Re What is metaphor in painting?
zi...@interport.net
apologize, deeply. I usually go off the top of my head anyhow. And
then feel differently afterwards.
I think that anyone who tries to look at Paul Klee assuming that he
knew what he was doing and believing that the titles have relevance to
the experience of looking at that particular work can see what is
meant by metaphor is how the painting is constructed. Take, for
example thepainting owned by the MOMA called "Blooming".
I did not know until a Klee show perhaps 15 years ago, that there was
a whole series of related works and related works which led up to it.
The painting consists of a somewhat irregular grid of squares in which
the color within the squares varies so that a certain group of them
are light and many more are dark. There also are changes in chroma
and in intensity from one rectangle to another. The effect of the
painting -remember only squares- with no semi abstract reference to a
flower anywhere- is to give you a sensation of radiance spreading out
from one spot over the entire painting. The pictorial action of the
painting, as purposefully worked through by Klee through an intimate
and intensely felt and understood control of color in all of its
variables is what produces the effect. No one ever did such a thing
including Klee himself. After he was done with this series, he never
repeated it.
Now, the painting has no really developed pictorial space, there is no
spatial arabesque, there are no other references oblique or otherwise
to any natural phenomenon. I think it is a very great painting. The
pictorial action itself is the metaphor of the painting.
Did Klee invent that idea about painting? I believe that he did not.
Traditional painters as well as radicals within the tradition
generally between say 1310 and some point in the middle of the 20th
century, were aiming at a spatial flow throughout the entire painting
which would fulfill the belief that space had been represented. They
did this in different but complementary ways through that whole
period. The words "Spatial arabesque", or a movement which is complex
and full of curves, like Arab calligraphy, but which moves not over
the surface biut through the space of the painting, is a convenient
way of describing this experience.
Non-abstract formalists or formalists who work with and from nature
may not be aware of the fact that the same kind of pictorial event
which Klee was aiming at -that is that the painting through its action
should involve the theme- is in fact occurring there as well.
Analysis of the way the eye moves and how forms are developed in
subject matter paintings should not result in all of them having the
same kind of movements and balances, but should change and result in
construction which fits the specific ideas which the painter tried to
evoke through his composition.
The character of the space, the location of nodes and forces in the
balancing, the spot where th eye finally rests the most, the greatest
volumes created and the least are all involved. It was from such
events observed by Klee in traditional and exotic art that Klee
derived his interest in metaphor.
That is why I believe that if there is a metaphor in painting it comes
about because of the action of the forms and nothing else can be
powerful enough to substitute.
Unfortunately I have a lot of Shamai in me together with some of
Hillel, but not enough either in temperament or in mental power
.
I don't know how to explain metaphor in figurative art easily. I do
know that I can recognize it when I see it.
I do have a prejudice in favor of artists who have individual
metaphors which vary a great deal from painting to painting, at least
I have that prejudice sometimes. Artists like that would be Duccio,
Pontormo, Michelangelo, Redon, Ambrogio Lorenzetti [Read the John
White analysis of the" Results of Good and Bad government" in his
Birth and rebirth of Pictorial space], Let me oversimplify it for
you.
Ambrogio Lorenzetti was given a job by the oligarchs who ruled Siena
to paint the walls of the room in which they held audiences. There are
three walls. The fourth is the window wall and source of light.
The wall behind the oligarchs showed the rulers of the underworld
choosing souls for hell or for heaven on the basis of their deeds in
life on earth. This was what the people coming to the oligarchy asking
for favors for setllement of disputes etc. would see. The walls which
the oligarchs would see would show the Results of Good Government on
their left hand and of Bad government on their right. The Good
Government fresco is painted with a perspectival construction which
was never used by any other artist before Ambrogio and which he never
used again himself. The same is true about the Bad Government fresco.
In the Good goverment Fresco we see first the interior of the city of
Siena, within its walls, with a cutaway where the wall comes to the
edge of the painting. Inside the city a group of men are dancing in a
circle, workmen are at work, some are repairing a roof. Children are
in school, and a couple wearing rich robes are preparing to ride out
into the countryside through the gate. In the countryside we can see
travelers and wporkers going towards and away from the city and
farther and farther away working in the fields, plowing, tilling the
soil, etc. The houses are placed in angular perspective within the
city walls. The eye flows easily over them because of their placement
and the artist's skill in painting. He wants it to be very easy for
your eye to travel around the scene of activity and ease which is the
result of good government. The angular placement of all the forms,
with no one point perspective funnels which would trap you in the
distance is part of the strategy. But something even stranger happens.
The people who are dancing, who are just about where the oligarchy
would sit are the largest figures in the painting. as your eye shifts
into a smaller and small giagonal because you are looking acros the
long , long painting from your seat behind the table, figures parallel
to the picture plane in location get smaller and smaller. They do look
further and further away, without the need to project them farther and
farther from the bottom edge. Your diagonal [that of your eye] in
space has been providing the perspective.
Reading the easy fulfilled space in that painting IS an allegory of
Good Government. The spatial construction of that painting reinforces
the result on their world, their city which good government would
obtain.
The other painting is not in good condition, it was painted on the
outer wall of the building but we can still make out that the city is
constructed with a series of one point perspective corridors which
trap you time after time in the dep space. You are not allowed to move
easily and fully through the painting.
I have loved this painting since I first saw it in Richard Offner's
classes in 1952. It has meant to me the ideal of what a figurative
painter who wanted to do some good with his gift could do. It is one
of the reasons why I belive in art and believe in metaphor.
Gabriel
mark webber
> I did not mean to offend Mark in my last post where this came up and I
> apologize, deeply.
No offense taken, and no need to apologize. I'm not sure, still, what I
said that bugged you, but the writing about Klee and Lorenzetti is
beautiful. Terrific post, Gabriel.
I was in Siena this past summer, and, coincidently, brought White's "Birth
and Rebirth of Pictorial Space with me. So the experience of looking at
the "Good and Bad Government" murals is still pretty fresh in my mind.
It is astonishing finding a monumental work like the "Good Government"
fresco that has something so radical (and site-specific) happening in its
space, as well as being just a damn beautiful painting.
I found it pretty pleasing to see how this example of yours and the
example of the Klee, work so well together to indicate what else can occur
in a work besides the compositional elements.
Thanks again,