“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.  

A Rainy Day

A rainy autumn day can be so full of promises of urban delights. So, while sipping my tea and peering out in the grey damp morning, I just knew this was going to be a perfect day to go to Antwerp – a city still carrying a whiff of the Northern port romance so suited to lone rambles through the rain.

– Surely y’all now fondly remember that iconic street-photo of a lonely sailor ambling through rainy Brest (“Il pleuvait sur Brest ce jour-là), huddled in his sailor-coat, a wet cigarette dangling from his lips. In my early twenties (on a train tour of European port-cities) I actually went to Brest, looking in vain, alas, for port-romance in a very unromantic city – but I did redeem my stay there by sending a sailor-postcard to a love-sick gay friend back home. –

But well, back to the present day rain and over to riding a bus, packed with people & umbrellas. Hmmm the romance of a bus on a rainy day! J With its clouded windows through which one glimpses trails of shimmering lights. And with its cozy silence – people do seem to be less unpleasantly boisterous when it rains, folded as they are into their coats, absorbed in their head-phone music, already bracing themselves to step out again in a gust of rain.

So I admit, to me this dark and dripping world feels quite sheltering, benign even in its glimmering hazy-ness, so different from the inquisitive glare of a brighter day. What could be more soothing than the permanence of that swooshy rainy noise that envelops everything? And what more elegant than the spectacle of people moving gingerly through the streets, avoiding puddles & umbrella clashes …

I’d set out for an Antwerp gallery tour, and this one brave gallery had not joined its peers in the gentrified Southern part of town, but had settled closer to the Northern districts, near to the former port (the actual port is now so hugely industrial that it has moved out of the roaming circle of a pedestrian Antwerp visitor).

It had been some 20 years since I last wandered through this neighborhood (am again referring to my twenties’ infatuation with the romance of urban decay) and I was surprised to see how little it had changed. Yes, some streets had been overhauled, some squares spruced up – but there was still that peculiar atmosphere of oddly provincial cosmopolitanism: cafés catering to locals and seamen, bric à brac stores hovering between old-fashioned grocery stores and discount import-export stores. Not at all the aggressive & anonymous atmosphere of for example run down station districts full of temporary shops and thrills. Rather a typically Antwerp, folksy local flavor - from the lopsided two story houses over the Flemish shop signs to the Antwerp dialect spoken by un-hurried passers-by.

Wandering about, I managed to get lost for a while, ending up in a no man’s land of criss-crossing highways, car dealer showrooms, bland-faced buildings. A desolate landscape under a threatening sky, cars noisily speeding by. And on came a strange elation, almost akin to the sensations triggered by the spectacle of a thunderous fiery sea. I felt happy too, in these stark surroundings, unburdened by expectations.

Then I drifted back to town, shivering in the grey drizzle, hands in coat pockets, just like the lonely men prowling these streets. Um, rather many lonely men prowling these streets … Well, either they were heading for the red-lights district or else just innocently taking a stroll from the nearby seamen’s house (7.5 EUR for lunch and 22 EUR for a room, prices “on presentation of a valid seamen’s book).

Oh I did get to take my gallery tour too! And it was lovely to discover the latest work of Bert De Beul: small black watercolor images arranged in pairs. He paints the presence of objects and rooms and buildings when we are not there, their contrasts and shadows. And he paints them with such a caring attention …. charging their banality and emptiness with meaning, or longing, or remembrance?
I loved peering at those intensely silent images, arranged slightly askew in their frame. If comparisons have to be made: something like a cross between Hopper (but in B&W) and Xavier Mellery (early 20th century Belgian artist who drew and painted l’âme des choses).

And then I finally ended up in the trendy South-district, did some galleries there too. And had to flee from one: with its gaudy red carpet, its loud Astor Piazzola music, a gallery keeper who stuck out the price list at once, and feeling closed in by paintings of archetypical seductive women in pastel colors or reddish hues.
I took refuge in a trendy café, that is actually more welcoming to unhip people than its trendiness would suggest. With its old-time wooden furniture, the floor tiles, the lamps it has retained a relaxed atmosphere. And the sound-mix is just right for a reader ensconced in his or her book : a blend of music and chatting voices and the general clank & clamor from dishes and cutlery.

And then the rainy day ended with some splashes of late-evening sun, grazing rooftops, dazzling windows and almost drowning out the city’s neon lights.