Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Art Minute

Van Gogh, so the story goes, used to be afraid of painting faces.  He found humans so strange and inaccessible a species, that he first attempted painting them without taking up the challenge of depicting their facial expressions at all.  In this vein, he obliged himself with a painful and diverse life, working as an art dealer, studying to become a minister in Amsterdam, failing to get a post in the church, living as an independent missionary among the Borinage miners.  Things changed when he discovered color in Paris, where he also met Seurat, Pissaro and Toulouse-Lautrec.  However, color did not help him to sell his paintings, and he committed suicide after managing to sell only one of his works.  The sign of the new times - his work is highly appreciated now, maybe because it somehow keeps us within the illusion of sanity, contemplating Van Gogh that crossed the limit in trying to understand human beings, losing his head in the process, but leaving us with the dowry - his loud and clear, unbounded and imaginative accomplishment.  At the threshold of eternity :


All this was a prelude to post one of my old-time favorites from Toulouse-Lautrec, another weirdo, a product and anti-product of the French culture of the time. Son of an aristocrat, at 12 he broke his left leg and at 14 his right leg.  The bones failed to heal properly, and his legs stopped growing.  His adult height was 1.5m. To escape his handicap, he invested himself wholly into his art and alcohol. He stayed in the Montmartre cartier of Paris, the center of the cabaret entertainment and bohemian life that he enjoyed painting so much. Circuses, dance halls, nightclubs, and racetracks - a new theme for too formal and romantic an art before the loud arrival of this short character. One of his most striking paintings, Alone:


I have been thinking recently about writing a paper on the institutionalization forces within French art development in the 19th century.  It seems to be a nice example of institutional entrepreneurship, where impressionists, such as Monet and Manet, having their paintings refused at the most legitimizing event - the Paris Salon, managed to convince the public during their lifetime about the value hidden in their paintings using alternative Salons and other 'social movement' tools.  Others, such as Van Gogh or Gauguin, simply refused to participate or play the game - and were left out of the legitimate art community.  Thus, the choice within society is either to conform, to try to change the rules, or to refuse to play the game altogether.  The outcomes seem to also be predetermined in a way...

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

The paths of the art are unknown...maybe to reach that "state" pain and suffering is allways needed.

Is Ordinary life allways the opposite of geniality?

Does this art need to be sinking in desesperation as a way to see over there?

Or do we find just "genial" the delirium?

uasunflower said...

I am more on the hedonistic side of things - trying to avoid pain, although it is rarely possible. That might be the reason for my lack of any specific 'talent' too though.

If there is a frontier between ordinary life and genius, it is probably a very porous one, borrosa, as they say in Spain.

I definitely appreciate the delirium, and desperation is a way of reaching over there. It is much harder to come back though...

Anonymous said...

Usally an ordinary life gets more rutinary than a lost life, between alcohol and sluts...

Pain and suffering makes appear some sides of conscience we normally have slept...mad and insane people "can" access to parts of the brain and conscience that most of the people can't...

But i allways asked myself about the happines of that people, the final results of their work ( not as an artistic value but a human value) and the profit of it for themselves...even the work you upload to the post is not the hardest one from this painters...

Think they didn't come back, did they?

I know really nothing about art...is there any good but happy artist?

uasunflower said...

Happiness is a blurry concept, being able to create is one of the biggest satisfactions for man, IMHO, and that starts with writing a book, giving birth to a child, or more prosaically writing a blog. It makes man become god, or maybe the reverse, that is why we have the creation myth, because creation is such a pleasure, it had to be included as the first step of the most sacred.

However, pain is usually closely involved in much of the creative effort - from giving birth to writing or building a cathedral. From this viewpoint, maybe happiness can be achieved as the final disappearance of pain. I am not sure though, given the unfortunate human tendency to always want more of it.

Good and happy artist? Many...Monet, Renoir, Cezanne lived long lives, with family and friends. Picasso seemed also pretty satisfied although the quality of his work suffers from high variance. However, i can't venture to suppose what happiness levels they managed to achieve...

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the art history class...!!! Knowledge allways clears suppositions...

Last discoverings in biogenetics made me think that all myths or religions about human roles in the cosmos, or gods are just a way of "understanding" or "explaining" aspects that we where not prepared to know.

From the moment we confirm that LIFE can be the result on programing dna...what are we? mATERIALITY is closer than we thought, but it alsoi shows new ralitys and new perspectives/interpretatios about how enjoy IN the real life...

BUt is truth than creation related with despairing maybe is recreation about destruction...explanation of pain...we use to be more curious about this than about the plane view of ordinarity, despite it was good...

Well, is just an opinion, never so wise than yours but we should made a difference between effort, sacrifice and degeneration or decadence...

uasunflower said...

can we, as humans with human brain, ever understand... human brain? The task seems verging on absurdity. Anyway, i like very much your "creation related with despairing maybe is recreation about destruction", btw, where did the frogs go??

oh, and please, you just make me say this - difference between effort and sacrifice is probably just a misunderstanding or miscalculation. Sorry, sacrifice for me is such a hairy, slimy, and unpleasant concept - have heard it from too many people i love, uttered carelessly as an excuse to the right and to the left. The word should be used cautiously, maybe simply left alone with the tribes on Trobriand Islands and never to be resuscitated again as a rationalization/justification weapon, ever.

Anonymous said...

youp!

the frogs are irrationally just THERE...no evolution is clarely their choice.. i can't undrstand or am i a bad observer???


About suferin? Well...nothing is easy...take the hedonism way is an option that not allways get to succeeeding results...

Think everybody choose between comodity or suffering..it depends...

Looking to your fingers...well...don't have doubts about it...push harder...

uasunflower said...

1) hedonism, similarly to suffering, does not always lead to good results. The reasons are various, such as causal ambiguity and the everlasting state of uncertainty of human condition. However, the ones who do not choose to try are cowards who prefer to suffer and are afraid too much of the jump. It is much easier to keep to an institution, such as family, or physical possessions like the hypotheca or a car - they provide the needed artifacts (or should i say fetishes) to keep surviving through this short and oh so exciting gift - life. The ones that do not choose might be right - they might be (very) wrong. Or they might spend the rest of their life looking for a rationalization of the wrong choice.

2) And no, - maybe you guessed already, - i don't agree, everybody does not choose between commodity and suffering. Very few people choose at all - only philosophers enjoy discussions about freedom, an abstract concept of some ideal hidden to us, dwellers of the Planet Earth. It is so much simpler to 'follow the path' that gets so easily predetermined by random encounters, random events, random climbs. The biggest mistake the god floating out there made was to supply intelligence to the sorry human lot.

and finally - the frogs - maybe they were a figment of your imagination? If you close a kitten in a big black box, and never open it again, when will you know that the kitten is dead? How much your knowing will matter to the kitten?

AM said...

i thought the painting was called "At the threshold of eternity"

uasunflower said...

AM - as usual, thanks and i stand corrected.

Anonymous said...

I take note...thanks for all the explanations...

Need to focuse just on "art" again...!?

AM said...

you may want to correct "the cirque of the unclimbables" as well, that is in north-western Canada, said to be very beautiful but hard to get to