Posted on: September 26, 2008
Las Meninas, by Diego Velasquez. 1657
Perhaps the first post-modernist painting, well before the period assigned to that name. Pespective. Multiple perspectives. Meta. About painting. About the act of painting. Velasquez paints Velasquez. This is not a pipe. This is not Velasquez. Are we, the audience, looking at the painter painting us? Or, does our vanity blind us and prevent us from seeing that it is the king and queen of Spain in that mirror, not you? Or eye. Too easy, that one.
Mirrors. Pictures within pictures, plays within plays within plays. Rubens on the wall. Hamlet stages Shakespeare. Velasquez stages Nietzsche. Velasquez stages Barth and Coover and Barthelme and McElroy.
All is vanity as the Infanta Margarita tires of being painted. So tired, they have to bring in her court dwarves to keep her in the picture.…
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Posted on: July 19, 2008
Untitled, by Mark Rothko. 1952
All art is paradox. But Rothko, perhaps more than any other modern painter, embraced the paradox and threw it profoundly in our faces.
The canvas is flat. You can’t enter it. You can’t go through it, if it’s hanging on the wall. At least without injury and perhaps a heavy bill from the gallery. But Rothko continuously tells the audience to do just that. Embrace the painting, enter it, walk into it, let it engulf you and torture you and shake you. Shake the core of you. He wants the painting to be a plane and an entrance way in the same bright moment. Flat and omnipresent. Pressed against the wall as it surrounds you. And he wants you to accept the paradox and reject it long enough to succumb.…
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Posted on: June 8, 2008
Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith and Her Maidservant with the Head of Holofernes.1625. The Detroit Institute of the Arts
Artemisia Gentileschi lived a stormy life, to say the least. A lightning rod of sorts in her day (1593 – 1653) and at present, her tragicallly violent existence creates alternate realities for some. Years ago, I watched the movie, Artemisia, which I thought good, though inaccurate historically. Some of the inaccuracies can be forgiven, for they added beauty to the story, to the look and flow of the film. But one change is unforgiveable, possibly unconscionable: the movie depicts a passionate love affair between student and teacher, between Artemisia and the artist Tassi, who actually raped her. Artemisia suffered additional violence during the subsequent trial, as she was tortured by the authorities to gain true confession.…
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