For a contemporary reading of
Nicolas Poussin's paintings
SEE
POUSSIN'S HUMOUR
CLICK ON
http://www.nicolaspoussin.co.uk/index.html
If this link does not work from here, copy & paste it to your browser.
For a contemporary reading of
Nicolas Poussin's paintings
SEE
POUSSIN'S HUMOUR
CLICK ON
http://www.nicolaspoussin.co.uk/index.html
If this link does not work from here, copy & paste it to your browser.
November 24, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Technorati Tags: NICOLAS POUSSIN, POUSSIN, POUSSIN'S HUMOR, POUSSIN'S HUMOUR
I have had a good time reading this book. If I were top award ratings,
definitely5 stars. Even so I feel I should make clear some of my reservations
about its argument. Two sections of this book of special note:
1. The City & the Land Sexed. Best for Francis Pound's genial delight in taking
the usually implicit sexual metaphors of 'Nationalist' criticism as literally
as possible. He has a great comic time naming genital parts & sexual acts that
were presumably unmentionable from the 30s to 50s in NZ. The gender
implications are made clear. Some assistance from Alex Calder is one of the few
exceptions to Pound's near-silence about And.
This is a New Zealand Dunciad
beyond compare. !8th century British satirists would have been proud of this
section.
2. In Chapter VIII: Primitivism & the National Purpose, the accounts of Gordon
Walter's adaptation of Maori & Pacific motifs to his clean-edged 'geometric'
abstraction & of his relation to abstraction in Europe and America are fine
pieces of writing -- maybe the most incisive commentary of Walters to date.
It gradually becomes clearer as the book goes on that the monster of
'Nationalist' criticism and its attendant 'timid modernism' was finally
destroyed by Walters [as classic mythological hero, Perseus or Theseus
perhaps].
Colin McCahon in this account is still too stuck on Christian religiosity &
landscape ['Nationalism']to do the deed. For all that, Pound makes his case
with some thoroughness and sensitiviy. His later work is as full of symbolizing
as the art of Joseph Beuys.
What was needed to kill the monster was not,it appears, McCahon's wide-open
acceptance [also 'forbidden'] of US painting of the 40s & 50s --- Harold
Rosenberg's Action Painting with its attention away from formal geometry &
containment of easel painting by the frame to process, nor to McCahon's keen
attention to Alan Kaprow's art and the 'Happening'.
As soon as Clement Greenberg's term 'Abstract Expressionism' appears it is
usually the case hat questions of formal overall treatment & surface versus
depth, painting versus drawing will follow, remaining within the terms of
a formalist aesthetics.
re- Pound's comments on my early account of McCahon's visit to the USA in the
Bulletin of New Zealand Art History, 1975:
that attempted to elicit the documented facts of McCahon's visit -- what he
could actually have seen.
Far from excluding as much as possible, the later part of the article pays
attention to the effect of US painting on him, along with the other things he
admired by Gauguin, Tessai, Capogrossi and Mondrian.
& US influence is more clearly acknowledged in my essay of 1992 for Headlands.
In Buffalo a year later, I was struck by the look of Robert Motherwell's Elegy
for the Spanish Republic, no. 34, as if I had found a McCahon I hadn't seen
before.
What counts is Walters' static, framed, contained aesthetic of the idealist
formality of the geometrical, as practised by the painters and sculptors
Walters encountered in 1950 in Europe, Over a previous knowledge of Miro &
Klee, probably Capogrossi, Vasarely, Sophie-Taueber Arp & Herbin [perhaps also
Sonia Delaunay] are the models This is the territory of apparently forbidden
by 'Nationalism': 'Ultra-Modernism'. Even so, as Pound continually points out,
it still bears the 'signature of place' with its references to Maori motifs.
Mrkusich is another hero [though his art does not get the same attention here
as does Walters'], because he never was a figure painter.
When Walters' art finally got the serious attention it undoubtedly deserved --
and still deserves -- it was 1966. In terms of overseas art, it was much too
late. & though in New Zealand the whole argument Nationalism/Internationalism
remained among some critics, but not all, & with little hold on artists after
1970.
[I did see Len Lye mentioned in a footnote -- footnote 'names' do not appear to
be indexed. But in spite of Lye's very early liking for -- and appropriation of
Pacific arts materials -- he doesn't count in this story, which tends to be
confined to NZ residents].
It is still one of the most ambitious accounts of New Zealand critical
positions in the first phases of New Zealand's modernism, clear and incisive in
its attack on 'Nationalism', full of excellent detailed discussions, a finely
readable text.
December 23, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Technorati Tags: Colin McCahon.Clement Greenberg, Francis Pound, Gordon Walters, Harold Rosenberg. Len Lye, Len Lye, Milan Mrkusich, Nationalism
On page 143 I'm made to look a bit of an idiot, by a peculiar process of extraction of words and repositioning them. Please bear with a relatively long process of quotation.
In 'McCahon made difficult' -- Art New Zealand,49, Summer 1988-1989, pp54-56 & 97
-- republished in'Tension,18,October 1989 pp24-27 -- I began:
"As a critic, I get weary of hearing about McCahon the Prophet. Such an inflated rhetoric requires me to believe, only, and to abrogate criticism as irrelevant impiety".
That does not fit Francis Pound's book. He has McCahon as a Nationalist Prophetic Artist, as truly religious as he can make him. And several prominent McCahon scholars made, he believes, several attempts to drain him of his religiosity. [p142. I hope I summarise that fairly.] First, Wystan Curnow makes it seem that McCahon's
"conception of religion, strenuous and tragically dramatic though it may seem, is hardly more than a pictorial attitude -- a form, as it were, of post-modern quotationalism" --
I am sure Wystan Curnow can comment on that "hardly more than", if he wishes. It is a poor return for all his work on McCahon over the years.
As for Anthony (Tony) Green, another one of the 'several prominent scholars of McCahon' [who were the others?] he cops it on the next page, but in the strangest of ways. First see what I wrote and then see what Pound made of it.
"It is unfortunate that McCahon used so many religious texts in his paintings, since this attracts the most careless of assumptions: that the paintings themselves are sanctified as a result. The texts are not simply, or merely, enunciated. Rather they are frequently embedded in a questioning mode, full of doubt". The text goes on to note that the texts are Biblical, sometimes changed in their meaning. Then continues:
A little further on I comment that McCahon felt he needed a 'common language'. As against, abstraction or pure formal means:
"He needed representation and recognisable ethical text".
My text goes on to speak of McCahon's original support from people with a Christian commitment, therefore no surprise he make use of Christian symbol.
"More recently the Christianity in the texts has been an embarrassment to many among his younger audience. This is especially true of those who have had trouble separating themselves from religious upbringing, felt as restrictive, and doctrinaire. What on[c]e was an entrance is now seen as a blockage. This point of view tends to see McCahon as preaching, with a God-given certainty. which is not the case. And further to miss the painting altogether, assuming that the text[s] he uses are all that paintings say".And so on for another 2 pages. I'm sorry for on-liner readers working through all this, but now I can come to the point. Here is what Pound makes of that.
"Tony Green...remarks of McCahon's biblical inscriptions that they 'are frequently embedded in a questioning mode, full of doubt'; and he further notes that they 'are texts inside painting, with all that [ ] implies' -- as though by being pictured within the relative autonomy of a painting, these Christian texts might lose all the meaning that they normally have in the world'. Finally, Green concludes that since they have become an embarrassment to many among his younger audience', it is unfortunate that McCahon used so many religious texts in his paintings' -- a thought he choice were merely arbitrary, and any texts ... might have served as well."
Is that a fair summary and citation of what I wrote?
Just goes to show, how de-contextualisation disrupts meaning. Sentences can even be made to look clean contrary to their originally contextualised meaning. [Journalists are skilfull at that]. Anyhow, Pound's text goes happily on, as if he has dealt firmly and cleanly with Wystan Curnow and me. The reader will decide.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The bibliography of this wonderful and elaborate book is 23 pages long: great stuff!
But then it includes a whole lot of interesting work: Pound could have taken advantage of ------
e.g. the writers of And -- and the theses (MA & PhD) of the excellent Stephen Zepke who had such a good grasp of Jacques Derrida's writing that he seemed to demolish Gordon H Brown's view of McCahon beyond repair -- and Wystan Curnow's comparison of Barnett Newman's painting and McCahon's.
In bibliography but not mentioned [a brief acknowledgment,as I've mentioned before, of Leigh Davis].
The drive towards making the all-embracing 'Nationalism' analysis stick, stops at nothing. Could one say then: here is the obverse or reverse, the Anti-Nationalist view?
December 18, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Technorati Tags: Barnett Newman, Colin McCahon, Francis Pound, Nationalism, New Zealand painting, Stephen Zepke, Tony Green, Wystan Curnow
Funny goings on. In Francis Pound’s book ‘The Invention of New Zealand’ I’m ‘his professor'. Thanks Francis for the acknowledgment and that I ‘never seemed to believe anything his student wrote’. Was I then unintentionally responsible for his attempt to construct the implacable logic of his argument here? What have I done!
Somewhere in Pound’s discussion of McCahon he has me saying in one sentence something very odd, seemingly the opposite of what I had thought I was saying. Now that had me wondering what else he’d done.
My by-line has been ‘Tony Green’ for about 30years, so it’s a bit strange to find myself referred to as Anthony (Tony) Green. [Pound p.95]
Only keen bibliographers could possibly care that I used Anthony S. G. Green for a couple of years. I wanted to be distinct from the Academic British painter, Anthony Green. [With whom I was in fact later confused at a school house reunion by a then ageing very deaf housemaster c. 1993. I guess he thought I’d done well.
This reference comes at the end of a passage in which Pound is writing about Colin McCahon’s 1940s landscapes, with black edges to the hills against the light of the sky – the rest of the hills invariably dark green & sometime some ochre & often strongly shaded. Then ‘after a certain point’ ‘modernist reductivism’ set in for McCahon until there was nothing left on his palette but black & white. I’m not sure when that was. 1970s there were often creamy colours, reddish underpaintings, purple and in many landscape works on paper, multi-coloured.
But that is just to sketch some context for what comes next. At that point, whenever it was, “McCahon seems to Nationalist criticism to be the harsh clarity painter par excellence, who personifies the national light – he becomes in the words of Anthony (Tony) Green, ‘Mr Big Black-and-White’ himself”.
In case anyone gets the impression that I was there supporting what Pound calls the ‘Nationalist’ view of landscape painting and/or of McCahon, take a look at the context in which I wrote it in 1993. [The Big Bang Theory. A.C.A.G., 1993] I’m not describing my own view of McCahon’s painting. “The hype around McCahon makes him popularly acceptable in the guise of Mr Big Black-and-White, essentially a landscape painter, expressing the essence of New Zealand”. What alternative view did I suggest? “ But that resists, downplays, ignores, all the many paintings that do not lend themselves to useful criticism as landscapes, e.g. Numerals or Teaching Aids”.
It would be nice now to revise that, for the present occasion and put an emphasis on the word landscapes. I began to wonder whether in fact the whole argument of Pound's has gone ballistic, starting simply enough from a critique of older art/literature criticism, especially of the writing & painting on around & about landscape to imagine it has engaged with all of New Zealand art. Actually it is far from inclusive, even of painters.
Much of the
analysis & commentary on ‘criticism’ in the 30s & again in the 1950s &
1960s in the book is interesting. The editors & writers of And 1/And
2/And 3/And 4 pretty well nailed it for
literature [or writing] in the 1980s. But there is very little in the book other
than a brief acknowledgement that it exists. Eventually on p.374 Pound more or
less conflates mid-1980s And with
1970-ish Freed. 15 years apart &
more or less indistinguishable?
December 17, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Technorati Tags: And, Colin McCahon, Francis Pound, Freed, nationalism, New Zealand
A good read over breakfast -- & beyond -- this morning.
The myth of the 'Harsh New Zealand' has become a familiar topic for criticism of 'Nationalism'. Pound has had a lot of practice in it over the past thirty years. The new version in this book is a finely honed performance: well beyond good provincial play, it reaches test match standard.
Everywhere,as he meets the absurdities and excesses of his
'Nationalists', he demolishes their positions. He really has the wood on them.
I specially liked his characterization of G.E.Fairburn's dissing of the 'temptations' of modernisms of all kinds, as a maledictory rite [p.124].
The more I read the more monstrous the opposition seems.
December 13, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0)
December 12, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0)
The Invention
of New Art &
Zealand National
Identity
Francis 1930--1970
Pound
Auckland University Press 2009 ISBN 978-1-86940-414-7
Francis Pound's extraordinary wittily written finely researched in depth study of an ideological theme, that, as he shows, dominated 'art' in New Zealand for 40 years -- & is still not altogether dead -- deserves an in depth reading.
I sat down to it yesterday. I'm making a few notes as I go.
I.1 'Art'? It is a book about easel painting -- narrower than that: primarily
about a practice of landscape painting from 1930-1970. The main concern of
those years: how to represent characteristic contemporary scenes. That meant
embedding appropriate signifiers in images.
I.2 For Francis Pound 1930-1970 has a period-style: Nationalism with a capital
N - not unlike, as he recognizes, Erwin Panofsky's distinction of the
Renaissance [the Real Deal] from earlier renascences [because they only
partially fulfill his conditions for Renaissance].
I.3 It begins with a sharp generational manifestation assertion of newness &
ends with a kind of fade, because the rejection by a later generation of
painters did not manifest itself so clearly with claims of newness. This is
what Pound calls a 'Post-Nationalist art'.
I.4 Here is a problem: the earlier 'period' is overall centered on adequate
significations in painting, but in the later 'period' painting though a
widespread & still interesting practice, is only one practice alongside
sculpture, photography, video, performance, installation, multi-media and
cross-media activities. It is no longer the case that art = painting.
I.5 Writing about 'Post-Nationalism' is the occasion for the rescuing of two
painters who had emerged in the 1960s. First, chronologically, it was Milan
Mrkusich, promoted by Petar Vuletic and Michael Dunn, in the name of modernist
abstraction. Second, it was Gordon Walters, promoted by Vuletic, Dunn and
Pound. In the critical battle-ground, this showed itself as an opposition to
Colin McCahon's supporters. The battle was engaged at the level of what Pound
calls primary dealers, between Barry Lett Galleries and all-comers, as
challengers.
I.6 In the late 1960s the crucial young painters for 'Post-Nationalism' in
Auckland were Ian Scott and Richard Killeen. During the 1970s there were
several prominent painters whose work was marked by its abstraction, a lack of
interest in appropriate signifiers of nationhood. Richard Killeen, for Pound,
is a central figure in this development, possibly because his painting is not
abstract, but makes use of figural items, dispersed in the 80s in cut-outs to
be displayed in clusters without centralization of arrangement or clear
signifying theme.
I.7 While that was going on, seen from the dealer-gallery perspective, there
was an altogether different kind of revival going on from the 1970s on
attention to Len Lye's films, paintings and kinetic sculptures.
I.8 Sometimes inside the dealer gallery spaces, but more active outside them in
independent artist-run communal spaces or Artspace or on the beach or in the
street or in the Domain artists were working on projects that had little to do
with contemporary painting practice and for the most part had no interest in
the contestation of 'Nationalism' by 'Post-Nationalism'.
II.1 The book is illustrated in colour. The first one, important to the text,
is a small 1947 painting, The Listener, of an image of a head turned away,
facing into the depth of the scene. Somebody has turned up the brightness &
saturation of the somewhat dull colours, pink and brownish shadowy areas to the
left of the 'background' and around the black hair of the head. The browns come
out an improbable dull orange.
II.2 Glancing through the other colour illustrations, I'm struck by the
intensity, the saturation, which mercilessly rework often lovely original
paintings into seriously lurid colour. I recall that the Auckland University
Press did something similar with the colour plates for Peter Simpson's book on
Colin McCahon. A painting that I once owned, illustrated in there, was almost
unrecognizable.
December 08, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Technorati Tags: Colin McCahon, Francis Pound, Gordon Walters, Richard Killeen
December 03, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0)
David Packwood has just blogged on the Jonathan Jones vs Poussin controversy in The Guardian.
His comment on the slow progress of Poussin studies, often held up by a group of scholars who appear to be blocking new publications:
"But not all Poussin scholars regard Poussin as a figure of academic classicism to be preserved in amber for the delectation of connoisseurs. Outside the small circle of scholars grimly hanging onto the idealist view of Poussin, new work is emerging; but the problem is that it takes a very long time, not only for fresh writing to be published, but for work to become assimilated into the field. A high-ranking scholar once told me that Poussin studies moves "slowly." Substitute glacial for slowly, an apt metaphor for as far as Poussin studies are concerned, we seem to be frozen. We're looking at a cultural field that has turned to ice. Still, there are signs of the Great Thaw- the ice can't melt quickly enough for this Poussin Eskimo". For the whole comment see http://artintheblood.typepad.com/art_history_today
November 27, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0)
November 24, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0)
60 comments so far -- successful journalism by Jonathan Jones! -- but it simply will not do to say, as a critic, 'I don't get it' -- that simply points to the inability & failure of understanding of the critic -- happily, Jonathan Jones doesn't go on to add '& you can't persuade me otherwise' [which is the language of bigotry]
I put the stereotypical view of Poussin as cold erudite & boring down to a rotting tradition of art historical treatment of his art that permeates the 20th century & continues -- & my colleague David Packwood is also indignant about the maintenance of that stereotype in journalism -- his comment today in 'The Guardian' re- Jonathan Jones remarks about Poussin as the delight of snobs is worth repeating here:
November 24, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0)
"When people enthuse about him, I can't help feeling that they're phoneys at some level. I'm sure I am wrong. But on Poussin, I'm a philistine and fear I always will be."
http://xrl.us/bgdeie -- Jonathan Jones in 'The Guardian'.
There are plenty of reasons why an intelligent & sensitive art-buff such as Jonathan Jones should feel cut-off from the paintings of that admirable painter Nicolas Poussin. But it sounds as tho it's thee current enthusers who are the real target for his dislike.
I remarked this morning in an email to a friend:
that part of the more recent arty public perception
of Poussin as an elite interest is probably due to
the information flow more about the market than anything else -- & the sky-high prices, the recent discoveries of 'lost' works, their scarcity outside public collections & hence the large amount of interest among scholars who are implicated in the market in attributions, copies, paintings existing in 2 versions --
& that's before you get to the insistent drone of 19th century [& 20th century idealist] aestheticism that still clings to this great 'classical' artist -- & the insistent hermeneutics of difficult erudite subjects that is still the mainstay of scholarly writing"
Be assured: you are not alone, Jonathan Jones, in an aversion to that version of Poussin -- that's the version that has [almost completely ] monopolised writing for 40 years --
there are a number of writers currently trying to change that version -- there's at least one important publication in the pipe-line -- [there's something going on there, but you don't yet know what it is...] -- apart from TJ Clark's close-up of 2 landscape paintings -- there's David Carrier's 'Poussin's Paintings' [1993].
Try a dose of 'Poussin's Humour' -- see if it doesn't give you reason to think again & actually get to enjoy paintings that a number of contemporary non-snobs do enjoy.
http://www.nicolaspoussin.co.uk/index.htmlNovember 23, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Technorati Tags: David Carrier, Jonathan Jones, Poussin, Poussin's Humour, The Guardian
Len Lye week for me -- yesterday Wystan Curnow put into my hands a copy of 'Len Lye' edited by Tyler Cann & Wystan Curnow -- beautiful design by Kalee Jackson -- big book, c. 290 x 250 mm ] --
published by the Govett Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth. A brilliant picture book with some really interesting new essays by McCann, Curnow, guy Brett, Roger Horrocks, Tessa Laird and Evan Webb-- more like a magazine than a book, a serious piece of coffee-table decor, full of many new photos of strips of film, hand-written documents, sculpture, photograms [& some more familiar, including the photos of Lye with friends erecting a Wind Wand in New York].
This should generate some excitement about Len Lye in the [arty] public at large.
& on Friday Roger Horrocks long awaited new book on Len Lye's art [to complement his fine biography of Lye] will be launched "Art that Moves: the Work of Len Lye" [Auckland University Press] -- with DVD of some movies & Roger Horrocks' short movie about Len Lye that was shown at the NZ International Film Festival this year Film Festival
November 22, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Technorati Tags: Govett Brewster Art Gallery, Len Lye, Roger Horrocks, Tyler McCann, Wystan Curnow
Conference
of the Académie de France à Rome – Villa Medici
Poussin e l'Antico
I wish
the conference good luck for Friday 13th November
&
Saturday 14th November.
The main
topic will be the analysis of the way in which the painter made reference to antique literary sources.
That sounds interesting and is certainly germane to 'Poussin's Humour'.
Unfortunately I cannot go to
Rome next weekend. I would have liked to hear the papers to be given
by Henry Keazor and Todd Olson.
Information on the conference was not as widely distributed
as might have been expected. By invitation only?
The news reached me this morning thanks to David Packwood in
UK, who had only just heard about it. Perhaps the papers of the conference will
be published one day.
November 06, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0)
October 28, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0)
October 20, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0)
October 06, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0)
"Poussin's Humour' will be published towards the end of November.
NZ readers should contact the publisher for special pre-publication price at
September 22, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Download Press release draft 1
details of the book & sales are on http://xrl.us/bfmp5s
& the theme song http://xrl.us/bfmpr4
September 20, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0)
POUSSIN’S HUMOUR
1
The author, writing about Poussin’s paintings,
explains where he is coming from and the scheme of art history that was in
operation at the Courtauld Institute of Art in the 1950s and 1960s. He sees
that as lacking an art critical component and interested primarily in
iconographical meanings. That scheme has operated especially in the case of
Poussin’s paintings. They became – and remained – an important model for
classical academic art beginning in the years immediately after Poussin’s death
(in 1665).
2
By contrast the author, starting from an admiration
for painters like Henri Matisse and intensely concerned with colour, became
interested only slowly and gradually in Poussin’s practice as a painter. His
first writing about Poussin’s Sacraments paintings, a doctoral thesis (Edinburgh,
1968) was conservative, largely concerned with iconography, and also with
sources in antique art and in book illustration. But later concerns with
teaching Fine Arts students and with new interest in contemporary art practice
shifted his investigations to unexpected irregularities and peculiarities of
some of Poussin’s paintings. These he found have not been commented on before,
and the reason, he believes, is the aforesaid lack in art historical practice of
concern with the practice of painting. The result of this lack is a failure to
recognise Poussin’s wit as a painter.
3
Since the book does not have any reproductions in
either colour of black and white, he lists available reproductions of Poussin’s
paintings and drawings. In addition he provides general notes on his reading
for the writing of this book.
4
STUDYING POUSSIN
The author reviews the state of art historical
knowledge of Poussin. It is rich in iconographical study and in a close
attention to the intellectual context of the painting, that is to say, the
currents of philosophical thought with which Poussin and his patrons might have
been familiar. There has also been extensive and valuable work done on
establishing the oeuvre in painting and drawing, by documentary research and by
connoisseurship. In addition there have been occasional attempts to recognise
Poussin’s practice as a painter, by Michael Podro, Oskar Bättschmann, David
Carrier, Todd Olson and recently, and most notably, by T.J.Clark.
5
Poussin has been studied as if his ‘thought’ was to
be found by examining the content of his paintings and their links to the
history of ideas, that is to say the history of philosophical and literary expression of ideas. This supposes
that writing rather than painting is the measure of ideas and his thinking. In
particular, his painterly play with artifice and illusion has been disregarded.
6
This is maintained in the literature by denying as
far as possible the baroque, the devotional and the irrational and illusionist
features of his painting. In the 1960s, on the basis of highly selective
biographical details, he was regarded as a liberal agnostic and an academic
classicist, painting that seeks respectability among literary people by aping literature.
In contrast with the insistence of historical scholars on content, there was an
insistence by art critics on the formal design character of the paintings.
These were valued as part of a classical tradition that led to the paintings of
Paul Cézanne and thence to the formal inventions of early modernism and
abstraction. But this tends to ignore the process in the medium.
7
There follows a discussion of the basis of the
widely practised iconographical study, that is to say the study of recognisable
scenes and the apparent actions of figures, as if they were scenes with actors
in a theatre. It is there that the author sees a lack of understanding, and a
need for a close attention to the conditions of painting, since the scenes in
Poussin’s pictures are not tableaux vivants, but painted figures made
visible by painting.
8
The author summarises the prevalent view of
Poussin’s development as a painter, from baroque to classical. He wishes to add
to this an account of Poussin’s artifice, that is to say, the conscious
construction of images from the materials of painting. He discusses the various
ways of describing the respondent to painting. He settles on the term ‘reader’
and asks the crucial question of the book: what does it mean to be a reader of
Poussin’s paintings?
9
PAINTING AS A PRACTICE
The importance of la pratica, practice, is stated by Poussin in his
Osservazioni
(in Bellori’s Life).
This has only a very restricted meaning for academic theory: it omits knowledge
of the medium and the effects of the application of paint. That is a heuristic
kind of knowledge, practical know-how. In academic theory practice becomes no more than a
mechanical operation of representation, the kind of practice that gave rise to
Marcel Duchamp’s scorn: bête come un peintre. Practice, as execution, had to be rescued by
Delacroix’s writings and practice and by Baudelaire’s criticism in the 19th
century. In discussion of the creation of beautiful figures, critics have
repeatedly neglected painting as the mere means of signification and
concentrated on the figures signified. This is a modernist procedure, it fails
to goback to Aristotle’s view of mimesis, as including the colours and drawn shapes.
‘Seeing as’ is then left to the reader of painting’s sharp definition or its
loose and ambiguous vagueness. Painting is a double structure of ‘figures’ in
the sense of drawn shapes and colours and ‘figures’ in the sense of the figures
of recognizable things. Although a purely formal discussion is not to be
recommended, yet there is much room for a discussion of the strategic thinking
involved in the practice of painting and drawing.
10
ANTIQUE
THEORY & PAINTING
11
Poussin
as a painter in the antique manner
Although Poussin’s later paintings – from the 1630
onwards – do not have obtrusive brushwork of the kind found in many of his
contemporaries, there is still a residue of his earlier manner of open
brushwork, but on a smaller scale.
12
His paintings are painted as if they are ancient
works of art, rather than as if they are things seen and recorded. This follows
a tradition that is most obvious in Mantegna’s painting and then in the small
history scenes inserted in sixteenth century fresco decoration. Poussin’s
however are movable, framed oil paintings, independent of decorative framing on
a wall.
13
Poussin’s well-known distance from Caravaggio’s
painting can be seen as a refusal to become a painter of the visible. He
insists instead on the actions and passions of his figures, the invisible. But
this entails an extremely careful attention to the visible appearance of his
figures by which the invisible can be known. For this reason the operation of
the painting in the construction of a scene is of crucial importance.
14
The writings of the Philostratus family are significant
for Poussin, both in the
ekphrasis, or description, of paintings and in the
discussion of painting in the Life of Apollonius of Tyana. These are a rich source for
the notion of a playful illusion in the relation between material painting and
resulting image. This tradition is conspicuously present in Bellori’s 1672 Life
of
Poussin, but largely absent in subsequent writers. For Poussin as for any
artist the imaginary is at work in the manipulation of wax to model small
figures or in drawing and painting.
15
Only in T.J.Clark’s recent book ‘The Sight of
Death’ is the question of Poussin’s artifice properly opened up. Artifice is
also at issue in Jean-François Lyotard’s Discours, figure in which he distinguishes
between the effects of text and of image. The importance of figure, image and
picture is that they are instruments not of ‘signification’ but of
‘designation’, of pointing to things.
16
JUDGEMENT
OF SOLOMON
The problem for a painter is how to show which of
two women (harlots, only witnesses as to the death of a child) is the true
mother of a living child. In the Bible the problem is solved by the words
spoken by the two women in response to Solomon’s ruse: he orders that the
living child be cut in half. But that resolution is impossible in a painting
without words.
17
Poussin thought it was his most beautiful painting,
a judgement based, no doubt, on the beauty of its concetto, since the common
judgement of its general appearance is that it is harsh and austere. But all judgements are open to question
in this painting. Even the symmetry of the architectural setting is flawed and
questionable. The spatial effect
of the figures is elusive, with a typical Poussinian play between surface and
illusional depth relations.
18
An analysis of the drawings for the painting shows
that Poussin gradually changes the figures so that the one on the left, who in
Raphael’s paintings is usually the True mother, gives only a superficial
appearance of being the True mother. Even the facial expressions are far from
conclusive. The difficulty of deciding by appearances is increased. It has not
been noticed that the women have exactly the same facial profile, mirroring one
another, one in light one in shadow.
19
Experience shows that this painting commonly leads
to an animated debate, not unlike the contestation in a courtroom. All the
possible factors in the appearance the women are to be considered, and none of
them, is conclusive. The essay ends with an observation that has not been made
before and which may to settle the matter. To say more would be a ‘spoiler’.
20
REBECCA
AT THE WELL
This, like the ‘Judgement of Solomon’, was painted
for Jean Pointel. It too should engage the judgement and intelligence of the
reader. How is Eliezer to choose a bride from among the beautiful girls drawing
water from a well at Nahor?
21
There is one very strange detail that commonly
baffles all but the most attentive readers. This has not been discussed in the
literature. Nonetheless it requires a practical judgement of exactly what is
represented that is of a kind rarely given proper attention. Furthermore, while
the painting has been praised as a presentation of beautiful women, it is
seldom pointed out that their beauty is only a beauty of appearances. They
appear on closer regard to be idle or clumsy.
22
Famously discussed in the Academy, the camels of
Eliezer are not visible in the painting. They are not even ‘hidden’ in the
landscape, as in puzzle pictures. That is not surprising, since Poussin in his
landscape paintings rarely gives a hint of an anthropomorphic reading of
landscape features.
23
In addition to the figures, there is one item that
is in all probability derived from the Renaissance interest in ancient
hieroglyphs. There is a sphere on a pillar, which, in all probability is a sign
that the one God presides over the conjunction of Rebecca and Isaac. The sphere on a column recurs in two of
Poussin’s pictures referring to divinely ordained marriages: the second version
of Marriage of
the Sacraments,
and the impending marriage of Moses and Zipporah in the engraving of Moses
and the daughters of Jethro.
24
Though the painting is concerned with a plausible
presentation of he biblical story, it is also a challenge to the reader’s
judgement of what is actually there to be seen. There is not only a tempting
possible confusion about the drawing of one of the women at the well, there is
also the temptation offered by Eliezer’s sword-hilt at his waist. Given the
encounter between the man and these beautiful women, a lewd-minded reader might
perhaps misinterpret it.
25
ADDITIONAL NOTES
There are also brief notes on the peculiarities of
figuration in Narcissus & Echo Louvre), The Rape of the Sabines (Metropolitan Museum, New
York), The Feast of Pan and the small Adoration of the Shepherds (National Gallery, London).
The first three of these are in the form of Philostratus-like descriptions, which point to the artifoce
of the paintings, but without exensive interpretative commentary. The fourth takes
the form of a series of questions requiring attentive observation of the
painting of the picture.
26
ET IN ARCADIA EGO
Once more, writing about the morality of a picture
would be incomplete without writing about the play of its signifying material.
Taking all of that in makes for a full reading.
27
The problem of the date of the Louvre version is
not easily resolved. The argument is maintained that it is as enigmatic as any
and all allegories. The reading of the painting through conspiracy-theory
suspicion of European religion and politics is particularly unsubstantiated.
28
Lawrence Steefel Jr’s attended to the shadow of a
shepherd on the tomb and Louis Marin concluded it was the image of a scythe.
Both authors were looking for further symbolic images within the picture to
incorporate in moralising interpretation. But neither considered the
fundamental issues of visibility in shadows and lights in painting, sticking
rather with legibility.
29
Erwin Panofsky’s reading of the meaning of the
inscription, accepted, but his view of the change in moral sentimental between
the two versions of the subject, rejected. Interpretations of the actions of
the figures are inconclusive. Félibien ‘s description compared with Bellori’s:
the change in moral sentiment between the two versions attributed to Félibien’s
misreading, rather than to Poussin.
30
A material reading (visibility) could begin with
the inscription on the tomb. It is painted to make it visible, as shadow and
light rendering of letters cut into the stone of the tomb. The inscription is
incomplete and part of it barely visible, because of interruptions by the
figures and by the shadow of the shepherd cast on the tomb. The shepherd
reading the inscription, spelling it out, touching each letter in turn, leads to
ain interpretation of the figures as having varying degrees of literacy and
varying abilities in relation to understanding the meaning of the inscription.
31
SELF-PORTRAITS
Interpretation of painters’ self-portraits is
usually wrongly based on biographical evidence (writings) & sentiment,
excluding the painterly construction.
Poussin’s have been elaborately discussed in terms of the isolatable
symbolic items. There has also been attention recently by Bätschmann and by
Cropper and Dempsey to the thematics of absence-presence in the paintings. The
question asked now is what is the relation of the image to truthful actuality?
32
Both paintings are discussed as illusions of
presence or actuality, life as opposed to death, material paint on canvas as opposed
to illusion of presence. The analysis of the Louvre painting begins with the
representation of a nail-hole in the wall. Then the frames and the canvases
behind the figure are discussed. The peculiar presence of the inscription on a
blank canvas, with the shadow cast over it by, presumably the figure of the
painter, is taken as an indication that in thee illusional construction the
figure of the painter is in front of the canvas to which it should belong, as
if it were therefore to be seen as a real presence instead of a mere painted
one. This is seen as a characteristically seventeenth century device for
claiming actual presence in a portrait.
33
ECSTASY OF ST PAUL
Is it possible to imagine the painting not only as
a fine religious image, fine especially in its illusionistic construction, but
also as possibly to be read by those who knew about Scarron’s licentious
behaviour as a satirical portrait of him, as St Paul seated on thee laps of
beautiful androgynous angels? This is not asserted as a ‘correct’ reading, but
as a possibility for Poussin’s circle, who are offered opportunity for misreadings of details in construction
in several other paintings, as previously argued.
34
MARTYRDOM
OF ST ERASMUS
This revises the dossier in two ways. First, the
legend of the original reception of the painting is misleading. The argument is
that the e4vidence from Sandrart’s account of the reception of the picture has
been misread; and that the probable source of the legend of its lack of success
is due to Guido Reni and his friends.
35
Second, the peculiar perspective structure and the
extreme asymmetry of the picture have not been noticed or discussed since
Bellori published his Life of Poussin in 1672. Properly taken into account,
this answers the question raised by Anthony Blunt and Sir Denis Mahon’s dispute
of the 1960s: is Poussin a baroque or classical painter in his early years. The
relation of the altarpiece
to paintings by Titian and Caravaggio is discussed, especially to an engrving
by Cornelis Cort after Titian’s St Lawrence in the Gesuati and to Caravaggio’s paintings in the
Cerasi Chapel.
36
FECIT
OR FACIEBAT?
A note on Nicolas Poussin’s signature and
inscriptions on his paintings, explaining the antique usage ‘faciebat’.
37
ANTHONY BLUNT WRITES ABOUT POUSSIN’S DRAWINGS
The virtues of Blunt’s work on Poussin are those of
the thorough museum professional maker of dossiers. His approach to stylistics
is, however, lacking in articulation. Poussin’s known method of preparation for
paintings centres on his wax model figures on his model stage and his larger,
draped modelled figures. There are no clearly identifiable detailed drawings of
large figures. Do the larger figures take their place? Whether this is the case
or not, there had also to be a process of reckoning how the model theatre and
the larger figures are turned into painting rather than sculpture. Blunt does
not account of that process. His only approach to style is through supposed
appropriate style for subject, a crude expressionist approach. So violent
subjects need ‘vigorous’ – his favourite term of praise – treatment in a
drawing? He regards the drawings in terms of verisimilitude to something
already seen, but not the making of something that can be seen only when the drawing
has
been done.
September 19, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0)
POUSSIN’S HUMOUR
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September 19, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0)
"I can understand why you regard Poussin's paintings in this way, but believe me, there are Poussin professionals- like me- who want to make Poussin more accessible to a wider audience. But we're constantly hampered because of this perception- which your article helps to sustain- that the guy was a remote intellectual, a "mathematical" artist.
"I'm the co-editor of a forthcoming book of essays on Poussin that present a very different picture of the man. You won't find any writing on connoisseurship, the art market or the painter-philosopher. There's even an essay on Cezanne and Poussin which completely overturns your ill-considered view of their art history relationship.
"I'm only one of the few Poussin professionals- like Tony Green- who are sick to the back teeth with the stereotypical views of Poussin. As we know, there's much more to the man and his art..
"Your article shows how much we've got our work cut out!
David Packwood (Art History Today)"