Exercise: Annotate a Henry Moore Figure Sculpture, Part 4,Project 4

Annotate an image of a Henry Moore figure sculpture. If you can, choose one that you can actually go and see for yourself first - preferably one that's displayed in a public outdoor location rather than in a gallery.

Exercise:Annotate a Female Nude in the Western Tradition, Part 4, Project 3

This exercise asked me to:-

Choose one of the classic nudes in the western tradition, shown as the sole figure in a painting; so I decided to start with the one that inspired so many who followed - Giorgione's Sleeping Venus. This was the first time a Goddess had been shown sleeping, and the first time that Venus had been painted with dark hair, albeit with reddish highlights. 

The questions posed include:

Do you think this image invites the sensual gaze? If so, how has the artist used the formal elements of the painting to achieve this?

Compare your chosen image with this one by "a female artist", Maria Szantho. 

All of the discussion around feminism in the previous post perhaps made me notice immediately  the use of the phrase "a female artist" in this question, as if I am bound to find differences in these two paintings because they were done by people at opposite ends of the sexual spectrum. I must admit to being slightly put off when I see the preface "female" in front of someone's occupation. Art history language is extremely gender-biased, and the word "artist" refers to a man unless it is qualified by the adjective "woman".

 Is this relevant? Do you want to invite sexual sterotyping, OCA? Since I have trawled the internet and looked in every book I have without finding another copy or reference to this painting (date/size/medium/subject etc) I wonder why you didn't just write "unknown female artist"? After a lot of searching, I found one or two blogs that talked about this Hungarian artist, who was very well-known in her own country, representing it in the 1939 New York World's Fair with three of her paintings. So, not exactly unknown, but certainly hasn't stood the test of time like Giorgione.

Reclining Nude, Maria Szantho. Date unknown. Photo taken of image in OCA Course Handbook for this exercise.

Lastly, the exercise asks: Have you ever been to a life drawing class or drawn  or painted a female nude. Did you see this as a formal challenge or were you conscious of additional cultural factors at work?

I must say I found this exercise very hard-going. Instead of finding these annotations easier as I go along, I seem to be finding them harder and harder. Here goes:

Research Point: How Women are Portrayed in Art - Part 4, Project 3

Q. Does the female nude exploit women for male gratification? Or does it depend on context? 

Wilendorf Venus, 25000-30000B.C.

My first reaction to this question is that there is no definitive answer. If there were, it would be possible to insert the word "always" before the word "nude" and be sure that there are no exceptions; but there are always exceptions..... According to Breazeale in The Language of the Nude, "the nude (for the past several hundred years in Europe) was a vehicle to express many meanings" including religious, classical and literary. But if we go back further to the first known depiction of a female nude, the Wilendorf Venus (right), we see a female nude who has been interpreted as a fertility symbol, perhaps of a Goddess. Female nudes also appear in Indian temple art from circa the first century B.C., but again are related to Goddesses of Fertility and have religious significance.

There followed a long period in Western European art when females were not depicted nude at all. Why? The Greeks were very skilled at showing heroic nude male figures, notably champions of the Olympic games. In fact the homo-erotic society that was Ancient Greece celebrated male nudity; and erotic displays of delectable perfect young male bodies were commonplace. The penis, erect or otherwise, was not hidden, and hirsuteness was an accepted attribute of mature male gender. Female nudity was quite the opposite, however, and not seen until Praxitales' famous Aphrodite of Knidos (see previous post - 11 June, 2014) which was to influence art for the next several hundred years (but even this was carefully devoid of female genitalia). A double standard definitely existed in public art where male/female nudity was concerned. 

Once Christianity took hold in Western Europe, the only permissible nudity was in religious  scenes depicting Adam and Eve, or the Last Judgement,  and nudity came to be associated with shame. The role of the nude was to stir the mind, not the passions and the Church was in charge.

 Susanna and the Elders (1610): Gentileschi

Portrait of Helene Fourment

It was not until the early 13th century that nudity regained respectability, and became a major theme in Western art. The Italians rediscovered an interest in their Classical past, the Church lost its monopoly on wealth and an art market began to emerge. The idealised female nude prevailed until the 16th and 17th century, when more naturalistic nudes were depicted, like Gentileschi's 1610 painting of Susanna and the Elders; Rubens' painting of his child-bride, Helene Fourment, in 1638; and Velazquez' painting (below) of Rokeby Venus (1647-51).

Rokeby Venus (1647-51): Velazquez

The early 18th century saw female life models being used in art academies in Britain, as in a sketch made by a young Hogarth in 1735. Drawing the female nude became established as the greatest challenge for artists, an area where they could compete to show their artistic prowess. In fact painting the female nude was more popular in Britain than it was in the rest of Europe, with France not using female life-models until the 19th century. One of Britain's best-known-but-later-forgotten painters of the female nude in the 18th century was York-born William Etty, (1787-1849) who became controversial for his "lascivious" portrayal of too much female fleshiness.  (For a 6-minute video of a 2011 exhibition of his work, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TTWeWzzkR8 ) In his defence, he said, 

"Finding God's most glorious work to be Woman, that all human beauty had been concentrated in her, I dedicated myself to painting—not the Draper's or Milliner's work—but God's most glorious work, more finely than ever had been done." 

Etty was in fact one of the major influences on Delacroix's depictions of the female nude in paintings such as the Death of Sardanopolis (1827).

 

Death of Sardanopolis (1827): Delacroix

Youth on the Prow and Pleasure at the Helm: Etty

Certainly his paintings of women were controversial, and he managed to cram so many pink and curvaceous naked subjects into one allegory that his rival JMW Constable called it "a bumboat"! The painting in question, Youth on the Prow and Pleasure at the Helm (right), 1830, was regarded by many as too indecent to be hung in respectable houses, but Etty steadfastly rebuked allegations of smuttiness by declaring,  "To the pure in heart, all things are pure." Etty's persistent denial of anything but purity of mind  makes me question the idea that simply incorporating female nudity in a painting exploits women for male gratification. The pose or activity of the woman, the context in which she appears nude, the behaviours of others in the composition, the intent or meaning ascribed by the artist, all have an effect on the viewer whose subjective experience of the work

When a work of art that displays nudity is being viewed, the responses from all viewers will vary; some might feel exploited, some might be moved by the beauty of the piece; some might see it as erotic, while others might see it as sensual; some might be scandalised while others might be amused. The intent of the artist must also be appreciated.

Origins of the World:- photo courtesy of www.gustavcourbet.org

As the 19th century progressed, there was a revolt among artists in France against the Academies and their stranglehold on artists' freedom of expression. Courbet shunned the idealised female form in favour of more realism and truth. His 1886 painting "Origins of the World" (opp.) looks as if it was intended to shock, given that it is explicitly shows a woman in a position that cannot be understood as anything other than sexual, given that it shows explicitly her genitalia and her legs wide open. I feel a little bit voyeuristic looking at this, as it is not a view of another woman that I  ever see in real life, and it brings back memories of gynaecological examinations where I feel very much powerless and at the mercy of the examiner. Obviously, I expect others to have a different reaction to this painting, as they cannot have the mental associations that I (and/or other women) are likely to make. It is probable that some people whose preferred sexual partner is female might find this painting gratifying because of the mental associations they have of a supine female body, but this might not be the case for, say, homosexual men, who might be unmoved by subject. All viewers, however, are likely to be able to appreciate the technical brilliance of the brushstrokes, the modernity of the composition and the determination to present female anatomy in its natural state rather than the airbrushed version offered by the ancients.


More deliberate attempts to shock followed, using, as Whitney Chadwick states in Women, Art and Society, "an erotically based assault on female form: Manet's and Picasso's prostitutes, Gauguin's "primitives", Matisse's nudes, Surrealism's objects". Renoir is quoted as saying, "I paint with my prick", and referring to his models as "beautiful fruit"; while Picasso said, "Painting......that is actual lovemaking". All of these artists are making a comparison between artistic creativity and sexual energy, and are presenting women as powerless and sexually subjugated. Carol Duncan in her article, "Domination and Virility in Vanguard Painting" points to a long history of male pleasure being the rationale for representations of the female body in art. They have depicted women as obedient animals, powerless before the artist. The liberation of artists like Vlaminck, Van Dongen or Kirchner means the domination of others (i.e.women); the artist's freedom requires their (womens') unfreedom.

Identifying the female body with nature, generation, and the instinctual life have become important areas of identification for some women artists. But this has had its pitfalls, not least because it seems to suppport allegations (by men) that this is the only aspect of existence that women can paint about, and sits well with the gender-stereotype notion that women are consumed by their neuroses. Many of the female artists who turned to the subject they know best - the female body - were sidelined in the debates raging around the modern art movements of the early decades of the 20th century. Two of the first female artists working with nude female forms were Suzanne Valadon and Paula Modersohn-Becker - hardly household names now. Georgia O'Keefe threatened to stop painting altogether unless critics ceased to over-analyse her work with Freudian interpretations of "female" imagery in her flower paintings. Feminism definitely was seen by her as "a burden and a barrier to her development as a painter". What, I wonder, would she have made of the expulsion of Leena McCall's painting of Ms Ruby May from the Mall Galleries this week? Regarded as "too pornographic" by the Mall Galleries after complaints from visitors, the painting was substituted with another nude that does not show any pubic hair.  REALLY??   IN  JULY, 2014???

Fulcrum (1997) Jenny Saville  photo courtesy of The Guardian

Jenny Saville, one of the Young British Artists of the 90's, has concentrated on painting the female nude and transgender/transexual bodies over the last 20 years. She has supported the feminist-led attempt to destroy the role of the muse, model or lover that has been historically assigned to women in the world of art. She constantly challenges the image we have of the stereotypical female/male/transgender body. She has stated that she wants to paint "modern bodies", which I take to mean the bodies we all see around us - in the park, at swimming-pools, on the beach, on the tube........ definitely not the idealised Goddesses of the ancient Greeks. (See a slide-show of her work here ). Her work shows none of the gender-stereotypes of the past - more warts-and-all depictions of fleshiness with no trace of the smuttiness directed at Etty or the faintly veiled sexual urges of Egon Schiele or Lucian Freud. What I see when I look at Jenny Saville's work is openness and honesty. Now there's an idea................... will it catch on?




References:

Burnage,S., Hallet,M.,and Turner,L., (2011) William Etty:Art and Controversy, London, Philip Wilson Publishers Ltd.

Breazeale,W. et al. (2008) The Language of the Nude: Four Centuries of Drawing the Human Body. Surrey: Ashgate
Chadwick, Whitney (1990). Women, Art, and Society. London: Thames and Hudson
Perry, G (ed) (1999). Gender and Art, Yale University Press



http://www.dundee.ac.uk/museum/exhibitions/djc/lifestudy/graves/
http://www.royalcollection.org.uk/eGallery/object.asp?exhibition=H2Hexhibs=H2HE18&object=913482&row=1 (sketch by Hogarth of a female life-model) 
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/jul/07/painting-pornographic-pubic-hair-outrage 
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2012/jun/10/jenny-saville-paintings-oxford-solo-show?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487#/?picture=391319278&index=14

Gallery Visit: Visit a Cast Gallery - Part 4, Project 3

Research - Conservation - Interpretation - Entertainment

For a really interesting introduction to the Victoria and Albert Museum Cast Courts, you can visit vimeo.com/90982128

My sketch of Trajan's Column in the West Court

This assignment was really enjoyable for me as I spend at least two days a month in the Victoria and Albert Museum, often doing drawings in the Cast Courts. Until November 2014, the East Court will be closed for refurbishment, but the West Court is open and has a magnificent collection of Northern European and Spanish sculpture together with the amazing Trajan's Column. Like all exhibits in museums, the works are seen out of context, with little information given on how they would be viewed originally. Many of them would have been outside, so the impression of scale will be/was quite different when approached from a few hundred feet away as opposed to from a doorway; but the fact that one has to crane one's neck to look up at the tallest exhibits makes visitors feel very small when walking around these magnificent and inspiring spaces. Trajan's Column (opp.) is one of my favourites, soaring 38 metres upwards with a continuous frieze winding 200 metres in total to tell the story of Trajan's campaigns from 101AD-106AD against the Dracians of the Danube frontier. It was possible for Roman citizens to climb up the stairs inside the column and stand outside at the top to view the Forum below. Originally the whole sculpted surface was picked out in colour with metal accessories added, and could be viewed at various heights from the balconies of the surrounding libraries of the Forum buildings in Rome. This plaster casting is clearly monochrome and therefore doesn't offer the colourful experience of the original. The gallery is not high enough to hold the column in one piece, so it is shown as two parts, making it easier for people today to appreciate areas of detail that would be too high to see in its original position. Some of the carving in the original column has been lost to the ravages of pollution, so this cast has become a very valuable record of detail that has ceased to exist on the original. From an Art History and Conservation point of view, Trajan's Column holds enough interest to keep me busy for years to come. I find the whole concept of cast courts quite inspirational, as they take hundreds of years of history and bring them together in the moment under one roof. To visit these works in situ is now impossible in some cases and exteremely time-consuming in others (although there are several that I plan to see!).

Fontaine des Innocents, Paris (non-copyright photo)

To some extent the two parts of Trajan's column dominate the cast gallery, and dwarf the smaller pieces of sculpture and relief on the walls. I particularly like to draw the nymphs and putti that formed part of the Fontaine Des Innocents in Paris, (see photo right), carved in stone in 1547-49 by John Goujon (see below left and right).  They are hung side by side on a wall in the cast gallery, giving an impression that is quite different from seeing them in situ, where they adorn the four sides of the fountain.

  

My photo of the nymphs  

My photo of nymphs and putti. 

Own photo of St Stephen.

The cast courts give students like me an amazing opportunity to get up close to sculptures by experts from centuries ago who were at the pinnacle of their expertise, and the casting itself has been done with such skill and attention that it is often difficult to believe that the medium is different from the original. The cast (left) of St. Stephen shows  not only the detailed carving of the figure, but also the original paint colours used. My sketch of the head detail (below) allowed me to contemplate the marks made by one of the greatest sculptors of the Late Middle Ages, a contemporary of Albrecht Durer, the great Tilman Riemenshneider of Warzburg, Germany.  Set at eye level in the cast court, this sculpture is a joy on its own, but seen in the context of the other parts of the altarpiece, it is an amazing achievement. Interpreting the work of Riemenshneider in a pencil drawing gives me the opportunity to study the marks made by the chisels and rasps used in the art of woodcarving in a way that I would not fully appreciate just by looking.

Own photo of the whole altarpeice.

My sketch of head detail of St Stephen

The whole altarpiece (left) shows St Barbara and Stephen carvings on the right side.

My sketch of detail of head of St Barbara

Another of my favourite pieces to draw in the Cast Courts is this statue of the Three Graces (right), which is a copy of the original in the Louvre (below), by the famous Franch sculptor, Germain Pilon. Made in stone in 1525, I find it so graceful - and difficult to draw - that I return to it time and again. One of the slight problems with drawing in the Cast Courts is that it is not always easy to get far enough away from the subject to fit it all in to the page; and being close to these large sculptures often means an uncomfortable standing position. However, there are compensations, as it is relatively quiet compared to some of the other galleries in the V&A, and I am often left undisturbed. There is quite a different feeling seeing the original in white alabaster with the gilded urn atop the heads - it look much "finer" and more "pure" than the cast, and somehow less heavy.

The original (copyright The Louvre)

My photo of the plaster cast in V&A

But the opportunity to walk all around the work from a few inches away more than compensates. The way the Cast Courts have mixed up pieces from various countries and various centuries also gives the visitor a wonderful opportunity to compare and contrast the different styles that were being used by sculptors over several centuries - nearly 2000 years in all from Trajan's Column to the present day.

Untitled (Room 101) - Photo courtesy of The Guardian

In 2004, the Turner prize-winner Rachel Whiteread exhibited her Untitled (Room 101) cast in the Cast Courts (above), showing that there is a place for modern works in these galleries.Showing the room that inspired George Orwell's vision of the worst nightmare, rats and all.  It was cast by Whiteread before the original was demolished and gave visitors a unique chance to explore the space without the fears aroused by Orwell's vision. I hope they continue to evolve. as Adolf Borbein states in his informative article on the history of plaster casts, they "teach the eye and train our undeveloped capacity to respond to three-dimensional plastic form".

There is much evidence of casts being used by artists throughout history - Leonardo da Vinci was known to have a large collection - and drawing from casts was an essential part of art training. The first casts we know were made by the ancient Egyptians, and the first cast collections can be found in ancient Rome. But modern artists are also turning the casts themselves into artworks in their own right. In a previous post (27th December, 2013) I wrote about Antony Gormley's "6 Times" sculptures in Edinburgh, where he uses casts of his own body to interpret nature and our relationship with it as he follows the path taken by the Water of Leith.  George Segal (1944-2000) used plaster casts in several of his works, including "Woman Washing her Foot in a Sink (1964) (above left) and Juan Munoz used them extensively in his work (see Towards a Corner(1998), above right)  Perhaps one day, we shall see some of their work in the Cast Courts, which will hopefully survive and thrive well into the future.


References:

Taylor,B.(1995), "The Art of Today", Orion Publishing, London, UK
Honner, K. (2004) "Pop Art", Taschen Basic Art Series, Cologne

Borbein, Adolf H. (1997) "On the History of the Appraisal and Use of Plaster Casts of Ancient Sculpture (especially in Germany and in Berlin)" available at http://www.digitalsculpture.org/casts/borbein/ 

Videos:

vimeo.com/90982128 


Web-sites
http://www.digitalsculpture.org/casts/felice/index.html
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2003/nov/13/art2
http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/t/the-vanda-cast-collection/
http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/t/the-cast-courts/

Exercise: Annotatate a classical sculpture, Part 4, Project 3 - Aphrodite Crouching/Lely's Venus

The sculpture I have chosen for this exercise is one I have come to know well over the last few weeks, as I have attempted to draw it on two separate occasions (below right); both times made  difficult by the volume of tourist traffic in the more popular rooms of the British Museum. It is a beautiful piece, and well worth the interruptions and comments.

My pencil sketch done at British Museum

Lely's Venus, Roman,2nd Century BC

 Praxiteles' Knidian Venus,copy.

It would be difficult to overstate the importance of the naked and semi-naked Aphrodite/Venus as a mainstream subject of sculpture and painting in Western art. There are many variants,  of which the naked crouching Aphrodite is only one, but the attribution of the original subject is without question the Greek sculptor, Praxiteles. Praxiteles, as the first ever to show the Goddess completely naked, created a scandal by going against the social mores of Greek society and the sculptural traditions of the day which only allowed male sculptures to be shown naked. Not only was she naked, but she was doing something that every mortal did - bathing. This act of doing the commonplace brought her down from the Gods to a level where people could relate to her and she became more approachable. Placed in a shrine in her temple at Knidos in south-western Turkey, the Knidian Venus statue was later stolen, ending up in Constantinople where it is thought to have been destroyed in the fire of 476 AD. He defined the ideal which would influence how the female body would be depicted by artists for centuries afterwards, from the Romans to the Renaissance masters. The ancient writers Pliny and Lucian both describe in detail how the statue could evoke lust in her viewers, and the lengths they would go to see her from all directions; particularly admiring her soft flesh, her expression, her pose. 

Lely's Venus, as it is sometimes known, takes its name from the painter Sir Peter Lely (1618-80), who owned the sculpture after acquiring it from the collection of Charles I before the King's execution in 1649. After Lely died, it found its way back into the Royal Collection. The sculpture had previously been in the collection of the Gonzaga family in Mantua (northern Italy) for several hundred years, and was there in 1600 when Peter Paul Rubens first visited Italy. Rubens was so impressed by the artwork he encountered that he defined the style of the voluptuous nude in his paintings for years to come.  It came to England after being purchased from the Gonzagas in 1627 for Charles I, an avid collector of artworks.

It is a sensual sculpture, the sculptor's ideal of what the perfect (human form) female body of the Goddess Aphrodite might look like in the nude, made between the the 2nd and 1st century BC in the Antonine period of the Roman Empire by Doidalsas of Bithynia, after the original by the innovative sculptor Praxiteles. Often, the crouching Venus-type statue was placed around a pool so that her reflection could be seen in the water.  

Ionian Aphrodite

 
Earliest Greek sculptures of Aphrodite are thought to have been based on the Hindu Goddess Laxmi, and were much more modest, celebrating her role as the patroness of natural growth. As shown in a copy of an Ionian sculpture (right), approximately 6th Century BC,Aphrodite was depicted wearing a close-fitting chitton and long robe, holding a dove/fruit or flower - all symbols of mating and fertility (Museum of Lyon).

Nude depictions of Aphrodite (Venus to the Romans) inspired slavish following and were a critical development in Classical sculpture, which reflected the rising social status of women and changing attitudes towards them in Ancient Greek and Roman society. So famous did the Aphrodite of Knidos become, in fact, that she inspired generations of artists across the ancient world to make copies. Statue after statue of Aphrodite was produced, which mimicked or played with the stance and position of the Knidian Aphrodite, and thus her sexual ambiguity.  Sculptors who succeeded Praxiteles created more and more sexual and erotic statues, teasing the viewer and opening debate as to whether she was modestly trying to shield herself or inviting attention. It is the Greeks and the Romans we have to thank for defining beauty in women in a way that would influence artists for centuries.

 

Venus of Rhodes

The crouching Venus pose, already popular with the Greeks, became even more popular with the Romans, with her sexuality emphasized more as time went on. Greek mythology states that Aphrodite was born of the sea, and she was often depicted with wet hair. The variant (left) shows Aphrodite wringing out her wet hair and not attempting to cover herself. This association with water inspired 18th century garden designers to include Venus in many of their most ambitious projects.

Lely's Venus, in particular, has had a direct effect on many artists over the last several hundred years and almost certainly inspired Marcantonio Raimondi in his engraving of Crouching Venus in 1505-6 (below right), Rubens in his Allegory of 1612-13 (below left) and the Irish painter, Adam Buck, in his watercolour landscape (below centre).

Marcantonio Raimondi 1505-6

"Allegory" (1612-13) by Peter Paul Rubens

Adam Buck (1759-1833) Man and Woman Admiring Venus

References:

Beard, M. and Henderson J., 2001. Classical Art: from Greece to Rome, Oxford Uni. Press

Gersht, R., Aquatic Figure Types from Caesarea-Maritima, Department of Art History, Tel 

                    Aviv University (available at: http://www5.tau.ac.il/arts/departments/images

                   /stories/journals/arthistory/Assaph6/03gersht.pdf )

Havelock, C. H., 1995,The Aphrodite of Knidos and Her Successors: A Historical Review of 

                   the Female Nude in Greek Art, Ann Arbor

Honour, H. and Fleming, J., 7th Edition, 2009, A world History of Art, Laurence King, 

                  Publishing Ltd, London

Morford, M.,Lenardson, R., Sham, M., 9th edition, Classical Mythology, Oxford Uni. Press

 

https://www.britishmuseum.org

http://www.fischerarthistory.com/aphroditevenus.html

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/greece/hetairai 

           /aphrodite.html

Research: Review Paintings re. the Accurate Representation of the Human Figure, Part 4, Project 3

Symbolised, abstracted images of the human body have been around since humans first appeared on earth. They can be seen in carved human symbols ( the Venus Figurines of 25,00-23,000BC ) and cave paintings, and give us the first examples of representations of values and ideas that were prevalent at the time. The name, Venus Figurines, implies that they were made as examples of female beauty, but anthropologists have argued that they could have been deity symbols, or hopes of health and survival during an Ice Age.  Societies are always in a state of change, and are affected by various pressures. They need to be analysed within their cultural context to be fully understood. 

The ancient Egyptians certainly had a concept of what they saw as ideal in human beauty (remarkably similar to the long-limbed, small-hipped, wide-eyed symmetrical look of the present day!) and would work hard with their cosmetics and personal hygiene rituals to maintain their attractiveness. They portrayed static images of people, with little variation, and little attempt at anatomical accuracy.

In ancient Greece Aristotle said that, "Art completes what Nature cannot bring to a finish. The artist gives us knowledge of Nature's unrealised ends". This says more about how Aristotle viewed the role of art - i.e. as something to take us into the realm of the ideal, and away from the everyday. The Greeks strove to bring the Gods to the people in a way that emulated the human form, but as it would be in perfection - stronger, more symmetrical, more well-developed, more desirable, but with just enough unblemished exaggeration that ordinary mortals would still be in awe.

Kenneth Clark agreed with him in his classic book on the nude in art, writing,  "The body is not one of those subjects which can be made into art by direct transcription — like a tiger or a snowy landscape. . . . We do not wish to imitate; we wish to perfect. The nude as a conceptual and artistic category always involved the notion of an ideal abstracted from the reality we confront in our everyday lives. As such, we may add, the nude in art plays a role similar to that of the hero in epic: it provides the means and occasion to figure forth what a particular society takes to be greatest excellence".(Clark, 1956)

The Romans and Etruscans developed the art they revered from the Greeks by producing more dynamic, realistic poses that ordinary people could relate to, and the 16th and 17th century "academies" that sprung up in Europe, starting in Italy, set out to educate young artists in this classical tradition in a way that set them apart from mere craftsmen. By stressing the intellectual element of fine art with very fixed ideas of what was aesthetically correct or pleasing, these academies appeared to be enlightened when they first began, carrying on the ground-breaking work by Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. At the time, there was no question that art was about intellect, not emotion. But by the 17th Century, an argument had developed over whether the style of Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665) with its importance of line was superior to the style of Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640). Which was more important - disegno (line) or colore (colour)? Underlying this argument was the fundamental question of whether art was about intellect or emotion.

The problem with the academies having these fixed ideas was that they did not account for changing tastes in society and the different techniques (including photography) available by the 19th century, when artists like Gustave Courbet rejected the inflexible approach because it paid more attention to idealism than it did to contemporary social concerns.

Academic art declined throughout the nineteenth century because its approach was totally inflexible. and its image out of date with public taste. Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres (1780-1867) represented the ultimate academician with his history paintings and neo-classicist style portraits - in stark contrast to the dramatic style of the Romantic works of Eugene Delacroix (1798-1863) with their vigour and energy. The academies could make or break an artist's reputation, by rejecting or accepting works for public display. They held a stranglehold on the hierarchy of genres, which artists objected to because of the lowly position afforded landscapes and still life. Although most of the 19th century artists had trained under the academy conditions, many wanted freedom from academic art so that they could dispense with the idealized imagery and perfect detail demanded by the academic style. One artist who managed to "sit on the fence" and appease both sides of the stylistic argument was Antoine-Jean Gros (1771- 1835). Another debate that raged over time was to do with working methods. Was it better to learn art by looking at nature, or by scrutinizing the works of Old Masters? In other words, what is good art - the ability to interpret and organise what you see in nature or the ability to faithfully copy what the Old Masters produced?
 

These arguments about art had their effect on public taste, of course, and this anecdotal story about one man's perceived idea of perfection shows the impact of trying to impose a fixed ideal of beauty on society by attempting to control how people judge beauty.  In a letter written by Effie Gray to her father about the reason for the unconsummation of her six-year long 1848 marriage to the well-known philanthropist and art critic John Ruskin, Effie wrote,

"He alleged various reasons..................and finally this last year he told me his true reason..........that he had imagined women were quite different from what he saw I was, and that the reason he did not make me his Wife was because he was disgusted with my person the first evening 10th April." Janet Malcolm relates the explanation given by Mary Lutyens for Ruskin's disgust in his wife's appearance as:- ".......he discovered that Effie had pubic hair. Nothing had prepared him for this. He had never been to an art school and none of the pictures or statues on public exhibition at that time depicted female nudes with hair anywhere on their bodies. In his ignorance he believed her to be uniquely disfigured." (Lutyens in Malcolm, J. 2013) Lutyens explanation has been disputed (and a counter argument about to be put forward in Emma Thompson's film, Effie Gray, to be released this year), but the sad public scandal of their marriage did expose the disconnect between idealised images of the female body and reality which still exists today. If the beauty and desirability of all women is to be judged against the perceived perfection of the classical ideal, each of us is going to be found wanting.

It seems to me that the question, "Is there any tension between an art based on the classical ideal and art pursuing anatomical accuracy?" must be answered with a loud, "Yes!". It is really a re-statement of a more fundamental question posed for centuries. What is good painting today? Is it about intellect or emotion? Is there a place of interpretation? 

According to Paul Trachtman of the Smithsonian Institute, we are now witnessing a resurgence in interest in representational or figurative art mixed with elements of abstraction and ambiguous narrative in ways that have not been seen before. If artists stop experimenting, they have ceased to develop their art and have nothing more to say. He states, "As the 20th century progressed, painters such as Wassily Kandinsky and Jackson Pollock abandoned the concept of art as representation altogether, producing canvases that contained no recognisable objects at all. In their "abstract" works, the paint itself became the subject. By the 1960s, conceptual artists—inspired by Marcel Duchamp and other Dadaists of the 1920s—adopted the view that art should aim at the mind, not the eye, turning out paintings in which the idea behind the work was more important than the work itself. With a few obvious exceptions—Pop Art, Photo Realism and artists such as David Hockney—representational or figurative art was largely considered a thing of the past by the end of the 20th century." 
 

Western society is individualistic, expressive and far less religious than ever before. It is far more complex, multi-racial, multi-faith, yet more democratic in structure than the city-states where the classical ideal was born and flourished. Individuals today are encouraged to think and form opinions for themselves, not to slavishly follow dogma, and to be tolerant of differences. They do not risk ostracism if their ideas are not mainstream. Artists reflect the culture and society they live in so we should expect them to interpret, not to reflect ideals that were relevant in societies very different from the ones we live in today. What is more, tension produces debate and debate encourages ideas. We are far from an ideal society yet, so we accept the tension and we celebrate the freedom to debate.

Web-sites:

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/back-to-the-figure-164135338/?no-ist

http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/history-of-art/academic-art.htm

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/10659826/Will-Emma-Thompsons-film-about-Ruskin-now-see-the-light-of-day.html

http://www.unl.edu/rhames/courses/current/venus1.pdf

Books:

Malcolm, J., 2013, Forty-One False Starts: Essays on Artists and Writers, Granta Books, London

Clark,K.,1956,The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form,Bollingen Series 35.2. New York: Pantheon Books.
Strickland,C., 'The Annotated Mona Lisa: A Crash Course in Art History from Prehistoric to Post-Modern', pages 12-15, 68  

Exercise: Commission a Portrait, Part 4, Project 2

Pastel drawing of my husband for Drawing I

For this exercise, I have to imagine that I am  commissioning a portrait of someone and I have chosen myself. I have already commissioned two professional portraits of my husband and have even attempted to get a good likeness by drawing him myself for the Drawing I course (left), so I'd like to see what an artist would make of me as the subject. Why? Well, doing the research exercise for Project 2 on why artists make self-portraits was a great help in thinking about why I would want a portrait of anyone, (see post dated June 3rd, 2014), and I was particularly struck by Chagall's 1911 painting "I and the Village" (see below right) where the artist incorporated scenes from his early life in Russia with symbols of Christianity and folklore to bring together memories of his childhood, in a Cubist style. Would I want this portrait to bring back memories? 

Chagall: I and the Village, 1911

I was also struck by aspects of Courbet's "The Painter's Studio - A Real Allegory of a Seven Year Phase in my Moral and Artistic Life" (1855) where he includes many of the people who have influenced his artistic life. Do I want my portrait to say something of the people/ideas/events that have influenced my life?

Courbet: The Painter's Studio - A Real Allegory... ,1855

Do I want this portrait to say anything of my inner self, or just to be "the glove" that Dali describes, which concentrates on the recognisable characteristics that define what I look like at this age and stage? Does immortalising myself in canvas and paint come into this? And how about the style? I have so many photographs of myself that I definitely don't want a photo-realist image with every pore visible. Mmmm.....complex, when you get down to it. I want there to be included something of Courbet's idea of the influences in my life with some of Chagall's storytelling but in the style of David Hockney when he was experimenting with photo-montage or that of the Dadaist Hannah Hoch (below) with her combination of newspaper cuttings, photographs and print.

Hannah Hoch: Self-Portrait 1971

Hoch produced a collage towards the end of her life (left, 1971) which included photos of her at various ages. Good idea but very busy. I would want her to include some references to a country I have lived and worked in - the more than twenty five years I spent in India, Turkey, Canada and Holland - and the influences/freedoms I have enjoyed being born in the latter half of the 20th century. I would like this portrait to celebrate life in general and my life in particular, but to be selective - not as busy as the collage on the left - perhaps more like "Roma" below.

Hoch, Roma 1925

   
I definitely want her to understand how much I enjoyed the visual impact enjoyed in countries where life is lived outdoors - the colours, the sounds, the light, the aromas and the flora and fauna of these areas (especially India and Istanbul, but also the winter blue-sky-white-snow- blinding-brightness of Canadian winters) and how they have formed such a rich tapestry of memories for me. But including all of these place is difficult, so I have decided I want my portrait to be a memory of 2005-2012 and to concentrate mainly on my time in India.

My photo images to help Hannah Hoch

To help, I am going to give Hannah a small sheet of images from my photo collection that she can look at and make reference to in her work, but I don't want to dictate the final work - and I definitely don't want her to include everything. I am excited to see what she makes of it. Just creating the contact sheet of images gives me a good idea of the colours I would like to see in the final portrait.
There should be the blues of the sky and the ocean; the purples/pinks/oranges of the sunset; the dark contrasts between indoors and outdoors and the filtered light through elaborate stonework; the greens of the palms and the pinks/oranges of the bougainvillea; the warmth of the skin tones and the contrast of the saris. It should exude calmness - it is the sounds of the early mornings and sunsets that stay with me when I think of my home in India, not the frenetic roads and bustling stations that are part of every city anywhere on the planet.

 

What she chooses to do with the images is the exciting part. I don't want a portrait that is so predictable that there is no mystery, and I would like the result to be one that holds my interest for a long time.
 

David Tierney Self-Portrait 1985

A painting on my wall at home in London (below) is one I bought in Canada from David Tierney. It is a self-portrait, in colour tones that I really enjoy. There are a lot of warm tones, but with lots of blue. I will hope that Hannah picks up on the theme of the pictures I have given her as nature-history-spirituality-health and that they tell her a little about the things which give me pleasure.


Perhaps Hannah will come up with something like this photomontage (below), which I have made using cut and paste technique and Adobe Photoshop, as an example of how she might incorporate various images from my memory bank into a portrait of my time in India. I shall call it "Journey" as it represents many changes I had to go through in order to work and live happily in such a different culture. Many of these are changes of routine, change of workplace, change in diet, change in dress - what I would call "easy" changes, many of which we all make when going on holiday - but the really challenging changes are those that involve changes in attitude and those that involve managing to remain upbeat and optimistic when missing people/things and living with a degree of isolation in a very different culture. I hope Hannah Hoch can allude to the psychological and behavioural "journey" that I have gone through while in my years in India.

The mock-up of "Journey" which I made from my photos, to celebrate the years of living and working and India.

I have really enjoyed this exercise. It made me smile; and it made me ask a lot of questions about what I would want to be included in a portrait, helping me focus on what the important elements are that would give me satisfaction.

I cannot imagine not enjoying whatever my chosen portraitist, Hannah Hoch, comes up with, but if anything would disappoint me it would be if she produced a work that was very small. I would like this to be large, at least 1m x 1.5m and I hope she incorporates a mixture of media.