Alberti’s Window

Mieke Bal’s book Looking In: The Art Of Viewing has forever changed the way that I look at exhibitions in art museums and galleries. In her chapter “On Grouping,” Bal discusses how the juxtaposition of different images on a museum wall can create meanings and connotations which never would have existed otherwise. She discusses a grouping of three paintings in a Berlin museum: Amor Vincit Omnia (Caravaggio), Doubting Thomas (Caravaggio, shown above) and also Heavenly Amor Defeats Earthly Love (Baglione). Specifically, she argues that the placement of Doubting Thomas between these two images of nudes creates a new dynamic within the first painting. For Bal, she feels like “Jesus’ barely visible leg at the lower left becomes slightly coquettish” when placed alongside Caravaggio’s nude Amor (whose sprawled legs cover a good portion of its canvas).¹ If you’re interested, you can read parts of Bal’s argument and see a grouping of the three images online.

Since reading this article a few years ago, I am constantly looking for new meanings and connotations which come about because of the juxtaposition of images in a museum. A few years ago I helped hang an exhibition which featured work by the artist Sean Diediker. Due to the size of the paintings and the space of the museum, it ended up that a large painting of a female nude was placed to the left of a painting of Joseph Smith (the Mormon prophet) receiving a vision. Joseph Smith was kneeling down in semi-profile, looking at a vision that was placed to the left of the picture frame. If the picture frames between the nude and Smith were invisible, then the boy prophet would have been looking right at the nude woman. All of the sudden, the look of surprise and awe on Joseph Smith’s face began to look a little more embarrassed, as if he wasn’t supposed to be staring at a nude female!

As Bal points out in her book, every viewer brings their own personal experiences (“cultural baggage”) and past to a work of art. Therefore, we all have our own personal reaction to what kind of dialogue and connotations are created by a work of art. The writer of this article reacted to a past installation at the Whitney Museum (shown below), saying that “the juxtaposition of Urs Fischer’s Intelligence of Flowers (holes in the wall) and Untitled (hanging shapes) with Rudolf Stingel’s black & white photorealistic self-portrait creates an impression of crushing despondency in the face of a wrecked world.”

I agree that such a reaction to this exhibition of art is possible. Personally though, having just seen a recent episodes of LOST that involve swinging pendulums and abandoned Dharma Initiative stations, I can’t help but think of anything else when I look at these hanging shapes, circles, and gaping holes.

Have you ever found interesting connotations or dialogue that was created by the juxtaposition of artwork? What kind of personal “cultural baggage” has affected your reaction to a work of art?

1 Mieke Bal, Looking In: The Art Of Viewing (New York: Routledge, 2000), 184.

The Women’s Studies Journal recently posted a call for article submissions regarding female art collectors. Here are some of the questions listed in the posting:

“Paintings and sculptures of women have long been objects of the collector’s desire: what happens to this gendered dynamic when the collector is a woman? Is the drive to collect necessarily a masculine quality? What, if anything, is it to collect like a woman? Can collections be distinctively feminine? To what extent does a collection reflect its collector? What ethnic or feminist lenses may be applied to our understanding of these collections?”

(For anyone interested, the rest of the posting is found here).

I would really like to submit an article about Isabella Stewart Gardner. She was a fine art collector in the 19th-early 20th centuries and opened a museum of her collection in 1903. Today, the museum remains essentially unchanged since Isabella’s death in 1924.

There are many aspects to Mrs. Gardner’s life and collection that can be interpreted through a feminist lens. I think that the practice of art collecting is characteristically male, and it seems that Isabella also adopted (and perhaps flaunted?) some masculine characteristics aside from art collecting. She loved masculine sports like baseball and horseracing; the local newspapers were scandalized (and intrigued) by her behavior. Furthermore, Isabella’s appellate was also masculine; she was referred to as “Mrs. Jack” (“Jack” was her husband’s nickname).

However, for all of the masculine characteristics that Isabella exhibited, I think that the display and maintenance of her art collection lends itself to feminist interpretation. Specifically, I would argue that Gardner’s museum (and consequently Isabella Stewart Gardner herself) resists outside control and change, which I think can be extended to a rejection of the controlling “male gaze.” (I have written a little more about the “male gaze” here). Isabella stipulated in her will that the museum needs to be permanently exhibited according her aesthetic vision. I think that because the museum remains unchanged, Gardner still remains part of the female “subject” that visitors see when they come to the museum. If her art collection was to be moved around and changed, Gardner would shift from being a powerful female “subject” to a female “object” – and consequently all of the paintings in the room would become “objects” instead of embodiments of Gardner and her aesthetic taste.

Because of Isabella’s will stipulations, the museum has remained unchanged since her death. Even when several masterpieces were stolen (a loss that amounted between $300 and $500 million – the biggest art heist in history!) from the museum in 1990, the museum maintained the same display (with empty frames where the stolen paintings were once located). Today, these empty frames still remain, since the crime was never solved. (You can read a little more about the crime here).

Even with these absent paintings, I think that the frames still function to represent the “subjecthood” and female control of Isabella Stewart Gardner.

What do people think about female art collectors and Isabella Stewart Gardner? How would you respond to some of the questions put forth by the Women’s Studies Journal?

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about if art should be displayed and conserved to follow the “artist’s original intent.” The phrase “original intent” is used a lot by conservators, specifically in terms of describing how the conservator aims to preserve and restore exactly what the artist originally created. However, Steven W. Dykstra argues in his article The Artist’s Intentions and the Intentional Fallacy in Fine Arts Conservation (found online here) that this term is ambiguous. There are several different definitions of the word “intent.” For example, the original intent of the artist could refer to the artist’s aims for a work of art, or it could refer to the artistic outcome (which may or may not be the original artistic aim). In addition, “intent” could refer to biographical motives – the artist could be seeking fame, emotional catharsis, or the satisfaction of patrons by creating a work of art.¹ Often, we don’t even know what any of the possible intents of the artist may have been.

The art historian Gombrich discussed original intent in connection with a controversy that happened at the National Gallery. Before an exhibition in 1947, conservator Ruhemann and his team used new positivist scientific methods to clean some paintings. There was a mixed reaction to the results of the cleaning. Gombrich and his followers felt that a scientifically driven method for cleaning did not allow for artistic or historical consideration.² Ruhemann, however, felt that conservation techniques naturally followed artists’ intentions as a guiding principle.³ Gombrich disagreed (which I think ties into the ambiguity of the word “intent”). In an indirect reference to the cleaning of Titian’s painting Virgin and Child with Infant Saint John and a Female Saint or Donor (c. 1532, shown above), Gombrich mentioned, “One should have thought it is common ground that Titian is dead and that we cannot ask him what his intention was.”⁴ To finally retalliate to Gombrich’s accusations, Ruhemann’s followers came up with a mocking (and clever!) pun, accusing Gombrich’s camp of having a fascination with “dirty” pictures.⁵

What do you think about the phrase “original intent”? Can conservators (or connoisseurs, for that matter) determine the original intent of an artist? Is it important to try and learn about or follow the intent of the artist, whatever it may be? Does the artist’s intent even matter? (Postmodernists likely would argue “no” to that last question, but I’m not sure how I feel about that.)

I guess I’m thinking a lot about this lately because of my last post, where I complained that reproductions of Monet’s water lily paintings are used as decoration in college girls’ bathrooms. I still think that’s inappropriate; I would never do it. But now I’m starting to wonder what Monet’s specific “intent” may have been.

1 Steven W. Dykstra, “The Artist’s Intentions and the Intentional Fallacy in Fine Arts Conservation,” Journal of the American Institute for Conservation 35, no. 3 (Autumn-Winter 1996) : 205.

2 Ibid., 202.

2 Ibid., 201.

3 Ernst Gombrich, “Dark Varnishes, Variations on a Theme from Pliny,” The Burlington Magazine 104 (1962): 54.

4 Sarah Walden, The Ravished Image, (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985), 118. This book specifically deals with the Gombrich and Ruhemann debate.

Today I finished reading Still Life by A. S. Byatt. I didn’t like this book nearly as much as Possession, but it still was fairly interesting and engaging. I particularly liked this book because one character is fascinated with Van Gogh and several excerpts from Van Gogh’s writings are quoted and discussed. I also could relate quite a bit to one character, Stephanie. At the beginning of the book, Stephanie was the mother of a new baby that would spend her time dreaming up hypothetical Ph.D. dissertation topics. Yeah, I can relate to that.

Although Byatt wrote this book about a decade ago, the novel is mostly set in the 1950s. Throughout the book, Byatt suggests a postmodern critique of some of the modernist theories and ideas that her characters uphold.¹ For example, Raphael, a modernist poet and scholar, explains why he dislikes Van Gogh:

“And [Van Gogh] obtrudes himself all the time-” Raphael’s carved upper lip curled in perfect scorn -“he has one of the most personal styles in major art. He lacks that final clarity and selflessness.”²

According to Raphael, anonymity is a factor which determines great art. This is such a modernist way of thinking! Modernist sculpture (think of the Minimalists) and architecture (like the Seagram Building) refuse to recognize the sculptor or architect which masterminded their creation. They also exude “clarity” and “selflessness” in their sleek, industrialized design. As a postmodern reader and art historian, I think this rejection of personal style is rather silly and extreme (although, granted, I do like the modernist aesthetic). Obviously, though, I feel this way because I have been trained and educated to celebrate individual thought and contribution. Today, most art history survey courses are constructed to follow the career of one great artist after another. These artists become recognizable by their distinct stylistic characteristics and “personal styles” which can then be recognized as influences on lesser (dare I say anonymous?) artists.

I love Van Gogh’s style. He has a great use of color which makes his paintings very striking. My favorite thing about Van Gogh, however, is his use of impasto. His paintings are so tactile and tangible – I adore it! One has to see a Van Gogh in person in order to appreciate the sculpturesque quality of some of his paintings. In this reproduction of The Yellow Chair (1888) some of the paint buildup can be seen on the brick tiles, but it really isn’t the same.

In Byatt’s book, a playwright is obsessed with this painting and writes a play about Van Gogh and The Yellow Chair. The play stage is set up with a lot of different colors which reference Van Gogh’s brightly painted canvases (and also some of his darker paintings, like The Potato Eaters). It was so fun to read about the play; I wish that it really was on the stage! Even though there really isn’t such a play, I do know of a good substitute. There is a brightly colored Van Gogh segment in Kurosawa’s film Dreams which can be seen here and here. Watch it. The cinematography is lovely.

1 There is some interesting literary analysis of Still Life found here.

2 A. S. Byatt, Still Life, (New York: Collier Books, 1985), 338.

Last week I went to a couple of sessions of an art symposium. The invited guest speaker was the artist Brian Kershisnik, a local artist whom I find to be quite talented. During his speech, Kershisnik mentioned that he finds it important for painting to be self-aware. In other words, the painting should manifest awareness that it is a painting, awareness that it is a flat canvas which contains representations of objects with the medium of paint. This self-awareness of painting can especially be observed in Kershisnik’s style, since his figures are very flat. In this painting, Gardening in the Rain, the flatness of the figure (and subsequently, the flatness of the canvas) is further emphasized by the pattern on the woman’s dress and the stylized depiction of falling rain.

During a Q & A session, I asked Kershisnik to further discuss his ideas regarding the self-awareness of painting. He said something interesting, which I can’t quote verbatim (my notes are already packed away!) but it went something like this:

I am interested in one having a primary experience with painting and not a surrogate experience.

In other words, Kershisnik aims to have a viewer of his work aware that he/she is standing in front of a canvas that is covered with paint. In my opinion, this aim is in contrast to many realist painters who hope that the viewer is able to place himself/herself within the painting and have a surrogate experience with the work of art (“I feel like I’m actually there!” kind of idea). With a primary experience, however, I think that one is completely external to the painting and aware of his/her present surroundings.

I think that this escapist/surrogate experience has its own place within the world of art, but I think that I generally prefer the primary experience. I love looking at the tactility of the paint (hooray for impasto!) and observing the artist’s “hand” through the movement of the brushstrokes.

What do you prefer? A primary experience? A surrogate experience? A mixture of the two? In some ways, I like having a mixture of the two paradigms (I love to be swept away in the drama of Baroque subject matter), but I think I lean a little bit more heavily on the primary experience over the surrogate.