Lasting Longings for Harmony

 

It’s quite a paradox, especially for ponderous art lovers: in existential stress situations one apparently does not turn to those art works with the heaviest philosophical credentials or the highest emotional pitch.  One rather seeks refuge in pure aesthetic attention:  following a beautiful bold brush stroke (1) ,  listening intently to a subtly modulating melody (2), savouring the changing luminosities of the sky.

So, for instance, on that early morning end of January, after a sleepless night worrying about the diagnosis I’d just received (3), I could not eat, I could not read, nor could I find solace in Bellini’s heart-felt Gethsemane or in any other pathos-filled paintings.  But leafing distractedly through my art books,  my trembling finally did recede,  my anxiety did get quelled by the soothing sight of an elegant annunciation angel (4).

One can observe the same phenomenon, when, with age, a certain tiredness (5)  and the inescapable experience of the frailty of life (6)  seem to engender an increasing need for sheer beauty & harmony. A craving for disinterested aesthetics as a source of relief from the perils of the world, from one’s own anxieties (7), offering moments of reprieve from chaos and discord (8).

In previous eras, a sense for metaphysics and a belief in transcendence would have given legitimation to this longing for aesthetic bliss – it would have been seen as serious proof of the immanent congruence between cosmic harmony and the human soul (9).

By contrast, in our (post) modern times aesthetics and harmony have often been discredited as being amoral, apolitical. And since the romantic era, pure absolute musical harmonies have become suspect for their alleged lack of individual emotional expressiveness.  In our age, we rather prone political action and technological solutions to put things right, we rather recommend the sharing and expressing of raw emotions without overly formal complexities.

But ah, it is something (10)  to be able to focus only on perceiving, on making sense, on discerning harmonies and significations (11).  And it is something  to believe that this intense aesthetic attention can bring us closer to timeless sublime principles of beauty and signification, surpassing our own frail petty lives, adumbrating a possible human dignity shared across the ages.

 

 

Douze Petites Notes … (12)

(1)   Eg Tiepolo rather than Rembrandt,

(2)   Eg Mozart rather than Beethoven

(3)   A scary medical diagnosis, with uncertain outcome at the time. But effectively treated now, so I can look back with relief to the whole episode (and blog-readers need not to worry)

(4)   Giovanni Bellini,  St Vincent Ferrer Polyptych  - Detail of an annunciation angel

(5)   a growing realisation of how the world is, how life is – and our (or at least, my) utter inadequacy & powerlessness

(6)   as most of us must experience one day: the death of a parent, and prior to that - so shocking, so painful - their decay. 

(7)   A Nietzsche-quote, stumbled upon in an old notebook of mine, well worth to be reproduced again here digitally: « Ma mélancolie peut se reposer dans les cachettes et dans les abîmes de la perfection, c’est pour cela que j’ai besoin de musique »

(8)   This flight into the safe Haven of Harmony, goes back a long way:  “The Pythagoreans […]  cleansed their minds of the noises and perturbations to which they had been exposed during the day by certain odes and hymns, which produced tranquil sleep and few, but good dreams.” (p32 Jamie James: “The Music of the Spheres” see below)

(9)   As elaborated in this wonderful book by Jamie James: “The Music of the Spheres – Music, Science and the natural Order of the Universe” .

(10) “something”? something fervently to look forward to, each and every day: dwelling in beauty in the early still hours of the day, coming home to music after all the sound & fury of a worldly day

(11) Some key elements in the exercise of our aesthetic-cognitive faculties; as noted by Alpers & Baxandall in their study on Tiepolo (“Tiepolo et l’intelligence picturale”) : «  […] Produire du sens, […] Chercher de la lumière […] Le travail de déchiffrement présente un pur plaisir »

(12) Also the  title of the first section of Andre Manoukian’s effortlessly swinging & learned book on music (“Sur les routes de la musique”).  And so we make it to twelve silent notes – hurled  into the world wide web, perhaps to be read only by some voraciously learning chatbot.

“the mobility of lighting”, or : Musings on wandering luminosity

 

“Il sole di Tiepolo”

“We love Tiepolo” - so Alpers and Baxandall state, almost apologetically, almost as a disclaimer, in the first chapter of their wonderful study on “Tiepolo and the Pictorial intelligence”(1) .  Because of course, one might disparage Tiepolo as a frivolous painter of pompous showy scenes at the service of rich local potentates.  But then, one cannot help but falling in love with Tiepolo, at the very first sight, and one keeps coming back to his paintings & frescoes, looking at them with delight.  It’s a pure aesthetic pleasure to try and make sense of his intricate jumbles of forms and figures; it’s pure bliss to savour his intense colours; to plunge into his delightful complexities of luminosity. 

Tiepolo clearly caters to our quest for light, our feeling for luminous patterns. His intense luminosities, often contrasted with dull colors, have rightly inspired rapturous comments : “il sole di Tiepolo”. 

Even mere reproductions still work wonders - when I wake on these dark late autumn  days, I rush to get up, to open the Tiepolo book and bask in its luminosity. Just like during lunch break, in my quest for light, I brave the chilly grey drizzle for a walk to the nearby square, where the garden paths are strewn with intensely gleaming,  yellow leaves.

 

“Negotiations with site lighting“

While the former paragraph evokes the internal lighting linked to the hues and tones of the painting itself (or, mutatis mutandis, linked to the yellowness of the autumnal leaves themselves)  - there is of course also always the question of the ambient light  (direct, reflected and refracted)  and of the changes in lighting according the position of the spectator.  

Alpers & Baxandall brilliantly analyse how a fresco painter, such as Tiepolo,  who paints in situ,  uses all his pictorial intelligence to make his frescoes engage with the ambient light on multiple levels.

 For works in situ, the artist can  to a certain extent control or at least negotiate with the effects of external lighting . To a certain extent only – because it is impossible for the artist to anticipate all possible light scenarios, let alone the idiosyncratic wanderings and viewpoints of the spectators. 

 

Curators’ lighting

As to paintings on panel or canvas,  on their journey in the world they will mostly meet lighting conditions unknown to the painter (unless he or she is also curator of the exhibition).  There’s an element of accidentalness there, which is quite moving, and which for any art lover is an integral part of the unique ephemeral experience of looking at a painting at a certain point in time & in space. 

Thus, in a museum with lots of natural light, one can stand in rapture in front of a painting, watching how the colours light up, glow and then fade away again, as clouds drift by.  

In galleries and museums with mostly artificial light and guided or tempered natural light, the curator may intentionally use lighting to create a sense of drama in the room, or to draw attention to specific paintings or elements of paintings.

In the newly re-opened museum of fine arts in Antwerp (2) , I suspect the lighting is used very intentionally indeed. Heavy purple curtains block the sideways natural light while a steady tempered light comes from above  and each room has its own atmosphere of light, including ample use of dramatic potential of spot lights.

It can turn a walk through museum rooms into an aesthetic experience in its own right, one can appreciate the atmosphere of each room, with the lighting contributing to the “mise-en-scène” of a story which features and contrasts different individual works.

The curators/”stage designers” of the renovated Antwerp museum have built a wonderful experience indeed (and it’s quite uplifting to see how many visitors now re-discover the museum). 

 

Wandering light

But please bear with me, if I still cherish the memory of another visit to the Antwerp museum, a very long time ago. The museum back then was old & stately, but ever so quietly decaying, with creaky floors and dusty corners.  Natural light fell in from above (through grimy glass)  and sideways.  The order of the rooms followed the age-old recipe of historical styles and national schools.

 In the Italian room hung forlornly an early Titian, so quietly glowing with Venetian luminosity, its importance signalled only by an old threadbare carpet in front of it. 

 In an ill-lit  room hung the early Ensor paintings of staid bourgeois interiors – so the spectator’s eye would focus hungrily on each subtly rendered gleam and fraying ray of light, on each refracted luminosity in the painting. 

But  what a magnificent moment indeed, when the variable ambient light in the museum room would suddenly intensify and bring to life the painting’s bourgeois interior, before the light dimmed again and one would feel the full shady oppressiveness of a dusty, cluttered interior.  (3)

the immobility of notes

(1)   Tiepolo et l’intelligence picturale (Gallimard 1996, Translation from "Tiepolo and the Pictorial Intelligence", 1994 Yale University Press . Svetlana Alpers & Michael Baxandall)

(2)   What to see at the finally re-opened  Antwerp museum of fine arts : galleries restored  “to their former glory” and with seducing light effects & stories, great works of art brought back to the public; & much more  - see https://kmska.be/nl 

(3)    Now all the Ensors (the colourful ones in any case – where have the more sombre ones gone? ) hang in a brilliantly white room with glaring light everywhere, bringing out the full anarchy of glaring lights and gaudy colours.