Clearly, not all paintings are delightful little scenes of sunflowers and sailboats, but I think there is a difference between unpleasant subject matter and art that is actually ugly. Many paintings about torture, death, and other unpleasant subjects are quite graceful:
Cain Slaying Abel, Tintoretto
This Tintoretto painting is extremely violent; Cain is descending with a dagger while Abel struggles. However, the image itself is beautiful, with the two men's rippling forms spotlit against the darkness. (Maybe that's why the site I got this image from is selling posters of the painting!)
Now compare it to the Baselitz in my first post. To me, beauty is not so much a matter of subject but of style.
My question is, why would an artist or writer intentionally create something ugly?
Now compare it to the Baselitz in my first post. To me, beauty is not so much a matter of subject but of style.
My question is, why would an artist or writer intentionally create something ugly?
Your discussion of stylistically beautiful paintings of ugly subject matter reminds me of a conversation I just had about what James Joyce feels about Dublin, a city he writes about beautifully yet describes as utterly decrepit. We talked about how one role of the artist is to see what is beautiful in the ugly aspects of life, and to write (or paint) about them so that others can see how beautiful they are too. Artists understand that life is not all good things, and seek to celebrate the tragic, because often the tragic is real.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree that there is a grotesque beauty in both of the paintings you explored. I don't think though that the artist intentionally seeks to create something "ugly" or "aesthetic." These are essentially meaningless words constructed by social mores and norms. They are also 'relative' terms in that beauty would not exist without ugliness and vice versa. I think these artists are instead, just trying to tell a story as truthfully as they can. In this case, the story of Cain and Abel needs to be depicted powerfully, and the way they are positioned/their actions/the technical decisions made are all geared towards that goal.
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