COVID Galleries: The edges of myth I
I have been itching to be able to go to galleries since the pandemic started. However I largely accepted it was impossible, and occupied myself with other interests. Recently, for a date, I thought of trying to go to a virtual gallery, as the Louvre, among others have created. But when I tried it, it was unsatisfying. I felt I couldn’t really see the art that well, and the text on the wall was difficult to read — partially due to the small laptop screen I look at. Instead, I decided to make an exhibition of my own. Lots of historical art is scanned and publicly available now, it’s odd that virtual galleries are not more common, and that the ones offered are not more inventive.
This is a brief selection, and a first try at putting some paintings together with text.
Greek myth has been a persistent theme in Western art since the Classical era. However, it has tended to take the back foot to biblical themes, and only starts to have a strong presence in the Renaissance with the rediscovery of the Classics, and the challenges to the cultural dominance of the church.
Many of the great painters depicted scenes from Greek myth at some point, including Rembrandt, Michelangelo, Rubens, and Velazquez. Understandably even if sometimes we can detect criticism of the myths, almost all of them play into the drama of myth. They typically isolate events of supernatural significance. The events are shown to be important, and very much the focus of attention.
Take the example above. Zurbarán has isolated Hercules in nature, contrasted to a shadowy Hydra. He is lit by the glow of slanted sunlight, and his physique is a classical and idealised musculature — only the facial hair betrays the trappings of 17th century Spain.
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An interesting example is Velazquez’ painting of The Forge of Vulcan:
This scene is of the arrival of Apollo (god of the sun), to the forge of Vulcan (god of blacksmiths), to tell him that his wife Venus (god of love) is cheating on him with Mars (god of war). This crystallises to a study of surprise — at the appearance of a god in the forge, and at the news of the infidelity.
It is notable for the realist style, and for its banal setting. In particular it is rare to have ordinary unidentified characters involved, and ones that look so nondescript. In addition the level point of view and the proliferation of details sets it out from most mythical painting. A large proportion of depicted myths are also in natural, or themselves mythical settings, and so it is rare to have such a painting take place in a building, let alone the setting of what would have been an ordinary workplace of the time.
However Velazquez sticks with the genre conventions by adding a halo around the character of Apollo, and in centring the action entirely around the mythical event. Every character looks to Apollo, and he is emphasised by the colour of his toga, by the framing within the window, by how brightly he is lit, by his captive gesture, by his crown, and by the aforementioned halo.
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There are two examples of paintings that defy even these norms to question the mythical narratives themselves. The first we will examine is Bruegel’s The Fall of Icarus:
Without the title, one might struggle to discern the subject of the painting at all. The story of Icarus is a story of hubris. His father Daedalus was a renowned inventor who decided to make wings that would allow a human to fly. However when his son took a test flight with them, he flew too close to the sun (the origin of this expression), and the wax bindings of the wings melted. Icarus fell to the ground and died.
With this in mind, we can see that the supposed subject of this painting is the drowning boy in the bottom-right corner. We would be forgiven in thinking that the subject is the farmer framed prominently in the foreground and accented in red, the only bright colour in the painting.
It has been suggested that this painting is a metaphor for human indifference to suffering. Bruegel was fond of depicting proverbs in his work, and there is a Flemish proverb that goes ‘And the farmer continued to plough…’ That both seem to be near enough to intervene in the tragedy but do not, and could be seen as epitomising fundamental human callousness. This interpretation certainly fits with the attitude of the angler in the bottom-right, and the ship near the drawing boy.
The version of this myth in Ovid, describes the ploughman, the shepherd, and the angler as ‘astonished and think to see gods approaching them through the aether’. Such a marked contrast with the text can only be a conscious decision by the artist. However the theme of indifference we have noted doesn’t fit so well with the figures on the left as they don’t even seem to have noticed the event. The emphasis placed upon the foreground figure also implies that the attitude of the ploughman is crucial.
In my opinion the theme is not indifference, so much as irrelevance. It is not that the central figures have noticed the drowning but are untouched, but simply that they have not seen it. Thus that the events of myth, as all-consuming, as earth-shattering as they seem, have little effect on those that stand outside of history — the ordinary people that Bruegel spent much of his career trying to include in art.
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A final example from the edges of myth is given by De Chirico, titled The Soothsayer’s Recompense:
The painting features Ariadne, or a statue of her; in an empty square. In the distance, beyond a wall, a train passes by.
When the hero Theseus went to fight the minotaur, in a labyrinth in Crete, he was helped by the daughter of the King of Crete: Ariadne. She gave him a ball of wool in order that he could unravel it as he went, and then follow the string back to the entrance; then she left with him. On the island of Naxos, whilst she slept, he abandoned her and returned home.
Thus Ariadne is a symbol of abandonment, but she is also a side-character, and an implicit critique of heroic-mythology. There is a sense in the painting that, as the epic of Theseus has left her stranded, that life itself has left this place behind. The only sign of movement, the train, is distanced, and hidden behind a wall. When De Chirico chooses to highlight Ariadne alone, sleeping, rather than the act of abandonment itself, he brings out the tragedy in Ariadne’s role of being forever left out of the sweeping narrative of myth. For it is not just her lover that has abandoned her, but the path of history itself, and the capacity to be remembered. We hear scarcely more of Ariadne after she leaves the companionship of Theseus.
Most paintings, wittingly, or unwittingly, heap more attention and detail on what is closer to the perceiving eye. This principle reflects both a basic fact of optics; and the convention for paintings to be ‘about’ something, and to place this subject in, or close to the foreground. De Chirico partially inverts this dynamic in his typically unnerving manner. Most of the detail expressed in colour, line, and shape, are in the top-right quarter of the picture-plane, and would be classified as background. In addition, attention has been given to the fluttering banners, and the clock, as part of the back-drop. This combines with the ill-defined painting of the statue of Ariadne itself, and the visible gap between it and the other areas of detail. In between these detailed areas are areas of blank colour, more cardboard sets than representations of a real place. One gets the feeling that even the painter is not really there, that the act of painterly depiction, analogous to that of storytelling depiction, exists at a distance, and separated from the subject.
Therefore we can see how De Chirico, and Bruegel have both dramatised the edges of myth. By highlighting figures that are mentioned, but passed over, they implicitly criticise the monolithic and callous tendencies of myth.
