The business of art is to reveal the relation between man and his environment.
D. H. Lawrence
Contemporary art is
often criticised as pointless or overvalued by art market elites. Even the word
'artist' has lost much of its meaning. The many ongoing global socio-political
crises seem to make even the idea of art fade into insignificance. Most art
either reflects local reality (landscapes, cityscapes, portraits) or internal
'reality' (surrealism, conceptual art). But there are artists (in this case, I
will focus on painters) who do not shy away from depicting the difficulties
facing ordinary people or the elites who create those difficulties in the first
place. Here we will look at particular ways in which painters deal with
contemporary reality using old and new forms of art to draw attention to
injustices or general social issues.
When we see art that
is trying to depict contemporary reality we can easily be drawn into the content
of the picture without realising that the very forms used are themselves a
result of conflicts of differing styles for formal and ideological reasons arising
from within the artistic ‘community’ itself. While the forms can range from the
purely abstract to the hyper-real, most socio-political art tends towards differing
degrees of realism.
Nationalism
Historically, nationalist
artists concerned with political change resisted modern forms and looked back
into their own nation’s history for inspiration. For example, the intertwining of nationalism and art in Ireland has led,
in many cases, to a very inward-looking identity, a striving for Irishness in
Irish art (e.g. Celtic art), a misplaced resistance to centuries of
colonisation. However, in Ireland, as James Christen Steward writes:
“As
it has been throughout the century, internationalism in Irish painting can
still be seen as emotionally fraught, the adoption of foreign influence as a
form of emigration signifying Ireland’s colonization (specifically as a
colonized woman). Those artists who have resisted internationalism have often
sought consciously to invoke links between the individual, the community, and
the Irish landscape to assert a sense of distinct identity, and this remains
the case for Irish painters working in the landscape idiom.” [1]
However,
there are examples of nineteenth century Irish artists who used their art and
the new style of realism to highlight local social ills, such as James Brennan
(1837-1907) as Claudia Kinmonth has noted:
“It
was rare for artists to be able to afford the indulgence of painting precisely
what they wanted to paint, so the blatantly unfashionable images by James
Brennan, for example, were facilitated by his salary as head of Cork School of
Art. He was further driven to depict the plight of families of farmers or
fishermen at home by his altruistic involvement in the setting up of Irish lace
schools and his work for the Great Exhibition in London. His careful attention
to the minutiae of what was once commonplace, showing cabin interiors furnished
with nothing but the barest necessities, provides some of the most useful
windows onto social history.” [2]
News from America (1875) (James Brennan)
Realism
However,
the realist form needed real subjects and they were not always enthused by the
new attention and focus on their lives and occupations. Some artists converged
on the Claddagh in Galway (in the west of Ireland) in the move towards realism
and away from romanticism. These included socially engaged British artists. The
international focus of realism on the peasant and working class allowed these
artists to leapfrog nationalist concerns and paint outside their own community.
The initial suspicions of the local people towards artists suddenly taking an
interest in their lives soon changed, as is shown by the experiences of the
English painters Goodall and Topham in the Claddagh. While at first perceived
to be ‘tax-collectors, spies or Protestants’, they were eventually accepted by
the people and even stayed with them.[3] Despite typical hostility to
outsiders, Julian Campbell writes,
“It
was here in the Claddagh and the fish market that a colony of Irish and British
artists began to gather in the 1830s and 1840s, the period just before the
Great Famine and the arrival of the steam train to Galway. Significantly, this
was exactly the same time as the Barbizon School of landscape painters was
beginning to form in the forest of Fontainebleau in France. Unlike the earlier groups of painters in
county Kerry whose interest had been primarily in landscape, the artists in
Galway focused their attention on the everyday lives and activities of the
Galway people in a series of genre pictures. […] The Claddagh provided an authentic
fishing village of thatched dwellings to study, and the fish market much
colourful activity to observe.” [4]
Cottage Interior, Claddagh, Galway (1845) (Francis William Topham)
Barbizon School
The
French Barbizon artists were initially influenced by the English artist, John
Constable, to draw their inspiration directly from nature and to leave the
formalism of the Classical style in the studio. Soon, however, this idea was
developed by Jean-François Millet from painting the landscape to depicting the
local people themselves:
“Millet
extended the idea from landscape to figures — peasant figures, scenes of
peasant life, and work in the fields. In The Gleaners (1857), for example,
Millet portrays three peasant women working at the harvest. Gleaners are poor
people who are permitted to gather the remains after the owners of the field
complete the main harvest. The owners (portrayed as wealthy) and their laborers
are seen in the back of the painting. Millet shifted the focus and the subject
matter from the rich and prominent to those at the bottom of the social
ladders. To emphasize their anonymity and marginalized position, he hid their
faces. The women's bowed bodies represent their everyday hard work.”
The Gleaners (1857) (Jean-François
Millet)
Ashcan School
As
we move into the twentieth century even realism itself became institutionalized,
producing reactions such as the Ashcan School in New York. They used a darker,
rougher style of realist painting to express the poverty of the working class
in the ghettoes. Artists working in this style such as Robert Henri
(1865–1929), George Luks (1867–1933), William Glackens (1870–1938), John Sloan
(1871–1951), and Everett Shinn (1876–1953) were not a formal group, but:
“Their unity
consisted of a desire to tell certain truths about the city and modern life
they felt had been ignored by the suffocating influence of the Genteel
Tradition in the visual arts. Robert Henri, in some ways the spiritual father
of this school, "wanted art to be akin to journalism... he wanted paint to
be as real as mud, as the clods of horse-shit and snow, that froze on Broadway
in the winter."”
Hairdresser's Window (John Sloan)
German Expressionism
Back
in Europe, during the 1920s and 1930s German Expressionism was at its height
and artists like George Grosz and Max Beckman focused less on the working class
and more on decadent society and the rise of the Nazis. German expressionism
contrasts with the Ashcan School on a formal level as expressionism presents ‘the world
solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional
effect in order to evoke moods or ideas’ unlike realism where the emphasis on objectivity
is more important. The use of distortion, caricature and the general aesthetics
of ugliness became the formal basis of the art of George Grosz who used this
form as an implicit criticism of what he saw around him:
“In his drawings,
usually in pen and ink which he sometimes developed further with watercolor,
Grosz did much to create the image most have of Berlin and the Weimar Republic
in the 1920s. Corpulent businessmen, wounded soldiers, prostitutes, sex crimes
and orgies were his great subjects.”
Max
Beckman looked back even further into the history of art and mixed
expressionism with medieval aesthetics and forms to represent contemporary
reality as he saw it:
“Beckmann reinvented
the religious triptych and expanded this archetype of medieval painting into an
allegory of contemporary humanity. […] Many of Beckmann‘s paintings express the
agonies of Europe in the first half of the 20th century. Some of his imagery
refers to the decadent glamor of the Weimar Republic's cabaret culture, but
from the 1930s on, his works often contain mythologized references to the
brutalities of the Nazis. Beyond these immediate concerns, his subjects and
symbols assume a larger meaning, voicing universal themes of terror,
redemption, and the mysteries of eternity and fate.”
Departure (1932-5) (Max
Beckman)
Contemporary Visions
Contemporary
versions of these approaches can be seen in the realist work of the American painter
Max Ginsberg and the more
expressionist approach of the English painter John Keane. Ginsburg’s painting Foreclosure
has a baroque feel to it. While today baroque is associated with over-the-top exaggeration
and opulence, it was rooted much more in realism than romanticism (a reaction
to the Age of Enlightenment and the scientific rationalization of nature). The
features of baroque consisted of dramatic tension, heightened realism,
illusions of motion, and classical elements used without classical restraint. Ginsburg,
like Beckman, is looking back at earlier forms to express contemporary dilemmas.
Foreclosure (Max Ginsberg)
His
work is usually straight-up realism but the baroque style of Foreclosure allows him to use more
dramatic expressions of the crisis in hand. His interest and concern is
reflected in his comment on the painting:
“It is unconscionable that people are being evicted from their homes, especially when banks and corporations are being bailed out. This injustice is not supposed to happen in America. In this painting I wanted to express the anguish and frustration of people in this situation.”
Ginsburg’s
painting War-Pieta shows a similar interest in art history put to contemporary
use. He writes:
“I wanted to bring
attention to the horror of war, and in this case the war in Iraq. I thought of
a mother losing her son and the Pieta paintings of the Old Masters and of
Michelangelo's sculpture, Pieta, showing the Madonna mourning the death of her
son. In my painting I sought to symbolically connect, and contrast, the image
of a real mother screaming in anguish over the death of her soldier son with
the Old Master images of the Madonna mourning the death of her son in a rather
unreal, quiet and serene way. The torn fatigues, the mangled soldier's body and
the flag symbolize one of the many young Americans who have been killed in this
war.”
War-Pieta (Max Ginsberg)
The
English artist John Keane
uses expressionism as a form for dealing with Tony Blair’s ‘mercurial’
appearance at the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq war. While Ginsburg’s work
depicts ordinary people in sometimes extraordinary situations, Keane has focused
on those who caused them. Here we can see realism used as a form to depict the
victims of a state agenda and expressionist distortion used to depict one of
the executors of that same agenda.
Figure at an Inquiry no 5 (John Keane)
However,
the challenge for contemporary artists is not to fall into the trap of
constantly portraying people as victims. Art must be inspired and inspiring. As
an artist one can draw attention to the difficulties faced by people the world
over but it is also important to recognize that everywhere there are people
active in solving problems and trying to change society for the better, both
socially and politically. The massive demonstrations against war in Iraq are a
case in point:
“On February 15,
2003, there was a coordinated day of protests across the world in which people
in more than 600 cities expressed opposition to the imminent Iraq War. It was
part of a series of protests and political events that had begun in 2002 and
continued as the war took place. Social movement researchers have described the
15 February protest as "the largest protest event in human history"”
Peace-March (Max Ginsburg)
Ginsburg
describes the process of painting an image of many people of all ages and types
on the streets demonstrating
noting also influential artists and styles:
“The differences and
individuality of people marching for peace is quite different than the
mechanical sameness of soldiers marching. I took many photographs at a Peace
March protesting the war in Iraq and selected ten of them that were good for
expression and composition to use as reference. Attention was paid to the
variation of individuals and the expression of determination. Based on these
photographs, I made a compositional sketch for the grouping of figures,
perspective and darks and lights. Then, with the aid of a grid, I transferred
the drawings to the large canvas to scale. And then I proceeded to paint, in my
usual direct alla prima style. I was greatly influenced by Ilya Repin's Religious Procession painting and Kathe
Kollwitz' The Weavers.”
Subject / Object
The
change in realism over time from Millet’s peasants to narrative painting
has
also seen the move from the depiction of people as oppressed objects to
passive
subjects to engaged subjects. It seems that the opposite happens with
expressionist depictions – a shift from the subject to the object. By
objectifying our problems, bad leaders etc a certain distancing is
achieved.
Images of unity in mass demonstrations counter media strategies of
divide and
rule while the subjective, up-close, prettified televised images of
silver-tongued
politicians need some objectification to put conservative policies and
agendas
into perspective. Socially and politically conscious artists counteract
the controlled images of the state and find new ways of
seeing by looking back to images and forms of the past while at the same
time searching for new methods of depicting the problems of the
present.
Caoimhghin Ó
Croidheáin 27 July 2016
Notes:
[1]
James Christen Steward et al, When Time Began to Rant and Rage: Figurative
Painting from Twentieth-Century Ireland (London: Merrell Holberton
Publishers, 1999) p.22
[2]
Crawford Art Gallery, Whipping the
Herring: Survival and Celebration in Ninteenth-Century Irish Art (Cork:
Gandon Editions, 2006) p.37
[3]
Crawford Art Gallery, Whipping the
Herring: Survival and Celebration in Nineteenth-Century Irish Art (Cork:
Gandon Editions, 2006) p.28
[4]
Crawford Art Gallery, Whipping the
Herring: Survival and Celebration in Nineteenth-Century Irish Art (Cork:
Gandon Editions, 2006) p.27
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