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Rage, Rage Against the Dying of the Light (Dylan Thomas)

I mentioned in a previous post that in the English-language literature the genre of villanelle has acquired the depth it didn’t use to have as a Mediterranean-born dance-song. You could see how W. H. Auden and Oscar Wilde used the form to convey very profound meaning; however, the villanelle Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night by Dylan Thomas reads like a sober yet beautiful illustration to The Return of Prodigal Son by Rembrandt. At the same time the poem bears certain parallels with Shakespeare’s sonnet no. 7 (Lo! in the orient when the gracious light…), in that the lyrical hero appeals to the subject (a monarch, a kind of pater familiae) to leave a successor before his age expires.

Dylan Thomas, Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night (listen to Thomas’s recording of the poem).

Rembrandt, The Return of the Prodigal Son

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
William Shakespeare, Sonnet no. 7 (read the commentary and a 1609 version of the poem)

1. Lo! in the orient when the gracious light
2. Lifts up his burning head, each under eye
3. Doth homage to his new-appearing sight,
4.Serving with looks his sacred majesty;
5. And having climb’d the steep-up heavenly hill,
6. Resembling strong youth in his middle age,
7. Yet mortal looks adore his beauty still,
8. Attending on his golden pilgrimage:
9. But when from highmost pitch, with weary car,
10. Like feeble age, he reeleth from the day,
11. The eyes, ‘fore duteous, now converted are
12. From his low tract, and look another way:
13. So thou, thyself outgoing in thy noon
14. Unlooked on diest unless thou get a son.

Russian translation

Дилан Томас, Не уходи безропотно во тьму

Не уходи безропотно во тьму,
Будь яростней пред ночью всех ночей,
Не дай погаснуть свету своему

Хоть мудрый знает – не осилишь тьму,
Во мгле словами не зажжёшь лучей –
Не уходи безропотно во тьму,

Хоть добрый видит: не сберечь ему
Живую зелень юности своей,
Не дай погаснуть свету своему.

А ты, хватавший солнце налету,
Воспевший свет, узнай к закату дней,
Что не уйдёшь безропотно во тьму!

Суровый видит: смерть идёт к нему
Метеоритным отсветом огней,
Не дай погаснуть свету своему!

Отец, с высот проклятий и скорбей
Благослови всей яростью твоей –
Не уходи безропотно во тьму!
Не дай погаснуть свету своему!

(перевод Василия Бетаки

The Masters We Choose: Turner vs. Old Masters

The Guardian and Tate have today initiated a discussion – half based on Twitter – about Turner vs. the Old Masters. David Solkin, the curator at Tate, walked a Guardian journalist through the exhibition that pitches Turner’s paintings against those that inspired them. Turner’s works are shown next to Willem Van de Velde the Younger’s, Rembrandt’s, and Poussin’s.

According to Solkin, it’s 2:1 to Turner. Suppose this is so. But would one really organise such exhibition to let Turner lose? Especially at the gallery that boasts an impressive Turner collection? I don’t think so.

Copying and/or remaking the masters’ works is an exercise that arguably every artist out there undertakes at some point in their lives. Consider Francis Bacon’s study after the Portait of Pope Innocent X by Diego Velazquez (left). Or the copies of the work by Jean François Millet made by Vincent van Gogh: van Gogh’s own understanding was that he was more repainting Millet’s works rather than simply copying them. Or Duchamp’s well-known mockery of Mona Lisa (right).

Speaking of Turner, here are three Deluges: one by Leonardo, another by Poussin, the third by Turner. Who should, and why?

The problem I always have with this kind of juxtapositions in art is the point of reference. Poussin’s Deluge is likely to delude the viewer (I couldn’t resist the pun), so sober it is. Poussin deftly pushes the tragedy into the background of the painting. By comparison, Turner makes the viewer confront the tragic subject. Based on this, one may think that Poussin is more mature an artist because of the way he chooses the draw our attention to the subject. Another may say that Turner is braver and more ambitious, throwing us straight into the deluge. If Turner’s Deluge should be compared, it is best compared to Leonardo’s: not only the force of techniques, but the very intents are more similar.

Another statement that I would disagree with concerns Turner’s Pilate Washing His Hands, that it is “the bravest picture of the 19th c.“. I won’t question why it is compared to Rembrandt’s Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery: to me, the subjects are infinitely different, and so are the approaches to depicting them.

But let’s ignore this. Turner chose a grand subject, no doubt about it. In the larger context (that is, outside the Art world), this painting potentially preannounced the entire 20th c. with all its great wars with thousands, if not millions, of losses, off which many a Pilate washed their hands. But is that the context in which Solkin sees it? The Guardian doesn’t tell us.

What if the context is limited by the artistic pondering on themes of the New Testament? If this is the case, then Pilate Washing His Hands is no more ground-breaking than Millais’s Christ in the House of His Parents (right) that provoked outrage and was harshly criticised by Dickens.

And if the context is defined by the act of depicting a sensitive subject, then Eugene Delacroix’s Massacre of Chios (left) was considered both ground-breaking and outrageous and could possibly be seen as preempting the now familiar media reports from the “conflict regions”. But in the early 19th c. the Parisian society was not ready to spoil their day out at the gallery with the sight of exhausted Greek bodies. A century later Henry Miller noted the similar kind of displeasure of the cinema visitors who didn’t want to see the atrocities in the French Indochina. However brave Turner or Delacroix were, it doesn’t look like their works have had much impact either on contemporaries, or on posterity.

“Who wins” still stands, of course. And maybe it’s best not to try to give an answer, as the query is a rather fanciful one. Can we imagine Turner without the Titans of Renaissance? Or the Titans of Renaissance without Giotto or Duccio? Or the 20th c. art without the centuries that preceded it? We have the advantage that the contemporaries of Giotto, Leonardo or Turner didn’t have: we can see them in the context of their predecessors, contemporaries and followers – something they could never afford, at least as far as followers are concerned. But we should not use this advantage too much. In another 50 years, we will be seen in context, too.

As for me, when it comes to “winning artists”, I look at Picasso’s Guernica.

Image credits: Wikipedia, The Guardian, Aiwaz, Olga’s Gallery, and Matt Kirkland.

Special thanks to @Tate and @asiantees for discussing Turner and the Old Masters (especially Rembrandt).

P.S. I couldn’t resist re-sharing the photo I took in Waterstone’s in Manchester. As we can see, the good old Turner certainly ignites people’s creativity.

Male Self-Portraits (Philip Scott Johnson)

A year ago I wrote about Women in Art, an artwork by the American digital artist Philip Scott Johnson (aka Eggman913). The artwork has taken the Internet by storm, producing a string of posts, analyses, and – alas – a few pirate versions, as well. Undoubtedly, though, this was one of the most creative works we’ve all seen, and, for one, it showed that all that social media stuff is not just for kids. It is a huge artistic and creative medium and milieu.

In the post in which I observed some obvious peculiarities of the way the Western art has portrayed women I also said:

“unless EggMan is already in the process of doing this, may we kindly ask him to make a film about men in Western art. This subject is no less beautiful, and the controversy that often surrounds it will only expand our perception of Beauty”.

I wrote this in May 2007. There was no communication between Philip and me, so you can imagine my surprise when I have just discovered that he actually produced a video on the subject. But – and this is what makes an artist what he/she is – he didn’t just make a morph of diverse and sundry male faces the Western artists painted over 500 years. This new video is about “500 Years of Male Self-Portraits in Western Art“.
Accompanied by Bach’s Bouree 1 and 2 from Suite for Solo Cello No. 3, this is a breathtaking study of Western vision of the artistic self throughout half a millennium. Opened and closed by the portraits of Leonardo and Picasso, respectively (the two men whose genius no-one seems to doubt), the sequence is visually stunning. Most importantly, however, the visual work penetrates deep into our thinking. It is by itself amazing to see how easily Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) diffuses into Diego Velazquez (1599-1660), or how deftly Jan van Eyck (1395-1441) blends into Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640). But when you see Rembrandt’s (1606-1669) grey locks becoming Andy Warhol’s (1928-1987) famous white crop of hair, the story takes a completely different turn.

And the story isn’t just about troubled geniuses, the great eccentrics, the talents that continue to inspire virtually everyone up until now. The story is once again about their vision of themselves, and in this respect this video by Philip is an even greater achievement than Women in Art. I wrote about the latter that it was possible to make it partly because the artists were looking at their females from the more or less same angle. Now to see that the artists painted themselves in the more or less same manner makes the difference.

And I can’t help but speak about the merge of Rembrandt and Andy Warhol once again. Even taken on its own, it manifests the continuity in artistic expression, on the one hand, and the impossibility to pin an individual (let alone an artist) down to a certain image, on the other. If we can diffuse a smiling Rembrandt into an intense Warhol, the whole process can be inverted, and we can see Warhol becoming Rembrandt. This means – as far as I am concerned, at least – that there is little difference between a troubled genius and a happy genius. Each of them is an ocean of experience, thoughts and emotions, and thankfully, we have artists like Philip Scott Johnson to let us observe this.

For the list of artists and to leave a comment for Philip, please visit the YouTube page for the video.

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