Pleasure of old books.

While I am quite aware that “we have become accustomed to the irrelevance of the artist’s intentions or the inaccessibility of the artist’s experience in our aesthetic response,” (Joel Black review of Greenblatt’s Allegory and Representation) and even though historians like David Freedberg or Hans Belting question the categories of high art and low art, still, it’s hard to not be a bit in awe when one comes across the works of a ‘famous’ painter. Even knowing that that fame is built-up, constructed, and changeable.

Hence despite it all, I must say that I had the incredible pleasure of handling and reading a book printed in 1627 (English edition) with an engraved title-page that was designed by Rubens.

Rubens_title page to Obsidio Bredana by H. Hugo, from Department of Prints and Drawings, British Museum, 1994,0514.45

A few iPhone photos of the book (something could be said about new technology meeting new technology!):

photo from Warburg_English edition of H. Hugo's Obsidio Bredana.

Now I’ve got to write a paper about it. Not so pleasurable. More about the readings in a bit (for my own reference in the future).

Unrelatedly, just ran into this in a reading about allegory and representation, which amused me:

“Characteristically, Courbet expected to draw vast crowds and, at twenty sous a head, to make a financial killing while embarrassing the government. In these expectations he was of course disappointed…”

from Michael Fried, “Representing Representation: On the central group in Courbet’s Studio,” Allegory and Representation, ed. Stephen J. Greenblatt (Johns Hopkins UP: Baltimore) 94.

Here’s the painting:

Courbet, The Painter's Studio, 1854-55. Paris, Louvre.

Goya, Hirst, Rembrandt, and Rubens.

On France2 this evening, there was a brief exposé on Damien Hirst, which reminded me of my awfully disappointing visit to Musée Maillol in March (I happened to walk past it this evening). That then reminded me that I’d read an article about Goya not long ago, in which the author, photographer John Sevigny dismissed the Saatchi-fed Damien Hirst fad. From Guernica magazine:

John Sevigny: On Francisco Goya

December 18, 2009

By John Sevigny

Even in the age of Modern art, there was never a painter as modern as Francisco Goya (1746-1828). A thinker, a painter to the Spanish Crown, a do-it-yourself/sell-it yourself printmaker almost 200 years before punk rockers took up the act, and a master draughtsman, Goya was a Renaissance man long after the Renaissance ended.

…The black paintings present a powerful argument for doing away with patronage-based art systems (which exist even today in the guise of know-nothing, influence-everything collectors such as Charles Saatchi, who has championed such dubious art-world Paparazzi targets as Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, Richard Prince, and Stella Vine, a stripper turned painter).

…There is a great lesson here for Saatchi and the other mafiosos of the art market, from Miami to Madrid.

…Indeed, our greatest artists have frequently been outsiders initially rejected by the establishment. They include Claude Monet, Eduoard Manet, and Jackson Pollock, just to name three from the 19th and 20th Centuries. Hirst, Koons, Prince and Vine can hardly be expected to be remembered in 50 years, much less two centuries.

…That Goya was a better painter than the earlier, more popular Peter Paul Rubens, or a more intelligent artist than Diego Velazquez, Michelangelo or Rembrandt hardly seems worth mentioning. That he created the Black Paintings, and The Dog, the most thoroughly modern piece in the group, in utter solitude, is food for thought in this age of Artistic Prostitution.

Oh, and I happen to have a print of the Goya painting seen above, bought it during the Wellesley print sale! I don’t altogether agree with Sevigny’s take on Goya. Sevigny states unequivocably that Goya was a ‘more intelligent painter’ than Michelangelo and Rembrandt. What does that even mean, to be a ‘more intelligent painter’? As in he was more diplomatic? More intelligent approach to his patrons? Or that his intelligence was somehow expressed through his art. I suspect that Sevigny means intelligent as in diplomatic because he says that “Goya was a better painter than the earlier, more popular Peter Paul Rubens”. Rubens is known for being equally a great painter and an astute diplomat. If one is looking for diplomacy, intelligence, or tact, one must turn to Rubens. Take his Medici Cycle (at the Louvre!) The level of diplomacy as expressed through choice of subject and reinforced by composition is incredible. That’s obviously not very clear, but I’m too lazy to go into an art history discussion of the Medici Cycle right now. If, by intelligence, Sevigny means intelligence somehow expressed through his art, then I’m flummoxed. I don’t know what that means. I’d counter with Rembrandt’s painting of the prodigal son. Yes, I’m offended by his dismissal of the Dutch and Flemish painters 😛

But that’s not the point. My point was that I agree with Sevigny’s skeptical stance with regards to Saatchi and Hirst. Here are two Hirsts: