Posts By Micah Christensen
Including Goya in the Traditional Canon
Note: Each week I hold a discussion with a group of professional artists on the development and career of a major artist. I post a video recording of each discussion. This week’s artist, Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, prompted an unusual amount of controversy. After reflecting on the thoughtful comments made by those who attended, I have decided to write a little reaction of my own here. The video can be found at the end of this post.
“The last Old Master and the first Modern painter” is an oft-repeated phrase used to describe Francisco de Goya y Lucientes (Spanish, 1746-1828). It captures the un-categorizable nature of Goya’s nearly seven-decades oeuvre, and hints at both his appreciation for the past and influence on those who came after. This week, I led two discussion on the development and career of the Spanish painter. Each gathering was heavily attended by professional artists, mostly traditionalists. I was surprised by the resistance experienced in comments and questions about Goya’s ability to paint.
For that reason, before posting video of the discussion, I would like to write a few words. First, to Modernists, who see Goya almost exclusively as a anti-traditionalist. And, secondly to traditionalists who are often unable to appreciate Goya’s remarkable craftsmanship. He does not belong solely to one team.
A few words about Goya for Modernists
Francisco de Goya (Spanish, 1746-1828) San Juan Bautista niño (1812) Oil on canvas. 112 x 82 cm. Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid
In a 1921 essay titled “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” the poet TS Eliot, railed against the predominant spirit of his time, which he believed, saw originality as the highest value. Eliot did not see originality as innovation. In fact, he believed that innovation was dependent upon a solid understanding and appreciation of tradition:
We dwell with satisfaction upon the [artist’s] difference from his predecessors, especially his immediate predecessors; we endeavour to find something that can be isolated in order to be enjoyed. Whereas if we approach a poet without this prejudice we shall often find that not only the best, but the most individual parts of his work may be those in which the dead poets, his ancestors, assert their immortality most vigorously. And I do not mean the impressionable period of adolescence, but the period of full maturity. 1
Those who lionize Goya as having broken with tradition often ignore his portraits, religious and historical paintings and, instead, latch on to his experimental and private work, such as the so-called “Black Paintings” or etchings from the Disasters of War. While it is true that these works were revolutionary, they were also not usually intended for public consumption. Goya’s Black Paintings were made for the dining room in his private residence. And, the Disasters of War were not printed until some 35 years after his death. In other words, the artworks that we often see exclusively as representing Goya in art-history materials and courses were not the ones he was best known for in his own lifetime. I am not attempting to diminish the remarkable departure his experimental oeuvre represented at the time or their subsequent influence on artists. Looking only at his experimental works, Goya seems like a man out of time, almost completely divorced from the aesthetics of his time, which is not accurate.
A few words about Goya for Traditionalists
I have come to the conclusion that most artists interested in the classical tradition see Goya as unworthy of study. It is my belief this is not so much about whether or not his work is wanting. Goya is often excluded from the traditionalist lexicon because he was so well regarded by anti-traditional artists and modernists.
Francisco de Goya (Spanish, 1746-1828) Hannibal the Conqueror Viewing Italy from the Alps for the First Time (1770-1771) Oil on canvas, 87 x 131.5 cm. Selgas-Fagalde Foundation, Cudillero, Spain
It is true that Goya’s influenced generations of artists seeking alternatives to Academic painting, most notably Gustave Courbet and Eduoard Manet. Yet, it is also true that over Goya’s nearly seven-decade career there were works, even very late in his career (e.g. The Spanish Consittution) that were traditional. As a young man, he worked alongside Anton Rafael Mengs. Under the German painter’s encouragement, Goya made a series of copper-plate etchings of works by Velázquez. Goya then went on to Italy on a kind of private prix de Rome, where he copied Greco-Roman statuary and produced an ambitious, large-scale history painting depicting Hannibal crossing the Alps.
Detail, Francisco de Goya (Spanish, 1746-1828) Duke of Wellington (1812-1814) 25 1/3 x 20 1/2 in. Oil on panel. National Gallery, London.
In his portraiture, Goya could have hardly picked less polemical models to emulate:
“I have three masters: Nature, Velázquez, and Rembrandt.”
These are not the words of a anti-traditional revolutionary. Yet, it is my belief Goya has been treated lightly by traditionalists not necessarily because of his own work; but, because the Spanish artist was so well regarded by anti-traditional artists and modernists.
Goya’s timeline roughly parallels that of Jacques Louis David, David had established a strong, Neoclassical vision of art that dominated the French Academy and beyond. During the 1790s, while Goya was Professor of Painting at the Academia de San Fernando (Madrid), the taste for Neoclassicism led to heated debates on whether or not students in Spain should be held to new standards in terms of draughtsmanship and substitute their various Old-Master study materials — including artworks by Spanish, Flemish, and French artists — with those by Italian artists that more closely aligned with Neoclassical ideals, such as Raphael and Guercino. We have notes from the meeting where Goya stated his case for replacing pluralism with a nearly uniform style:
Finally, Sir, I cannot find another, more effective method for advancing the Arts, neither do I believe it exists, than to award and protect … the full liberty for genius to flow from those students of Art who want to learn [their instincts], without suppression, and without efforts to bend their inclination toward this or that style in Painting … 2
He was one of four professors at the Academia de Bellas Artes that voted, unsuccessfully, against the Neoclassicization of the Spanish Academy.
Francisco de Goya y Lucientes (Spanish, 1746-1828) Witches’ Flight (1797-98) 43.5 x 30.5 cm. Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid.
Does this mean Goya was “anti-academic”? I don’t believe so. In fact, I believe that Goya was attempting to preserve the Academy against itself. The strict adherence to towards Neoclassical dogma — one that arguably denied the Naturalism of Hellenistic sculpture — in European academies throughout the nineteenth century led to many schisms and misunderstandings about the nature of the Classical tradition.
If you are traditionalist or a portrait painter, I encourage you to look at Goya’s portraits. Last year, the National Gallery of London hosted the largest gathering of Goya’s portraits ever assembled in one place. It was astounding. I discuss is at length in the above video. (Skip ahead if you must).
Casado’s prescription for coming to terms with Goya
In 1882, the painter José Casado del Alisal was elected to the Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando the same school where Goya had taught nearly 100 years earlier. On that occasion, Casado attempted to describe to his colleagues — many of whom were still riding the anti-Goya wave of Neoclassicism and Neoplatonism — the value of Goya and his place within the pantheon of Spanish art:
Such a painter, so personal and impossible to copy, with his confident magnificence, with his strange and sublime eccentricities. He cannot have imitators, neither was he able to found a School. His genius was consummated with him …3
It is my hope that those who are anti-traditional can look at the entirety of Goya’s career and see where the Spanish artist subsumed and projected the traditions he inherited. Equally, I hope that Goya is welcomed with open arms by traditionalists, who may be surprised that they have unfairly ignored or marginalized a great master.
MJC
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Tiepolo Is Not a Decorator
It seemed like a compliment when, Michael Levey, former Director of the National Gallery (London) described Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (Venice, 1696- Madrid,1770) as “the greatest decorative painter of eighteenth-century Europe, as well as its most able craftsman.”4 (And, Levey was certainly a life-long advocate of Tiepolo.) But, for many the terms “decorative” and “craftsman” seem to indicate a lack of seriousness — a missing gravitas reserved for an Old Master.
Because much of his work was made for and installed in architectural settings — and limited to three geographic locations (i.e. Venice, Wurzburg, and Madrid) — Tiepolo is not always given the attention, I believe, are befitting his remarkable gifts for composition and narrative.
Above is a raw audio recording of a discussion between me and a group of professional artists discussing Tiepolo’s development and major work. With only 90 minutes we could not hope to approach all his works; nevertheless, we covered a lot of ground.
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Discussing Bernini with Contemporary Artists
Below is a raw audio recording, accompanied by high-resolution images, of a discussion I led with a group of professional artists (i.e. sculptors and painters) on the development, early works, and career of the artists Gian Lorenzo Bernini (Naples, 1598-Rome, 1680). Lasting about 90 minutes, we did not attempt to discuss all of his works, let alone all of his major accomplishments. But, the discussion brought up valuable insights regarding the kinds of choices artists — then and now — make when creating challenging works of art.
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Old Masters and Contemporary Artists: A Lecture Series
An embarrassing amount of time has passed since my last post. But, there are good reasons. After five years, I have completed a PhD in the History of Art at University College London. (More on that another time.) In the process of doing research, I travelled a great deal, saw astounding works of art, and met remarkable people. In short, there is a lot to share.
Over the past year, I have been meeting with a group of talented artists and art collectors to hold a weekly art discussion. We start with each artist’s training, early works, and, then, on to the undisputed masterpieces. As a result of having both an art history and artists talking together, the discussions produce some of the most fascinating/revealing discussions I have experienced.
We have only just begun recording the discussions. There is talk of potentially producing a book. In any case, I will begin posting them here each week. Enjoy. And, please let me know if there are any artists you would be interested in us tackling.
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A Critical Obsession: How and why those who dismiss Victorian art should take another look
Yesterday, Waldemar Januszcak, art critic for The Sunday Times, wrote a scathing review of “A Victorian Obsession,” an exhibition of 52 paintings by Frederick Leighton, Lawrence Alma-Tadema, and Albert Moore, among others, on show at the Leighton House Museum. Subtitling his review “Droopy damsels in distress take center stage . . .” Mr. Januszczak belittles and dismisses the works as “nonsense,” “divorced from reality,” and “grotesque.” This is not the first time Mr. Januszcak has written dismissively about nineteenth-century academic art and artists. (He wrote similarly negative reviews of recent exhibitions on John William Waterhouse.) And, this isn’t an angry response to his article, where I feign injury on behalf of a genre of art I happen to like. Rather, I feel that Mr. Januszczak repeated a standard approach to Victorian art — one that constantly sees it only in opposition to Impressionism and Modernism — that needs to be retired, because it misses the point. Whether or not we like them, these works say a great deal about the culture that produced them.
Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1836 – 1912) The Roses of Heliogabalus (1881) Oil on canvas. 52 x 84 1/8 in. Simón Pérez Collection.
The occasion of Januszcak’s article is a loan of 52 works owned by Juan Antonio Pérez Simón, a Spanish Civil War émigre raised in Mexico, to the Leighton House Museum. Mr. Pérez has been collecting the works over the past twenty years; a period accompanied by increased values for the works at auctions, scholarly publications, and museum exhibitions. Long held in private collections, many works from Pérez’s collection have not been seen in public, let alone as a group. This collection does not represent the bulk or, arguably, the best of these artists’ oeuvres. Many more can be found at the Victoria & Albert Museum, Tate Britain, and the Bristol Museum of Art.
Reading Januszcak’s review, my first instinct was knee-jerkingly defensive. He talks about the absurdity of the subject matter. He draws a comparison between the brief, meteoric success of Leighton and Alma-Tadema and the seemingly unsustainable trends in contemporary art.
If I were a nouveau riche Russian with a Kensington house full of stuff brought at Frieze, I would instruct my chauffeur to take me immediately to Christie’s, where I would start selling as if there were no tomorrow.
(One almost wonders if Mr. Januszcak just finished watching Bertold Bretcht’s “Seven Deadly Sins of the Petite Bourgeoisie,” and it spilled over to the review.)
Apologists often defend Leighton and Alma-Tadema on technical grounds: “Can’t you see these artists were educated, thoughtful . . . a true craftsman!?” But, that isn’t a winning argument. After all, Waldemar Januszczak understands quality. He has done several, thoughtful series on Old Masters. But, like many critics, he has an inherent disdain for the artistic period between the late-eighteenth-century and avant-garde movements of the last half of the nineteenth century. He writes:
. . . Leighton was just a year older than Manet. But while Manet was ushering in the impressionist revolution, in 1871 Leighton was imagining four Greek nymphs on a beach gathering pebbles in their floatiest robes.”
He makes Leighton sound convincingly backward. But, there is another point of view.
Having spent the past decade researching mid-nineteenth-century works of art, artists, and arts education, I am clearly biased. (I have also felt isolated and frustrated by my art-historical colleagues who would gladly write another book on Picasso’s treatment of cuticles.) But, I also feel that summarily ridiculing these works from our present point of view (e.g. comparing Leighton to Manet) misses an opportunity to discuss context in which the works were made. You don’t have to like these works. However, you should realize they are magnificent commentaries — often unintentional — on the aspirations of of the British Empire at its height. The art, with all its classical imagery and idealistic affectations, is a manifestation of the ideals of those industrialists in Bristol, Liverpool, and London who saw their generation as the latest claimant to the glories of the Roman Empire.
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Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1836 – 1912) The Roses of Heliogabalus, detail (1881) Oil on canvas. 52 x 84 1/8 in. Simón Pérez Collection.
Januszczak rightly points out the ridiculousness of Alma-Tadema’s work The Roses of Heliogabalus (1888), which imagines the moment the obscure Roman ruler showered and suffocated a crowd with flower petals. Alma-Tadema, Leighton and Moore are often referred to as Olympian painters, for conjuring these kinds of scenes, where attractive British women and men are dressed in vaguely classical costumes, and placed in meticulously-created and improbably grandiose settings. They are meant to be unrealistic. They are physical manifestations of the aspirations held by a generation of Belle-Époque Brits. It’s also one held by many — wealthy or not — today. Weren’t many of these nouveau riche and landed gentry funded by siphoning off colonial resources? The ridiculousness of the Alma-Tadema’s work does not come from the quality or subject of the painting. It is from the lack of embarrassment of riches by those audiences that related to it. (Is the fat old man in the background a Victorian banker? Is that the 99% drowning in mortgage debt?) I don’t know if Alma-Tadema intended it as social commentary. Whether or not he appealed to the elite by illustrating their fantasies or subtly criticized them, it is still a commentary on the times.
For me, Olympian works of art are less comparable to those showing at the Frieze Art Fair than to Apple products. Januszczak rightly points out that original oil paintings were purchased by contemporary industrialists for enormous sums. But, he fails to say that artists like Leighton made most of their money in the reproductions of their works — prints in popular journals that were torn out, framed, and hung in many households. This blows a hole in the theory that these artists were painting solely for the monied, elitist few. Like having the latest iPhone, a Leighton print hanging on your wall probably did little to actually increase quality of life or help humanity. But, it was what marketers today would call an “aspirational lifestyle purchase.” These works are a remarkable insight to the British Empire and its people — at least those in the UK. Bringing up Manet and the avant garde brings us back to a conversation that has been played out ( I can see Roger Fry’s angry ghost saying: “These artists were out of touch with Modernity!”) Manet had nothing to do with it. Januszczak wants to fold this work into a standard narrative from the playbook of art historians and critics without really thinking about what made these works truly popular.
I also agree with Januszczak that the great interest some people have in these paintings is puzzling. Akin to Januszczak’s quick dismissal, they love these paintings without considering them. The fact that they are becoming popular again — even inspiring custom luxury room scents (More here) as Januszczak points out — is another opportunity to examine what these Olympian painters distilled in their own era, in the desires of a Spanish billionaire, and the many people who see this art today and love it.
The Sartorialist Channels Old-Master Painting by Carracci
I’ve been following Scott Schuman’s Sartorialist blog for a long time. He is famous for capturing street fashion trends. But, occasionally he’ll include capture images that seemingly nothing to do with fashion and capture a remarkable sense of place. Today, he posted an image of a “young butcher” in Asni, Morocco.
Scott Schuman. “On The Road…The Young Butcher, Asni, Morocco” (2013) Photograph. Source: The Sartorialist.
Maybe it’s just the art historian in me; I was immediately reminded of “The Butcher Shop” (c. 1580) by Annibale Carracci (Bologna, 1560 — Rome, 1609). While Annibale and his brother, Ludovico, are often remembered for their Classical Baroque work, this painting demonstrates his remarkable range of experimentation.
Annibale Carracci (Bologna, 1560 — Rome, 1609) The Butcher’s Shop (c. 1580) 73 by 105 in. Christ Church Picture Gallery, Oxford.
Shuffling at Tate Britain: New rooms and old friends
I’m in London just in time to see changes made to Tate Britain, and share a few snapshots from my visit.
Thomas BROCK (1847-1922) Eve (1900). Tate Britain, London.
The Museum’s collections have been rearranged and expanded. (Learn more here.) Works, such as Eve (1900) by Thomas Brock (1847-1922), have been taken from other museums — Eve was formerkly in the sculpture gallery at the Victoria & Albert Museum, where it stood on a very high pedestal — and put within the context of contemporaneous works.
William GOSCOMBE JOHN (1860-1952) A Boy at Play (c. 1895) Bronze. Tate Britain, London.
With all works in chronological order, the Museum a visual feast of 500 years of British art. However, about seventy percent of eye-level wall space is given to art created in the last ninety years. One has to wonder why one of the museum’s most popular paintings, The Lady of Shallot by J.W. Waterhouse is hanging some ten feet above a row of paintings, while cavernous space is given to “sound art” and “visual projections.”
Hamo THORNYCROFT (1850-1925) The Kiss (1916) Marble. Tate Britain, London.
There, I’ve shared my nineteenth-century, figurative-art bias.
Now I can say without reservation that the Tate Britain is better than ever. Go see the paintings . . . and the sculptures!! Oh, the sculptures! They are worth visiting a thousand times.
Caravaggio and His Legacy in Los Angeles . . . errr what you doing here?
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1573 – 1610) St John the Baptist (c. 1604). Oil on canvas. 172 × 104 cm. Nelson-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, Missouri
Does Baroque art burn more calories than other genres? What did that couple in leather pants say about Mary Magdalene looking hot? Was Luca Giordan0 the first street artist? Is linseed oil more environmentally friendly than egg tempura?
These are questions that naturally occur when seeing a Caravaggist exhibition in LA. I’m kidding . . . sort of.
In the past two days, I have visited the Los Angeles Museum of Art twice to see Bodies and Shadows: Caravaggio and His Legacy ( 11 Nov 2012 – 10 Feb 2013). It is a remarkable exhibition, for eight works by Michelangelo Caravaggio on view and even more for the large body of Baroque works on load from over a dozen international institutions. (Whether or not you are able to attend, the exhibition catalogue has good illustrations–at a reasonable price–of the remarkable gathering of works at the show.)
Francisco Zurbarán. (Francisco de Zurbarán (1594-1664) Saint Serapion (1628) Oil on canvas.
I’ve heard a lot of bellyaching about there “only” being eight Caravaggio’s. Hogwash. There are at least two dozen paintings that, alone, would be worth the price of admission.
Martín Rico y Ortega: My Article in Fine Art Connoisseur
La Torre de las Damas en la Alhambra de Granada, Martín Rico y Ortega, 1871, Oil on canvas.
The January/February edition of Fine Art Connoisseur magazine carries an article I wrote about seeing the Prado’s exhibition, El Paisajista: Martín Rico y Ortega (1833-1908).
Assessing a “new” Leonardo da Vinci: Don’t talk to art historians about art
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) Salvator Mundi (c. 1500) Oil on walnut panel. Private collection.
Next month, the National Gallery of London will display a “previously-unknown work by Leonardo da Vinci.” Called Salvator Mundi (i.e. “Savior of the World”), the painting has been compared to surviving, fragmented preparatory drawings and undisputed paintings by da Vinci. As a result, many scholars believe it should be counted among a handful of paintings by the artist. Others doubt. The portrait of Christ will be on display in the exhibition Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan, opening on November 9 in London, for everyone to compare and opine.
Anticipating certain and divisive scrutiny, Nicholas Penny, the Director of the National Gallery, says he is “pretty sure” it is by da Vinci. He was interviewed by The Sunday Times(London) for a feature in the paper’s magazine titled “Leonardo? Convince Me.”:
“It is a very weird picture.” . . . It shares something, he says, with Leonardo’s portraits The Lady with the Ermine and the Mona Lisa. “They respond, but hold something back. You can’t think about them except in relationship to the viewer. They imply a narrative of which you are a part. That was not true of portraiture before Leonardo. The Salvator Mundi radiates intense presence. But because it’s Leonardo you do wonder if you’re going mad–and you certainly want people whose opinions you respect to look at it.” He pauses. “People can judge for themselves.” (Sunday Times Magazine. 9 OCT 2011.)
Before becoming Director, Mr. Penny was the Clore Curator of Renaissance Art at the National Gallery for ten years. He is a serious scholar; an expert. But, his advice here is nonsense. We may never be able to decisively attribute the painting to da Vinci–it has been over 500 years. But, we can certainly do better than stand in front of it to experience “radiated presence”–whatever that means–or take comfort in an “implied narrative.” It is the kind of non-methodical, relativistic drivel that has made art history and art historians completely irrelevant to public debate in our evidence-based era.
I don’t think Mr. Penny’s advice in this interview is the basis for his opinions; but, he has been trained by a hundred years of art historical practice to talk to the public about art in an imprecise and unhelpful way. The Salvator Mundi painting has been through a host of scientific tests, including carbon dating and comparative chemical testing of pigments used in undisputed da Vinci paintings; and, a series of comparative stylistic studies, such as analysis of stroke and process. These are not the kind of tools available to average museum-goers who Mr. Penny invites to “judge for themselves.” If he were a lawyer, we would expect him to say “Here is the compelling evidence for and against . . . therefore I am pretty sure it is attributable to da Vinci.” not: “I’m pretty sure . . . It’s weird . . . ask someone else.” It is a sign of our times that a trained scholar and Director of one of the world’s great museums would tell people to look at and interpret a Renaissance painting as though it were a 1960s drip painting. It is evidence of the public death of a way of talking about art called the “Morellian Method.”
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) Lady with an Ermine (1485) Oil on wood panel. 54 by 39 cm. Czartoryski Museum, Kraków.
Giovanni Morelli (1816-1891) was a trained doctor who had a love of art. During his lifetime, royal and national museums sprung up throughout Europe. Many Old-Master works were placed on public display for the first time, leading to an international public dialogue on art not seen before or since. Competing for attention, these collections–sometimes of dubious origins– were often overzealous and sloppy in attributing works of art to marquee names. Paintings labelled “da Vinci” have since been downgraded to “School of da Vinci” or “Unknown Florentine Artist.” At the time, art historians, critics and collectors were anxious to divide up painters into similar Schools (e.g. Spanish, French, Neopolitan) by observations of subject, palette and, even, size. Morelli had a different approach. He suggested that the same rigorous scientific methods used in medicine (e.g. dissection and observation) be applied to the observation of paintings. In particular, Morelli believed that an artist was best known by the minute and inconsequential parts of a painting: leaves on trees, fingernails, dirt. Artists didn’t reveal themselves in the big things; but, in the mundane areas of their art that were not subject to constant reinvention. He wrote detailed treatises on the varied hand gestures of particular painters, contrasting them with others. Over time, he was considered a kind of Sherlock Holmes of painting.Though some of his attributions were incorrect, Morelli’s object-based method pre-dated many scientific tools that his nineteenth-century philosophy would have embraced.
School of Leonardo da Vinci. Bacchus (c. 1510) Oil on walnut panel transferred to canvas. 177 by 115 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris.
By the early twentieth century, paintings were interpreted differently. Art was considered mostly through philosophical arguments alone, not craftsmanship combined with philosophy. Morelli was not relevant to Dadaists or Pop Artists. But, it was my belief that thos, like Mr. Penny, who continued to study art in the Classical Tradition, would retain the rigor and language of a scientific method in order to understand, preserve and teach the public about these works. I think Mr. Penny has a deep understanding–many years beyond technical possibilities of Morelli’s era–but his comments appear to indicate his lack of belief public capacity or interest to see paintings in a rigorous way. Maybe that is just my implied narrative.