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Zombie Apocalypse

By Elevenses, Talking art, Zombie Apocalypse

We’re working up to a Zombie Apocalypse in this post but firstly I don’t know what your initial thoughts are when looking at this image but I have to say I’m thinking that some men are utterly shameless! The poor girls are all dead, trying to cover their modesty even as two of them are ravaged by maggots, and the man on the right, a King no less, is giving them the eye. At least the Pope on the left is averting his eyes, or I thought he was but now I’m wondering whether he’s actually locked eyes with the whitest, least decomposed corpse on the right? The Emperor, in the middle, is more interested in the Pope which could be a whole other story!

three living three dead, Harley MS

Unknown artist, The Three Living and The Three Dead from a French Book of Hours, c. 1480-90, Harley MS 2917, f. 119r, British Library

This is the same sort of idea – three healthy fellows (rather effete noblemen this time) encounter three terribly cheerful dead people in varying degrees of decomposition. The one on the right is possibly performing some kind of Charleston whilst the other two are waving so frantically that surely there must be some worry that body parts might start to fly off?

The text in old English beneath the men tells us that one of them is actually pretty freaked out by what he’s experiencing. You can make out three words to the right: ‘ich am agast’. They may well be aghast; the text beneath the dead people is essentially a response along the lines of ‘yeah, you bloody well should be. I was once like you, one day you’ll be like me and you’d better buck your ideas up before you meet your maker and it’s too late for redemption.’  Not hugely comforting.

Happy chappies from three living three dead image

Unknown artist, The Three Living and The Three Dead from the Taymouth Hours, England, 2nd quarter of the 14th century, Yates Thompson MS 13, ff. 179v-180r, British Library

Cheerful dead people, three living three dead

Unknown artist, The Three Living and The Three Dead from the Taymouth Hours, England, 2nd quarter of the 14th century, Yates Thompson MS 13, ff. 179v-180r, British Library

No one quite knows what the origins of the “Three Living and the Three Dead” trope but there are loads of versions dating back to the 13th C mostly from France and England.

This is all very well as a not so gentle warning but what happens when the dead actually start to kill people?

Death comes for Plague victim

Unknown artist, Death Strangles a Plague Victim, Stiny Codex, 14th century, University Library, Prague

I’m going to say that this scenario isn’t ideal.

You’re just lying in your bed having a little snooze and a corpse comes and strangles you! Rude!

If I say that this illustration, like many others, was created in response to a plague, it makes more sense. This dates to the 14th century when the biggest plague (still, I think!) to sweep through Europe had done just done its worst. Between 1347 and 1351 a third of the population died.

So this is death coming for a plague victim rather than an actual homicidal corpse.

Death coming for you might, however, look like a pretty face. This is a vignette for a 19th century translation of an epic poem entitled Syphilis by a 16th century Italian poet and physician called Fracastoro.

The disease first became prevalent in the 1480s and all of a sudden people were dropping like flies.

Let’s just talk about the effects of syphilis for a moment. The strain that ripped through Europe in the late 15th century was particularly horrible.

Firstly you start to notice genital ulcers, and then you might get a fever and perhaps some joint and muscle pain. Then, at some point, you break out in abscesses and sores all over your body. They smell appalling but the smell is the least of your worries because they eat into your skin and then your bones. Many victims lost their nose, lips, eyes…

Illustration of Syphilis for 19th century translation of Fracastro poem

Unknown artist, page title vignette for 19th century translation of Fracastoro’s Syphilis

head of syphilitic prostitute

This is an etching from the 18th century simply titled Syphilitic Prostitute and it’s clear that the disease wasn’t pretty. Nor was it merciful. It often took a while for sufferers to die and hence reports of a particularly bad outbreak in Naples in 1495 talk of the ‘walking dead’. Infected people were walking, even crawling, through the streets. Body parts gone or being eaten away. Literally the living dead.

Durer Nuremberg Syphilis

Albrecht Dürer, Broadsheet: text and wood cut of a syphilitic man, 1484, Wellcome Collection, London

I’m going to end this post with this image by Albrecht Dürer.

Covered in lesions this man is maybe not the ‘zombie’ we’re really searching for but nonetheless he’s not looking the best, I’d say. This is definitely a depiction of someone with syphilis.

When the disease ripped through Nuremberg in 1484, it was violent, unexpected and unexplained which led the population to make an obvious connection. Syphilis was linked to planetary activity which signified the end of the world! An actual real life zombie apocalypse. Above the victim’s head is a sphere with astrological signs and the year that the world comes to an end. To ensure any potential survivors were aware that the good (or perhaps not so good?!) people of Nuremberg had sussed this out, the city’s coats of arms are clearly displayed.

Note to self: it was all going on in Nuremberg. Just under 80 years later in 1561, they had an alien invasion. See last week’s post, ‘Alien Invasion!’ for all the strange details.

The video of this episode can be viewed here. To view the entire ‘Elevenses with Lynne’ archive, head to the Free Art Videos page.

Alien Invasion!

By Aliens, Elevenses, Talking art
Saxo alien invasion

Alien invasion!! Ladies and gentlemen, the aliens have landed but they haven’t JUST landed, they arrived yonks ago and were best mates with Moses who could have also been one of them!

moses with aliens and horns

Unknown artist and date, Moses on Mount Sinai, drawer decoration from Warfusée Castle(?) in Belgium

I love the idea that Moses was an alien life form or at least fraternised with them which brings me to this image, which, as far as I can make out, is secreted away on a drawer in a castle in Belgium.

Here he is with his tablet and for my money, no less than four flying saucers. This may also be an early depiction of  a cable car but that idea hasn’t taken off (no pun intended!).

If we think of the story of Moses, according to the Old Testament, he had a chat with a burning bush. Who is to say that the burning bush wasn’t in fact a UFO which had perhaps landed in a volcano? Was Mt Sinai on the site of a volcano? Possibly! He came back, after a second visit, I might add, with some pretty good commandments. I have a theory that he was supposed to write them down as dictated by the aliens on the first visit but forgot because he was either having such a great time with old friends, or because he was so freaked out by the helpful, friendly aliens. My imagination tells me that they had to summon him back to give him the list they’d prepared for him when they realised that he might not get it right. He needed to get it right because the aliens were setting down the tenets of Christianity!

The thing is, is that this is a fairly established theory (apart from my reasons as to why he returned twice) and I, for one, can’t disprove it. Are these space ships in this image? They could well be.

What I can say with a little more certainty is that, yes, Moses does have horns in this image. St Jerome had some trouble with the translation here. The term that he was looking for was probably something more like ‘radiant’ but in Hebrew the word can also mean ‘horn’ so unfortunately Moses ended up with a horned face rather than an ethereal radiance as he returned from Mt Sinai.

Alien invasion 12th century manuscript

Our friends from Mars, or from where ever they hail, also visited us in 776 as detailed in the Annales Laurissenses to see off Saxon crusaders during a siege on Sigiburg Castle in France.

Picture this: the godly, Christian French are in the castle surrounded by ungodly, smelly marauding Saxons. Fighting is at its peak and the Saxons are about to take the castle when a very dashing French chap, perhaps even the King of this castle (although as accounts are sketchy who really knows?) spots something in the sky.

 

 

Images from Annales Laurissenses, 12th century French manuscript

That ‘something’ is joined by a similar object, helpfully pointed out by a blank faced but surrendering Saxon. According to a contemporary account, people watching from the town square “saw something resembling two large flaming shields of reddish colour moving above the church itself.” The Saxons thought that the French were protected by the UFOs and they fled, saving the castle. Intervention from God or by aliens??

Saxo alien invasion

There’s more…

This is a newspaper cutting of sorts from 1561. The image is a woodcut created by Hans Glaser and it depicts an event that took place in the wee hours of April 14, 1561 in Nuremburg.  The sky is full of strange objects, some of which also seem to have crashed to the earth. According to contemporary descriptions, there were a lot of things flying around and a lot of smoke. The general consensus was that it was a sign from God and folk on the ground were certainly upset but I love the fact that they all managed to get fully dressed!

Modern scholars and sceptics have wondered if the account was figurative or potentially describe a solar or lunar phenomenon such as a sun dog, in which the sun’s light appears as a halo around the sun, even creating spots of brightly shining light around the sun.

Alien invasion over Nuremburg

Hans Glaser, broadsheet woodcut of Himmelserscheinung über Nürnberg, 1561

I’m going to end this post on this image of a fresco.

This is simply called “The Crucifixion” and it’s a fresco in a monastery in Serbia. Painted in 1350, the artist has signed his name ‘Serdge’ but there are sadly no further records of him.

Crucifixion with aliens

Fresco by Serdge, in the Visoki Decani Monastery in Serbia

Now Serdge probably didn’t have that much say over what he actually depicted so it seems that he was told to show what looks to be a couple of angels in spaceships top right and left by the monks who commissioned the work.

No matter that spaceships didn’t exist in 1350!

Shall I quietly mention that Byzantine scholars believe the little space-angels to actually be human representations of the Sun and the Moon. They were, they think, included to demonstrate that even celestial bodies were impacted by the crucifixion.

I know what I think but I couldn’t possibly influence you!

Space-angel on the left of Serdge’s fresco in the Visoki Decani Monastery

Space-angel on the right of Serdge’s fresco in the Visoki Decani Monastery

The video of this episode can be viewed here. To view the entire ‘Elevenses with Lynne’ archive, head to the Free Art Videos page.

Janine Antoni’s ‘Gnaw’

By Conceptual Art, Installations, Talking art
Gnaw Janine Antoni with Lynne Hanley eating chocolate

Janine Antoni, Gnaw, 1992, installed at Luhring Augustine Gallery, New York

Random person eating chocolate is NOT part of the work!

When I first heard about ‘Gnaw’ Janine Antoni’s 1993 installation I have to confess that I thought she had basically eaten as much chocolate as she could and whacked the remaining (huge) block of it on a marble pedestal.

I was so wrong!

Gnaw began life as a pair of large cubes, one of chocolate, one of lard, each weighing in at 600 pounds. Antoni literally then gnawed away at each but, and this disappointed me slightly when I realised, she didn’t actually eat the bits that she’d managed to extract with her teeth (I was in awe of her eating lard and perhaps a little jealous of the huge block of chocolate). The finished work comprises of the two tooth and face marked blocks, now elevated on marble pedestals, and 27 heart-shaped packages of chocolate made from the chocolate removed and chewed from the cube and 130 lipsticks made with pigment, beeswax, and the lard removed and chewed from that cube. These are displayed in cabinets near the sculptures. This part of the display is called Lipstick/Phenethylamine Display.

What is phenethylamine and how do you pronounce it? Phenethylamine is a stimulant found in chocolate and is also produced in the body when we fall in love. Don’t listen to the corresponding Elevenses with Lynne to find out how to pronounce it though!!

So it’s clear that Antoni has a message here, and to me she’s asking questions about what it means to be a woman both with desires and who is, and wants to be, desired.

Janine Antoni, Lipstick/Phenethylamine Display, 1992, detail

The little by-products are either desirable (the empty chocolate box – so desirable all the chocolates have ‘gone’!) and a red lipstick that might aid in desirability, but there is a distinctly undesirable element to the way that they have been produced, unless perhaps you happen to be Antoni’s lover. Would you want to put something chewed by a stranger in or near your mouth? Perhaps not?!

But think about babies! They want to put everything in their mouths because it’s a way of discovering the world. That one bite of the apple was what got Eve and womankind into all manner of trouble but it also gave knowledge. The desire to know. What is the relationship between seduction, desire and knowledge? I’m not sure the work promises answers but it definitely asks questions.

It also rather marvellously references and then somewhat trashes the distinction between two hitherto disparate art movements from the 60s and 70s. Works by artists such as Donald Judd and Robert Morris were all about the cube. Minimalist, machine cut, intellectual in tone and above all, clean, they had no relationship to the messy, visceral performance art that was generally the domain of female artists often with a feminist agenda. Until Antoni came along and started taking chunks out of those perfect cubes with her teeth.

If you wanted something to ponder once you have the pronunciation of phenethylamine perfected, ‘Gnaw’ is definitely food for thought.

The video of this episode can be viewed here. To view the entire ‘Elevenses with Lynne’ archive, head to the Free Art Videos page.

Madame X

By Elevenses, Singer Sargent's Madame X, Talking art

Let’s talk about Madame X. I am not talking about Madonna’s album of a few years back but this amazing portrait by John Singer Sargent.

Madame X John Singer Sargent

John Singer Sargent, Madame X, 1883–84, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

It’s so striking! That’s partly because of the contrast between the model’s pale, flawless skin and the sumptuous black gown she’s wearing but the clean lines of her silhouette against a very neutral background  also help. The background was originally, by the way, painted in blues and greens but Sargent wasn’t happy with it and he re-painted it after the image was in the frame; bits of the original blue can be seen round the edges.

So who is Madame X and how did she get to have such amazing skin?

Madame X was Madame Pierre Gautreau an American living in Paris who was renowned for her beauty and panache. Her skin is so gorgeous because a) she’s only in her early 20s and b) she used a powder made of potato starch to cover her skin. I have also read that she used to consume arsenic to make her pale but this is unlikely to be true.

Anyway, loads of artists wanted to paint her but she generally said no, perhaps because she knew she would hate being still for a such a long time? Sargent was to find that out.

After pursuing her for a couple of years telling her what an incredibly talented artist he was, and how his painting her portrait would be the making of them both, she sat for him – but not for long. She was restless, she then demanded months off and the whole thing turned into a bit of a nightmare and then got a whole lot worse.

The portrait was accepted at the Paris Salon in 1884 where artists were still either made or completely undone. His portrait which was originally entitled Madame XXX a convention to maintain her anonymity rather than a statement about its sex rating, was absolutely vilified. Critics said that she was a caricature and looked like a corpse but moreover, the xxx might as well have stood for the sex rating because she was seen as essentially as a prostitute. What we would see today as the poise and sensuality of a confident woman was cause for outrage and scandal in late 19th century society.

It didn’t help that the strap of her gown was originally falling off her right shoulder (Sargent later repainted it), which jarred with the wedding ring on her left hand. Nor that she is wearing an unusual tiara that could be equated to the goddess of the hunt, Diana.

Detail of Sargent’s Madame X, 1884, Met, NY

Detail from Titian Diana and Acteon, National Gallery

Detail of Titian’s Diana and Actaeon, 1556-59, National Gallery, London

Diana, as depicted in Titian’s wonderful Diana and Actaeon, is a chaste goddess who has the moon as one of her symbols; check out her headdress which is the same as the one Madame X is wearing. Fine. But if you transfer the idea of hunting under the moonlight to the context of Parisian high society, you could get a different idea.

Mme Pierre Gautreau or Virginie Amélie Avegno as she was before she married a wealthy banker more than 20 years her senior, did, perhaps, have a wild side shall we say? She was also the ‘it’ girl of the age but all that stopped after the Salon.

Her mum, who seems to have been a bit pushy and probably orchestrated the marriage and perhaps the portrait, hoping for more fame, was horrified when the reception of the work was less than warm and demanded that the painting be removed from the salon, claiming that her poor daughter might die of chagrin. She didn’t die of chagrin but her image was tainted irreparably. Some of the more dramatic stories about her claim that she took all the mirrors off her wall and would only go out at night. I’d doubt the veracity of this as she subsequently commissioned another couple of portraits but she never regained her former status.

Singer Sargent in artists Studio with portrait of Madame X

John Singer Sargent in his Paris studio, ca. 1883–4. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

Sargent suffered from the fallout of the Salon too. He had been banking on the portrait being a hit and securing commissions. He hadn’t been paid for this one because it was only at his request that Virginie sat for him. So it was a bit of a disaster all round. He fled the country and came to London and kept the portrait for 30 years until a year after her death in 1915, he sold it to the Met. He wrote to one of the museum’s curators: “I should prefer, on account of the row I had with the lady years ago, that the picture should not be called by her name.” Hence it is now displayed as Madame X. He also commented, “I suppose it is the best thing I have done,”. It’s quite a portrait.

The video of this episode can be viewed here. To view the entire ‘Elevenses with Lynne’ archive, head to the Free Art Videos page.

Hard Candy

By Conceptual Art, Elevenses, Installations, Talking art

Today we are talking candy as the Americans would say. Hard candy, actually. I’m not American so I’m going for sweeties. Art made of sweets. Sweets in art.

I might be breaking new Elevenses ground here by going for an installation crossed with conceptual art. The truth is that when I think of sweets there are two works that immediately come to mind and both are installations. I’m posting about one today and the other will find its way into a post at the start of June.

I remember hearing about this particular work 30 years ago and when spoken about it always came accompanied by a huge eye-roll. ‘What makes it art?’ people cried. ‘I could have done that – look I’ll do a little version of it now’ they said as they emptied a packet of glacier mints into the corner of the room (where, frankly they could stay in my opinion; not my favourite by a long shot).

The installation that I’m talking about is this one, or one like it, by Felix Gonzales Torres, a gay Cuban born American artist who did a series of works (19 in total) in 1990 /1991 using wrapped sweets. He would put a pile of them in a corner of a gallery AND you were allowed to eat them. As many as you wanted. And then you could go back the next day or the next week and eat some more. That is the part of the artwork that, unsurprisingly, I remember the most!!

Felix Gonzales Torres Candy Spill

Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Candy Spill or Portrait of Ross in L.A., 1991, Art Institute Chicago

This work relies on people like me wanting to eat the sweets. Gonzalez Torres was quoted as saying that he needed the public to complete the work. The installation depicted here, consisting of a pile of sweets placed in the corner of a gallery, is called ‘Candy Spill’ or more poignantly ‘Portrait of Ross’. They represent his lover who died of an AIDS related illness. The weight of the installation should ideally be 175 pounds or 12.5 stone, Ross’s ideal weight. The shrinking pile of course represented Ross’s own weight loss as he lost his life to the disease. The audience is therefore acting as the AIDS virus as they deplete the pile.

There’s more.

One of the conditions of a gallery displaying the work is that they are obliged to replenish the pile every day. If we stay with the metaphor of the sweets representing Ross’s body, the fact that it was forever replenished grants him everlasting life which in turn raises the notion of transubstantiation. This was absolutely something that was in Gonzales Torres’s mind when he created the work. He said:

‘You put it in your mouth and you suck on someone else’s body, and in this way my work becomes part of so many other people’s bodies. For just a few seconds, I have put something sweet in someone’s mouth, and that is very sexy.’

Add all that to the layer of meaning that comes in when you consider how often we give sweets as gifts, all those boxes of chocolates as declarations of love, and you get a very poignant and rather elegant work.

Felix Gonzales Torres also succumbed to AIDS at just 38 years old in 1996.

The video of this episode can be viewed here. To view the entire ‘Elevenses with Lynne’ archive, head to the Free Art Videos page.

Flora the ambitious blonde

By Elevenses, Renaissance Art, Talking art
Palma Vecchio Flora

Palma Vecchio, A Blonde Woman, 1520, National Gallery

Flora the ambitious blonde? Well, yes. Palma Vecchio’s A Blonde Woman is most certainly blonde. But where does ‘Flora’ come in? And why might we say that this lady has ambition?

Read on!

Firstly, that is a knowing gaze. Also, because her eyes are sliding off to the left, our eye is drawn to the gorgeous pink nipple first and then to the posy of flowers. Before we get onto the flowers, I need to linger on the nipple and the breast (!) because, whoops, does she even know that her pretty blue ribbon has come undone? Or that the loop of the ribbon against this again rather soft and sensual abundance of white chemise perfectly frames her perfectly pert right bosom?

And so to the flowers. Firstly, isn’t it gorgeous the way that the colours echo the gold of her hair and jewellery, her ribbon and the green of her dress and of course the rosy pink of her nipple. They also may have symbolic meaning. The forget-me-nots ask us to do what they say on the tin, buttercups are all about dazzling charms and the primrose (pink flower) associated with first love ‘prima rosa’ because they flower in early spring.

It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to figure out that perhaps this unapologetically erotic portrait is of a courtesan. But if you were in any doubt, let’s delve deeper into the clues, starting with the gaze. No up standing member of the 16th century community is going to sit around for hours on end with her chemise undone and slipping off her shoulder to expose a boob. And they are definitely not going to look invitingly at you as they do it!

Palma Vecchio, A Blonde Woman detail of posy of flowers

The posy of flowers, however, is fairly innocent, right? Wrong! The flowers allude to the goddess Flora which in itself is lovely. Classical antiquity was all the rage in the 1520s and to depict a goddess showed a certain erudition. But Flora, ah! Flora was the goddess of the flowering or blossoming of flowers and plants, especially agricultural crops. Violently abducted by Zephyr the west wind , she was subsequently given a beautiful garden. So she is the goddess that makes things grow, by which I mean ‘things’ other than flowers and crops. We can thank ancient Rome for that bit of double entendre. Courtesans in the Renaissance era were commonly called Flora as a result of this. And just another connection to antiquity; all prostitutes in ancient Rome had to have blonde hair. Do we think she’s a natural blonde? Unlikely!

There was, in the 16th century, a fashion for Venetian women to bleach their hair. This 16th century version of sun-in may well have had similar results but was quite a lot more disgusting to apply and seems to have involved pigeon shit rinsed off with horse urine. It’s surprising perhaps, given the smell, that bleaching the hair was a sure sign of vanity – I look good but I smell like shit (literally) – although many women apparently succumbed.

In a world in which portraits were essentially displays of wealth and the importance of lineage, why a courtesan and who commissioned this? Well, courtesans played quite an important role in 16th c Venice. There was absolutely a distinction between the honest or intellectual courtesan who often had what we would call ‘sugar daddies’ and the ladies that hung around the Rialto Bridge. The intellectual courtesans were relatively frequently not low born but born into patrician or merchant families and were, to a degree, educated. The problems started when they were at marriageable age because dowries were exorbitant. So if a couple had several daughters, they were in real danger of going bankrupt trying to marry them off. The options were that they remained spinsters and stayed at ‘home’ and then could be in the really weird position of having their baby brother’s wife as the mistress of the house; they could go into a nunnery – that also required a dowry albeit less; or they could become a courtesan which meant that they earnt a lot of money, often becoming the sole support of their family. In a society in which wealthy men often weren’t expected to marry until they were in their 30s, a cultured woman who provided entertainment and extras was almost a necessity.

‘Honest’ courtesans, as they were known straddled the gap between the noble and the lower classes but had the opportunity to mix in interesting circles and, to an extent, had power over their destiny. Those canny enough could wield considerable influence.

In sixteenth-century Venice, therefore, it wasn’t unusual for images of beautiful young women to be commissioned by collectors and the wealthy clients of courtesans. There is also evidence that successful courtesans commissioned such paintings of and for themselves, both as solid financial investments and as lasting records of their charms to be prominently displayed in their own apartments.

An ambitious blonde? Oh yes!

The video of this episode can be viewed here. To view the entire ‘Elevenses with Lynne’ archive, head to the Free Art Videos page.

True Blue? Ask Yves Klein!

By Elevenses, Talking art, Yves Klein Blue

Anyone who has heard of the French artist Yves Klein may well think of International Klein Blue or IKB which was a colour that he trademarked in 1957.

He patented a formula based on the pigment ultramarine. Ultramarine was, in Renaissance times, more expensive weight for weight than gold. It comes from lapis lazuli which is naturally found in Afghanistan and it’s really difficult to extract hence a very laborious process, and hence the high price tag.

Yves claimed this colour as his own which is slightly less audacious that declaring that ‘The blue sky is my first artwork’ which he did in his late teens gazing at the sky on a beach in Nice.

Yves Klein Blue

Yves Klein, IKB 79, 1959(?), Tate Modern, London

IKB 79 is on display in the Tate Modern. It’s one of nearly 200 extremely similar works. The numbering came after his death at the age of just 34 of a heart attack. It was instigated by his widow, Rotraut Klein-Moquay, a visual artist in her own right, but the works weren’t numbered in chronological order probably because even at that point no one knew which order they’d been painted in. Rotraut wrote to the Tate saying that she was fairly certain that IKB 79 was one of about four monochrome paintings Klein made in Germany in 1959.

Klein exhibited eleven of his IKB works in Milan in 1957. Each was ostensibly identical (they were all blue monochromes), but he gave them all different price tags because each, he explained, had a different spirit which was reflected accordingly. The extraordinary thing is that there were buyers who pondered and chose between them. All paid the price requested. Perhaps they felt the cost was justified not for the materiality of the work purchased but for the exact opposite. Klein associated IKB with an immateriality that he called ‘the void’.

With this kind of ideal, it’s not surprising that he wanted to move past easel painting and into a different sphere with his art. Cue his series of ‘anthropométries’.

Anthropometrie Yves Klein

Anthropométries, 1960, photo courtesy of snippetofhistory.wordpress.com

Yves Klein naked human paintbrush

Anthropométries, 1960, photo copyright Harry Shunk and Janos Kender J.Paul Getty Trust

It’s 1960 and you fancy an evening out with a difference so you decide to join one of Klein’s anthropométries (which translates as the measurement of the human body).

You take your seat and in front of you is a huge vertical board covered by a sheet of white paper. Or a sheet of paper covering the floor. Perhaps even both.

You are handed a blue cocktail and as a band starts to play, Klein leads several naked young women into the area in front of you.

The tune the band plays is a bit repetitive as it’s just a single chord. It’s Klein’s Monotone Symphony. You don’t think it will catch on.

The women start to douse themselves in IKB and conducted by Klein, they press body parts against the paper, or slither or drag each other across the floor.

Exactly 20 minutes later the music ends and the women depart.

You sit in silence for another 20 minutes.

What remains is a memory and the bodily impressions made by Klein’s ‘human paintbrushes’ (his term). Oh, and probably quite a few drips of paint where there shouldn’t be drips of paint.

Anthropométrie 1960, Pompidou Centre

Yves Klein, Anthropométrie de l’Époque Bleue (ANT 82), 1960, Pompidou Centre, Paris

Yves Klein Anthropometry

Yves Klein, La Grande Anthropométrie bleue (ANT 105), ca. 1960, Museo Guggenheim Bilbao, Spain

The video of this episode can be viewed here. To view the entire ‘Elevenses with Lynne’ archive, head to the Free Art Videos page.

Salomé: the dance that will make you lose your head!

By Elevenses, Salome, Talking art

Oh yes! Salomé’s dance really did make someone lose their head. And definitely not in a good way.

First broadcast on International Dance Day, this looks like the ultimate Burlesque routine, I reckon. I mean, wow! Great back bend, elegant arms and head, the shoes completely match the outfit and she’s either brought along a leopard or is completely comfortable dancing with one in the room…

Salome dancing for Herod and Herodia

Armand Point, Dance of Salomé, 1898, private collection?

The couple she’s dancing for are pretty into it too. Clearly wealthy, he’s on a throne and they are both wearing a crown. Who are they? What’s with the peacock?

Well, if I say ‘dance of the seven veils’ does that give you a clue?

This is Herod – or actually Herod II, son of Herod who was King of Judea, and infamous for the massacre of the innocents. By his side is wife, Herodia. So of course the dancer is Salomé, the daughter of Herodia and Herod. But not this Herod, oh no. Nor Herod’s dad, but a different Herod altogether, Herod Philip, from whom Herodia was divorced. So many Herods! And the problem was that they were all related. Because both Herods were the sons of Herod… got it?

Let’s go back a few weeks, months, even years, before this dance took place.

Herodias and Herod Philip marry and have a daughter, Salomé. Then they fall out and get divorced. Herodias eyes up his half-brother Herod Antipas and, as she has a way of getting what she wants (as we’ll see), they end up marrying, much to the vehement condemnation of one John the Baptist which really upset Herodias. Herodias suggested quite strongly to her new husband that they could easily get rid of John the Baptist but as the saint was pretty popular, Herod refused and said he wasn’t interested.

What DID interest him, however, was the beautiful Salomé. So Herodias took her chance on his birthday and said if Salomé dances for you what will you give her? I imagine his eyes misting over here as he wrings his hands in anticipation and declares (greedily) that frankly give her anything she wants! Hmmm.

So here is Salomé, in a late 19th century work by the French symbolist artist Armand Point, looking fabulous and working the room alongside a peacock and leopard.

Aubrey Beardsley Salome

Aubrey Beardsley, The Peacock Skirt, Illustrations for Oscar Wilde’s Salomé, 1894, Print in V & A, London

Peacocks have been a symbol of wealth, beauty and rebirth (in a Christian context) since ancient times but they were hugely fashionable in the 1890s – they were used as a motif by the illustrator Aubrey Beardsley throughout his 1894 illustrations for Oscar Wilde’s play, Salomé. I suppose their extravagant, beautiful exoticism fit the bill perfectly. And, by the way, Oscar Wilde is the man that coined the phrase ‘the dance of the seven veils’ in his one act play.

The leopard is a hunting animal, sleek and elegant; perhaps a sign of things to come?

The trade-off is of course that Salomé, prompted by her vengeful mother, asks for John the Baptist’s head on a platter. Against his better judgment, Herod reluctantly acceded to her request. Not that you’d get much of the horror of what’s to come from Point’s offering.

Fra Lippi Feast of Herod

Fra Lippi, Herod’s Feast, between 1452 and 1465, Prato Cathedral

The fabulous early Renaissance artist Fra Lippi, on the other hand, tells us exactly what’s going on in his mid 15th century fresco. No peacocks here, just good old fashioned story telling.

Centre left we can see Salomé dancing, not looking quite as happy and seductive as she does in the 19th century version, but youthful and lovely nonetheless.

She is seen again to the left of the fresco receiving Saint John the Baptist’s head on the platter, and a third time to the right of the picture presenting it to Herodias who appears to be saying, ‘no, no, it’s for him’ whilst pointing at Herod. I’m not sure whether the couple to the far right are about to have a cheeky snog whilst everyone’s distracted, or whether they are reacting to the horror of having a head brought to the table!

Some artists just didn’t bother with the dancing and went straight for the head on a platter scenario.

I love this fashionable lady of the Wittenberg court as depicted by Lucas Cranach the Elder with her reddish necklaces that echo the horrible red blood of St John’s decapitated head. Cranach painted this theme a lot. Most of the works are quite small in size and would have been for private patrons. They share the common theme of depicting a haughty woman with a high forehead, the beauty ideal at the time, perfectly dressed in extremely fashionable clothes and calmly displaying a severed head. The thrill of the horror combined with the sensuality of Salomé proved a winning combination. Plus ça change!!!

Salome Cranach

Lucas Cranach the Elder, Salomé with the Head of John the Baptist, 1530s, Fine Art Museum, Budapest

The video of this episode can be viewed here. To view the entire ‘Elevenses with Lynne’ archive, head to the Free Art Videos page.

Luncheon of the Boating Party

By Elevenses, Renoir's Luncheon of the Boating Party, Talking art

This week is all about dining al fresco!

And here is one of the most famous and delicious luncheon scenes ever to be painted. Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boating Party.

Renoir Luncheon of the Boating Party

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Luncheon of the Boating Party, 1881, The Phillips Collection, Washington D.C.

It dates to 1881 and I suppose would be classified as an Impressionist work – it prioritises colour, it’s of a modern, everyday scene, it was mostly painted outdoors – he spent 16 months painting individual portraits in situ but then finished the whole thing off in the studio which wasn’t so Impressionist. It has to be said, however, that the Impressionists actually didn’t have a manifesto that they worked to.

The scene depicts a group of young people enjoying the tail end of what looks to have been a rather fabulous lunch. The location is a restaurant called Maison Fournaise which was closed in 1906 but with a rising interest in the Impressionist artists throughout the 20th century, there was a campaign to restore it. So you can go and dine there once again.

In the 1880s it was a popular hangout for rowers who would congregate there because you could access it via the river and artists, and actresses and bourgeois types; all of whom are represented here, in glorious 3D. Renoir wanted them all to be substantial, properly modelled and convincing, hence he spent time on them and he painted them in a different way to the background which is far more ‘impressionistic’, they are also almost life size.

Look at these figures; they’re so much sharper than the background because they’re painted with finer brushstrokes.

The objects on the table are less defined too – look at the way that the glasses are brilliantly depicted using light and shadow.

Luncheon of the Boating Party really was, and still is, considered Renoir’s masterpiece. It’s three genres rolled into one (still life, landscape and portraiture),  and is full of interaction which gives it real dynamism. The interaction in terms of the composition was certainly staged as the composition works so well but it was also genuine as the people depicted where Renoir’s friends.

The guy leaning against the balcony is Alphonse Fournaise, Jr. and the lady is Alphonsine Fournaise; brother and sister and the children of parents with little imagination. They are also, of course, part of the family who own the restaurant.

The lady cooing at her terrier is Aline Charigot, Renoir’s future wife. You might notice that the dog is looking slightly surprised, and that’s because he’s not looking at the same person that he was originally! Aline replaces the original model who had her face scraped away when Renoir fell in love with the young seamstress and decided that she needed to be in the painting!

Opposite Aline is the artist Gustave Caillebotte and amidst other recognisable faces of the day is one that is in the centre but, unlike all of the other people depicted, not interacting at all. She’s completely in her own world. This is the actress Ellen Andrée who also modelled for Degas.

The painting became part of the collection of Durand-Ruel who was an art collector and the main patron of the impressionists but when he died in 1922 the work was bought by an American collector called Duncan Phillips who had founded Washington D.C.’s The Phillips Collection, America’s first museum of modern art. It’s still there. It went to a great home, Duncan Phillips LOVED the work. Legend has it that one bitchy fellow collector once commented to Phillips that ‘that’s ‘s the only Renoir you have, isn’t it?’ and Phillips replied, ‘It’s the only one I need.’

The video of this episode can be viewed here. To view the entire ‘Elevenses with Lynne’ archive, head to the Free Art Videos page.

Hair Matters!

By Elevenses, Good hair / bad hair, Talking art
mock up of Lynne Hanley as Marie Antoinette

Hair matters. As I write this, half the nation have hair like Rembrandt. Well, if not actually the same, they are sporting a frizzy, unkempt look born of not being able to get to a hairdresser for six months or so. The other half are luxuriating in newly coiffed fabulousness.

I’m going to the hairdresser as soon as I’ve posted this. I’ll post an update.

Bad hair day

Rembrandt first self portrait

Rembrandt van Rijn, Self-portrait, c.1628, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Good hair day

close up of Empress Elizabeth and her glorious hair

Franz Xaver Winterhalter, Empress Elisabeth of Austria, 1864, Collection of the Prince of Thurn and Taxis (detail)

Back to Rembrandt. This is one of his very early self-portraits, possibly the earliest, created in 1628 when he was 22, before he moved to Amsterdam from Leiden.

What a selfie debut! It takes quite an artist to decide to basically hide their face in a portrait. You don’t see the eyes for a second or two when usually they are the focal point. And he’s used really loose brushwork by his ear, and probably the end of the brush to make squiggles in the wet paint to create highlights where the sun has caught his hair. So innovative. So modern!

But it’s still bad hair.

Perhaps during lockdown, you might have felt like turning to wigs, hairpieces and decorations? Cue the fashionable ladies of the late 1700’s. Here’s the most famous up-do wearer not just of her time, but, perhaps, of history. Marie Antoinette is rocking her ‘up do’ in this portrait of her by Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun. It’s the first of 30 portraits the artist painted of the French queen. Vigée Le Brun recalled, probably in the memoire that she wrote in her later years, that the queen ‘walked better than any other woman in France, holding her head very high with a majesty that singled her out in the midst of the entire court’.

Not surprising with that hairdo!

Marie Antoinette by Vigee Le Brun

Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun, Portrait of Marie Antoinette, 1778, Met, New York

But how did she manage it? Well, I guess part of the point of having hair like that is that she didn’t manage it herself. Frames, padding and hair extensions all played a part. The hair was curled with hot tongs and then covered in lard which acted as 18th century hairspray. Delicious. The piece de resistance, however, was created when the whole thing was dusted with lead powder. So smelly, toxic and altogether a bit of a nightmare because, of course, this kind of do was a bit of a mission to create and therefore you weren’t going to wash it for a while. Cue head lice at one end of the scale (there was such a thing as a scratching stick), and actual mice at the other end of the scale. It has been said that women wore cages to protect their hair at night. Sounds crazy but it might be true?

The men definitely got the easy end of the bargain as they were the ones wearing the wigs.

Vigée Le Brun, by the way, encouraged Marie Antoinette to go for a more relaxed look, which, it’s said, the queen actually favoured. This was exhibited at the artist’s first Salon in Paris very briefly because she was asked to remove it after a day or so as it was condemned as inappropriate for the public portrayal of royalty because Marie Antoinette looked ‘undressed’.

You can see that Vigée Le Brun herself went for the same look!

Marie Antoinette Vigee Le Brun

Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun, The Muslin Portrait, 1783, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun Self-Portrait with Straw Hat, 1782, National Gallery, London

Now this is beautiful hair! This is Empress Elizabeth of Austria. Her hair was absolutely her pride and joy. It fell to her knees apparently – at least it did when she was 15 – and in later years she was completely paranoid about it falling out altogether. Which it may have done because she suffered from eating disorders. She used to have a light coloured silk cloth placed underneath her whilst her hair was brushed, after it had been washed with brandy and egg whites; presumably the egg whites first (?!), and then she’d count to see how many she’d lost. I imagine her maid was always worried about it being too many as life probably wasn’t nice for a while.

This is a completely mesmerising portrait by Franz Xaver Winterhalter. The stars in her hair! The shine! She’s absolutely stunning.

Winterhalter Empress Elizabeth

Franz Xaver Winterhalter, Empress Elisabeth of Austria, 1864, Collection of the Prince of Thurn and Taxis

Stunning and very sadly absolutely miserable. Apart from her eating disorder, she suffered from very low self-esteem and bouts of depression, was exceedingly unhappy in her marriage, and, at one stage, had a nervous breakdown.

The thing that she wanted to hold on to was her beauty which became an obsession. According to her various biographers, she began to live on a diet of meat juice, fresh milk and egg whites mixed with salt. She travelled with her own cows, not sure about the hens or other animals…

To keep her waist tiny, she slept with hot towels around it and wore a silk mask with raw veal in it, presumably not to bed, but hopefully only when she was alone.

Her strange, troubled life was cut short when she was assassinated aged 60 by a crazy anarchist who just wanted a murder a royal. Sadly he crossed paths with her first when she was walking by Lake Geneva. I’m sure she still had great hair.

On that note I’m shortly off to get my hair washed in brandy.

The video of this episode can be viewed here. To view the entire ‘Elevenses with Lynne’ archive, head to the Free Art Videos page.