Jan 24th, 2013 by Studio Matters
Beginning today, Studio Matters will go back into hibernation. I will continue to post under my own name on First Things, a monthly print journal devoted to religion, culture and politics. Please join me among the weblogs on First Things’ website.
If you wish, you can dial direct: http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/maureen-mullarkey/
Jan 22nd, 2013 by Studio Matters
I know many persons who have the purest taste in literature, and yet false taste in art, and it is a phenomenon that puzzles me not a little; but I have never known any one with false taste in books and true taste in pictures.
John Ruskin
John Ruskin was skeptical of the Victorian era’s flourishing publishing market. Dismayed over the “days of book deluge” in which he lived, he cautioned his audience to “keep out of the salt swamps of literature and live on a rocky little island of your own.” He saw the swell of printed material as a dilutant of public taste, something that confused and coarsened it. His recommended reading list to keep you company in your exile would thrill Mortimer Adler. While he granted some wiggle room for individual preference, he was adamant about one thing:
Among modern books avoid generally magazine and review literature. Sometimes it may contain a useful abridgment or a wholesome piece of criticism; but the chances are ten to one it will either waste your time or mislead you.
Ruskin’s dismissal of journalistic reflection applies ever so keenly to today’s art press, bloated like a puff adder to illusory proportions. From foolscap to Kindle, art commentary is everywhere. Every newspaper has its arts-and-entertainment section devoted to reviews and something called—or misnamed—art criticism. More deliberate weeklies, even the stately monthlies, do not escape the fog of contemporary art chatter. We go at art appreciation like catechumans intent on full communion. Ordained appreciators broadcast the lux et veritas of the new faith in a torrent of print. The study of art has come to mimic the communal role bible study once held in our public life.
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Roslin Chapel (1838); watercolor by John Ruskin
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Ruskin might not have objected to that last point if only the study were conducted on a higher plane. One that corresponded to his reverence for Homer, Plato, Aeschylus, Herodotus, Dante, Shakespeare, and Spenser might easily be welcome:
Every good book . . . is full of admiration and awe; it may contain firm assertion or stern satire, but it never sneers coldly, nor asserts haughtily, and it always leads you to reverence or love something with your whole heart.
I love that final phrase, and bless Ruskin for believing it. But the view from my own rocky little island sees a culture too much altered since Ruskin’s day. There are times when a sneer—a hot, considered sneer, if not a cold one—makes a beeline to the heart of things ahead of more elegant subtleties. It is the Willy Wonka principle: candy is dandy but liquor is quicker.
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by Dean Vietor for The New Yorker
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As a guide through the chocolate factory of the contemporary artmind, I commend it. And I like to think that if Ruskin were here today, he would not fault me for the endorsement.
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© 2013 Maureen Mullarkey
Jan 18th, 2013 by Studio Matters
According to Sartre, “I am what I have” is the reigning attitude of the bourgeoisie. Much as I dislike the word bourgeois and its historic uses, Sartre’s comment is on the money when it comes to art collectors. “I am my paintings.” Collecting is an upscale recreation, a game that confers the illusion of cultural superiority on the players.
Cleaning out old files, I came across a copy of a speech given by Eugene Schwartz, a leading collector of contemporary art until his death in 1995. The speech had been delivered in 1970 but the copy made in 1987, the year New York Magazine featured Schwartz and his wife on the cover as embodiments of the 1980’s art boom. He was circulating the speech because he still stood by its premise:
The only prize in the art game is art. The only thing important about art is art. The only thing that matters, at least as far as I know, is who ends up with the painting.
In other words, competition is the spur. Forget all that highminded reflection on the ennobling aspects of art. Acing out the other guy, getting in on the ground floor, and proving oneself a ranking investor are the incentives. The promise of asset longevity, of a clever transaction, is the single aesthetic factor. In somewhat the manner of physicist Paul Durac who gauged the truth of equations by their elegance, the art collector takes aesthetic pleasure in the successful speculative stab. Beauty begins with smart money.
Most people think that to buy valid new art—art that lasts—you have to predict the future. This, of course is nonsense. . . . If you can predict the present, you don’t have to predict the future at all. . . . All you have to do is see what’s happening now—to see what’s REALLY happening now—and you can pretty well tell what’s going to happen next.
"Overexpression" (1998) Ross Bleckner
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Schwartz continues with a self-congratulatory riff on his own prescience in buying Ross Bleckner and Peter Halley in their IPO stage. Then he offers ways to REALLY see the present in order to predict it.
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1. Great art plays checkers. First it jumps one way, and then it jumps another. Picasso does Cubism, and then he paints classical figures. Minimalism jumps into Neo-Expressionism, and then into Neo-Geo. Therefore, look for the next jump.
2. Look for bird dogs. These are usually critics or freelance curators or especially young galleries who have one overwhelming skill—they can see the present. Colliins and and Milazzo with Neo-Geo, or Stux with the Starn twins are prime examples.
//Photomontage by Mike and Doug Starn
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3. Look not only at the art, but at its effects. Who’s being picked up by established galleries for group shows? What young artists are older artists imitating? Who are the crazier curators exhibiting. What galleries, previously overlooked or disregarded, are getting a lot of important visitors suddenly?
Precisely how do desirous looky-lous determine which insignificant gallery is suddenly on the trade routes of deep-pocket VIPs? Are spotters stationed at the corner of Tenth Avenue and 25th Street? No matter. What counts in #3 is Schwartz’s understanding of the word effects. No determinant is given for art’s humane or aesthetic impact. The art need not have any. All it needs is to have been noticed by Serious Spenders.
There is something refreshing about aviso #3. Love of art is fine as it goes; but, honestly now, how far does it really go? The fact of ownership trumps everything else. Schwartz’ obituary quoted him: “Collecting is the only socially commendable form of greed.”
Greed may sometimes correspond to connoisseurship of a more soulful kind. But even the most unregenerate vulgarians are under pressure to display hints of a sensitive nature. They must tremble in front of their purchases. Obedient to the protocols, Schwartz confessed to “an unshakable thrill, or an unshakable shiver” that halts his shopping cart in front of a particular work.
Why are collectors so reluctant to admit to collecting because it is lucrative? And an investment in prestige? Any such admission would shatter the aristocratic model which beckons collectors. It is a devious siren. And often blind.
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© 2013 Maureen Mullarkey
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Jan 10th, 2013 by Studio Matters
For connoisseurs of civilizational decline, the delights keep accumulating. Contemporary art is especially generous in building the case that Spengler had it right. If only he had been an art critic. The ignorance and terminal vulgarity of what passes—still—for feminist art disqualifies most of its practitioners from any claim on civilized attention.
Newly arrived is a press release from Ceres Gallery, a women’s not-for-profit collective in New York, announcing a not-so-unique exhibition Meet My Uterus. Vaginas have been over-exposed, laid bare every which way from Sunday. Time, now, to turn the speculum on a different site in the female viscera. Ceres’ catchy exhibition title links the expo to another feminist production: The Art of Resistance: The Exquisite Uterus. Organized by ladies in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, the latter is part of a more strenuous effort called Power, Politics and Performance, and the Snatchel Project which inspires gals to knit uteri and mail their handicraft off to congressmen with the statement, “Hands off my uterus!”
If you’ve been paying attention, you will recognize this as the inevitable follow-on to fevered women demanding that their bishops “Get your rosaries off our ovaries.” That was a clever, if misleading, catchphrase. No rosaries were ever on their ovaries. More to the point and above all else, abortion—the issue that sparked the slogan—is a philosophical and scientific matter before it is, by coincidence, a religious one. It cuts to the core of what kind of society we choose to be. Are we willing to adopt the National Socialist principle of life-unworthy-of-life? Was Catherine MacKinnon right when she argued in Feminism Unmodified (1987) that women will never be free until they have “the right to kill”? These are grist for considered policy discussions, not occasions for aggressive know-nothing stances. But I digress.
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Ceres’ press release is a model of conceptual confusion and bandwagon hysterics spurred by the Texas sonogram law that required women seeking abortion to have a transvaginal ultrasound.
Who would have ever envisioned the need to fight for, of all things, contraception in 2012? Women’s reproductive rights are being eroded. Because of government interference with women’s healthcare decisions, these women artists felt the need to express their concerns in the way they know best. They have gotten creative with the image, the shape, the form, the essence of the uterus and we have presented them all in an exciting and visually arresting format of high density and over-the-top repetition of one thing: the uterus.
Contraception was never an item on the national agenda, never at risk in November’s election. Raising the specter of an end to contraception was a low rhetorical feint used successfully by Democrats against Republicans. Texas’ ultrasound initiative was a common-sense ruling that largely codified existing practice. Planned Parenthood and close to 99% of all responsible abortion facilities already perform the ultrasound. It verifies that the mother is truly pregnant; it establishes the size, age and positioning of the unborn child. This, in turn, aids in determining whether the infant will be killed by vacuum or by needle, and whether surgical procedures will be used at all. The ultrasound also helps guard against harm to the mother as the infant is being dismembered. In short, the law mandates what is already standard procedure.
But this is not the kind of information that art is capable of conveying. Art is an effective medium for bypassing the rigors of thought by delivering a political position immune to contention. It cannot be contradicted because it is a stance, a gnomic position of more sound than sense. It is not an argument. Yeats said it best: “You can refute Hegel, but not the Song of Sixpence.”
Organizers of The Art of Resistance are members of the Women’s Studies and LGBTQ Studies on the Oshkosh campus of the University of Wisconsin. Who was it who recommended that all graduates of “studies” programs be sent to re-education camps? When they go, self-styled feminist artists and their exquisite uteri should travel with them.
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© 2013 Maureen Mullarkey
Jan 1st, 2013 by Studio Matters
This time last year, Studio Matters went on retreat. It withdrew in anticipation of a long, difficult year. The new one promises to be no easier. Still, retreats are meant as preludes to renewal, not abdication. I was reminded of this by a note that came from a lovely and thoughtful artist in Arkansas. She wondered if postings had been abandoned forever.
No, Lin, not forever.
New Year’s Day seems a good moment for Studio Matters to shake off sleep and open eyes to the new season. On the liturgical calendar, January 1st has traditionally marked the celebration of the circumcision of the infant Jesus. So much marvelous painting owes itself to the commemoration of that act. Male circumcision is out of fashion these days, though; even under attack. An iconographic search relating to the ceremony, recalling as it does Mosaic law, is less productive than one that uses a less clinical term. The Presentation of Jesus in the Temple is the title best suited to conjuring up glories from art history:
From the workshop of Giovanni Bellini, around 1500, came this:
At the same time, Hans Holbein the Elder gave his world this:
Today, what circulates in celebration of January 1st are variations on images like this:
Or, if we moderns want to get fancy, this:
Either way, it is a telling comedown. The richness of the art of later Christian culture represents more than material or historic realities. It signifies moral intuitions—claims on conscience—that are in danger of receding along with the Christian story.
Let me start this new year with a reflection by David Bentley Hart:
I cannot help but wonder what remains behind when Christianity’s power over culture recedes? How long can our gentler ethical prejudices [toward the vulnerable—the diseased, disabled, or derelict among us], many of which seem to be melting away with fair rapidity, persist once the faith that gave them their rationale and meaning has withered away? Love endures all things perhaps, as the apostle says, and is eternal; but as a cultural reality, even love requires a reason for its preeminence among virtues. And the mere habit of solicitude for others will not necessarily long survive when that reason is no longer found. If . . . the “human as we understand it is the positive intervention of Christianity, might it not be the case that a culture that has become truly post-Christian will also, ultimately, become posthuman?
Feb 1st, 2012 by Studio Matters
AS MANY OF YOU HAVE EMAILED to inquire—or scold—about, postings have been sluggish for some time. It is not good form to leave it at that. Time to be direct and own up to reality. Circumstances do not permit me to continue Studio Matters for the moment. It will start up again when life permits it. Meantime, hearty thanks to each of you who kept conversation going with your comments or personal emails. Good talk is a grace note. And I am grateful for yours.
Until later,
Maureen Mullarkey
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Kenneth Kirsch, "Gone Fishing"
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Dec 25th, 2011 by Studio Matters
EACH CHRISTMAS MORNING I wake up relieved that the struggle against “Happy Holidays” is over for another year. Holidays are holy days, after all. When Hanukkah and Christmas arrive so close together as they do this year, I wonder if it would be possible to announce “Happy Holy Days!” into the secular void. The wondering calls to mind “A Rabbi’s Christmas,” an essay by one Jakob Petuchowski. When it was written 20 years ago, the author was a professor of Judeo-Christian studies in Cincinnati, of Jewish liturgy in Arizona, and a rabbi in Laredo, Texas. Where is he now, I do not know. But I remain grateful for his words, published in the December, 1991, issue of First Things.
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Duccio, "The Epiphany" (14th C.)
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The rabbi does not celebrate Christmas nor accept the Christian belief structure. But he does recognize in the Christian observance of Christmas “one of the factors that help maintain the religious character of our society-in which Jews, too, with their own beliefs and practices, and with their very lives, have a considerable stake.”
Speaking of himself in the third person, he writes:
What really intrigues him is the fact that millions of his non-Jewish fellow human beings are celebrating the birthday of a Jewish child. And they are doing so by extolling the values of peace and good will. All the more misplaced, he thinks, are the efforts by some supposedly Jewish organizations to arouse, through their battles against Christmas symbols in public places, the ill will and resentment of Christians—at the very time when the Christian religion, more than at other times of the year, inspires its followers with irenic and philanthropic sentiments.
Sober attention is given to historic reasons for Jewish suspicion toward Christian expressions of good will. Christianity, after all, has not been an unmixed blessing for Jews. Nevertheless:
. . . what we are really dealing with in this annual battle against public Christian observance is not so much a “Jewish” attack on that observance as it is a secularist one—with some of the prominent secularists identifying themselves as Jews. They are the same people who fight non-denominational prayers in public schools, the use of public school facilities for meetings of high school religious-interest groups, and state support of private schools. They fight with equal vigor the attempts by other Jewish groups to have Jewish religious symbols exhibited alongside the Christian ones, such as the efforts of the Chabad (Lubavitch) group of Orthodox Jews to place a Hanukkah candelabrum on the public square when a Christmas tree is put up there, which would be a fitting demonstration of America’s religious pluralism. They are, in other words, not singling out Christianity. They are against the public manifestation of religion per se-even (or perhaps particularly) against the public manifestation of the religion of their own ancestors.
The invocation of the First Amendment as authority for the campaign against the public display of any and all religious symbols seems to involve the demand that the state “establish” the religion of Secularism as the official religion of the United States-which would, to say the least, be a rather curious use of the First Amendment. But even if one were to grant, for argument’s sake, that the lawyers employed by the American Jewish Congress, the (Reform) Union of American Hebrew Congregations, and similar organizations have established the “true” meaning of the First Amendment, i.e., that the amendment really and truly rules out the public display of a crèche or a Hanukkah candelabrum, one would still be entitled to wonder what those organizations hope to gain by stirring up animosities every winter.
. . . Life in the medieval Christian world-in which, by the way, we no longer happen to live-certainly was no bed of roses for the Jews. But Jews fared infinitely worse in those modern societies from which the God of Abraham and of Jesus had been banished. If Jews cannot forget the Middle Ages, they owe it to themselves to remember the most recent past, too. One could argue, therefore, that the very self-interest of the Jews is at stake in preventing the United States from becoming a totally godless society.
As the saying goes, read the whole thing. And, above all, Merry Christmas.
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© Maureen Mullarkey
Nov 30th, 2011 by Studio Matters
ART HISTORIANS ARE NOT NECESSARILY the best commentators on art. They are primarily researchers: archival sleuths, inquirers, unearthers of fact. Gumshoes, the best of them. Some can write, many cannot. The discipline draws bookish sorts who are more at home in a library carrel, reading up on the words of some other member of the discipline who needs to be corrected. Or quieted. Or slain. In many respects, the discipline can be thought of as the yeshivot of the art world, a seminary for orthodox secularists trying to puzzle out the path to a better heaven.
That brings me to my point, which is simply that some of the finest writers on art are not art historians. Sensibility—informed by scholarship but separate from it—is key to art writing. Persons of extraordinary sensibility are no more prevalent in art historical precincts than they are anywhere else. Enter Robert Kiely, distinguished scholar of modern literature (Professor Emeritus, Harvard) and a lively critic. His Blessed and Beautiful: Picturing the Saints (Yale University Press, 2010) is a learned, readable, richly illustrated text. Fluent in every sense, both readable, eloquent and agile in its insights.
Fra Angelico, "Jesus Apearing to the Magdalene" (1440-41), Convent of San Marco, Florence
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Particularly appealing is his survey of the historical progress of Mary Magdalen, through scripture, pious commentary and popular imagery. Next to Jesus of Nazareth, the Virgin Mary and John the Baptist, no other figure in pantheon of Christian iconography has earned no much, and so variable, attention. Kiely manages to make a believable human being emerge out of the sources, scriptural and artistic. This is his reflection on Cell 1, San Marco:
Since Mary Magdalene and especially the scene with Jesus in the garden outside his tomb were fraught with various and contradictory interpretations, it is fascinating to see how painters “read” Noli me tangere. In decorating the cells of the Dominican monastery of San Marco in Florence, Fra Angelico and his assistants chose the encounter as the subject for cell number one. In this depiction (designed by Fra Angelico but probably painted by his assistant Benozzo Gozzoli in 1440), Jesus—who the Gospel says was mistaken by Mary for a gardener—carries a hoe; he could be saying to Mary that he has “work” to do and cannot stop to chat. If so, the artist managed to endow this matter-of-fact moment with a magnificent spiritual serenity. Mary is not weeping or visibly shaken by the sight of Jesus. She kneels in dignified reverence and her gesture is a refined combination of greeting and prayer. She is neither forward nor humble, but rather balanced in an attitude of recognition, regard, and self-composure. Despite the fact that his linen wrapping is supposed to have been left in the tomb, Jesus is fully clothed in stainless white robes, and the position of his feet suggests that he is already beginning his ascent to heaven. He looks at Mary with regal kindness; his hoe could be a scepter or standard. There is no sign of displeasure or suppressed desire. Indeed, the elegant postures and pleasant exchange of looks suggests a minuet in which each partner knows his and her role. This is not a shocking or disturbing scene in which Mary overreacts but a quiet beginning of a heavenly dance.
Titian’s vision of the scene—the Magdalene meets the risen Christ, mistaking him for a gardener—is of a different temper altogether.
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Titian, "Noli Me Tangere" (c. 1514), The National Gallery, London
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Once again, the scene suggests a dance, but here Jesus appears to play the role of the female partner, elegantly curtsying while modestly attempting to cover himself and avoid the touch of the woman kneeling as if she is making a proposal (or proposition). Mary is literally forward in the painting; her expression is imploring; her long hair and gorgeous red cloak are reminders of her former life of luxury. John’s Gospel does not specify how or where Mary intended to touch Jesus, but painters cannot avoid the details. Titian leaves little doubt that, whatever her intentions, Mary was coming very close to the Lord’s genitals. This is clearly what Titian’s Jesus fears, as his gesture indicates. The painting lends an obviously erotic element to the episode.
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Agnolo Bronzino, "Noli Me Tangere" (1561), Louvre, Paris
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Kiely is equally adept at describing Bronzino’s weaving together of physical beauty and sexual potential in the altarpiece for the Church of Santo Spirito, in Florence:
Whereas in the Fra Angelico and the Titian the atmosphere is peaceful and private, the figures relatively calm and dignified, in Bronzino’s painting (above) the mood is theatrical, even melodramatic. Both Jesus and Mary Magdalene appear aroused, although in different ways, and they are not alone. There is an audience. Not only are there women and an angel still at the tomb in the background (perhaps representing an earlier moment in the story), but two women also hover near the leading players, gesturing, smiling, and whispering as if spying on and gossiping about the encounter.
True, the figures are twisting and turning in a way reminiscent of Michelangelo, but not everything can be blamed on Michelangelo. In more than one way, the positions of Jesus and Magdalene are the reverse of traditional depictions of the event, including a sketch by Michelangelo. A particularly young and beautiful Jesus approaches from the left (the usual entrance point of Magdalene). His red locks, delicate features, and glowing white skin seem to have borrowed some of the attributes of the repentant sinner with whom he exchanges tender looks. He appears to be running toward, not away from, Magdalene; the odd but graceful twist of his torso suggests a “turning away” that looks very much like a thrusting forward. Mary too is on the run, so much so that if both keep going (as the dynamic of their movement shows they must) they will surely collide. Although Mary’s posture and gestures are wild, she is modestly attired in sober colors and her expression is one of adoration rather than of what Calvin called “stupid excitement.”
Jesus, the “gardener,” has evidently been a good gardener. He carries a shovel, not a hoe, and from the earth behind the two friends lovely flowers bloom. In the background even the tomb is “alive” with possibility: on the right is the dark door of the sepulcher leading nowhere and on the left is an arch opening onto the soft and gorgeous hills of a landscape like paradise. Bronzino shows the Resurrection as a scene of questions, opportunities, pleasures, and risks, all in motion, like life, just as the artist or his patron, an old man facing his own death, might have liked to recall it.
Just lovely. Try to imagine Michael Fried or one of his wanna-be acolytes bringing the painting to life as Kiely does. I have a few caveats of my own in his treatment of certain subjects, but they are no bar to a full-throated recommendation. Overall, Blessed and Beautiful is a ravishing book, its prose as vivid as the paintings it chooses for reflection.
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© 2011 Maureen Mullarkey
Nov 20th, 2011 by Studio Matters
HASAN NIYAZI, impressario of Three Pipe Problem, had included a list of readings that informed his essay in the previous post, Navigating the Cognitive Philosophy of Michael Fried. I omitted the roster simply to conform more closely to the format of Studio Matters. The audience for this blog are, in the main, other working artists, a critic or two (one of whom comments anonymously), and art history buffs in the finest sense of the word amateur. Professional art historians, a rarified priesthood, tend to prefer talking to each other.
Caravaggio, "Conversion of St. Paul"
Nevertheless, Niyazi’s book shelf holds many fine things, as you already know if you have visited his site. So, without more ado, his acknowledgments appear below:
Damisch, H. A childhood memory by Piero della Francesca. [Goodman, J. Trans]. Stanford University Press. 2007
Freedberg, SJ. Circa 1600: A Revolution of Style in Italian Painting. Belknap Press. 1986
Freedberg, SJ. Painting in Italy 1500-1600 (3rd Edition) Yale University Press. 1996
Fried, M. Art and Objecthood – Essays and Reviews. University of Chicago Press. 1998
Fried, M. The Moment of Caravaggio. Princeton University Press. 2010.
Fried, M. Thoughts on the Caravaggisti. The Sydney J. Freedberg Lecture on Italian Art. National Gallery of Art, Washington 2010
Hall, MB. The Sacred Image on the Age of Art. Yale University Press . 2011
Nagel, A. The Controversy of Renaissance Art. University of Chicago Press. 2011.
Rowland, I. From Heaven and Arcadia. The Sacred and the Profane in the Renaissance. New York Review Books. 2008
Shearman. J. Only Connect…Art and the spectator in Renaissance Italy. Princeton University Press. 1994
Spranzi, M. The Art of Dialectic between Dialogue and Rhetoric -The Aristotelian Tradition. John Benjamins Publishing Company 2011
Missing from the list is Walter Friedländer’s 1969 Caravaggio Studies. That text is so fundamental that it is hardly necessary to mention it. Still, there is value in adding it on—just in case. It applies here, in part because Friedländer was a native German speaker. Yet he language of his discussion of Caravaggio is more accessible, kinder to the ear and to his subject, than anything ever penned by Fried. He discusses the works with great empathy:
Caravaggio represented the Conversion of St. Paul with the same kind of sober observation, with the same close sensuous grasp of the factual and the tangible, which St. Ignatius would have demanded from the imagination of the exercant. In composition, too, the space is strictly limited and precisely measurable. The miraculous light is powerfully visualized without the indication of an ethereal source., and the celestial voice can almost be heard by the spectator, even without the image of Christ who utters it—exactly as it would be heard by the exercant in his overstimulated imagination. . . . Caravaggio’s representation of the mystery in completely human terms corresponds closely in spirit to the contemplation of the mysteries in the Exercitia [Ignatius' Spiritual Exercises]; both make the supernatural tangible and understandable to man’s spiritual intelligence with the help of the senses.
In the end, Fried is really not necessary.
© 2011 Maureen Mullarkey
Nov 12th, 2011 by Studio Matters
by Hasan Niyazi
CARAVAGGIO AND HIS FOLLOWERS IN ROME has arrived at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas. Those unable to experience the majesty of the Baroque in person are left to ponder the substantial catalogue recently published by Yale University Press.
Featuring essays by exhibition organizers and notable scholars of the Baroque, Michael Fried’s contribution, Notes Toward a Caravaggisti Pictorial Poetics, will be seen by some as riding on the critical success of his 2010 study The Moment of Caravaggio. That work on the Caravaggisti was first delivered as a lecture at the National Gallery of Art, Washington. The current essay mirrors Fried’s 2010 volume, which drew on a series of lectures from 2002.
As explored previously by Studio Matters, initiation with Michael Fried can be a jarring experience. That there is a resonant, perhaps even profound message in his work is undeniable; yet its mode of delivery can be hard going for readers more accustomed to an historiographic approach to art.
It is interesting, albeit challenging, to read an art historian who seems to persistently refuse to write in an art historical mode. Those familiar with the cognitive sciences and the history of rhetorical dialogue will see much that is familiar in Fried’s approach. Fried came to art history from a background in art criticism; nevertheless, whether his esoteric approach to art writing is suitable for such a catalogue is a matter for debate.
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Valentin de Boulogne "Fortune Teller"
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Noting Fried’s use of language, the textual antics of humanist rhetoricians come to mind, particularly the work of Sperone Speroni and his Dialogo della Rhetorica (1542) and Apologia de dialogi (1574). These commentaries on dialogue and rhetoric are fascinating journeys into a tradition with origins in antiquity. As Speroni deftly summates:
Through the confrontation over some topic, the one uses his reasons to strike the opinions of the other, not unlike the iron to the stone or the stone to the iron. This occurs through dispute, and although the sought truth will not spring out openly and entirely, we shall inevitably witness some of its sparks, because truth by its nature always shines.
That Fried employs just such a technique is perhaps where his training as an art historian is most clearly evident. Art history, as a discipline, is replete with underlining past contributions that gel with an author’s own take or crossing out those that do not. From the outset, Fried outlines his mission: a search to clarify something missed by predecessors. Referring to Valentin de Boulogne’s 1628 Fortune Teller in the Louvre:
The overall impression – I am seeking to express a consensus among Valentin’s commentators – is that of an anthology of stock figures, motifs and anecdotes (to use a loaded term which I shall disparage shortly) somewhat crammed together in a shallow, minimally articulated space.
That Fried seeks to draw attention to wonderful things often ignored by other art historians is probably his greatest strength. With Valentin specifically, he goes on:
Valentin is a superb colourist, his touch is invariably strong, his figures have remarkable realistic and naturalistic “presence” ; in short, one is aware of his pictorial gifts virtually in every brushstroke.
Response to Fried’s methodology has been mixed. Praised (and occasionally derided) by critics with a literary bent, the appeal of his work to researchers and students is less tangible. Part of an art historian’s primary role is to mediate between the physical object and historical evidence, and to present a synthesis palatable for instructional use. Consequently, the target audience becomes a key consideration. Are these collations for other scholars, students, the public or all of the above? A work like Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of The Artists has proven enduringly popular because it is relevant to artists, scholars and the interested public alike.
While Fried readily acknowledges previous works that look at the role of artists and spectators in early modern art, his language signifies that he sees something new and unprecedented in Caravaggio. Those familiar with the work of Hubert Damisch, Marcia Hall, John Shearman and Alexander Nagel, among others, will be aware of this subjective approach to early modern art. Yet these works are arguably easier to navigate; they are prefaced by an historical context that elaborates the dynamic between artist and patron.
In both The Moment of Caravaggio, and the catalogue essay, Fried seems to focus almost entirely on the object, calling for contemplation of internal mechanisms to explain the stylistic developments of the period. The inevitable question hence arises: can an art historian write about the 17th century in a manner that places little emphasis on the history of the period?
Where other essays in the catalogue use archival transcripts, Fried describes the pictures themselves, plus others like them. This seems to be the key difference between the modes of art history at play. That one approach is more viable than the other is relevant to the beholder’s aims. Readers who enjoy musing on the creative process may find something interesting in Fried’s approach. Others, adept at plumbing text for glimpses of the past may find a lot of Fried’s content unsatisfying.
There is an historical thread to Fried’s arguments on the evolution of the picture gallery, and subsequently the nature of the gallery picture. In an earlier section of the catalogue, Sandra Richards explores Caravaggio’s Roman Collectors. While not a symbiosis of any sort, her essay provides historical counterpoint to Fried’s more internal contemplation. Yet, even Fried’s commentary on this process could most certainly have benefitted from placing this period in starker contrast to the famous private galleries and pictures of previous eras.
Readers familiar with the art, history or literature of the Baroque period will invariably reflect on what is award-winningly new about Fried’s conclusions (apart, that is, from the jargon he adds to Baroque studies). Fried insists that Caravaggio—and subsequently his followers—invented a new type of artistic language which, while present in glimpses in previous eras, fully blossomed under the Lombard Master. To support his claims, Fried shies away from the voluminous archival records of the day. There is no quoted epistle from a Cardinal to the painter confessing the work’s revelatory nature (Though they perhaps exist, as other essays reveal). The closest we get to this from Fried is the famous comment ascribed to Poussin: that Caravaggio sought to destroy painting. The comment largely referred to his methodology, and to a degree to his subject matter.
From the late Middle Ages to the Renaissance—particularly in the guise of works now known as ‘mystery painting’—the relationship between patron and artist transcended the traditions observed in devotional works before that time. Artworks became baubles of wealth, embodiments of devotion, intellectual status and ego. Contemporary records tell us of learned men puzzling over the iconographical constructs of artists from van Eyck to Titian.
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Jan van Eyck, "The Arnolfini Portrait" (1434)
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The end of this mode of ‘mystery painting’ is often linked with the publication of emblem books, such as Alciato’s Emblematum Liber (1531) and the later Iconologia (1593) by Cesare Ripa. These books effectively revealed the visual code previously used by writers and artisans. It has been argued that their distribution in print took the fizz out of the mystery painting genre.
Stripped of a complex symbolic language and often confined by edicts such as those by the Council of Trent, later artists came to rely more heavily on optical factors to draw attention to their work. Hence, drawing from dynamic predecessors such as Tintoretto and adopting the play of light on sculpture, Caravaggio’s signature style makes sense as a natural stylistic progression of these forces.
Yet to read The Moment of Caravaggio or his catalogue chapter, Fried seems to insist that his historical myopia is a gift that allows him to introduce a new layer of jargon into a discipline already replete with the detritus of centuries of verbose banter in several languages. His essay on pictorial poetics is littered with particular words graced with quotation marks to indicate that Fried has anointed them to transcend their natural meaning. “Address” and “presence,” in particular—even “into” and “be”—are elevated in this fashion. The success of this approach is dependent on how willing the reader is to acquiesce to Fried’s modus operandi:
By now I hope it will not seem tendentious to suggest that the combined effect in these and similar paintings of the depiction of absorbed states of mind and body and of the sense of temporal protraction or dilation that goes with those states also serves the end of the pictorial “presence” ; the effect, one might say, is of a sustained density of being that is more than simply physical.
That Fried is enamoured of rhetoric is obvious. He often seems to be adrift in his own musings, almost oblivious to his audience. While this may add to the romance of his approach to art history, one can contest its relevance in a catalogue volume also intended for public consumption.
A brief note should also be made about Fried’s piece in the context of the catalogue as a whole. One could argue a successful catalogue is one which captures the aesthetic and historical significance of the period in question and does this in a manner that is useful for educators, artists and general visitors to the exhibition. In all of the other essays, from commentators such as Museum director David Franklin, and Caravaggio experts Sebastian Schütze and Rossella Vodret, the voice of the writer is relayed through historical records, or an exploration of depicted themes. In Fried’s section even his most ardent admirers will notice the stark juxtaposition of his approach. The words “I” and “my” never appear more frequently in the entire catalogue than in his chapter.
There are of course valuable segments in Fried’s presentation. When he puts his descriptive skills into capturing the works, his writing can charm. Witness the way his description of a work by a somewhat obscure Caravaggio follower, Valentin de Boulogne, brings it into sharp focus:
Between the two principal figures and a few feet beyond them a boy sits at a table covered with an oriental carpet, his left elbow resting on the table as he supports his head with the back of his left hand ; he too looks neither at the gypsy and her client nor at the viewer, but instead gazes off towards his right….behind the gypsy a shady character in a cloak and hat carefully extracts – that is to say steals – a chicken from the pocket or sack at her side.
If Fried could be similarly concise with his thematic content, he could go a long way toward achieving some of the greatness of Sydney J. Freedberg, to whom he often pays homage. (Fried has been both a student and junior colleague of Freedberg at Harvard) Freedberg, whatever his foibles may have been, was a superlative communicator on Early Modern art. His most well known Painting in Italy 1500-1600 is still a landmark text on the topic. Freedberg’s contribution to the Baroque, particularly Circa 1600 – A Revolution of Style in Italian Painting, is perhaps the germinal seed of Fried’s endeavour. And it is easily a more approachable text.
That Fried will have an enduring legacy in art history is not in question; whether his approach to the Baroque will radiate an influence beyond his own publications remains to be seen. Fried has since returned to subjects perhaps more suited to his approach, with his new book Four Honest Outlaws, a look at the work of four contemporary artists.
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Note:
Hasan Niyazi is an independent arts writer based in Melbourne, Australia. He first fell in love with Early Modern art and history after finding a copy of Panofsky’s Meaning in the Visual Arts on the ground at age 9. He explores the interface of art history and the information age at his blog, Three Pipe Problem. He is also currently working on an online open educational resource (OER) dedicated to Raphael studies and tweets as @3pipenet.
He wishes to thank Benjamin Harvey for his assistance and advice.
An overview of the entire catalogue, Caravaggio and His Followers in Rome, by Monica Bowen, is available at the art history blog, Alberti’s Window.
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