David and Goliath, by Caravaggio

David and Goliath, by Caravaggio. 1600, The Prado.


Caravaggio (1571 — 1610) was the Bad Boy of his day and time. A Rock N Roll rebel before there was such a thing. Seemingly always in trou­ble with the law, all too ready for a fight, and deadly if crossed, Caravaggio was also among the most impor­tant painters of his or any era. His use of chiaroscuro was stun­ning for its dra­matic impact and inno­va­tion, while his sub­ject mat­ter blazed new ground for in-​​your-​​face heresy. In short, he lived his life like a storm.

Art needs to move. It often needs to sim­u­late motion in order to move you, the viewer. Artists for mil­len­nia have known that slash­ing lines, high con­trast, and sharp jux­ta­po­si­tions of color and shape gen­er­ally impact the viewer more than sta­tic scenes with nice ver­ti­cals and hor­i­zon­tals. The Baroque Era pushed this con­cept fur­ther than any pre­vi­ous artis­tic period. Dramatic diag­o­nals were in. Deep blacks forced bright col­ors out­ward into the face of the audi­ence, charged the room with new elec­tric­ity, before Franklin, before Edison, before GE.

Mannerism to Realism and Naturalism. Caravaggio was one of the keys to flip­ping art from its Mannerist stage onto Realism and Naturalism. He took paint­ing in the direc­tion of the hard-​​boiled, like Hemingway, James L. Cain and Raymond Chandler with literature.

Was it because he lived on the edge, a James Dean speed­ing toward the edge of the cliff? Did he paint in a hard-​​boiled man­ner because his own life was like some­thing out of a detec­tive novel set in 17th cen­tury Rome? Making that con­nec­tion is all too easy. It’s some­thing many of us who care about his art like to do. But if it’s true, then what do we say about those great painters, writ­ers, philoso­phers and musi­cians who lived seem­ingly unevent­ful, peace­ful lives, yet made intense, even vio­lent art?

And what about all of those decap­i­ta­tions in his paint­ings? Oftentimes, the sev­ered head was a self-​​portrait. Freud equated decap­i­ta­tions with cas­tra­tion (with fear of cas­tra­tion, too), so it’s easy to make that leap for Caravaggio as well. But I’m not so sure. His enig­matic poses, the provoca­tive gaze on the faces of so many of his sub­jects, lead many to quick judg­ments con­cern­ing var­i­ous forms of eroti­cism. But Caravaggio lit­er­ally car­ried a sword with him every­where he went, for years. Perhaps he had the right to be con­cerned with los­ing his head.

The gaze. He looks at us, enig­mat­i­cally. Is he call­ing us closer, deeper into the dark con­trasts of his paint­ings? Or is he push-​​pulling us into ambi­gu­ity and eter­nal hes­i­ta­tions? Oftentimes the best art is unde­fin­able. On more than one occa­sion, I worked on a paint­ing too long and ruined it. We can do the same when we ana­lyze them. Cutting off their heads to spite their bod­ies. The body of art. The drama. The mystery.

 

Sharing is good!

Related Posts: