So this is Guernica, arguably the most important painting to come out of the 20ca. I hated it on sight, because it [violated] my childish expectations that art should be beautiful, and representational. It looks crude and slapped together. It wasn't. Painted in 1937 to protest the nazi attack on the Basque town during the Spanish Civil war, Picasso made a number of preliminary sketches & though the artist vigourously denied ascribing specific symbolism to the figures, I find it interesting he chose a horse as the main focal point. Recall at that time horses were not only still common farm animals, thousands of them were also used in Europe during the wars of the first half of the century. Thus, horses—harmless herbivores—were both innocent civilians and hapless participants in the carnage.
But hey, then I discovered the work had to be something we'd actually seen, and I've never been to Madrid, so...
Closer to home we have on of Nick Cave's soundsuits. I first encountered these over 20 years ago, in the pages of Ornament magazine, and just thought it was so cool an artist had managed to combine fantasy costuming and textile embellishments such as embroidery and beading and make it work in a fine art context. As an artist of color, protesting the killing of Rodney King, no less.
So you can imagine how excited to finally see one of these things. I loved it, but it was part of the travelling exhibit, 30 Americans which has now moved on from the DIA, and I really wanted something you could experience yourself.
Well, last time I had to a project of this sort I was stuck with Seurat's Afternoon on the Island of Le Grand Jatte. To be sure, it's the crown jewel of Chicago's post-Impressionism collection, but this time I could talk about my favourite, Henri de la Toulouse-Lautrec's At the Moulin Rouge. Besides its obvious qualities—Lautrec's draftsmanship and understanding of colour—
it's halfway between a drawing and painting. The transition between the sketchy lines and highly finished bits, which along with the lurid turquoises and oranges really add to the atmospheric quality of the setting.
2) The artist had to add a strip of canvas midstream, so he put that face over on the lower right. In doing so he turned a decent painting into a great one.
This to me is a bit of a metaphor for his life in general. Lautrec is one of two artists I can name off the top of my head who had disabilities (Van Gogh being the other) because he suffered a bone disease that made it impossible to ride horses, which he loved; though passionate about art, it was a second choice, which he made work. Nevertheless, he suffered from life long depression, and poor self-image and that melancholy permeates and informs his work.
Alas, last time I went to Chicago, they'd totally redone those galleries and it's no longer on view; and I have no idea when it will go back on display. So much for that idea.
So I finally settled on this wonderful, under appreciated painting by Rachel Ruyesch. The daughter of a scientist and grand-daughter of an architect, she had access not only to art training from an early age, but also bones and specimens. The scientific revolution was sweeping the world, an outcome of the Enlightenment's pushback against the church; and nowhere was this more apparent in the Dutch Gilded age, where new technology, such as the camera obscura and camera lucida were being used to achieve unprecedented levels of realism. Whether Ruysch used these tools herself, there's no question that she observed her subjects minutely and strove to achieve a fidelity to them— look at the painting itself and you can see the veining in the white lily petals, the bloom, or velvety texture some flowers and fruit get when they're utterly fresh.
The DIA frames this work as a type of vanitas painting, and flowers were used in these works to symbolize various things, but I think that's unfair. I see this work as celebrating the beauty of the natural world, and the joy in representing it. But I also can't help noticing that despite being amongst the very best, her painting is buried in a little room on the third floor—they've got a lesser effort by Jan Breugal the Younger on the outside of course.
You don't actually need to be good at drawing to make great art, as Picasso and Cave show—‘Which brings me, finally to my conclusion: ultimately, art is about communicating something important to you via a visual medium. —whether that be the joy in the beauty of the natural world
Or your community
Or to highlight racism
Or even to combat the horrors of war.
Make what you love.
Bibliography:
Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.
