Caspar David Friedrich

I adore the paintings of Caspar David Friedrich, the nineteenth century German romantic. They have a mystery and Gothic intensity to them which seem to invest nature with a sense of power and foreboding. When people are depicted they appear diminished and unimportant, almost as if civliization and the created world itself were equally unimportant.

Arnold Böcklin, Mythology and Death

Arnold Böcklin, the nineteenth century Swiss symbolist, is another of my favourite painters, though he is not quite as technically proficient and awe-inspiring as Casper David Friedrich. Böcklin specialised in subjects with a mythological theme in the main. He also had an obsession with death, nowhere better expressed, perhaps, than in The Isle of the Dead, possibly his most famous painting, and his self-portrait with a skeleton in the background playing the violin.

Meeting Michelangelo

Most people going to Rome will want to visit the Sistine Chapel, accessed through the Vatican Museums. If one intends to pay proper respects to Michelangelo it is important to find out exactly when the Museums open and get there an hour or so beforehand. Now, once in, make straight for the Chapel, ignoring all of the wonderful distractions on the way; these can be admired later. Inside the Chapel, and hopefully alone, one can stand in silent awe before The Last Judgement, long before the twittering crowds arrive. :))

Bosch and Ernst, Visions of the Grim

For me Max Ernst stands comparison with Hieronymus Bosch. It might be said that they speak to one another across the centuries. Both share the same gruesome vision, with paintings populated by monstrous bird-like figures and other demons. There are depths of imagination, and wells of fear, well beyond the reaches of psychoanalysis and other such rational constructs.

Past Futures

Have you been to the Futurist exhibition at the Tate Modern? If you can, go. If you have any interest in modern art, go. If you have any interest in the history of Italy in the twentieth century, go. I can answer yes to all three, so I went!

I first came across mention of Futurism a few years ago when I was researching the history of Italy, with specific reference to the rise of Fascism. Perhaps the most exciting thing for me was to discover a collection of Futurist Manifestos in my parents’ book collection, really marvelous stuff, full of energy and dynamism.

OH! pleasant exercise of hope and joy!
For mighty were the auxiliars which then stood
Upon our side, we who were strong in love!
Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven!--Oh! times,
In which the meagre, stale, forbidding ways
Of custom, law, and statute, took at once
The attraction of a country in romance!


Yes, it was, despite what came later. I certainly make no apology for falling in love with the words of that great showman and clown, Filippo Marinetti, particularly his ‘declaration of war’ published in Le Figaro in February 1909, which announced the arrival of Futurism to the world. It still carries some shock value, a threat to all bourgeois sensibility. The art of the past, even the greatest, is denounced before the author goes on to call for the destruction of all galleries, archives and libraries. More than that, he calls for the purification of a dying, claustrophobic world through war. Yes, it’s shocking, is it not? It’s also exciting; it excites me in its celebration of youth, violence and speed.

I know, I know, it’s bombastic and adolescent, but it was written at a time when art, Italian art, was dying under the deadweight of the past, of inherited culture. The destruction of the past was really little more than a call for the flames of the phoenix; for a form of rebirth.

The exhibition itself is a delight, with work by Carlo Carra, Giacomo Balla and Gina Severini. For me the highlight was Umberto Boccioni’s wonderful Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, the great masterpiece of Futurist sculpture, a figure that, though frozen in bronze, is full of dynamism and movement. Yes, bliss was it in that dawn to be alive!

The Fairy Raid: Carrying off a Changling-Midsummer Eve

This is one of my all-time favourite works of art. It was painted by the Scottish artist, Joseph Noel Paton, noted for his fairy themes. This one shows an amazing level of technical proficiency. Beyond that it’s just so magical, so exciting.

Goya's Black Art

I have a fascination for paintings and graphics depicting witches or the theme of witchcraft in general. Lucas Cranach and Albrecht Dürer have both dealt with the subject, but the one who intrigues me most is Francisco Goya, who depicts witches and the Sabbath as part of his so-called Black Paintings series, completed in the latter part of his career, and intended for his eyes only. Spain was only just emerging from the trauma of the French invasion and the Wars of Napoleon, and Goya himself from a period of depression and mental illness. He had earlier in his career depicted the Devil and the Sabbath, but in an altogether lighter, almost comic fashion. There is nothing light about El aquelarre.

Chola Art

A couple of years ago I went to an exhibition if bronzes from the Chola Empire held at the Royal Academy in London. It was quite a revelation. Before that I hadn’t given too much thought to Indian sacred art, particularly the sensual quality that many of these images display, forms, if you like, of sacred sexuality.

Anyway, the Cholas were a Tamil dynasty who flourished in southern India between the ninth and thirteenth centuries AD. Soldiers turned builders, they created massive temple complexes which were then furnished with devotional images cast in bronze, including one of Shiva dancing in a ring of fire, as much an emblem of India today as the Taj Mahal. Shiva in the form of Nataraja-the Lord of Dance-became the most important symbol of the Chola dynasty itself, with one twelfth century ruler devoting a whole year’s revenues to the embellishment of the god’s shrine at Chidambaram in central Tamil Nadu.

The interesting contrast between this form of Hindu art and the Christian sculptures of the same period is the emphasis the former places on bodily beauty. It’s not just beauty of form but the teasing sensuality which appears to be such an important part of the Indian bronzes. It can be seen in the perfection of Shiva’s form in the ring of fire and in the image of Krishna standing on the head of the serpent Kaliya.

These divine works of art were specifically intended to allow the observer to focus on a higher level of being. They were created in the wake of a form of devotional Hinduism known as bhakti, growing in importance across southern India since the seventh century. Under this form of belief devotion was expressed in a whole variety of ways, in poetry, in song and in the contemplation and praise of the beauty of scared icons, images of bodily perfection. And perfect they are. I simply can’t wait to see them again, and in their original, and sacred, settings.

Die Wilde Jagd

Die Wilde Jagd, or The Wild Hunt, is a folk-myth common across Northern Europe in pre-Christian times, in which a group of ghostly or divine riders race across the sky, used, among other things, as an explanation for thunderstorms, or as a warning of some impending catastrophe. It is sometimes referred to as Wotan’s Hunt, after the chief Germanic deity. It has been depicted in art, both ancient and modern. The painting I would like to focus on is that of Franz von Stuck, a German symbolist. Here it is below. It was painted in 1899. Does the figure of Wotan remind you of anyone? :-))

Melancholy and Mystery of a Street

There is, for me, something deeply unsettling about the paintings of Gorgio de Chirico, particularly those of his so-called ‘Metaphysical Period.’ They are full of sun and light, beautiful studies of the streets, loggias and piazzas of Italian cities, places like Turin, where Nietzsche, the artist’s favourite thinker, completed his best work. But there is something more, a deeps sense of melancholy and threat, in places almost completely devoid of people. This sense of the sinister, the sense that something terrible is about to happen, is nowhere better illustrated than in his Melancholy and Mystery of a Street. Who is the figure in the background, the shadow, waiting for the little girl, playing on her own? Is it someone she knows? Is it something else? One’s sense of foreboding is heightened, never to be released.