Bite 148: Caspar David Friedrich - Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, 1818



Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, 1818, Oil on canvas, 94.8 × 74.8 cm, Kunsthalle Hamburg

"The painter should paint not only what he has in front of him, but also what he sees inside himself. If he sees nothing within then he should stop painting what is in front of him."
                                                        - Caspar David Friedrich

A turbulent sea of fog: a reflection of inner emotion. Turned from the viewer, the subject is the artist himself, while, at the same time, us before the sublime power of nature.

One foot forward, toward the distant horizon, bold and apprehensive, the 'wanderer' gazes out at a mysterious landscape, wide and threatening. Like much of Friedrich's work this painting is mystical and melancholy, religious and quietly profound.

Read More

Bite 132: Caravaggio - David with the Head of Goliath, 1609-10

David with the Head of Goliath, 1609-10, oil on canvas, 125 × 101 cm, Galleria Borghese

In one of Caravaggio's last works before his mysterious disappearance and death, the artist paints himself as the dead Goliath, having been defeated by David. It is said that the young David was modelled on "his own little Caravaggio." This may refer to previous studio assistant - and lover - Cecco del Caravaggio. The diagonal sword - inscribed with an abbreviation of the phrase  "humility kills death" - mirrors David's gaze and has been seen as sexually suggestive. Or rather David may depict a younger version of the artist himself, who, in a double self-portrait, looks upon the head of his adult counterpart with sadness and compassion, in sharp contrast to the jubilant expression typical of other portrayals of this Biblical subject.

Carvaggio is on the run from the authorities, having murdered a man. He paints in desperation - his patron, Cardinal Borgese, maintained the power to grant him pardon. The result is a self-portrait alive with turmoil, his face contorted in hopelessness, mouth gaping as if about to utter his last words. 

A devastating explication on the human condition, the painting itself becomes the artist's own monumental elegy, the bold and mysterious Caravaggio having the final word.

Read More

Bite 128: Marc Quinn - Self, 2006

 

Self, 2006, blood (artist's), liquid silicone, stainless steel, glass, perspex and refrigeration equipment, 205 x 65 x 65 cm, National Portrait Gallery, London

The hum of a refrigerator unit below a cold glass case. Within: a red decapitated head, eyes closed, as if in meditation.

Every five years, beginning in 1991, Marc Quinn creates a new sculpture - of his own head, out of his own blood, taken over a 5 month period. Formed from liquid - the liquid of life and the Eucharist - it only remains a sculpture through freezing.  A death mask of blood.

Quinn refers to it as a "frozen moment on life-support," maintaining the tension of an object wanting to destroy itself, reminding us of the fragility of the human state. Being a life-cast it operates like a three-dimensional photograph, brutal in its honesty while withholding easy meaning. As with all photographs, like a death mask, it heralds the subjects - and our own - mortality.

Read More

Bite 127: Sir George Hayter - The House of Commons, 1833-43

The House of Commons, 1833-43, oil on canvas, 300 x 500 cm, National Portrait Gallery, London

Painted to commemorate the passing of the first Parliamentary Reform Bill in England in 1832, Sir George Hayter took 10 years to complete the work, which depicts the opening session of the new House of Commons on 5 February, 1833.

Of the 658 in parliament at the time 375 are present in the portrait and 323 can be definitively identified, including a self-portrait of the artist himself, kneeling in the bottom right corner. Highly figurative, each representation has been given specific painstaking attention, with individual sittings taking place in most instances, of which many preparatory oils survive.

After completion, interest in the Reform Bill having waned, Hayter had great difficulty in finding a buyer for the monumental work. It was 15 years later that he succeeded in selling the work to the, ironically, then Tory government (who originally opposed the commemorated reforms) for ₤2,000. It was presented to the newly founded National Portrait Gallery in London and was for many years hung in the Houses of Parliament, rebuilt following a fire in 1834 - a year after Hayter completed preparatory sketches of the space.

While the painting remains a record of a moment in the extension of democracy in Britain, it must be remembered that it was not until 1919 that the first woman joined the House and 1928 that women gained equal rights to vote. Looked at today the work is a stark reminder that power, global, has historically been held primarily by straight, well-off, white males.

Read More

Bite 115: Jan van Eyck - Portrait of a Man (Self Portrait?), 1433

Portrait of a Man (Self Portrait?), 1433, oil on oak, 26 x 19 cm, National Gallery, London

A head, almost certainly that of the artist, emerges from darkness. His piercing eyes and ambiguous expression confront the viewer from beneath a red headpiece, light accentuating red detailing. 

The frame, also by the artist, is inscribed, trompe l'oeil - to give the illusion of carving - with the words "Als Ich Can," a pun in Greek meaning "As I/Eyck Can," and below with, "Jan van Eyck made me on 21 October 1433." These references, along with the slight turn of the man's head and his penetrating gaze, strongly suggests at the painting being a self-portrait.

Read More

Bite 114: Jan van Eyck - The Arnolfini Portrait, 1434

Portrait of Giovanni (?) Arnolfini and his Wife (The Arnolfini Portrait), 1434,
oil on oak, 82 x 60 cm, National Gallery, London

Redolent in symbolism, this mysterious painting has been the subject of much conjecture among art historians.

The woman, thought to be Giovanna Cenami, is not believed to be pregnant here, despite appearances. This, along with the dog, fruit and bed, can be seen instead as indicative of fertility, in what many scholars believe to be a marriage or betrothal portrait. Whether this be the case or not, an oath is none-the-less seen to be taking place - Giovanni raising his hand and Giovanna lowering and opening hers. Extravagantly attired in highly expensive winter clothing the couple stands in the front room of their house, on the second story, with cherry blossoms outside suggesting early spring - further adding to the confusion surrounding this Early-Netherlandish work (a very early example of oil on wood instead of tempura).

Thoroughly justifying the extraordinarily fame of this work, however, more even than its remarkable realism and painstaking illusionistic technique, is the convex mirror and inscription in the centre of the painting, on the far wall behind the couple. In the round glass can be seen the backs of the Arnolfinis and a man in front of them holding up his hand, widely accepted to be the artist himself. Above this is transcribed (some even believe legally notorised): "Jan van Eyck has been here." This gesture of authorship attests to the role of the artist as witness, while also being a bold statement on consciousness and the human ego. 

Read More

Bite 111: J.M.W. Turner - Self-Portrait, 1799

Self-Portrait, 1799, oil on canvas, 74 x 58 cm, Tate Britain

At 24 Turner has just been made an Associate at the Royal Academy. He paints himself, almost life-size, confident and dapper, standing tall - yet with perhaps a hint of self-doubt. He gazes, front on, directly at the viewer, head protruding from a tight jacket, willing himself to be undaunted. 

He is tremendously present in a bold statement of who he believes he could be.

Contained and silent. Yet brimming just beneath the surface: a violent energy - like that in his later marine paintings; his billowing white scarf even prophetic of this. With thick, confident brushwork, he bristles with potential and possibility - and the lingering fear that he may in the end amount to nothing.

It is this paradox of ambition, in an expertly understated and transcendent work, which reaches across centuries to confront the viewer as if to say: "You may be young and a little scared, but dare to believe you have something unique to offer the world."

Turner certainly did. He went on to become the dominant figure in English Romanticism, and the key forerunner to Impressionism.

Read More

Bite 85: Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn - Self Portrait, 1658

Self Portrait, 1658, Frick Collection

In the final of many self portraits made throughout his career Rembrandt presents himself, not at work, but in the luxurious garb befitting a truly great artist.

The largest of his self portraits, it stops you in your tracks, his hands, face and golden coat glowing ethereally. The trials he has faced can seen in his eyes as Rembrandt confronts the viewer, as well as himself.

Kenneth Clark regarded it the "calmest and grandest of all his portraits." On its exhibition in 1909 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art it was commented: "It is the head of an old lion at bay, worn and melancholy, yet conscious of his strength, determined and a little defiant."

It is the raw, honest portrayal of a man near the end of his life, by perhaps the greatest self portraitist to have ever lived.

Read More

Bite 72: Louise Bourgeois & Alex Van Gelder - Armed Forces, 2010

Louise Bourgeois, 2010, from the series Armed Forces

Utilising the talents of photographer Alex Van Gelder, Louise Bourgeois presents her hands - essential tools in the creation of her sculpture - as works of art in themselves. Sinewy and wrinkled, aged and used, yet also very much alive, these hands are fulled with personality and the evidence of a life fully lived. 

Photographed at the invitation of Bourgeois in her New York townhouse over the last year of her life, Van Gelder beautifully composes and lights Bourgeois's hands against a stark black background emphasising the physicality of her artistic production and her lived philosophy of art and life. Here Louise Bourgeois becomes a sculpture herself.

Currently showing at Hauser & Wirth Zürich.

Read More

Bite 61: Shigeyuki Kihara - Sina Ma Tuna: Sina and Her Eel, 2003

Sina Ma Tuna: Sina and Her Eel, 2003

In the series Vavau - Tales from ancient Samoa Shigeyuki Kihara mimics the tradition of velvet painting through photography and self-portraiture. “Where the velvet painters are notorious for portraying Pacific people from the colonial gaze, what I do is re-occupy that gaze" she says. "I come from a point of view from the insider.” 

The work Sina Ma Tuna: Sina and Her Eel  depicts Kihara in the role of Sina from the traditional Samoan myth ‘Sina and the Eel’, in which the origins of the coconut are explained. After being attacked by the eel some men kill it and, in mourning, Sina buries the head of the eel. The head then grows into the first coconut tree. 

Kihara, in this image, has chosen to portray the grieving Sina with her head turned, out of the blackness, toward the viewer. Holding up the eel, the object of her loss, with blood running down her arm, the viewer is invited into her pain. 

One possible interpretation of this re-enactment, in relation to gender performance and the ambiguity surrounding the ‘third gender’, would see the eel as a phallic symbol. While society expects her to grieve the loss of her masculinity Kihara is ironically pointing out that there is in fact nothing to grieve: she is both male and female, breaking the binary. Again Kihara is challenging her own marginalisation and societal categorisations about who she is and how her body should be portrayed. Through the image of a beautiful grieving ‘dusky maiden’ Kihara is confronting the expectation that she has anything to grieve or feel sorry for at all. On the contrary, it is others who should be feeling sorry. 

As Jim Vivieaere puts it “‘Who am I, what am I, and what are you?' are questions that will never haunt or torment Kihara.” But, these certainly are questions that Kihara wants to confront us, and our colonial legacy, with. It is this myriad of questions, challenges, ambiguities and compromising of binaries, throughout Kihara’s work, that never leaves the viewer without feeling challenged.

Sources:

Absolutearts.com

C. Vercoe, “The Many Faces of Paradise” in Paradise Now: Contemporary Art from the Pacific (Auckland: David Bateman Ltd., 2004), 46.

J. Vivieaere, Exhibition Catalogue for Shigeyuki Kihara: In the manner of a woman. Sherman Galleries, 2005. 

Read More

Bite 60: Shigeyuki Kihara - My Samoan Girl, 2004-5

My Samoan Girl, 2004-5

In a similar vein to the Fa'afafine work, My Samoan Girl also utilises a mimicry of traditional studio portraiture of the late 19th century. 

Colonial portraiture came in many forms but one ongoing theme in the representation of the exotic female was one of ownership. As the historian Anne Maxwell points out “[s]uch images endowed indigenous peoples with the romantic characteristics associated with renewal, while portraying them as children in need of tutelage and protection.” This ‘Samoan girl’ then is presented just as Kihara’s ancestors would have been: objectified, sexual, passive, obedient, in need of direction and protection and thus ownership. 

The way that her arms are held up makes it clear that she is being asked to do this by the photographer. Her comfort is not taken into consideration and her identity is not what is being photographed. She is merely an exotic artefact holding another exotic artefact. The surrounding plants heighten the feeling of the exotic expected in such images. “That mainstream culture has periodically expressed desire for subaltern art has never obligated anyone to deal with subaltern peoples as human beings, compatriots, or artists. That is, perhaps, until now,” writes post-colonial theorist Coco Fusco. 

The colonial assumes her need for ownership. But for now her image will do; for is not photography another form of ownership? – a simulation of possession – a way to have your ‘Samoan girl’ in your pocket for whenever needed. In contrast to her stance in the triptych, in My Samoan Girl Kihara portrays a girl vulnerable and passive; looking slightly off to the left one imagines that she is picturing her island paradise, or perhaps her long-lost colonial lover.

Sources:

A. Maxwell, Colonial Photography and Exhibition (Leicester: Leicester University, 2000), 165.

C. Fusco, English is Broken Here (New York: New Press, 1995), 28.

Read More

Bite 59: Shigeyuki Kihara - Fa’afafine: In the Manner of A Woman, 2004-5

Fa’afafine: In the Manner of A Woman, 2004-5

The colonisation of Samoa coincided almost exactly with the announcement of the invention of photography in the early 19th century. By the 1850’s photographers were travelling from Europe all over the world with anthropological aims to capture through photography a cultural ‘Other’ whom they saw as exotic and savage, bringing back the images for study and sale within a number of contexts. Over time Samoa began to be imaged in, as academic Alison Nordstrom puts it, “a few manageable and marketable clichés. These clichés consistently presented Samoans as primitive types inhabiting an unchanging Eden that did not participate in the Western world of technology, progress and time.” 

These clichés included that of the South Sea Belle or Dusky Maiden, the stereotype of a sexually available exotic female body. Images were sold as exotic postcards and pornography, disconnecting the photographic representations from the identities of their subjects. As artist Shigeyuki Kihara explains: “There [were] more [other] people photographing Samoans than Samoans photographing themselves.” As such Samoan identities were defined not by Samoans but by the voyeuristic colonial gaze. A gaze that was largely white, straight and male. 

In the triptych Fa’afafine: In the Manner of A Woman Samoan-born, Auckland and Sydney based Shigeyuki Kihara takes on the stereotype of the ‘dusky maiden’ as a way of criticizing and reconstructing the colonial gaze. Kihara herself had relatives who posed in such 19th century portraits and by choosing to photograph herself in the role of the ‘dusky maiden’ she is able to pay homage to her ancestors while simultaneously examining the hurtful legacy of colonial portraiture. By the time photography arrived in Samoa, Samoan people were already dressing in Western clothing, yet when they were invited into the studio they were often asked to strip nude so they would more fully embody the European fictional idea of the exotic ‘noble savage’.

This confronting series portrays Kihara in three states of undress posing in a traditional Western art historically influenced reclining pose. The third image disrupts the viewer’s expectations further by challenging the Western classifications of male/female gender. Kihara herself identifies as fa'afafine, “a liminal gender that encapsulates both a male and a female gender," as Kihara explains it. It takes a moment for the viewer to see the difference between the two fully nude figures. When one does, in viewing the final image, the confrontation is complete. She goes on to say, “I feel that portraying man and woman is a responsibility of mine because I am a manifestation of both.” 

A parallel is made here between the ‘construction’ of her body to match her gender identity and the highlighting of the social construction of the stereotyped native belle. The double meaning of the title references this further. In the manner of a woman: fa’afafine, and, in the manner of a woman: exotic beauty. 

Here we have a Samoan Olympia. And just as with the painting by Manet her body may be nude but she is not as vulnerable as this would suggest. Kihara is not merely an object for male delectation. Instead she is upright and confident, challenging and reoccupying the white male gaze. Her pluralities heighten this confrontation with the viewer further. Three people stare out at us from what we are tricked into imagining is three period photographs (which in reality were photographed on a digital camera). 

The extraordinarily direct gaze is the dead give away though (even more so perhaps than the phallus) that these images are distinctly post-colonial and very much contemporary. For this ‘native belle’ is no passive exotic subject as her ancestors were. She is in on it: the subject, the photographer, the viewer herself in one. In this way she has become the (de)coloniser of her own body. As Kihara herself puts it “'the Fa`a fafine work questions the western classification of races, gender and sexuality. I can never fit into them, but at the same time I ask myself – are they worth fitting into?”

Sources:

Alison Nordstrom, “Persistent Images”, Continuum: The Australian Journal of media & Culture vol. 6 no. 2 (1991), 1.

Alison Nordstrom, “Paradise Recycled: Photographs of Samoa in Changing Contexts”, The Journal of the Society for Photographic Education, vol. 28, no. 3 (1991-92): 15.

Tautai Contemporary Pacific Arts Trust

Assembling Bodies 

Sarah Robins interviewing Kihara

Read More

Bite 53: Thomas Eakins - Max Schmitt in a Single Scull, 1871

Max Schmitt in a Single Scull, 1871, oil on canvas, 82 x 118 cm

"There is so much beauty in reflections," Eakins observed, "that it is generally well worthwhile to try to get them right." 

Here, painting his childhood friend Max Schmitt in commemoration of a  successful championship, he certainly achieves that, portraying perfectly the Schuykill River in his native Philadelphia bathed in that specific late-afternoon sun when the world appears all the more tangible. 

This is American Realism at its best, with expert colour control and well-crafted composition. The result is an air of tranquility touched with melancholy; Schmitt looking back at the viewer before he continues on with his efforts, the red boat in the distance occupied by the artist himself. This may be a naturalistic work by a fiercely realist artist (Eakins was one of the first American artists to utilise the camera in painting), yet it none-the-less remains a deeply personal and moving work without resorting to over-sentimentality. 

"The sentiments," Eakins explains, "run beyond words. If a man makes a hot day he makes it like a hot day he once saw or is seeing; if a sweet face, a face he once saw or which he imagines from old memories or parts of memories and his knowledge, and he combines and combines..."

This exquisite combination is what makes great Realism - it is much more than a mere xerox.

In the collection (of over 2 million works) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Read More

Bite 47: Claude Cahun - Que Me Veux-Tu? (What Do You Want From Me?), 1928

Que Me Veux-Tu? (What Do You Want From Me?), 1928

André Breton, founder of the Surrealist movement, called her “one of the most curious spirits of our time.” Although she produced a huge amount of work, as well as significant writings, Claude Cahun operated on the fringes of the Parisian Sureallist movement. It was not until the 1980's that she was discovered (by François Leperlier), and soon became seen as a forerunner to queer theory and feminist art. 

Born Lucy Schwob, Cahun often cross-dressed, and many of her photographs are taken by her stepsister and partner (in life as in work) Suzanne Malherbe, who went by the name Marcel Moore.

Cahun was queer, and openly so. Fully out of the closet in an era when such an identity scarcely existed. Her haunting self-portraits show evidence of this ongoing identity crisis and conflating of gender norms. In comparing her to other women in Parisian Surrealist circles Max Kozloff describes her as, "a woman who insisted on being taken seriously, while ostentatiously refusing to be treated as an object."

In Que Me Veux-Tu? a deep personal tension is made visible in a profoundly revealing portrait. An androgynous two-headed creature becomes a metaphor for a splitting of identity. In her writings she eloquently expressed her artistic and philosophical objectives: "Divide myself in order to conquer, multiply myself in order to assert myself."

This, her most revealing self-portrait, shows a sinister 'demonic' head whispering into the ear of its angelic, naively curious, twin. Which of them is speaking the title - "What do you want from me?" - is unclear. But perhaps they both are, and it is the viewer, society even, who is being addressed. For she has certainly received little affirmation about who she is from a society who didn't recognise her 'kind' as sane or healthy. 

This image represents an inner conflict resulting from a profound lack of any external identity cues - which we take for granted. In her art Cahun is creating herself. Becoming human. Figuring things out for herself. 

A true pioneer, we are able to be ourselves because people like her took a leap, and, as hard as it would have been, fought the status-quo to be authentic to themselves.

Here we see her freedom, but also the pain suffered in getting to it.

Sources:

Max Kozloff, The Theatre of the Face: Portrait Photography Since 1900, Phaidon, 2007.

Read More

Bite 36: Ryuzo Nishida - Self-Portrait, 2004

Self-Portrait, 2004, nails and paint on board, 100 x 100 cm

Each 'pixel' here making up the face is a gray or black nail driven into board. Yet despite the apparent drawbacks of Nishida's chosen mixed-media method, this self-portrait none-the-less remains remarkably commanding and highly expressive. 

In fact the use of nails seems somewhat appropriate to this mans expression - his eyes silently scream just as his wide mouth does - while the 'calming' pale blue background off-sets this tension. 

A Japanese-New Zealander who often confronts imperialist social issues in his work, Nishida may well be in consternation against racial assumptions or invisibility. Or perhaps he is angry at a constant misunderstanding of his creative endeavors, at always being put into particular conceptual boxes. 

He succeeds, however, is remaining gloriously ambiguous, staring us straight in the face, confronting us with a highly personal identity crisis. 

Currently on view at the Pah Homestead, TSB Bank Wallace Arts Centre, Auckland.

Read More

Bite 27: Caspar David Friedrich - The Monk by the Sea, 1808-10

The Monk by the Sea, 1808-10, oil on canvas

Insignificant before nature the small figure sits just below the horizon, visually swamped by the sea and sky before him. The 'monk', sometimes seen as the figure of the artist, appears to float on the sand. Barely grounded yet centreing the composition. Originally met with bemusement and even annoyance the work is now seen as a forerunner to abstraction, appearing almost like a Rothko if the figure is removed. 

Yet the work sits firmly within German Romanticism, presenting the Sublime in its purest form, focusing on the loneliness and ambiguity of what it is to be human faced with the magnitude of the expanse of nature and eternity.

We hear the waves crash and stare towards the distant horizon, overcome by the mystery of why we are even standing on this sand.

Read More

Bite 20: Duane Michals - The House I Once Called Home, 2003

The House I Once Called Home, 2003

The raw material of photography is light and time. Each photograph then, although appearing solid, contains the ephemeral. This is a fundamental paradox of the medium and the key reason for its inherent ambiguity.

Duane Michals in his series The House I Once Called Home combines an exploration of the ephemerality of photography with that of place, returning to his childhood home to recreate family photographs, eerily absent of people.

Here he stands in for an uncle. The courtyard has now overgrown; nature has reclaimed where people once lived. The middle image, a transition between the two states - then and now - is inhabited by ghosts of the past. For Michals they are still present in this space, as he pensively overlooks it. Any understanding of a sense of place, of location, then, is inseperable from an exploration of personal history, a meditation on time past. The photographic medium, by its very nature, is equipped to explore these concerns.

Read More