrait.  The meticulous detail of this work is purely obnoxious. Using a single-hair brush in order to paint the hairs of the dog? The convex mirror in the background, including the reflecting images of another man and the artist? The story of Christ painted UPON the mirror? The ambiguous date on the wall? The oranges? The barely seen statue and references to St. Margaret on the chair in the background? RIDICULOUS. All of these are cause for an asshat.

In conclusion, the man on display might as well of been Jan van Eyck himself, due to the fact that he is a European male, making an ass out of himself by wearing a turban, be it if he is wearing it for artistic purposes or not.  Van Eyck’s repetoire leaves itself open to asshatery on its own anyway (Google van Eyck’s “Annunciation” if you don’t believe me).  He might of been considered the “Father of Oil Painting,” but here, I say that he is the “Father of the Asshat.”

Jan Van Eyck | Homeschool Art Lesson Resources

Learn about the life and art of celebrated Early Netherlandish painter Jan Van Eyck (1395-1441). Start with the biography, and then click and print these fun curriculum resources.

Biography
Jan Van Eyck (IKE) was born in the Netherlands. His paintings are very detailed. He was not the first to use oil paint, but he perfected the use of oil in paints. The colors in his paintings are delicate and have a beautiful shine. He was called “The King of Painters” by people even hundreds of years after his time.

Jan Van Eyck biography continued on GardenofPraise.com

Understanding “The Arnolfini Marriage” Portrait
The candle and the dog are actually symbolic additions to “The Arnolfini Marriage” Portrait. Learn why .

The Arnolfini Marriage Symbolism explained on Ibiblio.org

Jan Van Eyck’s The Arnolfini Marriage Online Jigsaw Puzzle
Try out this fantastic online jigsaw puzzle of Jan Van Eyck’s The Arnolfini Marriage. The Arnolfini Marriage, an oil on wood, was painted in 1434 . The puzzle even allows you to rotate the pieces to make it a little more challenging for older students.

The Arnolfini Marriage Jigsaw Puzzle on GardenofPraise.com – Educational Resources for Kids 

Jan Van Eyck’s The Arnolfini Marriage Matching Game

 Play The Arnolfini Marriage online matching game on GardenofPraise.com. Yet another opportunity to familiarize your young student with great art.

Browse the Index for more great “The Art Student” resources

Tout est regard. Tout peut se regarder à travers le regard. Etre capable de vraiment regarder quelque chose c’est devenir cette chose. C’est se fondre en elle. Il est possible de traverser
la vie sans voir. Sans regarder, il faudrait plutôt dire. On passe alors à côté des choses. Il est tout-à-fait possible de ne pas vraiment regarder les gens dans les yeux. De peur de se perdre dans cet océan sans fond. De peur peut-être encore d’avantage de percer quelque chose qu’on a pas envie de percer. D’eux. Des autres. Une sorte de pudeur. Je ne veux pas te percer à jour. Je ne veux pas que tu me perces à jour. Alors on reste là, étrangers aux autres qui n’existent pas. C’est alors une fuite continuelle. Une fuite en avant mais sans direction. Il serait intérressant d’essayer de mettre cela en images. Ce léger décalage. C’est la différence entre être au monde et ne pas être au monde. La différence entre appréhender l’Autre et l’autre. On retrouve sans appel le Christ de Jan van Eyck. Un Christ séparé dans sa présence. Un Jésus ici mais déjà autre part aussi. Partagé, déchiré dans sa dichotomie radicale. Il s’agit d’une image temporelle. Une image qui ne peux se comprendre que dans le temps. L’artiste lui a appliqué une ellipse. Inconcevable en effet, serait pour moi l’idée que le Christ véritablement, ait louché. Inconcevable l’idée que les gens qu’il a croisés, guéris et auquel il a enseigné sa parole, que ces gens aient été mis dans le dillemne inconfortable de devoir choisir un oeil auquel s’adresser. Cette image alors ne peut se comprendre que dans une optique (eh oui!) temporelle où l’artiste a voulu représenter cet être duel. A la fois présent et dans l’au-delà. Il a peint ici un tableau qui nous interpelle plutôt qu’il nous transperce.

Az impresszionizmustól a klasszicizmus felé, a színektől a formák felé fordul.
Először a meztelen változat készült el, és amikor a spanyol The Madonna with Canon van der Paele (detail 3) 1436.
Emellett festett a kor kívánalmainak megfelelő portrékat, amelyeket sokáig tanítványának, Van Dycknak tulajdonítottak. Élete vége felé félelmetes képeket festett őrültekről, betegekről és fantasztikus alakokról; ezeknek a fekete festményeknek a stílusa az expresszionizmust vetíti előre.
Mind a genti oltárképen, főleg az alsó szint centrumában elhelyezett Bárány imádása, Jan van Eyck Madonna Rolin kancellárral c. Egymás után következnek: Anakreon, Görög női szoba, Kandaules király neje, A gladiátorok a cirkuszban üdvözlik Vitellius császárt (1859), Pollice verso (gladiátori jelenet), Phryné a birák előtt (1861), Alkibiades Aspásiánál, A nevető jósok, Kleopatra és Caeser (1866).
század második felében ismerték fel, midőn a természet tisztán festői ábrázolására irányuló törekvések (impresszionizmus) rokonok voltak az övéivel és az ő művészetéből indultak ki (Manet).Goya miközben képeket és grafikákat készített, 1798-ban freskókkal díszítette a madridi San Antonio de la Florida-remetekápolnát.
Hozzájuk hasonlóan nagy lábon élt és adósságokba verte magát, ezért sokszor meggyűlt a baja hitelezőivel.

Jan Van Eyck a festmények, Giotto utolsó ismert művei, kivívták a reneszánsz mesterek. Az első ilyen a Kazlak‎-sorozat, amelynek darabjait több szemszögből, más napszakokban Signac The River Bank, Petit-Andely, 1886. Önarcképe alapján is a legtöbb tudós 1395-nél előbbre teszi születési évét. Ez az akkor újszerű megközelítés nagyban eltért a közönség által megszokottól, ezért Sisley és barátai nehezen találtak lehetőséget műveik kiállítására, még kevésbé eladására.
Évfordulóját, s ekkor Goya műveit is újra rendezik a madridi Prado Múzeumban. Sok megbízást kapott az egyháztól.
Azonban Adoration of the Mystic Lamb (The Ghent Altarpiece) hogy ha Degas fejlődése ezen a ponton megállott, vagy. Gyűjteményét lassan Madonna in the Church c. 1425.
Ebben az időben került szoros kapcsolatba a Medici családdal, és többükről készített arcképet.1880-as, 90-es években Monet elkezdte a „sorozatképeit”, amelyben a fényhatásokat és az időjárási viszonyokat ábrázolta.
Art Renewal Center Novemberben visszatért Párizsba, ekkor ismerkedett meg a van Gogh testvérekkel, Vincenttel.Az ajánlkozó levél sikeresnek bizonyult: Leonardo elnyerte a milánói udvar művészének és mérnökének állását.
Akvarelljeiben már a tökéletes kompozícióra, világos elrendezésre és hangulatos előadásmódra törekedett.

Szépet, jót, őszintét festett Manet, de

csak megütközést váltott ki.
Marcel Proust Vermeer alakját irodalmi alkotásba is beleszőtte. Közösen kerestek új megoldásokat a festészetben, szabadtéren rögzítve a fényhatásokat, tört színekkel, gyors ecsetvonásokkal – kialakítva azt a stílust, amely később impresszionizmus néven vált ismertté. Ezek után egyre nagyobb gyötrelmet okoztak a személyiségétől távol GameSpot feladatok.
Van Eyck Itt 25 képet festett – közben a holland rendőrség forradalmi tevékenységgel. Frank Jan Van Eyck – The Virgin of Chancellor Rolin (detail 3) 1435 Parsons 1904-ben csatlakozott az intézethez, 1911-től pedig igazgatta azt.
Valószínűleg erről az asszonyról festette ritka női portréi egyikét, a Hermelines hölgyet.
Van Eyck: The Madonna of Canon van der Paele 1436 Híres egy kivégzést ábrázoló kompozíciója.
Lappangva, recesszíven öröklődik olyan, látszólag egészséges szülőktől, akik The Seine, Grenelle, 1899 hordozzák a. április 30 Man in a Turban 1433.Az ősi azték Jan Van Eyck: The Ghent Altarpiece- Singing Angels (detail 1) 1427-29 is forrásául szolgált dualista szemléletével, hiszen ott állandó.
Magatartásuk mindig keresetlen, „festőietlen”, véletlen adta. A tudományos megalapozottságú műben elméleti fejtegetések során eljutott az egyetlen szépségideál Portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini and his Wife 1434.
A szórakozóhelyeken Toulouse-Lautrec ámulva nézte Van Eyck: Small Triptych c. 1437 divatos kánkánt, megismerte a híres.

LA SOMBRA

Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza y Fundación Caja Madrid
10   Febrero – 17 Mayo 2009

Desde el Renacimiento hasta nuestros días, la representación de la sombra proyectade en el arte ha presentado un amplio espectro de implicaciones, problemas y soluciones. Desde el Renacimiento hasta finales del siglo XIX, los artistas han representado y utilizado el elemento sombra de uno u otro modo en sus composiciones: desde las connotaciones simbólicas o su estudio y utilización en la creación de perspectivas de los artistas del Renacimiento, hasta la representación de la luz y la sombra en el Impresionismo, pasando por su espectacular uso por parte de los pintores tenebristas del Barroco o su incorporación como elemento narrativo fundamental en la época romántica y postromántica. A lo largo del siglo XX, la sombra adquiere otra utilización en los juegos de proyección de los pintores surrealistas, o en su papel protagonista en el Expresionismo alemán.

“La sombra” como tema artístico ha estado indivisiblemente unida a la historia del arte occidental. Su intencionalidad ha sido fundamentalmente naturalista, al subrayar la verosimilitud de lo representado. Pero cada época la ha dotado de connotaciones diferentes.

1. La invención de la pintura.

Una antigua fábula de Plinio el Viejo († 79 d.C) sitúa el origen de la pintura en Corinto, donde una joven muchacha, hija del alfarero Butades de Sición, habría trazado el contorno de su amante sobre una pared, siguiendo la silueta de la sombra proyectada por la luz de una vela.
Dicho mito ha sido ilustrado por diversos artias como Joseph Wright of Derby, David Allan y Joseph Benoît Suvée. Las pinturas de Matías de Arteaga y Karl Friedrich Schinkel se basan en Quintiliano († c. 96 d.C) que derivó el origen de la pintura de la circunscripción de las sombras solares sobre una pared. En la obra de los pintores contemporáneos Vitaly Komar y Alexander Melamid, retoman el mito de Butades para ironizar sobre los fundamentos clasicistas del Realismo Socialista.

- La doncella corintia (1782 – 1784). Joseph Wright of Derby (1734 – 1797)

- La invención del arte del dibujo (1791). Joseph Benoît Suvée (1743 – 1807)

- Los orígenes del Realismo Socialista (1982 – 1983). Vitaly Komar (1943) y Alexander Melamid (1945)

2. Renacimiento

Aunque las primeras sombras en el arte datan del siglo IV a.C —vinculadas todavía a escenografías teatrales y al sombreado de objetos en relieve—, la sombra proyectada hace su verdadera aparición en el Renacimiento. Durante el siglo XV se produce un acercamiento empírico a la sombra, mientras que un siglo después ésta se vincula estrechamente con la perspectiva. La sombra, como resultado de la interposición de un cuerpo sólido y opaco entre una fuente de luz y una superficie de proyección, fue objeto de experimentación temprana por parte de artistas como Gentile da Fabriano, Giovanni di Paolo, Pier Maria Pennacchi, Lorenzo Lotto o el Maestro de la Leyenda de la Magdalena. Se observa también la connotación simbólica positiva que la sombra adquiere al vincularse al tema de la Anunciación. Así, en las obras de Jan van Eyck, Lorenzo di Credi y Ludovico Carracci, el reflejo opaco del Ángel o de la Virgen alude a la “sombra del Todopoderoso”, bajo cuyo poder se produce el milagro de la Encarnación.

- Estigmatización de San Francisco (1419). Gentile da Fabriano (c. 1370 – 1427)

- Díptico de la Anunciación (c. 1433 – 1435). Jan van Eyck (1390 – 1441)

- Anunciación (c. 1480 – 1485). Lorenzo di Credi (1459 – 1537)

3. Barroco

A partir del Renacimiento, al tiempo que se asiste a una profundización en el conocimiento de la representación de las sombras —que llegará a formar parte de la enseñanza de las academias—, se limita su uso por la propensión a ensuciar o emborronar la composición, en detrimento de la claridad visual. Sin embargo, los “tenebristas” del Barroco supieron como nunca antes explotar sus espectaculares posibilidades. En las escenas religiosas de Jean Leclerc, Matthias Stom, Gerrit van Honthorst, Hendrick ter Brugghen, Georges de La Tour, Mattia Preti y el llamado Maestro de la Luz de la Vela, la sombra sirve para enfatizar la presencia sagrada y su incardinación en la vida cotidiana. En Rembrandt y Pieter de Hooch, la luz y la sombra construyen espacialmente la composición y sugieren la temporalidad de la escena. Por último, la obra de Jacob I van Oost es un ejemplo singular en el que la sombra aparece proyectada sobre el lienzo representado.

- Hombre sentado leyendo en la mesa de una habitación noble (1628-1630). Seguidor de Rembrandt

- Incredulidad de Santo Tomás (c. 1641-1649). Matthias Stom (c. 1600 – después de 1652)

- La educación de la virgen (1650). Taller de George de la Tour (1593 – 1652)

4. Romanticismo

Con el Siglo de las Luces, la sombra alcanza un nuevo protagonismo de la mano de Johann Caspar Lavater y sus Fragmentos fisiognómicos (1775-1778), con los que pretende sentar las bases para el estudio de la personalidad humana a partir de la proyección del perfil del rostro sobre una pantalla. Pero el siglo XVIII fue también el del nacimiento del concepto estético de lo “sublime”, y la sombra comienza a ser valorada por sus cualidades narrativas eminentemente negativas. Poco a poco se asiste a la aparición de una verdadera “estética de lo siniestro”, algunos de cuyos ejemplos más destacados se encuentran en la obra de Goya, Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein, Joseph Wright of Derby, Adolph von Menzel, Jean-François Millet, William Holman Hunt, Jean-Paul Laurens, Gioacchino Toma y Émile Friant.

- Corral de locos (1794). Francisco de Goya (1746 – 1828)

- La gran sombra (1805). Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein (1751 – 1829)

- La sombra de la muerte (1870 – 1873). William Holman Hunt (1827 – 1910)

- Sombras marcadas (1891). Émile Friant (1863 – 1932)

5. Simbolismo y fin de siglo

El simbolismo, al apartarse de la representación naturalista de la realidad, encumbró la visión subjetiva como eje de la representación plástica. Lo misterioso y lo sombrío despertaron la creatividad de escritores y artistas. En las escenas de interior de Monet, en las que varios personajes de una misma familia se concentran bajo la luz de una lámpara, resuenan todavía ecos del tardo-Romanticismo francés, aunque con un mayor énfasis sobre el estudio de la luz y la sombra como fenómeno plástico. Su ejemplo fue seguido por los artistas nabis Édouard Vuillard y Félix Vallotton, en cuyos interiores la atmósfera se hace más densa y las formas tienden a aplanarse. Desde una óptica más literaria, la sombra centrará también buena parte de la producción de artistas como Léon Spilliaert, Xavier Mellery o el joven František Kupka.

- La Cena (1868-1869). Claude Monet (1840 – 1926)

- Dos mujeres bajo la lámpara (1892). Édouard Vuillard (1868 – 1940)

- La noche (1908). Léon Spilliaert (1881 – 1946)

- Desnudo sobre fondo amarillo (1922). Félix Vallotton (1865 – 1925)

6. Impresionismo

Con el impresionismo se observa un giro importante en el tratamiento de la sombra, que por primera vez abandona su carga narrativa para convertirse en sujeto de investigación exclusivamente plástica. La sombras de los árboles ocupan un lugar destacado en la obra temprana de Monet, pero es en Camille Pissarro y Alfred Sisley donde mejor se observa cómo las sombras coloreadas dejan atrás el tradicional empleo del negro y, con él, la carga peyorativa de la sombra. Otros artistas son Childe Hassam, Joaquín Sorolla, Santiago Rusiñol y Darío de Regoyos.

- Paseo (Carretera de la granja de Saint-Siméon), (1864). Claude Monet (1840 – 1926)

- Helada blanca (1873). Camille Pisarro (1830 – 1903)

- Bajo el toldo, Biarritz (1906). Joaquín Sorolla (1863 – 1923)

7. Realismos modernos

Las sombras carecieron de relevancia plástica en el primer cubismo y los movimientos abstractos subsiguientes, fieles a la bidimensionalidad del cuadro. Hubo que esperar a Giorgio de Chirico para que la sombra alcanzase un nuevo protagonismo, a medio camino entre la verosimilitud naturalista y la pesadilla. En los holandeses Pyke Koch, Carel Willink y Dick Ket el empleo de sombras pseudo-cinematográficas, unido al carácter estatuario de las figuras -tomado de Piero della Francesca y Mantegna-, nos introduce en una “realidad mágica”. Pareja dualidad entre un orden aparentemente estable y la amenaza de lo siniestro está también presente, con diferentes matices, en la obra de Christian Schad, Felix Nussbaum, Edward Hopper, Rockwell Kent, Alfonso Ponce de León y Gregorio Prieto. De un modo más singular, en Picasso la sombra del artista –que es a su vez la del espectador- se proyecta sobre la mujer desnuda representada.

- La mañana angustiosa (1912). Giorgio de Chirico (1888 – 1978)

- Retrato del Dr. Haustein (1928). Christian Schad (1894 – 1982)

8. Surrealismos

Si algún movimiento de la pintura contemporánea dedicó una especial atención al tratamiento de la sombra, éste fue el surrealismo, principalmente en su vertiente vinculada a la representación de los sueños. Artistas como Salvador Dalí, Yves Tanguy, René Magritte, Max Ernst, Paul Delvaux y Esteve Francés dotaron a la representación de los sueños de una verosimilitud aún más acusada que la de la propia realidad contemplada por nuestros ojos, recurriendo para ello a una técnica minuciosa y al empleo masivo de las sombras. En Dalí, además, las sombras ayudan a recomponer imágenes contradictorias, dentro de lo que se ha denominado el método “paranoicocrítico”.

- Metamorfosis de Narciso (1937). Salvador Dalí (1904 – 1989)

9. Del pop art a nuestros días

La sombra también ha jugado un papel importante en la pintura de la segunda mitad del siglo XX, a raíz del triunfo del pop art en el panorama artístico internacional de los años sesenta. Andy Warhol y Roy Lichtenstein, en su empleo de motivos medios artísticos vinculados a la publicidad, dieron cabida a la sombra como un elemento más de la vida cotidiana. Warhol, en concreto, dedicó una serie completa al tema de “la sombra”. En la obra homónima seleccionada, la fractura moderna del hombre con su sombra es el tema central de la composición. En la estela del pop y más allá de él, la sombra ha continuado atrayendo la atención de artistas como Ed Ruscha, Gerhard Richter, Jürgen Klauke y Susan Rothenberg. Claudio Parmiggiani y Tobia Ercolino la evocan como una éterea y poética presencia.

- Silla de cocina (1932). Gerhard Richter (1965)

- La sombra (1981). Andy Warhol (1928 – 1987)

10. Fotografía

Uno de los primeros usos de la fotografía fue, como en el mito de Butades sobre el origen de la pintura, el mantener vivo el recuerdo de los seres queridos que se han ido. Pero más allá de su condición de “huella” o “nueva sombra”, la fotografía se interesó tempranamente por las sombras proyectadas, marcando con su impronta a otras artes, como la pintura. La sombra, como elemento constructivo o expresivo, documental o experimental, e inclusive auto-reflexivo, está presente en la obra de Ansel Adams, Francesc Català-Roca, Constantin Brancusi, Brassaï, André Kertész, Dorothea Lange, Man Ray, Alexander Rodchenko y Umbo, entre otros. La artista británica contemporánea Sam Taylor-Wood, posee una serie de fotografías basadas en la novela de Bram Stoker, Drácula. En ellas, el cuerpo de la artista, en éxtasis, es sostenido por una silla que, como el célebre vampiro, no proyecta sombra.

- Negra y blanca (1926). Man Ray (1890 – 1976).

- Silla de Bram Stoker II (2005), Sam Taylor-Wood (1967)

11. Cine

Incluso antes que en la fotografía, la sombra alcanzó un desarrollo temprano en el cine expresionista alemán como prolongación siniestra del hombre. Otros realizadores posteriores ampliaron el espectro de recursos, buscando nuevos contenidos que casi siempre tienen que ver con la esencia misma del encuadre fílmico, abierto a la imprevista circulación de seres y objetos. Entre otros, cabe destacar la obra de Robert Wiene, Arthur Robinson, F.W. Murnau, Fritz Lang, Lotte Reiniger, Serghei Eisenstein, Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock, Woody Allen, Peter Greenaway y Quentin Tarantino.

- Fotograma de la película Nosferatu, Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau (1921)

By Jonathan Liew, Chief Football Correspondent
Old Trafford

I’ll be honest here – I don’t actually have any thoughts on this game. I’ll let you all into a secret: much as I love football, I can’t actually write about it. Everything that can be written about football has in all likelihood been written. In case you haven’t noticed, my writing consists entirely of recycled cliches. And there’s a good chance you actually haven’t noticed, because I pick them very carefully. A snatch of Bill Bryson here, a smidgen of Radio 4 panel show there, a soupçon of Daniel Kitson just behind you, a splash of Russell Brand’s My Booky Wook over in the corner.

But with football punditry, the cliche has been elevated beyond even the level of the art form, into something of actual value. By couching everything in familiar, well-trodden terms, the cliche-peppered analysis, far from being an irritant, actually relaxes the average football fan. Who, let’s face it, isn’t very bright. Come over all “And Osman, I feel, was unto the Villa defence as Achilles unto Hector – save Arteta’s timely retraction of the cudgels once the Rubicon had been crossed” and you’re not going to get your Setanta contract renewed in a hurry.

In that spirit, then, let me just say it was an end-to-end game which both sides had the chances to win. Porto really took the play to United, and that late equalising goal will be a real sucker punch for Alex Ferguson’s side, who will now have to pick themselves up for this weekend’s game against, I think, West Ham. In many ways, the game was akin to a Jan van Eyck painting: there was plenty of space, but it was implied rather than genuinely articulated.

Oops, sorry.

 Memory comes when memory’s old
I am never the first to know   

–        Fever Ray  –

Last Tuesday I attended the excellent lecture series The Old Brand New, in the Stadsschouwburg in Amsterdam. The speakers that evening were the Belgian painter Luc Tuymans and the French dancer/choreographer Boris Charmatz. Their talks were reflections on the evening’s topic, New Virtuosity, and on the overarching theme of the series, looking at the term new, in the light of the old and the relationship between the original and the representation. These problems of originality, of the absolute new and the idea of referentiality and remix are themes I have written about before. What I would like to do now, in this post, is to combine the thoughts that came forward during the lectures of these two artists, with some theories and concepts I have recounted recently, thinking about ideas of the static and the fluid, memory and modernity, ownership and collectivity, repetition and representation, actor and participant, reality and virtuality and virtuosity and geniality.

I would like to present a virtual conversation between the ideas and works of Tuymans and Charmatz, as developed and presented last Tuesday, and the thoughts of thinkers and writers as diverse as Paolo Virno, Walter Benjamin, Carl Einstein, Guy Debord, Jacques Attali, Aleida Assmann and Margaret Atwood.

What interests me the most in this hypothetical discourse is what our relationship will or can be to the image, to the work of art, to information and knowledge and thus to content in a more general manner, in the present digital age. Taking into account our relationship towards these representations or constructs as narratives in language in our growing stance of/as prosumers (active participants) in an age in which the old and the new are constantly recontextualised in a flow of continual remix or refluctuation, forming a radical (virtual) potentiality posited towards the future, creating a sort of meta-referentiality in which the old and the new almost seem to fall or collapse into each other, or maybe don’t matter anymore… then all becomes movement, everything is stream.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Back to the beginning. The theme of last Tuesday’s gathering was New Virtuosity. From the flyer:

“Nowadays the concept of virtuosity has moved away from notions such as excellence and distinction and seems to have become synonymous with craftsmanship and mere technical prowess. What is the status and place of a notion as virtuosity in an epoch in which the borderline between mastery and ordinary ability has dramatically shifted?”

Luc Tuymans started his talk by stating that the concept of a New Virtuosity is grounded in ideas of timing and position. Virtuosity offers a more versatile understanding of reality using understatement. As he says, there seems to be a discrepancy between memory and oblivion. Thus, an image needs to be shown in all its layers. This kind of fragmentation can then be seen as a way of dealing with the larger context as a whole. The image has become an object of desire, it has become interchangeable and interactive.

As Tuymans goes on to talk about the meaning of the image, he touches on the aspect of remediality, of the appropriation of the image, or the concept and context of the image, in other media. His talk focused mainly on his new exhibition ‘Against the day’ in Brussels, and the paintings that will be exhibited there. Starting with Jan van Eyck, he shows how the painting has broken away from mere mimesis. Images have become constructions, as Tuymans also shows in the painting Map (2008) which has been completely created digitally, in a way becoming a non-existent entity. Tuymans sees in the repetition of images a further moving away from the mimetic; he creates huge site-specific wall paintings derived from his own paintings (Cathedral), making works that do no longer refer to reality as such but only to the image as a concept.

This connects strongly to the thoughts of Walter Benjamin, who, as Charles W. Haxthausen states in his article on Benjamin and Carl Einstein, argues that the aura of a work is located in the image, not in any unique physical object. For Walter Benjamin, the reproduction of a work of art, meaning to lift it from its constraints of tradition, is a way of renewing it, by offering it a new context, actualizing it in the present.

Tuymans also discusses the role of memory when it comes to interpreting a work of art. In a painting showing towering dust clouds, the observer is confronted with the remembrance of and imagery surrounding 9/11. The same applies to a painting depicting ballroom dancing, in which one can reminisce back to times of crisis. In this way, Tuyman remarks, observation of and interaction with a work of art can be seen as a regressive form of conservatism. The imagery (in its collective re-medialised re-membrance) itself gives the context, its form is simultaneously a veil and a projection, states Tuymans.

As Aleida Assmann shows in her article Transformations between history and memory. (Part I: What Does It Mean for a Community to Have a Memory?), memory increasingly comes to us through images and movies. It is the image that triggers a constructed collective memory:

“Participation in social memory is always varied because it is based on lived experience and linked to autobiographical memory, which is irreducibly specific in its position, perspective and experiential quality. The memory of the Holocaust, for instance, will vary vastly among survivors depending on the fact whether they endured the torments of the concentration camps, hid in secret places, or managed to escape into exile. For the second and third generation of the survivors, however, as well as for the members of other nations, this memory will become more and more homogeneous as it is reconstructed by historians and accessed through the shared representations of public narratives, images, and films.”

In this respect one could say that in Tuymans work, memory as a form of context shaping, determines the meaning we attribute to art: we see a repetition of the past in the creation of the new. As Haxthausen shows in his aforementioned article, in which he juxtaposes Benjamin and Einstein and tries to find their communalities, for Einstein this repetition gives an illusion of the immortality of things, where he feels that everything is truly in a constant flux. The question for Carl Einstein was basically how to break free from these constraints of the past to create something radically new, something which Rimbaud says faut être absolument moderne.

But for Benjamin reproduction strips away this veil (which reminds me of Nietzsche’s conception of art as a veil, art as a Dionysian illusion); Benjamin states reproduction frees art from the constraints of tradition and makes it remixable and malleable, it gives it movement. The new medium gives the viewer the chance to contextualize the art, to project his/her subjectivity on the art, to actualize it; the viewer makes it new.

A GOOD PAINTING IS NEVER FINISHED

Going back to the work of Luc Tuymans, the influence of the context of the past, in Einstein’s fashion, can be seen more clearly, as Tuymans shows, in the painting depicting Condoleezza Rice, which shows a vivid depiction of determinacy, but can also be seen as a representation of African American slavery and emancipation.

This contextualization of memory can be seen maybe most confrontingly in Tuymans painting Gas chamber. Now it is the title that gives the context, that triggers our memory of the past, more than the image an sich. Without the title we would just see an empty room. In a way, Tuyman says, this painting represents the irrepresentable and it shows how painting is really a conceptual form of art. Again, without the title, it would just be mimesis, a depiction of an empty room. Tuymans says it is a tricked space, disguised as a chamber. This shows again the polylevel of images (Tuymans calls this a sort of subdued virtuosity). A painting is not mobile, but is in its multi-layeredness confronted with mobility.

Benjamin concurs with this idea that when one releases the image of its aura through reproduction, the image becomes a mere concept, mirroring Tuymans idea of painting as a conceptual art, no longer mimetic. This concept, as Haxthausen states, is for Benjamin external to the work, it is waiting for actualization. Tuymans does exactly this, using either another medium (wall painting) or recontextualizing the image through language (adding a title).

In Wonderland the title gives a Disneyland reference. As Tuymans states, in this painting the utopic is instrumentalized. We are eluting content from fantasy, creating context out of virtuality. Tuymans also draws a parallel with another context: Hitler was a big Disney fan; he used to love to draw dwarfs. As Tuymans states, we have entered an imagery that consists of non existent (virtual) spaces. Reality is produced as raw material. Painting increasingly reflects an animated world without anima.

But the relationship with the past and the effect of memory can also be seen in the creation of a work: painting is custom, says Tuymans; it is a style, it is a remembrance of ones own style, but it is also a movement: nothing is completely still, style knows a development too. In painting one can see an element of deconstruction of the image, one refers to the past and memorizes/internalizes history in ones style.

The spectator or viewer eventually terminates the image (in numerous ways): this has the ultimate consequence that “a good painting is never finished”, according to Tuymans.

Tuymans plays with the difference between the power of the image and the influence of the spectator, in a way playing with the same tension Haxthausen distinguishes between Benjamin en Einstein, but he, like Benjamin, does let the consumer play a crucial role when stating that the work of art is never finished, the view of the spectator and the loss of the aura of the image through reproduction make for this combination of the static and the flux. I think that this duality between Einstein and Benjamin, as Haxthausen has brought forward, can be seen in Tuymans work, where he plays with the notion that on the one hand the image carries inside itself the context of the (image of) past and our recollection of that past and in this way works in a very deterministic, conservative, inescapable way. It is the context of the tradition of the image, of the memory, of the original context and meaning of the image that is bestowed back on us, this subjectivity of the image itself. This resists actualization and recontextualization. This is what Tuymans plays with in his work, this relationship between voluntary constructed memory and recontextualisation and the image that comes up in front of our eyes involuntary (Hitler/gas chamber/ the desire of the image).

But on the other hand, Tuymans also is very much aware of how the technological possibilities now give us the opportunity to distill the image from its tradition and to use it in our creation of a new reality/imagery, a new constructed memory and the role the medium and the viewer play in this. For Einstein (the forms of) art/the image are active, they shape our views and memories, our world and our society. For Benjamin the focus lies more on how we determine art, how we give it meaning and context through our remembrance and remedialisation, we make art/the image passive and never ending through our context giving.

Tuymans also mentions Robert Barry, an artist who creates non-material works of art. Tuymans talks about art as a vide (plural emptiness), quoting Barry who states an empty space = a room where you are free to think what you are going to do. A work of art can then be thought of as an empty space, where it becomes a field of potential action and of potential thought.

In a sense culture has thus turned towards a representation of the unrepresentable: of the concept, of imageries, of memories and the constructs we create around them. Where, as Benjamin states, the technology of reproduction detached the object from the domains of its tradition, it detached it from its uniqueness, making it also into an object that can be construed in different contexts.

THE BODY AS A MUSEUM, THE MUSEUM AS A BODY

Boris Charmatz wants to create a museum for modern dance, a Musée de danse contemporaine. In his book Entretenir – À propos d’une danse contemporaine, cowritten with Isabelle Launay, he speaks of dancing as a form of entretenir: as a form of upkeep, keeping up the conversation with the past. Dance can be seen as a reenactment, the performance as a reconstruction: you perform the dance again and again, whilst at the same time holding an immediate view on history. Charmatz describes the struggle between the new and the old in dance as a tension between renewal and remembrance. In the 80’s being modern was an absolute must: artists needed to make their own brand. Reproduction was a taboo; you needed to create your own style. In the 90’s this changed, says Charmatz: making something new did no longer seem to be the best way forward. There was a strong tendency to consider ones own culture.

Charmatz describes how in dance there are basically two options: one reenacts a dance, so one performs the same dance time and again over history using new dancers, or one can create a new work or production. Create something new or reflect on the old.

Charmatz tried to reflect on this theme of the old and the new in his work on jeunesse, in which he tried to create a tension in movements between the virtuosity of the young body and the growing distance to that when growing older. The dance then becomes a description of time, we are looking back and are reenacting time within our body, as he states, reconfiguring and reenacting the past.

Charmatz also plays with memory, with bodily memory and the memory of sensations. With Odile Duboc he created a dance in which he, as he says, dived deep into a memory of sensations, an improvised memory that is, making the body work with different materials (wood, stone) and surfaces, and then taking these things away. The newness of this lies in the connection of the things we experienced (in the past) with our memories of them in the present.

Another way of confronting the past is to work on what you still do not know but can re-member. Charmatz mentions an exercise in which he was asked to improvise Nijinsky’s dance Afternoon of a faun. Charmatz explains how this requires you to make an archeology on yourself, a need to scan your memory (things came back slowly he said and formed a memory context/construct: Mallarmé, Debussy, faun, nymph, myth, obscenity, animality). In this way he states that the improvisation became a performance of things we didn’t know beforehand, but could reconstruct.

This (re)working of memory and remembrance is also a theme that plays an important role in the work of Benjamin, as Haxthausen shows. When it comes to the aura of a work, Benjamin (building on Proust) distinguishes between two kinds of memory:

-         Involuntary: spontaneous memories, like in Tuymans work depicting dust clouds; involuntary passive association and memory, remembrance.

-         Conscious, willed acts of remembrance; constructed memory: like Charmatz’ dance of Nijinsky or his improvised dance based on material remembrance.

The first kind is what Benjamin then sees as aura. But as Tuymans also shows in his work, aura lies not in the reproduction or the medium, but in the image itself, in our memory connected to a specific image. But also in language (the title Gas chamber).

Aleida Assmann also states, like Benjamin and Proust, that memory “takes into account the ambivalence of the past both as a conscious choice and as an unconscious burden, tracking the voluntary and involuntary paths of memory.” 

Assmann discusses Susan Sontag who states there is no such thing as collective memory; all memory is individual. She states that experiential memories are embodied and thus personal and non-transferable. We can see this in Charmatz’ work in which the memory of the body plays an important role, indeed necessarily individual and non-reproducible and shaped by its own specific context and history. As Assmann states, however, Sontag forgets that individual memory has two important dimensions that transcend this individuality, namely our interaction with others and our interaction with external signs and symbols. We cannot transfer our embodied memories but we can share them, she states. This is done by the means of language or representation in an image, through which the individual’s memories become part of a collective.

Assmann quotes Margaret Atwood who stresses that collective national memory is always designed for a purpose and specific use:

“The past belongs to those who claim it, and are willing to explore it, and to infuse it with meaning for those who are alive today. The past belongs to us, because we are the ones who need it.”

Thus, with the remixing of images that constitute the memories of individuals of the past we construct our own new memories and contexts.

As Charmatz states, history can thus be taken quite literally as a way to produce new works; this wide approach in dance to history in the 90’s can be seen as an approach to make new works about our own fantasies of history, based on our own preconceptions as viewers and producers. In this way we can reconsider/reframe/reproduce history. Charmatz identifies many frontiers between the old and the new; fixation and movement, patrimonium and creation, visual art and the life arts… In his Musée de danse contemporaine, he wants to create a space that talks about these divisions between the fixed/static and movement, to create a new platform for dance.

It would be a musée précaire. For Charmatz such a museum is not only a fixed frame but it could be something in which you engage yourself to create a/the museum. The museum is a space that opens up what an (idea of) a museum is. It will be an experimental project to think about an utopian/new space for the dance. It could consist of objects/pieces/movements and is no longer fixed to a certain medium. Conceptual art, literature, digital art could all be a complete part of it without excluding each other.

In this museum, Charmatz envisions that the divisions between producer and consumer would disappear. He wonders how the museum could facilitate that the dance be enacted or performed by the participants/visitors themselves. The people inside should also produce the art that is inside in a collaborative effort. As Charmatz explains, this is a way to think movement: movements of the museum itself, movements of the visitors, movements of the dance. The museum becomes a mental space, a taxonomy of potentiality.  

Benjamin also involves the viewer in his theory of art: he/she plays an important role in the perception of the image: the perspective of the viewer changes over time and thus the personal memory. In different times an image of clouds conjures up different remembrances (see Tuymans).

With a change in perspective in the modern image reproducing age, the consumer becomes a participant in the art. He/she finishes (or never finishes, Tuymans) the work of art. By incorporating the role of the viewer into the work of art, making him/her an integral part of its concept, we create a work that is never finished, that is fluid, flexible and reinterpretable, without a static meaning.

In Charmatz’ thinking about dance as a concept, a potential space, the lines between producer and consumer seem to shift. Jacques Attali displays a similar view on music in his book Noise: The Political Economy of Music. From the outline of his book by Theodore Gracyk:

“This new activity is NOT undertaken for its exchange or use value. It is undertaken solely for the pleasure of the person who does it (its “producer”). Such activity involves a radical rejection of the specialized roles (composer, performer, audience) that dominated all previous music. The activity is entirely localized, made by a small community for that community. There is no clear distinction between consumption and production.”

Charmatz summarizes that his museum would necessarily encompass three kinds of spaces: the mental space, as described above; the architectural space (nomadic), stating the physical present; and the body space. The first museum in dance is your own body: the site where you remember the movements you learned. The body becomes the main space of the museum: it encompasses contexts of education, history, the social, gender and most importantly, the (potential) of movements. Body as a site of work.

Body as potential of activity.

Reinvent.

Rethink.

VIRTUOSITY COMMODIFIED

Charmatz went on to discuss virtuosity, the ability to do movements, in which they become virtues or daily movements, referring to the work of Paolo Virno. He states that new virtuosity is centered, or should be centered, not on the things you are able to do but on the broader potential of action you have, the potential rethinking of history, of opening up your body, of thinking about movements rather than performing them. Virtuosity also entails a breaking free of these skills, to enlarge your own potentiality. You can only become free whilst (re)considering your own skills.

Paolo Virno develops some very interesting thoughts in his book A Grammar of the multitude. For an analysis of contemporary forms of life, on performance, virtuosity, repetition and the culture industry. He states that a performance is an activity that finds its own fulfillment in itself. It does not objectify itself into an end product. He also states that the performance requires the presence of others: the performance only exists in the presence of an audience. Interestingly enough this seems to blur the lines between for instance dance and painting, as seen through the eyes of Tuymans and Charmatz, where both artists state that their works depend on the viewers, on the consumers, who ensure through their participation, their view, their gaze, their interpretation, that the image/dance is never finished. In this sense the difference between live art and visual art, between painting and dance, is no longer a difference as such.

They too would probably agree that art and knowledge, being never finished through the interaction with others, cannot be objectified. Virno, however, states that as a result of the post-Fordist culture industry this objectification into a product has occurred and this is where the problem with the exploitation of static works of art and knowledge (through for instance copyright) lies, where this objectification seems to go against the whole conceptual principles and underlying values of culture, art and knowledge, at least if we follow the definitions we are talking about here.

Virno states that when the performance is recorded, when it is fixed, it is no longer virtuosity, it is potentiality objectified and thus the end of movement. Using a Marxist perspective, Virno argues how intellectual labor is objectified in the culture industry. But intellectual labor is a product without an end product:

“The second type of intellectual labor (activities in which “product is not separable from the act of producing”) includes, according to Marx, all those whose labor turns into a virtuosic performance: pianists, butlers, dancers, teachers, orators, medical doctors, priests, etc.”

Virno sees verbal language as the ultimate potential virtuosity,  since it doesn’t have a necessary end-product. He refers to the Frankfurt School, where the stream of thought was that capitalism has serialized and apprehended the spiritual production. Virno also refers to Guy Debord, who states that “spectacle” is human communication which has become a commodity. Debord says that the spectacle enables communication through verbal language. With the commodification of human communication and the growing importance of human communication in all sectors of our daily life, this has become a concern. But the problem again lies, says Virno referring to Debord, with the fact that communication is a potentiality; it knows no end product:

“Unlike money, which measures the result of a productive process, one which has been concluded, spectacle concerns, instead, the productive process in fieri, in its unfolding, in its potential. The spectacle, according to Debord, reveals what women and men can do.”

Jacques Attali shows likewise in Noise how commodification (first the labor of creation (composition) is assigned monetary value, then so is interpretation (performance), normalizes, harmonizes music, making it in a way static and stripping it of its potentiality:

“The use-value of spectacle involves parallel developments of music. As music develops as a commodity and as harmonic developments display rational progress, music makes us believe in social cohesion. In short, “representation leads to exchange and harmony.”

But it seems that in the digital age art, culture and knowledge increasingly have the potential, by means of the possibilities offered by the online environment, to be freed from this static objectification, this fixation in a solid shape, which the commodity necessarily needed to be in order to sell/make a profit. Where Virno states that repetition of the image has turned it into a commodity, in the digital age the ease of repetition and its representation in multiple remixes en recontextualisations, actually might offer a de-commodification of the cultural object. Repetition does no longer need to entail static objects.

In remix representation is no longer representation/mimicry of the world of the social system, but representation of repetition, creation as reflection upon the past, and in this sense creation of the new. The boundaries between representation (actor/active/new) and repetition (mechanical/commodity/static/passive) seem to disappear in the digital age.

Just as Charmatz states that art and literature and music have all become part of the museum of dance, so conceptual art, not only as thinking, but also in its material form, in its interaction with memory, its connecting of the creator and the participant in the act of thinking about potential creation, has also become a part of the philosophical and theoretical discourse. In this way everything has become remix and fluidity, referentiality on thoughts and things together. The world of (virtual) things and the world of thoughts are coming closer.

Jan van Eyck. The betrothal of the Arnolfini, 1434. Oil on wood, 81.8 x 59.7 cm, 32 1/4 x 23 1/2 in; National Gallery, London.

When I had first learned about Jan van Eyck, I wasn’t very impressed–I didn’t like the way he drew people’s eyes. The people always just looked very stern. I dismissed his work entirely and didn’t even consider him an influential painter, despite my professor and my readings saying so. But after learning more about his work, I came to greatly appreciate the fine details he puts into his paintings.

Jan van Eyck, in fact, is the inventor of oil-painting. Before, painters used egg-whites mixed with pigments, but this was extremely viscous and it dried quickly, not allowing for much freedom. With oil-painting, the painter is allowed to choose how much oil goes in. And most importantly, it gives the painter much more time and gives the paint a sort of “gleam” or “glaze,” as a transparent layer of oil can be placed on top a matted paint of say, red. It is that invention that allowed van Eyck to add such detail to all his paintings.

This painting, The betrothal of the Arnolfini, is perhaps his most famous. It depicts the betrothal of an Italian merchant, Giovanni Arnolfini, and Jeanne de Chenany. The painting seems fairly “standard,” but if one looks at it more closely, it tells so much more.

Instead of simply signing it with his name, Jan van Eyck signs it very obviously, in the middle, on top of the mirror.

He writes “Johannes de eyck fuit hic” (Jan van Eyck was here), as though a witness to the sacred event. He put himself in the painting.

My favorite part of the painting is the mirror.

Looking closely, van Eyck painted a reflection of the entire scene in a “fish-eye” sense, to once again, include himself in the painting as a witness. The detail is never-ending–the back of Jeanne’s dress, the chandelier, and the curve of the window.

What I like so much about this painting is that it is more than a painting, especially with so much of van Eyck’s inclusion of himself in the painting. What I also learned from my professor is that there are theories that the painting is not just a depiction of a betrothal, but hidden meanings. The sandals, the one candle on the chandelier, and the dog. Arguments have been made that the sandals mirror the scene in which God tells moses to “take his shoes off,” and Arnolfini’s doing so shows his reverence towards the betrothal. The dog is a faithful dog, a faithful companion, as do two people need to be faithful to one another when marrying. And the candle is the presence of God through light. Of course, it is all speculative and opponents have said that the dog is just “hanging around,” but really? Would van Eyck just put a dog in that was hanging around?

My professor said that he has not decided whether or not he believes the theories and I don’t think I have either. For now, I will just appreciate the painting and the mystery behind it.

J

Jean Fouquet, Dittico di Melun - Madonna con Bambino e cherubini, 1450 ca., tavola 93x85cm, Musée Royal des Beaux-Arts di Anversa

In linea di massima, il Tardo Gotico che si era diffuso in Europa a partire dal XIV secolo, finì per corrispondere allo stile artistico dominante per buona parte del XV secolo, giungendo in alcuni casi isolati ad inoltrarsi addirittura nel Cinquecento.

In questo panorama non esattamente vivacissimo – il Tardo Gotico, lo dice il nome stesso, non si discosta poi molto da tutto il Gotico che lo precede, se non per quelle circostanze che, appunto, lo vogliono tardo –, Firenze e le Fiandre, agli Inizi del Quattrocento, emersero come i principali poli d’innovazione.

Mentre Firenze era la capitale dell’arte italiana che stava cominciando a diventar Rinascimento, le Fiandre (Olanda e Belgio, essenzialmente) divennero teatro di una rivoluzione più limitatamente pittorica, ma certo non irrilevante, anche limitandosi a considerare le ricadute che produsse proprio sull’arte rinascimentale (d’altra parte, per ovvie ragioni di vicinanza geografica e culturale uno scambio in tal senso risultava inevitabilmente reciproco).

Quentin Massys, The Moneylender and his Wife, 1514, olio su tavola, 71x68cm, Parigi, Museo del Louvre

Di certo non mancavano i committenti: accanto alla committenza tradizionale, rappresentata dalle chiese o dalle istituzioni religiose in genere, un’altra per lo più borghese, in un’area in cui la borghesia mercantile riusciva a passarsela piuttosto bene grazie alla presenza delle fiorenti manifatture tessili e l’ottima posizione dei porti, prediligeva quadri di piccolo formato come i ritratti o i dipinti di tematica religiosa in caso di collocazione “domestica”

Jan van Eyck, I coniugi arnolfini, 1434, olio su tavola, 82x60cm, Londra, National Gallery

Jan van Eyck, Vergine del Cancelliere Rolin, 1435, tavola, 66x62cm, Parigi, Museo del Louvre

o di più grande formato se destinati alla donazione pubblica: in entrambe le circostanze, naturalmente, l’opera definiva lo status di chi l’aveva ordinata, sia che se la fosse tenuta nel corrispettivo fiammingo d’un tinello Ottocentesco, sia che vi apparisse ritratto all’interno, generalmente in ginocchio, in posizione nemmeno troppo defilata dalla scena.

Jan van Eyck, Polittico di Gand - chiuso, 1432, 350x223cm, Gand, Cattedrale di S. Bavone

Ma fatte le dovute premesse, la carica innovativa (e il bello) della pittura fiamminga dal Quattrocento in poi, nella quale pure sono ben più ravvisabili le derivazioni dal Gotico Internazionale di quanto non lo siano nella pittura fiorentina coeva, risiede in tre punti principali: tecnica pittorica, trattamento della luce, e trattamento dello spazio.

Martin Schongauer, tempera e olio su tavola, Colmar, Museo d'Unterlinden

Tradizionalmente si attribuisce ai Fiamminghi l’invenzione dei colori a olio, e in particolare a Jan Van Eyck: tale tecnica in realtà era già nota nell’antichità e utilizzata anche nel medioevo, sebbene l’uso comune prevedesse di norma l’impiego della tempera.
I pittori fiamminghi furono i primi, questo sì, a preferirle l’olio che a sua volta permetteva l’applicazione della tecnica della velatura. Si trattava, per sommi capi, di stendere sulla superficie da dipingere pennellate semi-trasparenti di colore che sovrapposte l’una all’altra permettevano di raggiungere l’intensità e il tono desiderato (in pratica una gamma infinita). Andar di velatura era un lavoro molto lento e decisamente impegnativo, senza contare che necessitava per forza dell’impiego dei colori ad olio: molto più brillanti e luminosi delle tempere, colori ad olio e velatura insieme permettevano di ottenere effetti cromatici davvero notevoli per intensità e vividezza. Nell’ambito della pittura fiamminga, comunque, il colore non costituisce semplicemente una questione di tecnica, ma è strettamente legato al trattamento della luce.

Jan van Eyck, I coniugi Arnolfini (particolare del lampadario)

Jan Van Eyck e soci, infatti, tendono a porre una particolare attenzione alla provenienza della luce all’interno della composizione e agli effetti di questa luce sugli oggetti circostanti: mentre la luce rappresentata di norma è un tipo di luce diffusa, che è funzionale a rischiarare nel senso di vedere la scena, ma non proviene da nessuna parte in particolare, né ha per questo particolari effetti sui corpi o sugli oggetti rappresentati (fatto salvo per qualche tentativo piuttosto blando di trattamento chiaroscurale a suggerire volume e profondità), la luce fiamminga è una luce direzionata, così come la pittura fiamminga è una pittura d’interni (poi naturalmente esiste tutto un vasto repertorio di paesaggi: ma la pittura paesaggistica fiamminga è considerata un genere minore).

Petrus Christus, 1452, tavola, 85,5x54,8cm, Bruges, Museo Groeninge

Così la luce, provenendo nell’ambiente in cui si svolge la scena da una fonte ben precisa, solitamente una finestra o altra apertura architettonica, crea zone di luce ed ombra che a loro volta danno modo di esercitare quella trattazione analitica degli oggetti per forma e colore (appunto!) che, in parte caratteristica del Gotico, i Fiamminghi tendono ad esasperare in lenticolarità vera e propria.

Robert Campin, Pala di Werl (dettaglio), 1427, Madrid, Museo del Prado

Il trattamento dello spazio alla fiamminga, poi, è molto diverso da quello linear-prospettico dei Fiorentini. Pur arrivando a descrivere efficacemente un senso di prospettiva, di tridimensionalità e di profondità nello spazio, la resa prospettica dei Fiamminghi non risponde a regole geometriche strette come nella convenzione della prospettiva lineare caratterizzata da un unico punto di fuga, ma è di tipo intuitivo: la compresenza di più punti di fuga spesso provocano uno sbilanciamento tra l’ambiente rappresentato da un punto di vista alto e i personaggi “presi” invece troppo dal basso: il che genera un effetto di distorsione – alla prima occhiata qualcosa non va, ma non è facile dire cosa sia.

Robert Campin, Annunciazione di Merode, 1427 ca., olio su tavola, 64,1x117,8cm, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Le Annunciazioni fiamminghe presentano grossomodo tutte le caratteristiche iconologiche, allegoriche, i rimandi alla tradizione dei testi sacri ufficiali e apocrifi visti finora, ma ricollocano il tema in contesti domestici molto più reali (meglio caratterizzati come tali), contemporanei e vicini alla vita quotidiana del tempo. Fa un po’ eccezione l’Annunciazione di Petrus Christus qui sotto: tutto questo noi siamo abituati a vederlo, salvo per il fatto che qui la veduta è aerea:

Petrus Christus, 1425, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Solitamente Maria riceve l’annuncio dell’Angelo all’interno della propria camera da letto

Rogier van der Weyden, 1432, olio su tavola, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Oppure in “tinello”

Robert Campin, 1420 ca., tempera su legno, 61x63,7cm, Bruxelles, Museo Reale delle Belle Arti

Al posto della solita veste blu/azzurro e del manto color porpora, indossa frequentemente l’Abito Scuro della Giovane Fiamminga©

Gerard David, 1510, olio su tavola, Francoforte del Meno, Istituto Statale d'Arte

(vedi il ritratto della Signora Portinari)

Hans Memling, Moglie di Tommaso Portinari, 1470 ca, 44,1x34cm, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Naturalmente non sempre l’annuncio è ambientato all’interno della casa di Maria. Piuttosto di frequente la scena avviene all’interno di una cattedrale gotica (rimandando all’analogia simbolica tra lei e la Chiesa), come nell’annunciazione di Aix-en-Provence

Maestro dell'Annunciazione di Aix, 1445 ca., olio su tavola, 155x176cm, Aix-en-Provence, Chiesa di Santa Maria Maddalena

dove in alto a sinistra è possibile riconoscere Dio in Persona (di rado presente).