166 – From C- to Sea

Barbara Hepworth, Pelagos, 1946. Tate.

As so often, things have turned out to be more complicated than I expected – and that refers not just to today’s post, but also to what, exactly, I’m going to be doing in September. This much is settled: on Monday 22 August I will be giving a talk entitled Negative Spaces 3: Barbara Hepworth, as an introduction to the work of one of Britain’s greatest sculptors, and in parallel with the superb, touring exhibition Life and Work which is currently at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh. The following week, I will return to the Dulwich Picture Gallery, with Women Looking 2… Then, as I’m not sure what September holds, and I’m not sure how much travelling and seeing I’ll be able to do, I am going to revive a 4-part course I did for the National Gallery a while back. This will be different to my usual Monday talks, as each one will last 2 hours: for the four Mondays in September, (starting on the fifth) I aim to talk about Almost All of Michelangelo. You can find links to book for each individual talk on the diary page… But for today, I would like to look at one of my favourite Hepworth sculptures, and maybe untangle the strings that tie her to Naum Gabo, the subject of last week’s post.

Pelagos 1946 Dame Barbara Hepworth 1903-1975 Presented by the artist 1964 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/T00699

I’d like to start by taking you on a walk around the sculpture, without telling you anything about it, apart from what I see. Admittedly this is led by what I already know is there, but I’ll try to keep my observations to the purely visual. The title, Pelagos, is in the heading above, but I will tell you that Pelagos is one of the Greek words for ‘sea’: this might influence your own interpretation of what we are looking at, which I would strongly encourage. In some ways I want to try and approximate the possibilities of ‘slow looking’ – and at each stage you might want to consider what images or ideas – if any – the sculpture evokes for you. Starting, almost at random, from this particular viewpoint (above), we can see a hollowed out form, which is more-or-less spherical, sitting on top of a rectangular wooden base. As it happens, it is ovoid, but we’d probably need to measure it, or move around (as we shall), to make this clear. Like the base this ovoid is carved from wood, which is left visible on the exterior, while the interior is painted a light colour – white, or bluish-grey. There are two projections, or arms, which curve around, with squarish, but rounded ends. They are joined together seven times by a string which is threaded through holes in the two ‘tongues’.

Pelagos 1946 Dame Barbara Hepworth 1903-1975 Presented by the artist 1964 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/T00699

Moving to our right – anti-clockwise around the sculpture – it is perhaps more obvious that the arms are carved out of a single form, but presumably have a gap between them. Seen square on to the long side of the base, the arms reach the same distance across the central void. The exterior of the ovoid is polished, but not highly: it has a matte sheen.

Pelagos 1946 Dame Barbara Hepworth 1903-1975 Presented by the artist 1964 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/T00699

The arm which is further back here is far more curved than the other, which is why it appeared lower down in the previous image. The grain of the wood and its sheen are more evident here.

Pelagos 1946 Dame Barbara Hepworth 1903-1975 Presented by the artist 1964 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/T00699

Seen flat on to one of the short sides of the base, it is clearer that the two arms are curling round and in, and the distance between the two – which is not that great – becomes more obvious. What I described as the ‘lower’ arm is also the ‘upper one’, the result of its greater curvature – the other arm is far more ‘open’, or less curved. The long diagonal formed by the light interior – from top left to bottom right here – implies that the right side of the sculpture (seen from this point of view) appears more open. At the top, between the arms, the paint looks to be pale blue, whereas below and to the right it looks lighter: this is presumably the effect of the shadow higher up.

Pelagos 1946 Dame Barbara Hepworth 1903-1975 Presented by the artist 1964 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/T00699

This side of the sculpture is indeed more open, and the painted interior forms a backdrop to the wood of more convoluted arm. The smooth curves of the interior overlap to create a point: remember this in relationship to the drawing which I will show you below.

Pelagos 1946 Dame Barbara Hepworth 1903-1975 Presented by the artist 1964 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/T00699

Seen flat on to the second long side of the base, the negative space created by the two arms takes on its full value, and could be seen as being held in place by the arms. The more open one is hardly visible here, although the strings indicate its position. The more convoluted arm defines three concentric loops – the wooden exterior, the border between the wood and the paint, and the negative space within the paint. It has to be said that Hepworth herself might not have been too keen on these particular photographs – placing the sculpture against a plain, white background takes away the value of the space: something should be seen through every hole. She frequently photographed her sculptures – even the wooden ones – in her garden, thus giving them a place in the world and in our appreciation of it. I’ll leave the last two images for you to describe for yourselves.

Pelagos 1946 Dame Barbara Hepworth 1903-1975 Presented by the artist 1964 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/T00699
Pelagos 1946 Dame Barbara Hepworth 1903-1975 Presented by the artist 1964 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/T00699

More about the physicality of the sculpture: the materials are given, both on the Tate website and in Eleanor Clayton’s superb book Barbara Hepworth: Art & Life (which accompanies the exhibition) as ‘Elm and strings on oak base’. There is no mention of the paint, even though a work from more-or-less the same period, Wave, is described as being made of ‘wood, paint and string’. The paint was originally pale blue, which presumably relates to the title, Pelagos, or ‘Sea’. However, Hepworth often had problems with blue paint, as it often faded. In the end she decided that the matte quality of the paint was more important than the colour, contrasting as it did with the sheen of the wood. At one point the interior was even repainted white. Eleanor Clayton, who is also the curator of the exhibition, tells us, when speaking of Wave, that, ‘The strings are fishing line, connecting materially with the sea and the human community whose livelihoods are bound up with this elemental force’. Given that our sculpture is also called ‘sea’ – albeit in Greek – I am sure that fishing line was used again. It is undoubtedly relevant that Hepworth was living in Cornwall, and near to the coast, at the time the sculpture was made. She described the view from her studio, ‘looking straight towards the horizon of the sea and enfolded (but with always the escape for the eye straight out to the Atlantic) by the arms of the land to the left and right of me’ – which makes Pelagos look less like an abstract sculpture than an accurate description of the landscape. Indeed, Hepworth description was completed with the phrase, ‘I have used this idea in Pelagos’.

In addition to this landscape-inspired interpretation of the sculpture, a statement written for a retrospective exhibition of her work in 1954 – eight years after Pelagos was made – includes Hepworth’s summation of three different ‘types’ of sculpture which had long been important to her. Of these, the third was,

… ‘the closed form’, such as the oval, spherical or pierced form (sometimes incorporating colour) which translates for me the association of meaning of gesture in landscape; in the repose of say a mother & child, or the feeling of the embrace of living things, either in nature or in the human spirit.

So, as well as being an image of the landscape, it is also an expression of the relationship between people. Perhaps the two arms of the sculpture could be seen as two arms reaching around a central space, embracing a void – like the gap that parents feel when children leave them. Look back at the pictures above – there is one I find particularly reminiscent of a ‘mother & child’, and I’d be interested to hear if you see that too. But where do the strings fit into this? Well, we all have invisible ties to people and places. Hepworth herself stated that they represent ‘the tension I felt between myself and the sea, the wind or the hills,’ but, like everything else, they are open to more than one interpretation, and refer to more than one ‘tension’. It is all, in some way, related to our experience here on Earth. For this very reason, the base is important. It is not a subsidiary element, but an essential part of the sculpture – the ovoid form, the arms, the strings – everything is seen in relationship to this flat rectangle, everything is part of a specific environment.  

And what of the question hanging over from last week? What is the relationship to the work of Russian Constructivist Naum Gabo? Well, it’s simply the string really. As I said last week, Gabo arrived in London in 1935, and moved to Carbis Bay in Cornwall shortly after his friends Barbara Hepworth and her husband Ben Nicholson moved there in 1939. It was at that point that he started using nylon thread in his sculptures. The first was Linear Construction No. 1 of 1942-3. I included an illustration last week, but here it is again for good measure.

Linear Construction No. 1 1942-3 Naum Gabo 1890-1977 Presented by Miss Madge Pulsford 1958 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/T00191

There are several versions and variants of this piece, all of which seem to have more or less the same date. It is called ‘linear’ construction, because of the straight lines made by the nylon filament. Seen together, these become tangents to a virtual curved line. In the 1930s Hepworth and Nicholson became active members of the European avant garde, and became particularly associated with the Constructivist movement. In 1937 the book Circle: International Survey of Constructivist Art was published in London. Its editors were none other than Naum Gabo and Ben Nicholson, together with architect Leslie Martin, while Hepworth designed the layout, as well as being responsible for the production of the book and writing one of the essays. At the time her sculptures had names like Three Forms (1935), Ball, Plane and Hole (1936) and Pierced Hemisphere (1937) – entirely abstract titles. On moving to Carbis Bay in 1939 things started to change. In part, this was the result of the war – materials were not readily available, and she was left with full responsibility for looking after her four children, leaving precious little time to work – and precious little material to work with. When she could grab a moment she would draw. Here, for example, is Oval Form No. 2, from 1942:

Many of the drawings executed at this time were titled Drawing for Sculpture. These were not plans for sculptures as such, but explorations of the possibilities of three dimensional forms. I have chosen this example because it considers the inner geometry of an oval, as many of them do. If you look back, you’ll see that some of the overlapping curves in this drawing are not unlike some of the views of Pelagos above. Notice how, in a Constructivist way, she builds the drawings from separate lines and geometric shapes. Notice too, that two of the curves are constructed from overlapping straight lines. There is every possibility that this work precedes Gabo’s sculpture (the drawing is dated 1942, Linear Construction No. 1 is 1942-3), rather than being inspired by it. As it happens, there are plenty of drawings from 1941 using similar ideas. And anyway, Hepworth used string for the first time in a piece called Sculpture with Colour (Deep Blue and Red), which she completed in 1940. So maybe it is not Gabo influencing Hepworth, but the other way round? However, I should show you two other works, both by Gabo: Sphere Construction of a Fountain and Construction in Space (Crystal), dated 1937 and 1937-9 respectively.

The former, as far as I am aware, has not survived, while the latter is just about holding on in the Tate collection. Gabo used new materials, not all of which have stood the test of time. Cellulose acetate in particular – from which these two were made – is not as stable as was initially believed. Both use threads of some form. Gabo had also incised lines into his plastics. He didn’t start using nylon thread until 1939, perhaps, but ‘lines’ had been an element of his work for some time before this. What we are seeing is a shared idea, a common interest, a new way of defining space through line, and, as in one of the interpretations of Pelagos, the fact that both Hepworth and Gabo used ‘string’ of one form or another is as much an indicator of their artistic relationship as anything else. However, it is also an indicator of the differences between them. Hepworth was profoundly affected by living in Cornwall, and, having been an avid Constructivist in London, in 1946 she wrote to her friend Margaret Gardiner, ‘I hope my work will always be constructive but I don’t want to be called a “c-ist” any more than “Nicholson”’. By the time she was fully settled into Cornwall, the titles of her works changed: Wave (1943-4), Landscape Sculpture (1944) and Pelagos (1946) are just three examples. Her art was always part and parcel of her lived experience – hence the title of Eleanor Clayton’s book and exhibition – and that applies to the works with abstract titles as well as those with more lyrical, picturesque names. And there are plenty more! On Monday I’m planning to talk about several which are not in the Edinburgh exhibition, hence my comment in the first paragraph that my talk is ‘in parallel’ with the exhibition, rather than an introduction to it, as other talks in this series have been… just so you’re warned!

165 – Sculpture Ban

Naum Gabo, Revolving Torsion, Fountain, 1972-3. Tate, on loan to St Thomas’ Hospital, London.

OK, I’m not suggesting that art has been censored here, but as a fantastic embodiment of Naum Gabo’s art, his Revolving Torsion, Fountain, on long term loan from Tate to St Thomas’ Hospital, has probably been switched off in line with the hosepipe bans which are (or should be) in place by now, given the imminent, if not current, drought. It is, after all, a fountain, and as much as fountains are highly decorative, they are also a profligate use of water. Having said that, when I have walked over Westminster Bridge and past St Thomas’, the fountain has only sometimes been working, but I don’t know if there is any rhyme or reason for this. I want to look at it today only partly because I am interested in the use of water as a sculptural medium, but also because its ethos is related to the work of Barbara Hepworth, the subject of my next talk (Monday 22 August at 6pm). The following week I will return to Dulwich Picture Gallery’s exhibition, The Woman in the Window, for the cut-price part 2 of my introduction Women Looking… I’m also looking forward to more talks ‘in person’ at the National Gallery for Art History Abroad. They will introduce the Winslow Homer and Lucien Freud exhibitions, on 23 September and 20 October respectively, and you can read more about those on the diary page of my website. I will repeat these talks online for those who aren’t free on those dates, or can’t make it to London, and will let you know the dates as soon as they are fixed. Sadly I can no long go on the trip to Porto this year, but AHA will be announcing next year’s tour schedule soon.

So just what is it about this fountain that is relevant to Barbara Hepworth? Before we can answer that, it would help to look at Gabo’s work, so that we know what we are talking about. Resting on a circular base is a geometric, stainless steel framework defined by straight and curvilinear elements. Numerous jets of water issue from the inner curves of the form, projecting both into and out of the sculptural structure. These jets create lines in space, a bit like a three-dimensional drawing, and they break into individual droplets, an impressionistic spray. The concave unit which faces towards us in this photograph is made up of three identical elements, almost triangular, but with the same segment of a circle cut out of each, which are welded together along the straight edges. There are more units exactly the same which go together to form a fourth projecting axis at the back of the framework. At the top the two projecting elements – flared, and looking a little like arrow heads – are braced by a slim, curving piece which you might just be able to see has a kink in it. There is a similar brace at right-angles to this one going across the bottom of the form. The framework is supported by two elements which spiral up from the circular base: the nearest lower projection is held up by one which comes in from the bottom left, and the back lower projection is supported by a unit which starts just behind the front centre (from this point of view) and slopes up to the right of the base. Of course, the best way to see this framework would be to walk around it, but it would take a lot to get you all there. However, I can help by showing you a photograph of a sculpture Gabo made some 35-40 years early, which is also part of Tate’s collection:Torsion, from 1928-36.

Torsion 1928-36 Naum Gabo 1890-1977 Presented by the artist 1977 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/T02146

Made out of plastics (polymethyl methacrylate and cellulose acetate, according to Tate’s website), the sculpture espouses Gabo’s belief in using modern materials for a modern age. As most of the materials are transparent, it allows us to see the whole form, without the sculpture itself getting in the way, with the reflection and refraction of light – off and through the transparent form – turning the edges of the piece into a three-dimensional drawing, just like the jets of water in the fountain. The form of the sculpture is essentially the same as that of the fountain, with four of the cut-out triangular elements stuck together, creating four of the arrow-head projections. In this work we can see that the kink in the slim braces at the top and bottom are made of rectangular elements – opaque black here – and that, like the braces, the two black rectangles are at 90˚ to one another. The sculpture – and fountain – use a form of  symmetry regularly adopted by Gabo. For me, the best way to explain it is to ask you to touch the tips of your fingers and thumbs together so that your hands form a broad, curving dome, then twist one hand a bit towards you and the other a bit away. You could then put them together so that they meet between thumb and forefinger – but don’t. This is the symmetry: a mirror image with a 90 degree rotation. It sounds rather mathematical – and it is. The beauty of the geometry, and its mapping of space, is exactly what Gabo wanted. As he said in his Realistic Manifesto in 1920, ‘we construct our work as the universe constructs its own, as the engineer constructs his bridges, as the mathematician his formula of the orbits’.

Head No. 2 1916, enlarged version 1964 Naum Gabo 1890-1977 Purchased 1972 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/T01520

In 1916 he had made his Head No. 2 from cardboard, but this version (like everything else today, in the Tate collection) is an enlargement of the original, made in 1964 from cor-ten steel. The shape and volume of the head are mapped out by the edges of two-dimensional planar elements. The fact that it is put together – rather than carved or modelled – was also an innovation: Gabo was one of the first ‘Constructivists’, putting their works together, as the name suggests, from separate elements. He published the Realistic Manifesto with his brother, Antoine Pevsner (Gabo had changed his name to avoid confusion), and as part of it they established five ‘fundamental principals’. In the fourth they stated, ‘We renounce in sculpture, the mass as a sculptural element… we take four planes and we construct with them the same volume as of four tons of mass’. The volume that Head No. 2 occupies is not defined by the solid mass of, say, marble or bronze, but by the planes from which it is constructed. It was the definition of space which really interested them. They had already covered this in their third principal: ‘We renounce volume as a pictorial and plastic form of space; one cannot measure Space in volumes as one cannot measure liquid in yards: look at our space. . . what is it if not one continuous depth?’ Admittedly, with Head No. 2 the depth is not continuous – the planes of cardboard (1916) or steel (1964) get in the way. Not so with the plastic of Torsion, where the transparency allows you to see the continuous space, and to appreciate fully the volume which the piece occupies.

Linear Construction No. 1 1942-3 Naum Gabo 1890-1977 Presented by Miss Madge Pulsford 1958 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/T00191

This can also be seen in Tate’s Linear Construction No. 1 of 1942-3. Made from the same colourless transparent plastic as Torsion (polymethyl methacrylate), it also utilises nylon thread, and embodies Herbert Read’s statement that Gabo’s work hovered ‘between the visible and the invisible’. Gabo was born Naum Pevsner in Briansk, Russia in 1890. Staring in 1910 he studied medicine, and then natural sciences, and then engineering in Munich, where he met fellow-Russian Wassily Kandinsky and was intrigued by the possibilities of abstract art: he started making his constructions in 1915. He returned to Russia after the Revolution in 1917 in the hope that they would welcome his revolutionary art, but inevitably this was not to be. He left for Berlin in 1922 and a decade later headed to Paris, then on to London in 1935. Among other artists, he got to know Barbara Hepworth and her second husband Ben Nicholson, following them to Cornwall in 1939, thus escaping the capital as the nation was on the brink of war. The year after the allied victory Gabo left for the States, which is where he died in 1977. It was shortly after his arrival in Carbis Bay – very close to the more artistically ‘famous’ St Ives – that he started using nylon thread, the straight lines defining curves in space in a similar way to the definition of space itself by the edges of the planes in Head No. 2.

When looking back to Revolving Torsion, Fountain all of these ideas coalesce: the construction of a sculpture from separate elements; the definition of its volume by the edges of these elements; an appreciation of the continuity of space through, in, and around the sculpture; the jets of water creating their own, complex and changing lines as the wind, weather, and water pressure also change, in many ways equivalent to the nylon threads. And yes, the water pressure does – or should – change. From a still photograph you wouldn’t be able to tell, but the title gives a clue: this is not a static piece. Unlike Torsion, the plastic embodiment of this form from 1928-36, this is Revolving Torsion, and it does – or should – revolve a full 360˚every ten minutes. At the same time the pressure of the water – and so the projection of the jets – decreases to a minimum and returns to full every 10 minutes, two cycles of change which are synchronised.

Torsion (Project for a Fountain) 1960-4 Naum Gabo 1890-1977 Presented by the artist through the American Federation of Arts 1969 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/T01171

The project for a fountain went back to the 1960s. As yet another of its remarkable collection of Gabo’s works, Tate also holds Torsion (Project for a Fountain), 1960-4. Again, the precise forms of the sculpture are far clearer here than in the photograph of the fountain, which is helpful. In 1968, four years after this maquette was completed, the then director of The Tate Gallery (as it was originally called) Sir Norman Reid, visited Gabo in his studio in the States. Gabo told him about the project, and showed him this model. Long story short: Reid made it happen. Alistair MacAlpine, since the age of 21 a director of the engineering and construction firm Sir Robert McAlpine and Sons (founded by his great-grandfather) had by this time reached the grand old age of 26. He agreed to cover all of the costs. The firm drew up detailed plans, the fountain was constructed by Stainless Metalcraft Ltd between 1972-73, and on completion McAlpine gifted it to The Tate Gallery. Two years later it was installed in its present position outside St Thomas’ Hospital, where, since 2016, it has rejoiced in its new status as a Grade II listed building.

Back in 1920 the Realistic Manifesto had proclaimed:

We say . . .
Space and time are re-born to us today.
Space and time are the only forms on which life is built and hence art must be constructed.

In 1905 Einstein had published two articles on the Theory of Special Relativity. One of the things this theory tells us is that time is a fourth dimension. Artists tried to include the fourth dimension in many ways, just as the Renaissance had developed perspective to show the third. Kinetic sculptures – sculptures which move – were just one of these strategies.

Kinetic Construction (Standing Wave) 1919-20, replica 1985 Naum Gabo 1890-1977 Presented by the artist through the American Federation of Arts 1966 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/T00827

Gabo had introduced movement, and therefore time, with his sculpture Kinetic Construction (Standing Wave) of 1919-20, just before the publication of the Realistic Manifesto itself (this photograph is of a replica from 1985). It is made from a steel rod – a solid, straight line. It is only its motion, created by a motor in the base, which makes it look curved, and almost transparent. It would be another fifty years before an equally eloquent statement of Gabo’s radical ideas would be realised with the creation of this magnificent fountain.  It may seem sadly inappropriate now, during a time of drought, but let’s hope it won’t last long… However, none of this answers my earlier question: what relevance does this have for Hepworth? Well, you’ll have to read next week’s blog… or come to the talk on Monday, 22 August!

164 – Nude, with clothes…

Glyn Philpot, A Student with a Book, 1920. Ömer Koç Collection.

Glyn Philpot is one of those artists who should never have been forgotten. There’s a long discussion in ‘The History of Art’ which asks who the last ‘Old Master’ was – but of course it’s a question which has no answer. There is also a long discussion about whether the term ‘Old Master’ really has any validity nowadays. However, you could just conceivably argue that one answer to the first question would actually be ‘Glyn Philpot’. There is certainly no doubt that for the two thirds of his career he was consciously working in the tradition of the Old Masters. Not only did he have the most brilliant technique, but he also had a superb understanding of their work – as today’s painting demonstrates. The current exhibition at the Pallant House Gallery in Chichester – the first retrospective of his work in 38 years – is a brilliant introduction to the artist and his career, and I’m looking forward to talking about it this Monday, 8 August at 6pm, as part of my series Looking in Different Ways, in a talk entitled Looking at Men. Two weeks later, and still part of that series, there will be an introduction to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art’s comprehensive exhibition Barbara Hepworth, which fits into my subseries Negative Spaces. I thought talks for the summer would end there, but there was so much material in the Dulwich Picture Gallery exhibition Reframed: The Woman in the Window, I ran out of time last week, and decided to do a cut-price sequel, Women Looking 2 – which will be on Monday 29 August at 6pm. All of these exhibitions are accompanied by superb books, rather than a ‘traditional’ catalogue. Chichester has published a monograph on Glyn Philpot – the first in 71 years – written by the curator of the exhibition, Simon Martin, who is also the director of the Pallant House Gallery – none of which is a coincidence. I can recommend it very highly – although it came out after I’d published a list of The best recent exhibition catalogues with Shepherd, a new book sales website, which might interest you.

Today’s painting was exhibited in 1920 under the title A Student with a Book next to another, The Rice Family. The student looks similar in appearance and dress to Mr and Mrs Rice’s son Bernard, and so it has long been assumed that he was the model for this work. The family had recently arrived in England from Austria: Bernard was born in 1900 in Innsbruck, and had studied drawing, painting and wood engraving even before arriving in London. The family had been interned in Austria during the First World War, and, according to the exhibition label for this painting, ‘Philpot found them accommodation in London and helped Rice to secure a place at Westminster School of Art’. Bernard went on to study at the Royal Academy Schools, but didn’t hang around: in 1922 he left for Yugoslavia, and continued to travel for much of his life, not dying until 1998.

Rice sits on a plain wooden table with a large book held open on his lap between the thumb and forefinger of each hand. Visible on the right hand page – the one which has more visual prominence when leafing through – is a monochrome image, presumably a black and white engraving. But then the painting as a whole is more-or-less monochrome, moving through a palette of ivory, creams and browns to black, with nothing quite as bright as high white, or even as dark as the deepest black. It is the palette you would associate with the late works of Leonardo, Rembrandt or Caravaggio, although the clarity of depiction is closer to the earlier, but mature phase, of the third of these. The sitter looks over his left shoulder, creating a strong twist through the body, given that his legs are angled to our left, and his head to our right. He doesn’t appear to be looking at anything, though, but remains deep in thought, maybe contemplating what he had been looking at in the book, or planning something, or maybe even musing on the past – we are not told: this, I think, is part of the allure of the work for me.

At the back right corner of the table is a still life arrangement of rectangular objects: a cuboid box with a lid and a book with a pale cover on which rests a thin, cream-coloured booklet. There is a pencil just in front of the objects, and a piece of paper tucked under the book – together with the book Rice is holding, these can be seen as some of the tools of a student artist. Formally they are also an abstraction of Rice himself – the box is equivalent to his torso, while the booklet resting on the pale book is not unlike the larger open book resting on the student’s lap. As well as echoing Rice’s form, these details also close off the composition, making sure that our eyes don’t follow his gaze. By placing the sitter’s head in the centre of the painting Philpot creates a strong pyramidal composition – a typical construction of the Renaissance and Baroque.

Philpot was a keen observer of fashion, and interested in details of clothing of any sort. The attention he pays to the turned-back left cuff of Rice’s shirt is typical, as is the precise delineation of the folds of the thin cotton of the sleeves. You should see Siegfried Sassoon’s collar in another portrait! The artist was also keenly aware of human anatomy – particularly male anatomy – but apart from his own personal interest in the subject, this was also something he’d learnt from another artist. If you look at the very specific inflection of the right wrist, which is maybe slightly exaggerated, you may recognise the major influence on this painting. But then, if you can work out what the illustration in the book represents, the inspiration is made explicit.

It’s one of Michelangelo’s Ignudi, the naked men who sit atop the imagined continuation of the walls of the Sistine Chapel and frame the outer edges of the ceiling. As nudes they must be in a state of grace (Adam and Eve only started wearing clothes after the fall), and I’ve always assumed they are Michelangelo’s representation of angels. Philpot – and the student Bernard Rice – would both have been interested in the work of the great Renaissance master, but maybe, as curator Simon Martin suggests on the exhibition label, it was also ‘a covert expression of [Philpot’s] interest in the male nude’. Even if this is the case, does that say anything about Bernard Rice? To be honest, it doesn’t really have to, given that this is not a portrait, but a character study, and doesn’t seem to have left Philpot’s possession during his lifetime. However, as Martin points out in the book, this particular ignudo also appears in the background of the Portrait of Montague Rendall, Headmaster of Winchester College – admittedly in an incredibly shadowy form.

The painting to our left of Rendall is far clearer – the prophet Daniel, also from the Sistine, who just happens to be seated above the head of our ignudo, if on the other side of the chapel (which is not far…). Given that Rendall was, presumably, a far more ‘public’ figure than Rice, it seems surprising to me that Philpot might risk expressing his own personal interests in the male form – strictly illegal if acted upon, of course – in this portrait. This in itself might explain why the representation of the ignudo is so unclear. But why choose it in the first place? There are plenty of bold, female figures to choose from: the five Sybils who alternate with the prophets, for example. It would help to know more about Rendall – or Rice, for that matter – and I’m afraid I’m still writing these posts on an extremely ad hoc basis, gradually building up endless possibilities for future research. However, I have tracked down what I believe to be an entry from the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, which was included on a web entry of imprecise nature. Here are just a few details. Having been awarded a first class degree in Classics at Cambridge in 1887, two years later Rendall ‘…made the first of many journeys abroad to study the masterpieces of continental art, and laid the foundations of his lifelong enthusiasm for medieval and Renaissance Italian painting. In the same year he was appointed to the staff of Winchester College.’ This could, of course, explain everything. A ‘lifelong enthusiasm for… Renaissance Italian painting’ would more than justify the inclusion of two details from the Sistine Chapel. However, the biography also makes reference to ‘his sensitive taste’, and states that he was ‘Almost resolutely unmarried’. I could be wrong to focus in on these phrases, but, as far as I’m aware, sensitivity was not a quality greatly prized in men outside of the 18th and 21st centuries, and for many years, when sexual acts between men were illegal (and for a couple of decades after they weren’t) the term ‘confirmed bachelor’ in obituaries would have been interpreted by anyone even slightly in the know as a euphemism for ‘homosexual’. It’s not as if Philpot’s own tastes were unknown. He was a member of the Official War Artists Scheme during the First World War, when he asked if could paint soldiers bathing – as Michelangelo had intended to – but his request was denied. ‘I will bet anything that Philpot suggested it because it gave him the opportunity of painting the nude,’ according to one official. There are other references in Rendall’s biography which I find intriguing, but my reasons for choosing them could all too easily be misinterpreted by the ill-disposed. Of course, I could be imagining things. It could simply be a love of the work of Michelangelo that Philpot shared with Rendall… but why include the ignudo in the first place, and then go on to disguise it? And why choose Daniel, rather than any other prophet or sybil? I’m not sure there’s any way of answering the latter question. All I know about Daniel (without re-reading the book) is that he was protected by God, and good at languages. The first could possibly be said of Rendall, and the second was certainly true. In later life he was a trustee of the BBC, and devised its motto ‘Nation shall speak peace unto Nation’, for example. Daniel was also a just judge, which would be perfect for applying discipline in a school. As the biography states, ‘In college Rendall upheld high moral standards but softened any severity by his natural sympathy for boys.’  It was Daniel who cleared Susannah of the accusations of the elders, after they had spied on her while she was bathing naked. But we must be wary of drawing too many conclusions about someone who condemned looking on naked women: we could so easily be led up the wrong garden path.

Whatever the reasons for including Daniel, or this particular ignudo, Philpot really did understand Michelangelo’s work. I remain entirely convinced that I recognise the pose of Bernard Rice. Indeed, I’ve been trying to pin it down, to see if it has an exact source, but as far as I can see it doesn’t.

Overall it is remarkably similar to the Delphic Sibyl, who also has her knees to our left, whilst looking over her left shoulder to our right. The arms are in a different position, perhaps, but if you were to lift her right arm and lower the left, they wouldn’t be far off.

I suspect I might have recognised the inflection of Rice’s right wrist from Adam’s – or Rice’s right arm as a whole from Adam’s left, stretched out towards God the Father. But then, it’s not that different from the left arm of the ignudo above, either. There is no exact source for this pose (although I am increasingly convinced that the Delphic Sibyl is a good fit), but the position of the body as a whole and the articulation of every single joint speaks of a thorough understanding of Michelangelo’s work, which has been seen, studied, appreciated, absorbed, digested, and then remade in a new way. The only real difference is in the palette – nothing like the lucid and luminous colouring of Michelangelo. But even here Philpot is being remarkably sophisticated, and subtle, I think. Michelangelo is represented in Rice’s book by a black and white engraving. Modelled on elements derived from similar reproductions, the student appears to us in all his full, three-dimensional, monochrome splendour, every bit a sculptural as a Michelangelo painting, but with the tones of the print. This is Michelangelo remade for the neo-classicism of the 1920s, a trend which has been widely ignored, unless espoused by an acknowledged master such as Picasso – until recently, that is, and with Pallant House at the forefront of its rehabilitation. However, a decade after Bernard Rice was painted, Philpot would have his own ‘Picasso’ moment. He changed direction completely, and started to embrace modernism in his own, remarkable, idiosyncratic way. But to learn more about that you would need to see the exhibition, read the book, or come to my talk on Monday! Keep looking for those sources…

163 – Mary, multi-tasking

Dirk Bouts, The Virgin and Child, c. 1465. National Gallery, London.

I love it when I go to an exhibition which makes me think about something in a completely new way – or for that matter, which makes me look at something differently, or even properly, for the first time. That is certainly what happened with the subject of today’s post. There are so many paintings of the Virgin and Child in the National Gallery that I’m afraid this one has never really had a look in. However, it features in the Dulwich Picture Gallery exhibition, Reframed: The Woman in the Window, which will be the subject of my talk this Monday, 25 July at 6pm, Women Looking. It is one of relatively few religious images included in a diverse and fascinating display, and grabbed my attention straight off: it turns out to be a truly great and surprisingly complex painting! The exhibition itself is superb, and constitutes a prime example of Looking in Different Ways – the title of my current series of talks – which will continue on 8 August with Looking at Men: The Art of Glyn Philpot and conclude with Negative Spaces 3: Barbara Hepworth, on 22 August. But back to Bouts.

Dirk Bouts, The Virgin and Child, about 1465. Oil with egg tempera on oak, 37.1 x 27.6 cm. https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/NG2595

What better choice for an exhibition entitled The Woman in the Window? After all, The Virgin and Child appear to us through one window, and there is a second in the background – an idea which is elucidated, along with so much else, in the exhibition’s thoroughly researched and brilliantly written catalogue by curator Jennifer Sliwka. The Christ Child sits on a cushion on the window sill, supported by his mother’s left hand, his legs and back echoing the horizontal sill and vertical frame respectively. Mary proffers her breast for him to feed, and looks down tenderly, swathed in her traditional blue mantle. A red cloth of gold hangs over the wall, and on the left the second window looks out on the surrounding countryside, and a not-too-distant city.

What role does Mary fulfil in this painting? Primarily, of course, she is the mother of Jesus – or, to give her the title bestowed unequivocally by the Council of Ephesus in 431, Theotokos, the Mother of God. This not only defines Mary’s status, but also confirms Jesus’s divinity. Her role as mother is demonstrated through her act of feeding, although, given that it was common for members of the moneyed classes to employ wet nurses to suckle their babies, Mary’s nurturing and care of her own child would have been doubly significant. Her ‘sacrifice’ in this regard also became equated with Jesus’s care for us. In the same way that Mary fed Christ from her breast, the wound in his side, from which blood and water flowed when pierced with a spear at the crucifixion (John 19:34), feeds us spiritually.

As well as Mother of God, Bouts also shows Mary as Queen of Heaven. The red cloth in the background is the same as that hung behind her when enthroned. It is a cloth of honour, used to enhance the status of medieval monarchs and serving to emphasize their physical position while holding court. It can also include a canopy, or baldachin, which effectively crowns the throne, as it does in the National Gallery’s Donne Triptych by Hans Memling. However, when ‘used’ as the cloth of honour, the fabric would be directly behind the monarch. Here it is hung to one side, suggesting that ‘Queen of Heaven’ is just one of several roles that Mary performs. The green trim with which the cloth is hemmed hangs on the central axis of the painting, implying that the cloth takes up half of the background – but notice that the framing is not symmetrical. In the foreground the light comes into the window from above and from the left: the right inner face of the window frame is well lit. The joints between the stones from which it is constructed are angled differently, telling us that Bouts had a good sense of spatial recession, even if this isn’t a geometrically consistent perspectival system. Nevertheless, these lines lead our eye into the painting, and into a space made holy by the presence of mother and child. The underside of the frame at the top, and the inner side on the left, are both in shadow. On the left there is less of the frame visible than on the right, suggesting that our view point is to the left of centre, as if we are directly in front of Mary, who is likewise positioned slightly to the left.

The window at the back is also important. The inside of the frame and its tracery are in shadow (which is not surprising, given that they are ‘inside’). I can’t help myself seeing the shape of the cross in those dark lines. The light would appear to come from the right here, but we can’t see the other side of the tracery to see if it is lighter or darker, so it is not necessarily inconsistent. As so often in paintings of this time (and so, one would assume, contemporary houses) there is glass in the upper sections of the window, but not in the lower (see, for example, the Arnolfini Portrait). The shutters are perfectly defined, and you can even tell that, in bad weather, the lower shutters would be closed first, and then the upper ones shut over them, if you wanted to keep out the light as well as the cold and rain. Rust streaks down from the iron nails in the lower panels. This detail is, I suspect, purely naturalistic, and helps up to believe in the setting. The glass too, is an example of naturalism, but it is also symbolic: light passes through glass without the glass breaking. In the same way, Jesus, both God and Man, passed through Mary, and she remained virgo intacta – intact, unbroken. Glass, and light passing through glass, is symbolic of Mary’s virginity. One of the many epithets applied to her was fenestra crystallina – ‘the crystal clear window’. Placing her blue mantle next to the (anachronistic) church tower, blue as a result of atmospheric perspective, and reaching up to the deeper blue of the zenith, helps to emphasize Mary’s role as Queen of Heaven. But it also, perhaps, suggests another role – Ecclesia, a personification of The Church.

Bouts was not stupid. He painted the blue with the most expensive pigment, ultramarine, but he didn’t waste it. He painted it over a ground layer of azurite, a far cheaper form of blue. This was standard practice, to make the painting look good, but not to be too costly. And he didn’t use gold for the cloth of gold, although this was as much a display of painterly skill as anything else. I can see four different colours there: a ground layer of brown, and then, over the stylised leaves, cross-hatching of a creamy-butterscotch colour. The fruits are stylised pomegranates – I know, they really don’t look much like pomegranates, but comparison with other painted fabrics – not to mention real fabrics – show different degrees of stylisation. They appear to have been woven in a different way to the leaves, and rather than cross hatching Bouts has applied texture with dots, both orangey-brown and a light cream. Seen this close up the vertical line of light cream dots looks unconvincing – but seen from a distance it becomes clear that here, as across the whole surface, the fabric is creased by careful, regular folds. Elsewhere, as below the line of dots, it is the contrast of light and dark which defines the folding.

Jesus is not sitting directly on the cushion, but on a white cloth, held next to his hip by Mary’s hand. This may well be his swaddling, but it is inevitably reminiscent of the shroud to come. That’s the third reference to his death, by the way. The first was Mary’s breast, with its echo of Jesus’s wound, the second was the cross formed by the transom of the rear window. And there is a fourth. Look at the delicate way in which Bouts has painted the creases of the baby’s hands and feet. In 33 years – more or less – they will be pierced with nails. Even as an infant he is showing us his hands much as he will as in some versions of the Man of Sorrows which show his wounds post-crucifixion. We are never allowed to forget why this fragile infant has come to earth. And yet, I find his expression in this painting delightful, if not entirely easy to define. Is he slightly sleepy? And content, maybe, having eaten? I can almost imagine a gurgle.

The light coming from the left casts a shadow on the inside of the front window frame – the edge of his head and his elbow – and indeed, the light on his body is beautifully painted. Look at the way his left hand stands out against the fully illuminated arm behind it, for example, or the subtly varied shadows on the different joints of the fingers of his right hand. Look, too, at the gentle pressure applied by Mary’s fingers on his stomach, and on her own breast, which even wrinkles slightly – such delicacy of depiction!

Dirk Bouts, Portrait of a Man (Jan van Winckele?), 1462. https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/NG943

The composition of The Virgin and Child is not unlike a standard formulation for portraiture. Here is Bouts’ own Portrait of a Man from 1462 (the date is ‘carved’ into the wall at the top right) also in the National Gallery. His arms are firmly placed on a window sill, although in this case there is no surface visible: it would have been represented by the original frame of the painting, which no longer survives. We know that he is at a window, though, as the light casts a shadow of his head on the back wall – in the same way that Jesus’s shadow is cast onto the frame in today’s painting. There is also a window in the background, with a similar view, apart from having a distant town, rather than nearby city. However, this window has no tracery. It is more modest than that at the back of Mary’s house, although similar, perhaps, to the foreground window through which we see her. By painting The Virgin and Child with the same formulation as a portrait, Bouts makes them, too, look like they are sitting for a portrait, thus making them look more ‘real’. Not only are they appearing to us in the window, but they are very much a part of our world, the world we live in and see around us. But why did Bouts feel compelled to paint the window frame, when the picture frame could have fulfilled the same function, as it would have done in the portrait?

This is not the original frame – although it is a style that was common for paintings of this period. However, we don’t know if the original frame was painted: many were (for example, the Portrait of a Man by Jan van Eyck in the National Gallery). And if it was, it makes sense that, rather than being cut off by the frame, the white cloth hanging below Jesus may have hung over the frame – as if it were a physical connection between us and the divine. Mary is seen as the Mother of God, the Crystal Clear Window, Ecclesia, and the Queen of Heaven – the last role emphasized by the cloth of honour hanging in the background. Jesus sits on a green cloth of gold cushion, the underside of which is red – the same red as the cloth of honour. But then, the green of the cushion is the same colour as the green trim of the cloth, centrally located and seen only at the very top of the painting, where it leads our eye back down and connects to the cushion. If Mary is Queen of Heaven, Jesus, sitting on inversely coloured fabric, is its King, making Mary the Sponsa Christi or Bride of Christ. This is a title now commonly given to consecrated women whose life is dedicated to Jesus, but it also relates to the interpretation of that most intriguing of Jewish texts, the Song of Songs, or Song of Solomon, long seen by Christian theologians as an allegory of the love of the Church for Christ – or, for that matter, of the mystical marriage of Christ and the Virgin, as King and Queen of Heaven. In that light, Chapter 2, verse 9 is of particular interest:

My beloved is like a roe or a young hart: behold, he standeth behind our wall, he looketh forth at the windows, shewing himself through the lattice.

Admittedly the rich language of the King James Version is not at its clearest here, but the implication is that the bridegroom (Christ, in the Christian interpretation) is outside, and looking in at the bride (‘Mary’) through the window. This is one of the origins of an idea which culminates, poetically at least, with Petrarch (as quoted by Sliwka in the catalogue cited above). In the third verse of his ‘song’ Vergine bella, che di sol vestita (‘Beautiful Virgin, who is dressed by the sun’) is the phrase ‘o fenestra del ciel lucente altera’ –  ‘o noble and bright window of heaven’. As well as fenestra crystallina – ‘the crystal clear window’ – Mary was also seen as fenestra coeli, ‘the window of heaven’. It is through her that we can heaven’s beauty and truth. The window frame through which The Virgin and Child appear to us is a symbol of that concept, and represents yet another of the many roles that the Virgin adopted for the medieval and renaissance church. That is presumably why Bouts wanted to paint the whole stone frame, rather than relying on the painting’s wooden surround.

I do hope you can get to see this wonderful painting in the context of the Dulwich exhibition, given that this is just one of many roles that the window plays in art – but if not, it should be back on view at the National Gallery before too long. And if you can’t get to see the exhibition, but would like to know what else is there, please do join me for my introductory talk on Monday.

162 – Betrayal Redeemed

Cornelia Parker, Thirty Pieces of Silver, 1988. Tate.

Given that my current series of talks is called Looking in Different Ways, Cornelia Parker, about whom I will be talking this Monday, 18 July at 6pm, is a perfect choice. She sees the world in such a completely different way to most artists, and, with all of the advantages of living in the late 20th and early 21st Centuries, drawing on inspiration from decades of modernist thinking, she creates some of the most exciting and innovative work to be seen. She is not someone who has ever been accused of ‘attention grabbing’, unlike some of her contemporaries, which is odd given the unconventional, even crazy ways she has gone about making her work. That’s probably because everything she does has a purpose, which she is incredibly good at explaining. Not only that, but her insights into the way the world works, and into the complexities of modern history and society, are always a revelation. More of that in moment. The talk will be followed, on 25 July, by an introduction to a superb exhibition at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, Reframed: The Woman in the Window – a thematic show, which constitutes very different way of looking at the art itself. Slowing down for the summer, on 8 August I will talk about the Pallant Gallery, Chichester’s Glyn Philpot: Flesh and Spirit – a comprehensive view of a truly great, but sadly neglected, artist. These two talks will be called Women Looking and Looking at Men respectively – for more information, click on any of those blue links. My final talk for the summer (22 August) will be an introduction to the well-reviewed exhibition of the work of Barbara Hepworth currently on show at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. But before then, let’s dip our toes into the world of Cornelia Parker by looking at the work which takes up the first room of the exhibition – Thirty Pieces of Silver.

It’s hard to convey what seeing this installation for the first time is like – and unfortunately, just by showing you this photograph, I will, perhaps, have taken away some of the magic. This is a shot of what is apparently the whole work, although there is more to it than meets the eye, as I will explain below. On entering the room, you find most of the space occupied by the work. It is not a site-specific piece though, and can be hung anywhere – indeed it has been, and the photographs which follow come from at least three different locations. Consequently, it will always look different, as it takes on some of the qualities of the environment (having said that, the same is true of paintings – they always look different when seen against different backgrounds). It is also different though, according to how many people are in the room. As it happens, this photograph makes the work look a little dead, although if you are in the room on you own, it is, however quietly, fully alive. It takes a little time to evaluate what you are looking at, but basically there are a number of ‘pools’ of silver objects – five rows wide, six deep – making up the Thirty Pieces of Silver of the title. These ‘pools’ or Pieces float about 20 cm off the ground – the height is specific but I haven’t seen it written down anywhere – hanging from almost invisible threads, which create a luminous haze throughout the room, like mist over the water. Parker herself has said that the work ‘is reminiscent of waterlilies,’ and inevitably I am reminded of Monet.

Getting closer, you can see that each pool is made up of a number of domestic objects. In this detail there are six spoons top left, and fives forks to the right of top centre, for example. But there are also jugs, teapots and tankards, salt cellars and candlesticks, and what must have been some form of trophy. But these objects are not as they were, they have suffered considerable damage, subjected in some way to violence: they have been flattened. And they are hung from thin wires – the slight kinks tell you these are not cotton threads (for example). Lit from above, they cast shadows on the floor.

Now here’s a thing I don’t know: is each pool, each lily pad – each piece of silver – a separate identity? Are the constituent elements fixed for each one? Although the individual objects are always the same, I don’t know how rigid their arrangement is. In this view (from the current installation) the ‘front centre’ pool (as you enter the exhibition) also has a number of forks, but more than in the last detail. I’ll check next time I’m there to see if I can locate the ‘six spoon, five fork’ piece. I don’t think it matters, as it’s the idea as a whole, the overall appearance, which is important. But even between these two photographs you can see a substantial change: with a different floor the work already looks different. A lighter floor, as in this case, gives the work a more ethereal appearance. But that effect is also enhanced by a more focussed system of lighting, with the shadows overlapping less. This creates a different form of ‘drawing’ on the floor, a two-dimensional representation of the flattened, but still three-dimensional objects hanging above.

The wires must change. If hung in a different room, the ceiling will have a different height, and, if the pieces must be a set distance from the floor, then the wire has to be different. It’s copper wire, and I suspect that is to create a specific feeling, slightly warmer than all-over silver, maybe a hint of sunlight shining down. Although maybe it is because the objects themselves are not solid silver, but silver plate – a very thin layer of silver over another, cheaper metal, usually brass, which is itself an alloy of copper and zinc. Eventually, with polishing, Parker says, the brass will show through. None of the objects were new: as she says in an extended interview with the Tate’s curator, Andrea Schlieker, in the catalogue for the current exhibition, the work ‘is made of objects from ordinary people’s lives. None of it is new’. This gives it a history – gives every pieces a history – an unwritten catalogue of many people’s day-to-day existence. The stories they could tell. But why have they been flattened? And how? It’s quite simple really (this is the ‘more to it than meets the eye’ which I mentioned above).

For a while Cornelia Parker ran a market stall on Portobello Road, selling ‘silver objects,’ among other things. She ended up buying many of them – bags full – from car boot sales, and markets. ‘I used to cycle around with these big backpacks full of silver plate.’ When she had enough, she laid them all out in a strip, on a road, and hired a steam roller to flatten them all – thus starting her act of creation with an act of destruction, as she herself says. These were all discarded items – having seen many meals, sat endlessly, un-regarded, on mantelpieces, or, like the trombone, having uttered music – sacred or profane – thanks to the inspired exhalations of unknown musicians. But eventually all of these objects were rejected. Their original financial value was maybe not as much as it might have seemed, so in some ways they had been deceptive. As for their emotional value – well, who can put a price on what people feel? But all this was given up, betrayed even, when they were thrown out, and then doubly betrayed when they were flattened, so they could not longer be valued as functional objects either. But was it Parker, or the original owners, who were like Judas?

This is Judas accepts the Thirty Pieces of Silver, Giotto’s version of the biblical story which provides the title for today’s work. It was painted in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, effectively a thirteenth century ‘installation’ which occupied many of my previous posts, as many of you will remember (for this particular episode, see 102 – Jesus… and Judas). Judas, in yellow, the devil goading him on, accepts a purse containing thirty pieces of silver, as his reward for betraying Jesus to the authorities. As a result, Jesus was arrested, tried, condemned, and crucified. Through his sacrifice, and triumph over death, Christians believe that we are redeemed of our sins, and given new life in Christ. Having betrayed the objects, and having condemned them, Parker gives them new life – she redeems them, and they become art. You could say, more simply, that she recycled them, or made old things new, or gave them a new life, but she sees her artistic practice as a form of transubstantiation. It will not surprise you to learn that she was brought up a Catholic. Transubstantiation is the word used to describe what happens to the bread during mass (and I can’t help noticing that for Catholics, the ‘bread’ comes in the form of wafers, small, thin, circular objects, their shape not unlike that of each of the Thirty Pieces). The bread changes its substance, and becomes the actual body of Christ, even though the ‘accidents’ of the bread – its appearance, its texture, its taste even – remain the same. Well, the objects Parker used are still silver plate objects, and yet they are now art: transubstantiation has occurred. Another word would be alchemy – base metals are turned to gold. Alchemists also used the word ‘redemption’. After all, gold is pure and unchanging, just like God. But did she have to flatten the objects?

At the very centre of Hugo van der Goes’s Portinari Altarpiece, painted in Bruges around 1475 and now in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, the Christ Child, newly born and naked, lies starkly on the ground. Above him his mother Mary kneels in prayer, and he is flanked by angels who join her in silent adoration. In the foreground is a beautiful still life – a vase and a glass containing flowers, with more scattered on the ground, and a sheaf of wheat. Notice how the wheat lies horizontally in the painting, flat on the ground, and parallel to the infant. The wheat has been cut down, some of the grain will be ground to make flour, and the flour made into bread. Some of the grain will be sown to grow more wheat. If the wheat were not cut down, there would neither be bread, nor new life. Like the wheat, Jesus had to be ‘cut down’ to give us new life. Without his death he could not have become the bread that feeds us, and the bread could not become him. For Parker, if the objects had not been flattened, they could not have been redeemed…

Photo: Shannon Tofts

The objects are resurrected, and even, like Jesus start to ascend, floating above the floor at the average height of the objects when they were new. There is a rigor here which is rather surprising. They are hung in a minimalist grid, and indeed some artists would have been happy arranging circles in a rectangle, five wide by six deep. Think, for example, of Equivalent VIII, the ‘Tate bricks’, the eighth equivalent way Carl André found to arrange 120 bricks. But Parker takes the cold (but, to me, compelling) logic of minimalism, and renders it humane – it holds life, and hope, not just rigor. Nor is her work like the newly-minted Readymades to which Marcel Duchamp (a hero of Parker’s) gave new thoughts: her work has a depth, and thought, and feeling – and more than a little bit of magic. Do try and see the work in person in the exhibition at Tate Britain before it closes on 16 October. Or failing that (or as an introduction to that), come to my talk on Monday! Given all that I’ve said, I wish I’d seen the installation in St Mary’s Church in York…

Photo: Shannon Tofts

161 – Negative Spaces

Sybil Andrews, Via Dolorosa, 1935. British Museum, London.

As my next two talks are entitled Negative Spaces, I wanted to write about the concept, and explain the reasons why I am using it. And I want to do this because the artists to whom I am dedicating the first talk, Mary Beale and Sybil Andrews (on Monday 11 July), would seem to have nothing in common, apart from the fact that they both came from the charming medieval town of Bury St Edmunds. I will explain what inspired the talk towards the end of the post. These two women have even less in common, perhaps, with Cornelia Parker, who is the subject of the following week’s talk (Monday 18 July) – but again, it is the concept of absence – of ‘negative space’ – which brings them together. To try and explain these ideas I shall focus on one of Sybil Andrews’ linocut prints, and one of which I am increasingly fond: Via Dolorosa.

The subject is not strictly biblical, but rather, part of church tradition. The Via Dolorosa is the Way of Sorrow, and is a processional, pilgrimage route in Jerusalem, taken by the faithful who want to follow the steps that Jesus took on the way to his crucifixion. The current route was established in the 18th Century, but is based on earlier, medieval versions. Although this print was executed in 1935, a version of it was later incorporated in a series of Stations of the Cross which Sybil Andrews worked on from 1946-78, in which it represents Station IV: Christ meets his Mother. The series was never completed –  Andrews made only 10 of the 14 traditional Stations – and although Station V marks the point at which Simon of Cyrene takes the cross, he is already present. Simon’s role on the road to Calvary is mentioned in all three synoptic gospels. For example, in Matthew 27: 31-32 we read,

31 And after that they had mocked him [Jesus], they took the robe off from him, and put his own raiment on him, and led him away to crucify him.
32 And as they came out, they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name: him they compelled to bear his cross.

In the linocut Jesus is wearing red, ‘his own raiment’, as opposed to the ‘royal’ purple garment in which he was dressed as part of the process of being mocked by some of the bystanders. Simon, already bearing the cross, which ways down between the broad arcs of both arms, seems to wear nothing but a loin cloth. In her grief, the Virgin, in her traditional blue, lunges at her son in desperation, her left knee bent, her right leg stretching behind. The long, urgent reach of her body makes a strong diagonal from the bottom left corner of the image up towards Jesus’s head. He collapses around her, his face lost behind hers, her face hidden by his left arm, which crosses over her right. Their hands rest on each other’s shoulders, the echoing gestures complemented by the sharp inflections of their elbows: these two people are in harmony, they share a common grief. To the left of the Virgin is Mary Magdalene – identified by her long, red, flowing robe (darker than Jesus’s to ensure that he is the focus of attention), and by her long, red, flowing hair – which echoes that of Jesus.

The Virgin stretches up between the Magdalene and Jesus, as if they are a pair of brackets containing her. The Magdalene’s form curves in from the left, and Jesus’s from the right, showing how they try to comfort Mary in her inconsolable grief, but also how they support her. One of the Magdalene’s arms stretches under the Virgin’s, while Jesus’s rests on it, setting up a rhythm linking all three figures. And yet Mary is left isolated, the blue ringing out clearly against the off-white background of the paper. The space between the Virgin and Jesus reminds me of nothing so much as a bolt of lightning, as if that is what has struck her down. It is this ‘negative space’ which fascinates me. Put succinctly (I hope), the ‘positive space’ is the space taken up by the subject matter – in this case Mary and Jesus. The ‘negative space’ is the space in between – all of the composition which is theoretically not part of the subject. It is something that intrigued Sybil Andrews, and I was, in turn, intrigued to read in a biography (details below), that she found reliefs from the Chinese Han dynasty at the Victoria and Albert Museum ‘“tremendously exciting,”… especially the artists’ use of negative space’. I’d show you an example, but, to be honest, I can’t quite pin down what (in the V&A) is being referred to here, and anyway, it might get in the way…

However, look at the negative space created by Simon of Cyrene’s legs, and the equivalent shape formed by Jesus’s leg and foot: both have a similar, straight diagonal at the top (leading in different directions), and a similar broad curve leading down from the upper end of this diagonal. These similar, off-white forms are part of the rhythm of the image. Notice also the curving, triangular section between Jesus’s legs and Simon’s. The same shape appears under Simon’s left arm: another echo, more harmony.

At the top of the image Andrews has titled and signed the work, labelling it as the ‘1st State, No. 1’ – she made other ‘1st states’, apparently, with only minor variations to the wood grain of the cross, before printing the edition. The looming diagonals of the cross help to structure the composition, and reinforce the energy of the Virgin’s dramatic move towards her son. Indeed, the two diagonals of the cross are an abstraction of the bodies of Mary and Jesus. The cross also frames the figures, with the negative space between it and the embracing figures of Jesus and his Mother pushing them towards us.

This is a linocut, or linoleum block print, a technique invented early in the 20th Century, of which Sybil Andrews was one of the first exponents. I will talk more about the technique, and Andrews’ use of it, on Monday. For now, I will limit myself to pointing out that this image uses only three colours of ink, described by the British Museum (which owns this particular version) as ‘red, viridian, dark blue’. The red defines Jesus’s robe, the Magdalene’s face and the sides of the cross, the viridian, like a jade green, can be seen in Simon’s loin cloth and the highlights of the Virgin’s drapery, while the dark blue forms the rest of this robe. Everything else you see is a combination of two of these colours, or, in the case of what might look like black, all three. Three different ‘blocks’ were used, each cut into a single sheet of linoleum, with each being inked in succession. The paper was carefully lined up, laid on top of the blocks, and pressed down. Inevitably the ink would ‘bleed’ out from the blocks, so the printed paper, as a whole, looks like this:

When framing a print, the frame is often an equivalent to the size of the paper as a whole, while the mount is cut to reveal only the image – basically, the cropped version that I showed you first. But if this is a 20th Century technique, what could be the relevance to Mary Beale, an artist working in the 17th Century? Well, compare these two details:

A version of the linocut, and the painting from which this detail comes, both belong to the Moyses Hall Museum in Bury St Edmunds, and both are on show there now. The museum is currently exhibiting their collection of Andrews’ linocuts in a display which will be on show until September at the latest – although I couldn’t find any secure information about the dates (I did ask, but to no avail…). Having spent some time looking at Via Dolorosa, I was then struck by this detail from one of Beale’s portraits. The deep blue in the depiction of the Virgin Mary is derived from the traditional medieval iconography, and relates, in part, to the expense of the pigment ultramarine, the very pigment which Beale is using here. Colouristically, therefore, there is a connection between the two images. In addition, though, the highlights and dark shadows in this oil painting create a counterpoint with the Virgin’s robe in the linocut, I think. Beale makes a very specific choice to splay the fingers of this hand, creating curving triangular forms, not unlike those seen in the print, which exist as blue ‘negative spaces’ between the fingers, and between the forefinger and the hem of the bodice. I was also impressed by the way in which the chemise forms a long, gentle curve which approximates to the more linear, geometric form created by the horizontal of the top of the hand and the diagonals of the blue bodice leading up to the shoulders, a rhythmic form which I imagine Sybil Andrews would have enjoyed. The detail comes from this painting:

Beale, Mary; Self Portrait; St Edmundsbury Museums; http://www.artuk.org/artworks/self-portrait-10558

Traditionally described as a self portrait, I was happy to read that Penelope Hunting, author of the most recent and authoritative book on the subject, My Dearest Heart: The Artist Mary Beale, doubts this identification. Again, more about that on Monday, although if you have any thoughts about the urn and brazier, I’d be interested to hear them (I have some ideas, as it happens, and they make more sense if this isn’t Beale!) While I’m talking bibliography, there is also a recent biography of Sybil Andrews, On the Curve, by Janet Nicol, although it has precious little about her art. I’m hoping Jenny Uglow’s Sybil and Cyril: Cutting through Time, which I should get tomorrow, will be more… incisive (pun not originally intended…). I’ll let you know.

Having been struck by the ties between what are otherwise two unconnected images – and let’s face it, if I had seen the works in two separate museums I would never have made the connection – I was also struck by the notion of ‘negative space’ – something which is not, supposedly, the subject of a composition, but is a vital part of it. Had you heard of either artist before? You’re a sophisticated lot, so I’m sure you had. But they do not exist in a standard ‘History of Art’. Indeed, until relatively recently, women had been notably absent – certainly before the 20th Century. And yet, they were vital, even important in their own day. But since their deaths they have become negative spaces – notable for their absence – and I can’t help thinking that the concept is a valuable tool for thinking about a history of the art made by women. Which is precisely why I will be talking about these two artists on Monday…

160 – Painted by a madman?

Edvard Munch, The Scream, 1895. Private Collection.

If you think I’m being rude – or insensitive – I should point out that the title of today’s post is simply a translation into English of words that Edvard Munch himself wrote on the first (or second) version of The Scream. An infrared photo of the offending text is at the very bottom of the post, if you want to check it for yourself… There are several versions of this image – two in paint, two in pastel, and a lithograph which survives in a number of different versions, some coloured, some not. I am looking at them today as an introduction to the talk I will be giving on Monday 4 July, Seeing and Feeling: Edvard Munch. This is the first of my ‘scattered’ series, Looking in Different Ways, which will include artists who have found news ways of looking at the world, or which are introductions to exhibitions which look at art in ways that you might not have expected. There are details of the talks I have planned so far on the diary page, and via the links to Tixoom you can find there.

The Scream is one of those images which needs no introduction, so familiar are we with it, and with all the versions, mainly satirical, that it has spawned. Let’s face it, it’s the only painting I can think of that has inspired an emoji 😱, and the film franchise, Scream, uses the face for the mask worn by the killer. Like the many pastiches of Munch’s masterpiece, this franchise is a ‘comedy’ hommage (French pronunciation) to the slasher genre it apes. I’m sure the irreverent approach is just a means to undermine the darker implications of the painting. It is so familiar, perhaps, that we no longer look at it properly. We think that we know what is there, and we just stop looking: familiarity breeds disregard. So let’s look again. I’m going to focus on Munch’s third version of the subject, the pastel painted in 1895, but will consider the development of the series (briefly) below.

When you look at this image (and try to look at it as if you’ve never seen it before), what is the first thing that you notice? My first response, when I started thinking about this post, was surprise at the brilliance of the colour. The colour is why I’ve chosen this particular version to focus on – the others have faded, or were, in any case, duller. The sky is an intense vermillion, the bold, wavy lines interspersed with buttercup yellow and a couple of bands of pale blue. It takes up just under a third of the height of the painting, with a clear horizontal line in a darker blue marking, as the adjective suggests, the horizon. The lowest band of the sky appears to be made up of undulations of this darker blue – although reference to other versions imply that these ‘undulations’ are based on distant hills, blue as a result of atmospheric perspective. The majority of the land and sea is formed from a mid-toned blue, although small amounts of the reds and yellows creep in, in the same way that there is some blue in the sky. Overall, therefore, we have warm colours in the sky and cold down on earth. This lower section is almost square in shape, cut across diagonally by a straight path, with a fence or railing running alongside it. The path is formed of a series of straight lines, individual strokes of the crayon, and the railing consists of three parallel bars. The lines of the path and the bars of the railing conform to a strict, if exaggerated, perspective, converging at a vanishing point on the horizon at the far left of the image. The depiction of the land and sea is all curves, contrasting with the rigid, linear depiction of the path – we are looking at geometric forms and abstract values, particularly contrasts: warm and cool colours, straight and curved lines, squares and triangles, horizontals and diagonals. These abstract values are given meaning by what is represented. The path is presumably a jetty, and we see the sea with a curving coastline forming a bay, and, judging by the greens interspersed on the right, some vegetation. There is an androgynous figure, just to the right of centre, cut off by the bottom of the image. Its mouth and eyes are wide open and its hands are clasped on either side of its face. Further away on the jetty two more figures – men, as they wear top hats and this is 1895 – are sketched out full length. There is a boat on the sea, and buildings on the land, just visible on the horizon.

Looking closer at the figure at the bottom we can see its alarm more clearly, although the precise nature of the expression of this skull-like face is not easy to define. What is the wraith-like figure actually doing? The body seems almost immaterial: it is wavy, rather than solidly vertical, and is made of strokes more like the sky than the earth, all of which gives it a sense of insecurity. Is this person screaming, or does the open mouth speak of surprise, shock or horror? And do the hands express surprise as well, or are they clasped over the ears to shut out sound? There seems to be an unbearable pressure here, either coming from within, or closing in from the outside. As suggested above, the perspective of the jetty is distorted. It seems to recede too quickly, or, rather than receding, it could be seen as rushing towards us, giving the impression that we are zooming in, focussing on a close-up of the protagonist in a moment of high drama. Even the vegetation pushes in, the curved lines echoing the bend of the inflected wrist, pressing claustrophobically on the fragile figure.

Compared to the heightened drama of the protagonist, the two characters in the background seem relaxed, nonchalant even. One walks away, another stops to lean on the railing. If there is an audible sound – a scream – they do not seem to hear it: they certainly do not appear to be reacting to it. The boat just off the shore is a common feature in Munch’s work, and may imply the possibility of escape – but this is a possibility that is all too distant.

The sky is searing, with rich and brilliant colours, although oddly only the yellows are reflected in the water. The railing along the jetty, and even some of the planks of the path do take on some of the reds, but the intense colour is really the preserve of the sky, and is its defining feature. However, the nonchalance of the two figures could suggest that there is nothing unusual about it. Or maybe it is simply that they do not see it – or, that they do not see it like this. But then, the character in the foreground is not looking at the sky: he (is it ‘he’?) may have turned away.

I think that everything I have said so far is visible in the painting, although I can’t help wondering that so much of what I ‘see’ is coloured (deliberate choice of word) by what I have always known. It seems like ‘always’, anyway. I can’t remember when I first became aware of Edvard Munch, let alone The Scream. However, although there are unanswered questions in the interpretation of the image, we do know what Munch himself thought about the painting, as he wrote about it on more than one occasion. His first account was written a year before he made the first image. In a diary entry dated 22 January 1891, he said,

I was walking along the road with two friends – the sun went down – I felt a gust of melancholy – suddenly the sky turned a bloody red. I stopped, leaned against the railing, tired to death – as the flaming skies hung like blood and sword over the blue-black fjord and the city – my friends went on – I stood there trembling with anxiety – and I felt a vast infinite scream through nature.

This makes considerable sense of the image: it is Munch and two friends. They have moved on, but he remains, ‘trembling with anxiety’. Maybe this explains the wavy forms of the torso, even if he is not now leaning against the railing. The sky is ‘bloody red’ and we get a sense of the ‘blue-black fjord and city’ even if the colour chosen is not quite as dark as that might imply. What is key here is the last phrase, ‘I felt a vast infinite scream through nature’. He is not screaming (it is ‘he’), but there is a scream, a scream that maybe he is trying to block out with his hands. However, this is problematic, as he doesn’t hear the scream, so he can’t silence it – he feels it. What is truly ground-breaking about this image is that it isn’t a picture of something seen, but of something felt – hence the title of Monday’s talk: Seeing and Feeling. We are at the very beginnings of Expressionism.

The year after Munch had this experience he tried to capture it visually twice, once in pastel – which may have been the first version, it’s not entirely clear – and once in paint, using both oil and tempera, with pastels as well. These two are both in Oslo, and are owned by the Munch Museum and the National Gallery respectively. The reason for thinking that the pastel is the earlier of the two is that, although the basic ideas are sketched out, the details are absent – no boats, and no buildings – features which do appear in what is, presumably, the later version.

There were two more versions in 1895 – the pastel which I have discussed (the only one in which one of the ‘friends’ leans on the railing), and a lithograph. We don’t know how many prints were drawn from the original stone, but about 30 survive, some of which were hand coloured by Munch himself. They were published in Berlin, and bear the title Geshrei, i.e. ‘The Scream’ in German, although the literal translation of this would be ‘Screaming’ or ‘Shouting’, apparently (‘The Scream’ would be Der Shrei in German, or, in Norwegian, Skrik). There is also a phrase at the bottom right, ‘Ich fühlte das grosse Geschrei durch die Natur‘ (‘I felt the great scream through nature’). Often the image has been trimmed down, effectively cutting it out of the original ‘page’, meaning that the words do not appear – even if they were clearly important to Munch. This particular version, in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, was signed by the artist in 1896.

A final version was painted in tempera in 1910. This, too, is in the Munch Museum in Oslo, and, like the others (with the exception of the lithographs), is on cardboard. The first version in paint (1893) is the one which bears the inscription, ‘Could only have been painted by a madman!’ It is written in pencil on top of the paint, and recent analysis has confirmed that it is in Munch’s handwriting. It was probably his reaction – presumably ironic – to the public response to the painting when it was first exhibited in 1895. Typical of this was the comment of critic Henrik Grosch, who wrote that the painting was proof that you could not “consider Munch a serious man with a normal brain.”  The implications of this statement would have been more profound for the artist than Grosch would have realised – probably. I don’t know how aware he was of Munch’s family background. Born in 1863, Edvard was the second of five children. His mother died of tuberculosis when he was five, as did his elder sister when he was fourteen. He was a sickly child, and was often kept out of school, which created an enduring sense of isolation. One of his younger sisters was diagnosed with a mental health disorder at an early age, and by the time The Scream was exhibited, she was cared for in a local institution. For the rest of his life the artist was haunted by the possibility that he had inherited the same condition.

Somehow, through all of this, he seems to have captured the essence of what could be described as one of the defining features of the 20th and 21st Centuries: angst. A quick internet search defines this as ‘a feeling of deep anxiety or dread, typically an unfocused one about the human condition or the state of the world in general’. The painting would have been perfectly at home in Vienna at the time of Sigmund Freud, and appears to visualise the Existentialists’ post-war fear of ‘the Void’: if there is no God, what is the point? Or for that matter, an expression of man’s inhumanity to man, as seen in the holocaust, or again, the cold war fear of nuclear annihilation. It speaks of the inner horror of so many of Francis Bacon’s subjects – even if it isn’t one of the usually acknowledged sources – and, oddly perhaps, it seems to demand to be owned. Both paintings have been stolen – the 1893 version in 1994, and the later one ten years later. And in 2012 the 1895 pastel – the one we have looked at – was sold for $119,922,600 to a private buyer. That’s very nearly 120 million dollars, which at the time was the most ever paid for a single painting.

‘Could only have been painted by a madman!’? It was as much the fear of the implications of this phrase – even before he had written it – that must have inspired his initial experience, and the images that flow from it. This total honesty is what people have found hard to face, and yet, at the same time, it is so totally compelling. What else can have made it an early modernist Mona Lisa, ubiquitous and instantly understood? As we shall see on Monday, things were not always bad for Munch – indeed, the exhibition at the Courtauld, to which the talk is an introduction, ends on a note of positivity. Nevertheless, I can’t help feeling that his perceptive work can undoubtedly be a key to our understanding of the human psyche.

Some Virtues

Andrea del Verrocchio, Model for the Funeral Monument for Cardinal Niccolò Forteguerri, c. 1476, Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

The Sculpture course Form, Function, Material and Memory is rapidly drawing to a close. The last talk will be this Monday 27 June at 6pm, when we will consider Memory – Something to Remember. This will look at sculptures which were made with a very specific purpose: to remind us of those not present. The sculptures are all portraits of different types, including busts, full-length, and equestrian, or effigies on funerary monuments, which is just another form of portraiture. Today I am choosing to repost a blog about a sketch model for one of the latter, as, in its own way, it sums up all four talks. In its form it is a relief, its function was to show people (including the artist) would the finished monument would look like, it is a superb use of terracotta as a preparatory material, and the function of the finished monument was to keep the memory of someone ever present. Our usual heroes will feature, of course – Donatello, Verrocchio, Michelangelo, Bernini and Canova – but I will also introduce the brilliant French émigré Louis François Roubiliac. Before Monday’s talk, though, I have to pay a quick visit to Dresden, which is why I’m reposting. I’ll start afresh when I’m back, in preparation a whole new series – loosely titled Looking in Different Ways – which will start on Monday 4 July. All I know so far is that it will include talks on Edvard Munch, Mary Beale and Sybil Andrews, and Cornelia Parker, and may include more once I’ve seen more things and finished planning. There is more information on the individual links above, and in the diary. But back to the sculpture. What did I say about this lovely Modello when I talked about it towards the end of April 2020? It was still relatively early during the pandemic, someway into Lockdown 1:

Not exactly a request today, but I was asked to talk about some Virtues a while back, and this terracotta relief sprang to mind. I have since realised which Virtues had been requested, and why, and I will get back to them soon – but for now, a charming sketch which goes to show what a brilliant artist Andrea del Verrocchio was.   

Niccolò Forteguerri was born in Pistoia, not so terribly far from Florence, and rose through the church to become a Cardinal in 1460. It probably helped that his Uncle was Pius II, Pope from 1458-64. Niccolò was, therefore, his nephew, or, in Italian, nipote, from which, of course, we get the word ‘nepotism’ – jobs for the boys. He died in 1473, and was buried in Rome, in his titular church, Santa Cecilia in Trastevere, but his hometown decided that they wanted to remember him, and held a competition to design a memorial. We know little about the process, apart from the fact that in 1476 Verrocchio was commissioned to execute the monument following the design of a bozzetto – or sketch – which he had presented to the steering committee.  It is generally assumed that this is the very bozzetto that Verrocchio submitted.

(c) Victoria and Albert Museum

Made out of terracotta – which translates literally as ‘cooked earth’ – the relief is both wonderfully realised and beautifully sketchy. It is evocative, rather than precise, but allows you to see the disposition of all of the figures, as well as giving a wonderful sense of character and mood. It is full of vibrant movement and flowing draperies, light and airy, as if the characters were out in the open on a windy day, flying or coming in to land, above a platform on which a man is kneeling. 

We are very familiar with the idea of a sketch as a drawing, but anything that is done quickly, or remains apparently unfinished, can be considered a sketch. It could be an oil painting (remind me to show you one of my favourites!) or, as here, a sculpture. They are sometimes also called modelli – or models – as this is what they are – a small version of something which, when finished, will be far larger. Given the vicissitudes through which all art has past, the survival of a clay model from the 15th century is quite remarkable. Admittedly, it has not come down to us unharmed – there are a few repairs visible at the bottom of the relief  (the man’s praying hands are made from red clay, for example) – but it is still in a wonderful condition.

At the top of the image, Christ appears in a mandorla. The word means ‘almond’, and is used to refer to the almond-shaped ‘glory’ held up by the angels. The stress should be on the first syllable, by the way – MANdorla – as so often with three syllable words in Italian (Medici, Cupola… but not modello, where the stress is on the second syllable). In religious dramas, whenever anyone descended from heaven, or was assumed, they did so in a mandorla which was physically winched up or down, to or from the roof of the church…  

Jesus looks down, blessing those below with his right hand, while supporting an open book on his knee with his left: this is the image of Christ Pantocrator, or ruler over all (we’re all too familiar with ‘pan’ as a prefix these days), and is a slightly medieval feature of the monument. However, Verrocchio subverts this ‘medieval’ feel with a touch of proto-baroque humour. Although in other images Christ manages his own Ascension unaided [although on reflection in 2022, this is a vision of Christ, rather than an ascension – I got carried away by the mandorla] here four angels hold him aloft – although they do not seem entirely secure. The one at the bottom left may have lost his grip, and has had to adjust his hold, or maybe the one above him wasn’t pulling his own weight, I’m not sure what’s happened, but they are not entirely in control of the mandorla. It has tipped sideways, as you can see from the winged cherub’s head at the top, which is not directly above its companion at the bottom, but some way to the left. This slight shift, with its sense of movement and asymmetry, can be seen in almost all of Verrocchio’s output, a sense of drama which, as I have suggested, prefigures the Baroque in an unprecedented way. 

Moving to the bottom of the bozzetto it is the Cardinal himself who we see. He is kneeling on a sarcophagus, praying, and looking up to Jesus, either witnessing a vision of Christ, or the real thing – it’s up to you to decide [I got there in the end]. A woman steps towards him, although she is not fully on the sarcophagus. Under her feet is what could be a small rock, but is meant to be a cloud – this was the standard, accepted ‘sign’ for clouds in sculpture at the time. In her left hand, and close to Forteguerri – almost as if she is handing it to him – is a cross. In her right is a chalice, held above her shoulder. These are both items of Faith, and that is indeed who she is: a personification of Faith. Her movement towards him is swift, her right leg stepping across and in front of her left, her drapery flying out behind – again we have a wonderful sense of movement and of asymmetry. The dress of the figure on the right also billows out behind her. More obviously standing on clouds – she is further from the sarcophagus, after all – it is almost as if she is swooning, the rapid movement inward combined with a lowering of the body as she leans forward. Her arms are crossed over her chest, and she looks upwards, her gaze parallel to the Cardinal’s own. Her prayer, like all requests, wants fulfilment – that is what she hopes for. Indeed, she represents the virtue of Hope. Notice how Faith’s chalice, the direction of her gaze, and her cross, form a diagonal leading our attention to Forteguerri, while the angle of his head makes us look towards Jesus: Verrocchio expertly directs our eyes around the surface of the relief. Hope’s trailing left leg, and her gaze, create a diagonal which is continued by the leg of a third Virtue who appears above them.

Given that we already have Faith and Hope, this can only be Charity. Together they are the three Virtues named by St Paul in the thirteenth chapter of his first Epistle to the Corinthians. This is verse 13:

And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; 
but the greatest of these is charity.

As they are in the Bible, they are often known as the Theological Virtues. Now more often translated as ‘Love’, Charity, or Caritas, is the boundless love of – or for – God, and is expressed in a number of ways. Love is like a burning fire, which is why she carries a flaming torch in her right hand. The love for one’s children is unqualified, and a baby sits on her left. Charity is often surrounded by three – or more – babies, clambering all over her, and you’d have to be really loving to put up with that. Here she has just one, held safe in the crook of her left arm, the torch held as far away as possible. Unusually, she is winged. Verrocchio seems to be equating her with the angels. She flies above the other two virtues, perhaps in line with Paul’s assertion that she is the greatest.

Niccolò Forteguerri kneels on his sarcophagus awaiting the life to come. Faith offers him the consolation of the Cross, Hope echoes his own yearning for Salvation, and there truly is Love between him and Jesus. These three Virtues gather round him – flock to him, even – and reassure us that his soul will be with Jesus in Heaven. What better way to remember a man of whom the city of Pistoia could be justly proud? And even if we thought he wasn’t that great, maybe this monument could persuade us we were wrong – that is the often the function of memorials, if we’re honest.

Sadly the commission did not proceed smoothly. There was disagreement among the commissioning body in Pistoia, and at one point they tried to replace Verrocchio with Piero del Pollaiuolo. But Verrocchio went straight to the Boss – who at this point was Lorenzo ‘the Magnificent’ de’ Medici – who sorted things out. Nevertheless, the monument hadn’t been completed by the time the sculptor headed to Venice in 1483 to complete a more prestigious commission.  The sculptures were completed by his assistants in Florence, and were finally taken to Pistoia five years later. Some were deemed to be substandard, and were re-worked, meaning that the monument wasn’t erected until 1514, more than 40 years after Forteguerri had died. By this time, the Pistoiesi were probably asking ‘Niccolò who?’ And that wasn’t the end. In the 1750s the monument was moved, the figures altered and re-installed, bunched up and straitjacketed by an unimaginative Rococo frame. The kneeling effigy was replaced with a bust, and although it survives in the local museum, Verrocchio’s original intention is lost. There is ongoing scholarly debate about which bits of the sculpture Verrocchio had anything to do with, and to what extent the life, the energy, the vitality of the bozzetto ever made it into marble. What is certainly clear is that, in the monument as installed, Jesus is secure, the angels are fully in control. I can’t imagine that the church would have allowed any doubt of that. The flare is gone, the daring sway of the mandorla… but how wonderful that we still have this magical bozzetto to see in the V&A.

I mentioned this relief briefly during last week’s talk while I was talking about its Material – and inevitably it will feature again on Monday, when it will appear among the many portraits – of different genres – that we will consider when we look at the final topic, Memory. I do hope you can join me!

Psyche, a coda (a repeat)

Antonio Canova, Psyche revived by Cupid’s Kiss, 1787-93, Louvre, Paris.

So far in my series on sculpture I haven’t mentioned Antonio Canova, although I will this Monday, 20 June at 6.00pm, when I will discuss the very substance of art (or, at least, the different substances from which sculpture is made), in a talk entitled Material: Method and Meaning. As a result, it seems a good opportunity to re-visit one of the posts from the 100 ‘Pictures of the Day’ – particularly as I currently find myself very busy visiting exhibitions in order to find suitable subjects for future talks. When I know what they are I will of course post the details here and on the diary page. This is an ideal post to re-read, as it introduces many of the ideas I will cover on Monday – the materials of sculpture, their qualities, advantages and disadvantages, their ‘meanings’, and the techniques involved in turning them into sculpture. What follows was the 8th post dedicated to just one story – Cupid and Psyche – and if you want to have a look at the others you should start with Day 43 – Psyche – or it might be easier to click on the ‘Psyche‘ archive button, where all the posts appear in reverse order (sorry, I’m really not in control of this website). Meanwhile, at the end of the seventh post, I had left Cupid and Psyche living Happily Ever After… what could follow that? Well, this:

I know, Cupid and Psyche are living happily ever after, but I couldn’t leave them without one last look back, and without one last, truly beautiful image of Psyche. This is a sculpture by Antonio Canova, the great master of neo-classical simplicity. 

As often with Canova, there are two versions of Cupid and Psyche. This one is in the Louvre, and was originally commissioned by Colonel John Campbell. He was a Welsh politician and art collector, who, after the death of his father when he was just 15, and his grandfather when he was 24, found himself remarkably well off, and he headed off on the Grand Tour at the relatively late age of 30. He travelled to Italy and Sicily, where he spent the next five years. It was while he was there that Campbell commissioned this sculpture from Canova, who was four years younger than him – 30, when this sculpture was commissioned in 1787. However, it seems that Campbell never received it. Joachim Murat, Napoleon’s brother-in-law, acquired it in 1800, and after his death in 1824 it passed to the Louvre. A second version was commissioned by Prince Nikolai Yusupov in 1796. They were a highly sophisticated family. They had a superb art collection, and a rather fantastic palace in St Petersburg, which even had its own theatre. The palace and theatre are still there, but after the Revolution, the Canova ended up in the Hermitage.

I could have talked about this sculpture two weeks ago, when discussing Sir Anthony van Dyck’s Cupid and Psyche [Picture Of The Day 54 – but never edit on a train – I seem to have just deleted this when trying to copy a link, and now I can’t get it back. Ah well…], as the two works represent the same moment – but let’s face it, they are rather different, and both deserve a moment to themselves. We’ve got to the point in the story when Psyche was carrying out the last of her tasks, and had collected some of Proserpina’s ‘Beauty’ to take to Venus, but she opened the container and fell into a death-like sleep. Now Cupid has awoken her with one of his arrows, and they embrace… In many ways, it’s that simple, and the sculpture itself looks effortless. But ‘effortlessness’ turns out to be the result of a lot of hard work. The main aim of neo-classicism was not to be bold, and daring, and original, trying to find new solutions to problems, but to look for something essential, an idea that looks as if it has always been there, and then to pare it down even further, to simplify it and to make it clear. This might appear to be a somewhat disingenuous intention, especially as this particular sculpture manages to be both original and daring. Cupid reaches around Psyche, and, as she sits up, he supports her head in his right hand, while his left goes around her torso. She stretches up to hold his head, her arms forming a loop, in a similar way to his, which curl around her. The two are encircled by each other, two halves of the sign for eternity, promising the continuity to come. She lies on one hip, he kneels, balancing with one foot lower down the rock, her body forming a continuous line with one wing, his extended leg with the other. Their bodies form a pyramid, which, with his wings, becomes a cross – ‘X’ marks the spot. The wings themselves are carved so thinly, and the arms are entirely free from their bodies: this really is daring carving, puncturing a single piece of Carrara marble and turning it into the softest of flesh.

And it is thin – look how translucent those wings are. The excavation of the forms really pays off when Canova’s sculptures are lit well, and preferably, by natural daylight. The light falls on different surfaces, emphasizes some features, and blurs certain boundaries: the play of light and shadow defines everything this sculpture is about, caressing the surfaces, touching the sculpture lightly as they touch each other. But how do you work out such a complex composition? As any couple will understand, it’s not always easy knowing where to put all four arms, and when there are wings as well…

It’s always best to start with a drawing – although that might seem counterintuitive for a three-dimensional object like a sculpture. Canova’s work is conceived to be seen in the round, although there is usually a principal viewpoint. That is what he is developing in this drawing. You can see that the basic composition is already in place: the long curve from Psyche’s right foot – at the bottom right of the pyramidal composition – up to her right hand above Cupid’s head; the fact that her hips are twisted towards us, so we get as full a view of her body as possible; and the framing of their faces by the loop of her arms. We also see the full extension of Cupid’s right leg as he leans over her, kneeling on his left knee, with his left arm reaching around her torso. There is even a sketched suggestion of the drapery underneath her. The only thing that Canova was to change was the position of the wings. In the drawing they spread out across them, almost like a protecting canopy. They are more horizontal than in the sculpture, where they are far more awake and alert. You could even argue that in the drawing they represent Psyche’s lethargy, whereas in the sculpture they are far more vital: they are Cupid’s wings, after all, and reflect his energy at this point in the story.  They also come to have a more defining role in the composition, with its overlapping diagonals, continuing the lines of the two bodies, and bringing the couple together.

Having decided on your basic compositional structure on paper, you then have to check that it would really work in three dimensions – hence the use of clay. Often the small clay models were fired – thus making them terracotta – which meant they could be kept. There was always more than one reason to do this. Canova was aware that a sculpture could only be owned by one person – but that it was always possible to make a second version. So it was enormously useful to hold onto all of the developmental stages in case you wanted to go back and reassess the finished product. The best place to see this is the Museo Canova in Possagno, the small town in the Veneto where he was born, which has a remarable display of sketches, working models and plaster casts. Another reason to ‘save’ the bozzetto (POTD 42 & 51) was that Canova, like many artists since the 16th century, was very well aware of his development as an artist, and the process of evolution of each individual piece – and that the process itself was saleable. Terracotta bozzetti were collectable in a similar way to drawings.

However, looking at the bozzetto above, you realise pretty quickly that this is not the finished composition. It is the female figure – Psyche – who is sitting more upright, and has the male – Cupid – in her arms. Although one of his legs is extended, and the other bent, he is sitting on the ground, rather than kneeling. It is more as if she is caring for him, rather than him waking her up. Indeed, it could be that this predates the drawing – and that, when commissioned to carve a sculpture showing Cupid and Psyche, Canova originally thought of a different episode in their story: this looks more like Cupid swooning – although without the wings. They really would be tricky in clay. It could be that he abandoned his idea, and went back to the drawing board – so the drawing might have come after this terracotta. That aside, it does at least show you what the process of development would be: the creation of a rough, terracotta model of a potential composition. The limbs are built up with small pieces of clay, and modelled by hand, or with a number of different tools. The most obvious here was something like a comb, a toothed spatula, which has been used to scrape the base into its current form. There could easily have been several bozzetti like this. Each would not necessarily have taken too long to make, and, being clay, were relatively cheap. Clay is also extremely malleable, so adjustments can be made as you look, and, working on a small scale, you can turn the model around in your hands and check every angle to see that all possible viewpoints work. In this way you would eventually arrive at a definitive composition. The next stage would be to turn the bozzetto into a stone sculpture.

Having decided on the composition, and how it would work in every detail, Canova would then make a full-scale model in plaster. This one was made for Prince Yusupov’s sculpture – as I said, the sculpture itself is in the Hermitage in St Petersburg. However, the plaster modello has ended up in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. It might look as if it is not in a terribly good condition – or that the complexions of both Cupid and Psyche have suffered from some terrible skin disease, as it is covered all over in small spots. These are, in fact, metal pins, which have been inserted into the surface of the plaster, and there are more pins where the surfaces are more complex – notably on Cupid’s left hand, just below Psyche’s breast. These are measuring points for the stonemasons. Yes – Canova didn’t carve the marble himself. Don’t feel disappointed – the same is true of many, many sculptors. Rodin did not carve The Kiss, for example, and even Bernini had a helping hand with the leaves on Apollo and Daphne (POTD 56). The stone masons were expert at replicating the precise appearance of the modello, as it was primarily a mechanical exercise. To do this, they used a pointing machine, which measures the height, depth and distance from left to right of each pin that has been inserted, and helps them carve the marble to the same depth at each point. If you’d like to see how it works, there is a good video from the Smithsonian Institute, Carving a Marble Replica using a Pointing Device – other longer videos are available!

However, this process does not complete the work – it is just roughing out the forms – the finish would have been done by Canova himself, and he insisted on doing this in private, so that no one could see his secrets. How, precisely, did he get that wonderful silky finish? That’s where the real skill lay…

I’m including this photograph as a real lesson in looking at sculpture. It is solid, it is three dimensional, and you can move round it. But all too often, with Canova especially, people only bother to look at the ‘front’ – they never get beyond the ‘principal viewpoint’. It was only when I went round the ‘back’ of the Three Graces that I realised what a brilliant artist he was – he has thought about every point of view. There are several clues to that in this photo. It is only from this side that you can see the vase lying behind Psyche that would originally have contained Proserpina’s ‘beauty’ – and lying next to it, to the right, and pointing towards her, is the arrow that Cupid used to wake her. It is only from this angle that you can see his quiver, for that matter, still full of arrows – that crowd is lucky he’s busy at the moment or there could be mayhem. And quite apart from those details, the sculptural mass of the composition, the way the two forms stretch in towards each other, his, taut and leaning down, hers, limp but reaching up, can only be appreciated fully from this side, without the complexity of the interlocking arms and the incidental distractions of their faces. And here’s the real clue: just under her right foot, projecting beyond the base, there is a handle sticking out, and that would originally have been used to turn the sculpture round. OK, so now there is no one to turn the sculpture for you, and you have to make the effort yourself, but do. Walk around, look at every possible viewpoint, get closer and further away. And never worry about going round ‘the back’. You might learn something.

Inevitably I will look at the backs of other sculptures on Monday – including The Three Graces – but I will also look at many different materials – from bronze and wood, to ivory and alabaster. I do hope you can join me then.

159 – Michelangelo, holding a candle…

Michelangelo Buonarroti, Angel, 1494-5. San Domenico, Bologna.

You would think that no one could hold a candle to Michelangelo – but everyone has to start somewhere, and the young sculptor must have learnt from someone. Indeed, today’s work is an example of the young genius responding – directly and overtly – to someone else’s work, while also enabling the good people of Bologna to burn the candle – or rather, candles – at both ends (in a manner of speaking). It also happens to be a very good example of one of the strengths of sculpture: it can be used for many different things. In this case, it is a candlestick, something that just wouldn’t work with a painting. It is, inevitably, one of the sculptures which will feature this Monday, 13 June, in the second talk in my series Sculpture: Form, Function, Material and Memory. Being week two, we will be looking at the function of sculpture, and asking What is it for? We will look at many of the potential uses of three-dimensional art – besides the ‘merely’ aesthetic, that is – with works varying from fountains to funerary monuments, and from candlesticks to coinage. Today’s work is a good example of this, given that’s its own function is just one element of a sculptural ensemble which in itself fulfils more than one role.

The angel kneels on his left knee, with his right foot firmly planted on the ground. The left is resting on its big toe, bending under the weight at the very edge of a scalloped base. A sizeable candelabrum rests on the angel’s right knee, and is held in place at its base by the left hand, with the right, wrapping round the shaft from behind, about half-way up. The top of the candelabrum is at the same level as the top of the angel’s head. Two wings project behind the figure, and we can see a space carved between the lower section of the candelabrum and the angel’s torso. He wears a long robe which forms full, rounded folds – even though the hem below the raised knee would make it appear very thin. Not only is it very delicately carved, but some of the folds are excavated deeply to create dark shadows. Some of the drapery falls over the base, and even over its edge, making the figure seem more ‘present’ in our space. The angel’s full, round face looks out, turning a little to his left, with slightly parted lips. He has a full head of curly hair piled on top of his head, but cut shorter at the back and sides.

He has a companion – another candle-bearing angel, kneeling on his right knee, with the left foot planted firmly on the ground, and the right resting on a bent toe at the edge of an identical base. The robe is perhaps simpler, and the folds, although similarly rounded, fall more directly downwards. Even so, one crosses the edge of the base in an equivalent way. The delicate hems of the sleeves suggest that this robe was also made from thin fabric. The wings are different, perhaps, but not as different as the face – longer than that of Michelangelo’s angel, more delicate too. This angel’s hair falls in luxuriant curls which spiral down on either side of the face and behind the neck – although as we can’t see the back of the sculpture (the photographs simply don’t exist) we can’t tell exactly how long it is. The hands do not seem to hold the candelabrum so firmly, with the fingers of the right hand merely resting on its base.

When seen side by side these two angels remind me of two very different altar boys, one refined, effete, polite, patient and following all the rules, the other a little bruiser, muscular, chunky even, getting into trouble but getting away with it, and probably there because his mum is a friend of the priest, but he’d really rather be somewhere else. The former is by Niccolò dell’Arca, the latter, Michelangelo. And while most people look to the famous artist’s work as a precursor of his late, great interest in the potential power of the male physique, I should really point out that he carved this sculpture when he was still only 19. He was still learning, and he was learning as fast as he could from Niccolò. The pose of the figure is a deliberate echo, as the less famous master had died leaving the work (after which he was named) incomplete. One of the missing figures was this angel. The pair was meant to kneel at either end of the Arca – the tomb, or shrine – of none other than St Dominic. Hence my suggestion that Michelangelo facilitated the burning of a candle at both ends…

This is the Arca in its entirety, almost a history of Italian sculpture in its own right, with some post-dating both of our angels. St Dominic died in Bologna in 1221, and was canonised thirteen years later. Compare that with St Francis who died five years after Dominic, and was welcomed into the Canon of the Saints within two years – eight years before Dominic. But then he was far friendlier, told good stories, and spoke to the animals. Dominic was more hard-line – and, as I said last week, particularly down on the heretics. Good for the church, some would say, but hardly endearing. As a result almost no one visits his shrine – the Arca – which means you’re bound to get it to yourself – although a friendly Dominican may well extol the good man’s virtues while you’re there.

In 1264 the Dominicans commissioned a sarcophagus from Nicola Pisano, although he was called away the next year, and it was completed by his workshop. The shrine would originally have stood in the middle of a chapel atop a group of caryatids, which are now believed to be dispersed among a number of different museums. The bold, Romanesque, almost classical figures in the scenes from the life of St Dominic (two on each side and one at each end) are set against a gold mosaic background. These scenes are separated by the Madonna and Child and Christ the Redeemer in the centre (front and back respectively) with a saint at each corner. In this detail you can just see the heads of the two angels at either end (bottom left and right).

Between 1469 and 1473 the Arca was remodelled by Niccolò, a sculptor from Puglia, and by this time as well as functioning as a tomb it had also became an altar, with the sculptures on the sarcophagus acting as an altarpiece. Niccolò added the tiled ‘roof’, and topped it with a remarkable superstructure. The four evangelists, in unconventional ‘oriental’ garb, stand on the four corners, with God the Father at the very summit above putti and garlands and any number of extravagant architectonic details. He also intended to carve eight saints to stand on the cornice of the sarcophagus – but only finished five – and two candle-bearing angels – but only managed one. It could be that he continued to work on the project until he died, but by 1494 there were still four figures missing. Nevertheless, it became his defining work. Referred to in documents as Niccolò da Bari and Niccolò d’Antonio d’Apulia, among other names, he is now universally called Niccolò dell’Arca – Nicholas of the Shrine.

So how did Michelangelo get involved? Well, Vasari tells us that, after the death of Lorenzo the Magnificent in 1492, the teenage Michelangelo carried on working for Lorenzo’s son Piero until 1494, when he left Florence abruptly, just weeks before the Medici family were deposed. He went to Bologna, then on to Venice, and then, ‘Being unable to find any means of living in Venice, he went back to Bologna.’ However, he failed to follow regulations, didn’t have the money to pay a fine, and ended up in trouble – a predicament he managed to get out of quite possibly because the Medici had connections in Bologna. Long story short: he carved three of the missing four figures, a great honour given that (a) it was one of the major monuments in Bologna, (b) he was almost totally unknown, and (c) he was not yet 20 when he started. The fourth ‘missing figure’ wasn’t carved until 1539, when it was assigned to Girolamo Cortellini. Before that, though – in 1532 – Alfonso Lombardi had added the predella-like section, the base of which is the same height as the bases on which the angels are kneeling. And centuries later, in 1768, the ensemble as we see it today was finally completed with the addition of the altar frontal, designed by Carlo Bianconi.

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What I find fascinating is that Michelangelo was so keen to learn from Niccolò’s example. Although not as long, the hair is every bit as curly, and he attempts to carve each individual whorl just as deeply. He also strives to make the facial features every bit as delicate. Even the drapery (see above) is carved as thinly as possible, and made to flow in the same rounded folds – even if the flow itself is more complex. And yet he can’t quite get there, he can’t quite do it as well as Niccolò. I’d even go so far as to say he can’t hold a candle to him, in terms of delicacy and refinement, at least. But that’s because, ultimately, this is not the direction in which his art would go. From this point on he left delicacy behind, and took on determination, boldness, complexity, the depths of the inner life, torment, and ultimately, terribilità – one of those words it is almost impossible to translate. Indeed, the Mirriam-Webster dictionary online says, ‘an effect or expression of powerful will and immense angry force (as in the work of Michelangelo)’. His work defines the word. Admittedly Wikipedia’s definition is better, although again, somewhat circular: ‘Terribilità, the modern Italian spelling, (or terribiltà, as Michelangelo’s 16th century contemporaries tended to spell it) is a quality ascribed to his art that provokes terror, awe, or a sense of the sublime in the viewer’. We don’t yet see that here, but maybe (just maybe) it is on the way.

And yes, I do ‘prefer’ Niccolò’s angel. But I’m also carrying a torch for the Michelangelo.