David Hinton, in his wonderful book Hunger Mountain talks about what great teachers mountains can be; how they were believed to dramatically manifest the vast forces and generative powers of the cosmos. Hence, they were perfect places for sages to dwell. Thatch Hut was particularly renown. Now a world heritage site, I did a translation about Zhangjiajie National Park about ten years ago for a Japanese documentary. Of course, it featured the famous poem, written by one of the legendary sages of Thatch Mountain: Tao Yuanming (also known as, Tao Qian 陶潛).
I fell so in love with that poem.
Especially the famous line 採菊東籬下-- Plucking chrysanthemums by the eastern fence. It is a popular subject for the seals of gentlemen retiring as the phrase alone, I think, sums up perfectly the serenity achieved by a life of cultivation and at the end of the hero's journey. Here is my translation below:
Drinking Wine (#5)–Tao Yuanming I’ve built my house where others dwell And yet there is no clamor of carriages and horses You ask me how this is possible– (And so I say): When the heart is far, one is transported I pluck chrysanthemums under the eastern fence And serenely I gaze at the southern mountains At dusk, the mountain air is good Flocks of flying birds are returning home In this, there is a great truth But wanting to explain it, I forget the words (my trans）
But now look at Hinton's:
Drinking Wine
I live here in this busy village without
all that racket horses and carts stir up
and you wonder how that could ever be.
Wherever the mind dwells apart is itself
a distant place. Picking chrysanthemums
at my eastern fence, I see South Mountain
far off: air lovely at dusk, birds in flight
Going home. All this means something.
Something absolute: whenever I start
to explain it, I forget words altogether
Okay, I much prefer mine--though I think my southern mountains is a mistranslation probably. Also it is fantastic the way he retained those symmetrical stanzas.
Regarding the second stanza, the forth line in mine, Hinton says this:
"To understand Thatch Hut Mountain is to take on the nature of the mountain, to live outside the human realm of words and concepts, like those in these chapters, outside even the self to which the name refers. This was a spiritual practice for the ancients, a practice that was ideally cultivated whereever one happened to be, including noisy towns and cities--as in the poem.
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Looking back at this old blog post, I re-read this poem which someone there shared--feels so long ago:
. . .The wild twister pulls me out How to return to that mid-field It should be south, but then north Saying east, but no, west Drifting drifting, where should I land ... Quick death and again living Flutter-float around Eight swamps In succession passing Five Mountains Flowing, turning, no constant place: Who knows my hurt? The wish to be mid forest grass Autumn: by wild-fires burned Annihilation: is there no pain? The wish for root connection"
When it comes to private art collections, not many places have the richness and diversity of Italy. Of course, Italy also has a few great national museums too. But that is not where one usually heads to find the cream of the crop of the country's fine art. For in Italy, the famed pictures and sculptures are mainly to be seen in the once legendary private collections of long-dead dukes and princes; as well as in those of Renaissance mercenaries and bankers --not to mention the art still found miraculously in the the churches for which they were originally created. Beautiful gems, these private collections are in part why going to Italy to see art somehow feels more an act of pilgrimage than of travel.
In the Uffizi last summer, I wondered about how the collection of a banker-- like, say that of a Medici -- is different from those of a prince or duke. Indeed, to my untrained eyes, the collecting styles and practices didn't seem so different at all. I wondered why that was. And as luck would have it, the museum shop had Tim Parks' new book Medici Money quite prominently displayed by the cashier. So I grabbed it!
What a great read! And the more I read, the more I could understand why it is that the great private collections of mercenaries and bankers so closely resembled that of the princely collections. Very similar to the situation in Japan, in Italy too, men of business and men of war--once having gained power-r- typically began to crave social acceptance. And so they often turned to art. In those days, art collecting and aesthetic sensibility was seen as a marked sign of character and virtue--and therefore of status. Along these lines, there is an absolutely brilliant (but out of print) book by Christine Guth, called Art, Tea ad Industry: Matsuda Takashi and the Mitsui Circle, about how this practice functioned in Japan down into modern times, where connoisseurship and taste were viewed as the necessary signs of a noble character-- and unlike today (where money "trumps" everything), in days past --in Japan and in Europe at least-- one would never be taken seriously without noble pursuits and enlightened hobbies.
That is, money alone didn't get you very far up the social hierarchy. One had to display their wealth through the practicing of those things considered to be noble. Art was considered a sign of good character. Even today in Japan, many successful business leaders make it known that they are persons of cultivation through the practice of a refined hobby, like tea or calligraphy, or in amassing refined collections of art (often of the type collected by aristocrats.) In that way, collecting functions to grease social upward mobility; and indeed, for much of history in many parts of the world, art and philanthropy were used to achieve what was the ultimate goal of showing a "noble lifestyle" (vivre noblement).
For the Medici, though, patronage wasn't just about image-creation and social climbing. There was a "metaphysical" aspect to their patronage as well. For, back then, the Catholic church felt that international banking was the source of great evil. And usury was strictly forbidden. I am reading the best book right now called The Richest Man who ever Lived, by Greg Steinmetz. It is about Jacob Fugger, the man who finally went up against the church to stop this prohibition on money lending and pave the way for the world of finance capitalism of today--for better or worse.
According to the church, usurers were sinners (Contro natura). Perpetually static inhabitants of Dante's hell, their hands alone remained in an endless whirl of counting.
And yet, the Popes were key clients of the Medici.
So, what to do, what to do?
It was fairly serious stuff we are talking about. Because usury was seen as a mortal sin. In fact, the debate goes back much further than Christianity (Luke 6:35) and stretches all the way back to Aristotle, who also strongly condemned the practice of loaning money for interest. While Aristotle likened lenders to pimps, Dante went further, likening them to sodomites, while Aquinas went further still, likening them to murderers.
Despite the fact that the popes could bend the rules (when it suited them), the people were perhaps less forgiving. And so the Medici engaged in great public art patronage--along with other civic activities, for the express purpose (according to Park) of rehabilitating their image-- in the now and in the hear after.
Yes, they wanted to buy their way out of trouble in the after life.
I have written a bit here about Renaissance donor paintings--and these too are a part of this kind of metaphysical negotiating.One of my favorites of the donor pictures is the Chancellor Rolin Madonna in the Louvre (picture at top). I truly adore this painting by van Eyck. And, adding to my interest in the work is the fact that Chancellor Rolin was himself a fascinating person.
Like many people, I have always associated him first and foremost with his famous Hospice in Beaune, France. For whatever reason, from the first time I saw a photograph of the hospice I longed to visit. Somehow, I was struck deeply by pictures of the tiled roof and of the hospital architecture. I also had long wanted to see the Van der Weyden triptych, housed there in the hospice--now a museum (photo below).
Finally making it this past summer, it was everything I imagined. Wonderful. Impressive and really inspiring, I would relocate to Beaune in a New York second! For me, the town (and the wines) are a kind of heaven on earth.
Built in the late 15th century to tend to the dying, the hospice has an impressive 500 years of history serving the poor of Beaune. Rolin had it built and left money for its continuation--which included daily bread to the poor and thirty beds for which those in desperate need could come to die with dignity. He had his reasons for this --and those reasons included ones similar to the Medici. He wanted to rehabilitate his image (making up for moral wrongs done when he was working with the Duke of Burgundy) and perhaps grease the wheels of social and spiritual mobility so his children could be accepted in more upper circles (he was not born a nobleman) and so he would perhaps have a smoother entry in heaven. He also had a very religious and pious wife.
And so Councilor Rolin sought to rehabilitate his image and intercede in terms of final judgement with his wonderful act of philanthropy. (Did I mention the hospital is still continuing its philanthropic activities today? And that those famed Burgundy wine auctions are part of that?)
Fugger too... have you ever heard of the Fuggerei? It is another 500 year old charity that keeps giving down to today.
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Anyway, the wealthy aren't as generous today. Maybe it's because usury is no longer seen as a sin or maybe it's because money is no longer considered to be dirty, but all evidence shows that the wealthiest people in the US, at least, are not as generous as those with less money and that as a class they seem to be less civic-minded than they used to be.
Like in the Renaissance days past, the super rich today (if they give at all) tend to give in terms of image rehabilitation. Their giving, therefore, follows a personal project rather than a societal need. We need to first ask ourselves, writes a reviewer on amazon, whether the rich really are as generous as we seem to want to think they are, because Dalzell believes many are not--and that we certainly cannot rely on them to save our failing infrastructure since they are not really looking at the big picture but in their own personal legacy. The reviewer adds this:
In 2009 Forbes reported that only ten people on their list of the four hundred richest, average wealth of $3.6 billion and in some cases over ten times that amount, had given away as much as $1 billion.) Bill Gates and Warren Buffett asked the richest Americans to pledge at least 50% of their wealth to charity in 2010 - in the two years since they have recruited 92 billionaires, including Zuckerberg (Facebook), Bloomberg (NYC Mayor), Reed Hastings (Netflix), Gordon Moore (Intel), Eli Broad (real-estate), George Lucas (Hollywood), Ted Turner (media), Barron Hilton (hotels), Alfred Mann, David Rockefeller (inherited), Paul Allen (Microsoft), Jon Huntsman Sr. (chemicals), T. Boone Pickens (oil), Sanford Weill (banking), Larry Ellison (hardware/software), and Elon Musk. Holdouts include Steve Jobs, the Waltons, Charles and David Koch, Sergey Brin, Larry Page, Sheldon Alelson, Steven Ballmer, Anne Cox Chamgers, Kirk Kerkorian, Philip Knight, Jeffrey Bezos, Rupert Murdoch, and Oprah Winfrey.
We are becoming less equal and less democratic as a nation, and Dalzell is concerned that the counterweight to the presence of inequality among us is overstated.
This is a crucial point, I think because what we have right now are a class of super rich who are neither creating large numbers of new jobs (being involved in a post-capitalist globalized financial activities); nor are they pulling their weight in the way that would be required to push back inequality in terms of paying taxes. Even their much-touted philanthropy is not all its cracked up to be either.
What about art, though? If the super rich are not pulling their weight in terms of philanthropy are they at least putting together some amazing art collections?
I am definitely not an expert here-- so anyone please chime in here! All I have read on this (and I love Sarah Thornton's book, Seven Days in the Art World) is that yes, the super wealthy buy art-- and in particular they are buying post-War and contemporary art, much of it conceptual made in artist factories. (Thornton in her book talks about Murakami's factory and Agustsson write about Koons). Especially the wealthy in North America focus on a handful of artists, who are seen as a great investment--and this drives the market. Thornton says that, the super-rich buy art for social reasons. Taste, she argues, is determined by the vagaries of fashion; 'collecting art has increasingly become like buying clothes'.
Sola Agustsson wrote a great piece at Alternet about how the patronage today is different than say how the Medici family patronized Michaelangelo
For the most part, the only people who can afford to buy art in this economy are people who are not affected by this economy, the top 1 or 2 percent. Of course, rich people have always patronized the arts— Michelangelo would never have been able to produce his masterpieces without the Medici family— but today's billionaires aren’t just patronizing artists, they’re investing in and branding them. The top 10 billionaire art collectors have 18% of their net worth invested in art, though the average billionaire invests about .5% of their net worth in art. Investing in art can sometimes prove more lucrative than the stock market; a recent study shows that works by Andy Warhol and Damien Hirst have been appreciating at a higher rate than the S&P 500.
And they are helped by a locust swarm of art advisers, who help them buy and flip the art....
A dismal state of affairs, somehow, to think of artists being brands or worse, artists being traded as stock....
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In any case, whether this is a terrible turn in events or whether it is the way patronage has always functioned, the super wealthy need to be taxed their fair share. They are not creating jobs in the same way nor are they engaged in acts of philanthropy that are significant enough to off-set the tax breaks they receive. Dazell ends his book by challenging our charity system—and our tax code—by disputing the premise that individuals will make better decisions regarding social investments than will our representative government. As Ken Stern summarizes in his article on the book for the Atlantic:
Other developed countries have a very different arrangement, with significantly higher individual tax rates and stronger social safety nets, and significantly lower charitable-contribution rates. We have always made a virtue of individual philanthropy, and Americans tend to see our large, independent charitable sector as crucial to our country’s public spirit. There is much to admire in our approach to charity, such as the social capital that is built by individual participation and volunteerism. But our charity system is also fundamentally regressive, and works in favor of the institutions of the elite. The pity is, most people still likely believe that, as Michael Bloomberg once said, “there’s a connection between being generous and being successful.” There is a connection, but probably not the one we have supposed.
Even Greg Steinmetz, a former teacher turned investment manager in his biography of Fuggers (The Richest Man who Ever Lived) cautions at the end of the book that Adam Smith was quite wrong that the pursuit of self-interest will necessarily promote the interest of society more effectively than if someone had directed it. He says the theory says that but the reality again and again shows is that self-interest alone, if left unchecked leads to crony capitalism....
Despite what we all learned in grammar school, educated people from the ancient Greeks through the Middle Ages had taken the idea of spherical world quite seriously; with the real question by Columbus’ day being how large the oceans were that separated Europe from Asia. Not unlike the Goldilocks Zone in the search for exoplanets, one of the geographical theories that informed Columbus’ journey saw the world as divided into five regions. The top and bottom were frigid polar areas; and between these two inhabitable zones, stretched a tropical zone, on some maps red hot and inhospitable for all life, but on others imagined as rich in resources.
So people already knew the earth was round when Columbus sailed the oceans blue. But wasn't Columbus sailing west in order to reach the east? Well, that also turns out to be more complicated than we were taught in school-- as I learned in a very large and endlessly fascinating book written by Caltech historian Nicolás Wey-Gόmez about the explorer's southerly journey called, The Tropics of Empire: Why Columbus Sailed South to the Indies.
I came to know of Professor Wey-Gόmez's book after I heard him give a Watson Lecture at Caltech a few years ago. These prestigious public lectures have been put on at Caltech for nearly 80 years and they are always well-attended. And Wey-Gόmez's lecture was no different, as every seat in the house was taken. I should say that I was not predisposed to agree at all with Wey-Gόmez since I had long believed that the Europeans of the Renaissance never expected to find much of anything in those high Atlantic waters where Columbus had set sail. Indeed, the Columbus that Wey-Gόmez spoke about that evening was largely unrecognizable to me. Intrigued, I ordered his book the moment I got home from the lecture.
3.
Back in Columbus' day, people held more than one map in their minds.
First, Columbus had an up-to-date version of the medieval T and O map. You've probably seen reproductions of this. With Jerusalem positioned in the center of the world, the three known continents --Europe, Asia and Africa-- are depicted branching outwards from the center. The continents appear encircled by a great ocean that was the "O" of the map's name; while the "T" was formed by the three great rivers that divided the continents from each other: the Mediterranean, the Nile, and the Don (Tanais River).
A tripartite system, each continent was associated with one of Noah's sons, with the sinful one-- surprise-surprise-- being associated with Africa. With East at the top, toward the light of Heaven and Christ, the three continents are shown surrounded by the great sea. Heading West to arrive in the East, then, Columbus would have had reasons to imagine that he had arrived at the easternmost part of Asia. Many of the maps he had studied had indeed showed islands off the coast of Asia, including the coveted spice islands written about by the English knight, Sir John Mandeville, in his book of travels a hundred years before Columbus' voyage.
Wishful thinking must have also played a part in his belief that he had landed in India, since Asia had always been his advertised destination. This was where the riches were thought to lie, and why the islands are still known today as the West Indies.
But why is America not called Columbia --after the man who discovered it?
4.
Wey-Gόmez, in his book, explains that in addition to the T-O maps, there was another tradition of maps that also held great sway throughout the late middle ages and into the Renaissance. These were maps derived from Ptolemy's book Geography, written in the 2nd century. Ptolemy's Geography was so detailed that scholars believe it must have incorporated first-hand accounts of far-flung geographical features. For example, the Bay of Bengal was described with astonishing precision. One of the maps that Columbus consulted just before his voyage was itself based on the Ptolemaic world map. Created by a German working in Florence named Henricus Martellus, it was considered to be cutting edge for all the modern information that had been incorporated into it. Considered to be "America's birth certificate" the famous Waldseemüller map drew heavily on Martellus, but aimed to add even more up-to-date information, by including "the discoveries of Amerigo Vespucci and others”.
By “others” he presumably meant Columbus!
He then suggested naming the new land in the southern Atlantic "America," after Amerigo Vespucci, whom the map-maker credited for having discovered it.
Wait... didn't Columbus discover South America?
Disappointed when few believed he had discovered India, Columbus decided to continue his explorations by traveling further and further south.
South? I thought he was trying to sail west to arrive in the east.
Then, when finally reaching what was clearly a continental landmass in present day Venezuela, Columbus did something very foolish. Instead of telling the world that he had discovered a new continent, he announced that he had found --you know what I am going to say, right?-- the Garden of Eden. And that is how Columbus got scooped by Amerigo Vespucci. This is where the "bumbler" part of his resume comes in.
Toby Lester in his book about the antipodes and the Waldseemüller map, called this antipodal continent in the unknown part of the world the "Fourth Part of the World." According to a geographical theory dating back to the ancient Greeks, the world was thought to be a sphere divided into five zones or belts. The top and bottom were frigid polar zones. In the middle stretched the tropical zone, on some maps red hot and inhospitable for all life, but on others imagined as rich with resources. There remained two temperate zones. The first was the inhabited world as the ancients knew it; while the other was a terra incognito.
Alfred Hiatt, in his book Terra Incognita: Mapping the Antipodes before 1600, documents the debates that occurred about the existence of an unknown continent starting from ancient times and right up to Columbus' journey. Augustine of Hippo adamantly denied this terra incognito. But Cicero firmly believed there was life on the other side of the world; and stated that such was the great distance separating the known and unknown worlds that Rome's dominion could never reach it. Even Rome had its limits, it seems.
I said I found myself spellbound by the picture. That does not mean I necessarily like the picture. What it means is that Leonardo's Salvator Mundi came to haunt my thoughts. As if the picture had been burned into my retinas. Again and again, I found it floating in front of my eyes before I fell asleep at night: extraordinarily beautiful, Christ stood facing fully front as if in a Byzantine icon against a dark background. With his hands bestowing a blessing (fingers lit up in light) the luminescence of the chest and forehead dazzles.
It is extraordinary really.
When I first saw it, not long after the disaster in Fukushima, I was somehow reminded of the solemnity of the Kudara Kannon Statue (百済観音) at Horyuji. Carved (probably by Korean artists) out of a piece of camphor wood, it is gilded in bronze. Like Leonardo's Christ, Kannon holds one hand in blessing, and in the other holds a vessel containing the "nectar" of compassion. Also like the Leonardo, the Kannon looks straight at you--and yet looks beyond you. The Salvator Mundi--like Kannon-- blesses human kind as he makes his promise to save us.
Statuesque, solemn, like a Byzantine icon...
Incidentally, in 2011 I wrote a post on my old blog, Tang Dynasty Times, about the newly discovered Leonardo, as well as a celebrated court case about another Leonardo called, Leonardo in the Gilded Age. This post won 3QD's Strange Quark Prize (judged by Gish Jen) and thereby kicked off my very happy relationship with 3 Quarks Daily!
Over the years, following the news about the picture and seeing more and more images online, I felt that the picture felt so familiar--as if I had seen it before. The face is reminiscent of the Mona Lisa. But it is also reminiscent of Saint John the Baptist (especially the curls).
I was also immediately reminded of the 1500 Self-Portrait by Dürer (see just above). Who but Durer would paint himself as Christ Triumphant? (I strongly recommend Joseph Leo Koerner's book below on Self-Portraiture in German Renaissance Art if you are interested in the Northern tradition of painting Salvator Mundi pictures and the Durer Self-Portrait in particular).
You can see the Durer painting at the same time you see you can see the other early Leonardo painting, Madonna of the Carnation at the Alte Pinakothek in Munich. Visiting Munich is a top priority for me. Madonna of the Carnation is --along with the Benois Madonna in the Hermitage Museum-- considered to be the two early paintings that Leonardo referred to in his notebooks that he was working on in 1478. This was about the time that Leonardo was transitioning from being a pupil of Verrochio in Florence to make his own way as an independent artist, soon thereafter moving to Milan.
Both the Durer Self-Portrait and the Leonardo are dated 1500. Durer dated the picture himself (the 1500 date for the Leonardo is just an educated guess).
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But there was something else that I couldn't place my finger on.
Finally, breaking down, I bought a used copy of the Christie's catalog on ebay for $90. I thought it was steep, but in the end, my curiosity got the better of me and I was delighted to open it up and immediately see both the Durer and Bosch's orb shown side by side with the Salvator Mundi.
There was also a discussion of expert MET curator Luke Syson's proposal that Leonardo was consciously trying to emulate the face of Christ as seen in famous examples of acheiropoetos, like the Shroud of Turin and the Veil of Veronica. Of course, that is why I felt so emotional about the picture! Why it looked so familiar! How could I have forgotten that my friend Brooks Riley had suggested as much last year in her post at 3QD on Leonardo, Resisting Leonardo?
Syson particularly focused on the Mandylion of Edessa (not the Shroud). There are three images that are said to be the authentic image of Edessa. One has long been held by the French crown and was kept in Saint Chapelle (along with the Crown of Thorns, for which the chapel was built) until the French Revolution. The other was kept (and still remains) in a church outside of Genoa, under Sforza control until 1499 when the French claimed it. Syson suggests that if Leonardo was painting the picture for the French crown (for Anne of Brittany and then later removed from France a hundred years later when the French princess Henrietta Maria married Charles I in 1625) then it is possible that he was commissioned to create the face in the likeness of the second Mandylion.
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Note Two (And what about that rock crystal orb?)
Some suggested that no one but Leonardo had the skill to paint that orb at that time. The restorer, Dianne Dwyer Modestin, has remarked about the extraordinary detail of the orb under microscope. Leonardo expert Martin Kemp also has written movingly about the orb in his memoir, Living with Leonardo (I cannot recommend this book enough! I could not put it down). Trained in science, Kemp was quick to note that this orb was unique in Renaissance painting, being a perfect rock crystal sphere with inclusions. Rock crystal was used during the Renaissance for reliquaries and was highly valued. Leonardo Patron Isabella d'Este had asked Leonardo to give his opinion on vases made in materials such as agate, jasper and amethyst and made note that Leonardo particularly liked crystal because of its clarity. Kemp did a study of Salvator paintings with orbs and found that while brass and glass orbs were quite common, none could be found made of rock crystal.
The orb as a crystalline sphere immediately calls to mind the exterior shutters of Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delight.
This is impossible to see at the Prado because the triptych is permanently displayed open.
Bosch depicts the third day of creation. According to the Book of Genesis, God said, "Let the waters under heaven be gathered together and the dry land emerge."
The choice of non-colors (grisaille) on the outer shutters of the triptych is very conventional--but instead of the usual depiction of donors or saints, Bosch gives us the earth as it was before the ruin at the hands of mankind. This is not the moment of creation but rather is a picture of a glass globe of the kind that emperors hold in their hands to express their dominion over the world.
In the top corner is God. And this inscription:
"For he spake, and it was done; he commanded and it stood fast." (Psalms 33:9)
I've always love to imagine the enormous delight that guests of the Duke of Nassau (original patron of the triptych?) when the gray world of the outer triptych opened to display the shock of all those colors (colors of the new world?) depicted on the inside of the triptych.
"The process of production is more in keeping with the commissioning of a superbly made chair from a major craftsman, "Kemp wrote...."We do not ask if a certain glued joint in the chair was made by the head of his assistants--providing the joint holds and looks good."
In the case of the Madonna of the Yarnwinder, as it was with the two versions of the Virgin of the Rocks, "we should modify the traditional questions asked by art historians: Which version is the "authentic" or "autograph" or "original" one? Which are mere "copies"? Instead, the proper and more interesting questions to ask are How did the collaboration occur? What was the nature of the team and the teamwork?
Interestingly, contemporary artists such as Jeff Koons and Takashi Murakami (Dustin Yellin is an interesting case) work using a production team.
Note Four (Restoration)
Etienne Gilson writes that the "restoration of paintings is one of the surest methods scientifically to substitute new paintings for the old ones."
And: Cecilia Giménez was scorned after her amateur efforts to repair a faded painting of Christ – but in the years since, the disaster has been transformed into a windfall as her story is being turned into a comic opera, called (you guessed it: behold the Man!) ! You can't make this stuff up!
Note Five (Aquamarine):
The use of aquamarine in the picture is noteworthy for two reasons. First it is unusual to see that much blue used to depict Christ (it is traditionally associated with Mary). And, because of its extraordinary expense, experts are quite sure Salvator Mundi was no ordinary copy! But incidentally, the copy of the Mona Lisa in the Prado, is a copy but also uses very expensive pigments, including aquamarine and vermilion (not very much though) so we know that that studio copy had a patron of some wealth.
One Day many years ago somebody told me that all the true ultramarine paint in the world came from one mine in the heart of Asia.
It's true, it seems that all the ultramarine paint in the world was painstakingly derived from the lapis luzuli rocks mined from one place in northeast Afghanistan. Located not far from Bamiyan; from the Sar-e-sang mine in Afghanistan, donkeys transported the expensive pigment in rough sacks over an ocean of mountain ranges-- East to Central Asia and beyond, and West to Venice and beyond.
In Europe, the precious pigment was so expensive that it was worth more than gold, and the legendary painters of the Renaissance were forced to wait till their patrons provided them the pigment before they could apply the heavenly blue to Mary's robes (for by this time the color was symbolic of Mary).
Finlay says in today's money, a pound would cost about $3000.
The color is truly heavenly-- just look at the Wilton Diptych-- shown here. That is all lapis lazuli from Afghanistan. It is the same color blue that was used at Kizil in what is now Western China and the same color blue that was used in painting the great Buddhist statues that stood over the Bamiyan valley for 1400 years.
In Medieval Byzantium dark blue was the color reserved for an empress. It was also--along with gold--the costliest material of all and so was used in paintings of the Virgin Mary as an expression of devotion.The color became, therefore, a symbol of Mary, and this is where the term, la sacre bleu comes from too...
Cennino Cennini, in Il Libro dell'Arte, wrote that "Ultramarine blue is a color illustrious, beautiful and most perfect, beyond all other colors; one could not say anything about it, or do anything with it, that its quality would still not surpass."
Even the great Michaelangelo was famously unable to finish his painting The Entombment because his promised shipment of ultramarine fell through.
Note Six (Pentimenti)
One of the most important clues that x rays tell us is what is happening beneath the surface of the painting. In this case, what was shown were countless changes of heart made by the painter as he created this work. The Italian word pentimenti means "regrets" and these refer to the changes made during the act of creation. Not surprising, Leonardo is known for his creative work that exhibits many revisions and improvisations during the act of painting. Compared to the final version, he had painted the thumb in a straighter position. He later painted over this to create the curved position of the right thumb we have today. As I mentioned, this kind of re-working during the painting process is typical of Leonardo, but it also suggests (not conclusively) that this is the original work since the other copies have the more bent thumb--as in the final version.
Pigments and binders are also analyzed to try and find signature Leonardo techniques. For example, Martin Kemp describes his usual method of painting over his first underdrawing with a light wash of lead (this was not widely shared with other painters) and his laying of a white lead priming directly onto some of his panels without an intervening layer of gesso. His technique of using his hand to model the flesh tones (something seen in the Salvator Mundi) is also idiosyncratic to Leonardo.
Note Seven (Good Old-Fashion Connoisseurship)
If you are interested in this subject, I really recommend reading, The Eye, by Philippe Costamagna. A specialist in 16th century Italian painting and a museum director in Corsica, Costamagna is a proud proponent of good old-fashioned connoisseurship. This is almost a dirty word in today’s American art world, which has removed art history from being considered a humanities subject and is turning it into a social science with a strong distrust of aesthetic intuitions and body know-how. Of course, the idea of a specialist gaining expertise by basically looking at every picture he or she can manage to see in her area of specialization and creating a memory palace in the mind—which can function as a catalog of all that he or she has seen, so as to be able to just “know” if something is authentic or not-- seems less scientific than the technical, analytical and textual training that is received today. And yet, this is a kind of “know-how” that has always been a part of the art world.
In Costamagma's words: “We stand in front of a work. Boom, we suddenly, instinctively know the artist who painted it”
Having a good eye is what they call it. And, this detached, de-contextualized objective seeing is straight out of Kant. To really see means to really look. And connoisseurs are people who have trained their eyes for decades, focusing on one particular period they would see every example of the artist or genre as possible in order that their eyes would form an expertise allowing them to recognize the hand, style palette of any given artist. To be trained as an “eye” was one of the hallmarks of an advanced degree in art history in days past.
I recommend reading this with The American Leonardo, by John Brewer, about a disputed Leonardo painting which led to a protracted court battle during America's gilded age. This occurred when identification and authentication depended on experts who could just know if a work was genuine or not and they did this by immersing themselves in the artists’ lives and seeing and really looking at everything they could. Costamagna compares the eye to “a nose: in the perfume world. There are musical people who can “know” they are listening to Mozart in just the first note or can hum the entire ring cycle because the music is so deeply inscribed in their minds (my friend can do this).
Peter Greenaway in his documentary Rembrandt's J'Accuse (2008) thinks it is a terrible shame the way we have all become visually illiterate. And perhaps musically, as well?
I agree it is very sad the way we have turned away from memorizing poetry and that art and music has been cut in elementary schools. Children are being forced into so much text-based hoop jumping but we really are losing our cultural sensitivity. We are losing our body know-how.
Note Eight (Consensus)
As in standard models on hard science, attribution is based on consensus among experts. For me, the most noteworthy aspect of this Leonardo discovery is the level of consensus. Of the scholars called upon to examine the picture out of its frame and alongside other early work by Leonardo, only one had qualifications. This was Carmen Bambach, who was inclined to see Boltraffio as playing a major role. The most persuasive dissenting opinion that I read was written by German art historian Frank Zollner in his newly updated Taschen publication.
He seemed inclined to favor another Salvator Mundi picture which was discussed as being the prototype original Leonardo in 1978. This picture, called the de Ganay Salvator Mundi, has a much more impressive French Provenance and also for a time carried a Leonardo attribution (and this picture is maybe a better match for the preparatory drawings in the Royal Trust Collection).
Its provenance originally places the de Ganay in the collection of Anne of Brittany, the wife of the King of France, Louis XII, who was Leonardo's last patron. The de Ganay sold at auction to a private collector for $332,000 in 1992. I would say they got a bargain.
Isn't it gorgeous?
Also a note about the restorer. Dianne Dwyer Modestini was married to one of the world's greatest connoisseurs and restorers of Renaissance painting, Mario Modestini, and is an internationally recognized art restorer and academic in her own right. I found this video in which she discusses the loss of her husband and the Salvator Mundi to be very moving.
“All of the most relevant people believe it’s by Leonardo, so the rather extensive criticism that goes ‘I don’t know anything about old masters, but I don’t think it’s by Leonardo’ shouldn’t ever have gone to print,” says British old masters dealer Charles Beddington. “Yes, it’s a picture that needed to be extensively restored. But the fact that it’s unanimously accepted as a Leonardo shows it’s in good enough condition that there weren’t questions of authenticity.”
I highly recommend reading this above short article from Bloomberg for an understanding of what is so annoying about the peanut gallery. Many years ago the Atlantic had a very thought-provoking article about what the Internet is doing to our brains. It was called Is Google Making us Stupid? And it posits way that online reading is turning us into pancake people. That is to suggest that not only are we reading FAR FEWER books but our understanding of basic concepts from science to art and music is becoming more and more superficial. This is to suggest that we no longer know what we don't know. My own opinion is that since I have not seen the picture in person yet, I cannot make any kind of judgement (since my judgements would only be based on aesthetic calls and emotional reactions anyway). However, I also tried to learn everything I could to write intelligently about this issue. Books recommended on Leonardo are as follows (And if you have any favorites, I am all ears!) I have grown concerned in my own life about the noise of my online life. Social media especially for me has become a time black hole and one day recently I woke up feeling very manipulated. Before the Internet I probably actively read and could talk about 4-6 books a month.
Note Ten: (Since the beginning of time, the super wealthy have over-paid for art)
It speaks volumes that Salvator Mundi was sold in Christie's Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale. Why? Because that is where people spend the big bucks. So, if you are concerned about someone being ripped off, that is where I would look. Have you seen The Price of Everything? The HBO documentary about the contemporary art market does not intentionally mean to be cynical or vilify--but nevertheless the result is intensely obnoxious (I warn you: it might make you throw up in your mouth).
One night, Nietzsche steps out into the darkness of a Venice nightscape. Surrounded by the sound of water echoing across the canals-- the moonlight madly shimmering off the water-- a mood overcomes him like a song:
Venice-- At the bridge of late I stood in the brown night. From afar came a song: as a golden drop it welled over the quivering surface. Gondolas, lights, and music-- drunken it swam out into the twilight.
My soul, a stringed instrument, sang to itself, invisibly touched, a secret gondola song, quivering with iridescent happiness. --Did anyone listen to it?
Durrell was born and spent an early childhood in India and though never religious, he declared that he had “a Tibetan mind,” attuned to Buddhism. Using scientific metaphor, he said that our view of the universe had changed when we discovered that the ultimate tiny atomic particle was not something hard, but a wave. “Our solid world may be real, but is also illusory and infinite. The spirit of place moves over the land like the spirit of God upon the face of the waters in Genesis,” he said in an interview.
Pneuma was the ancient Greek word for breath and also a metaphor for spirit or soul. Durrell often referred to a breeze rustling the Greek landscape as its pneuma, its spirit. An aware person drawing their breath in the landscape was merging their own spirit with that of the place.
Heidegger famously wrote that, "Mood is a form of attunement between nature and spirit; between habitat and inhabitant." Pointing out that a minimally meaningful life requires sensitivity to the power of shared moods that give mattering to our world and unity and meaning to events, according to Heidegger, moods are not something inside a person but rather are something that a person can be in. That is, moods come over us; overcoming us. The German word famously reflects this, as philosophers like to remind us that die Stimmung means mood in terms of atmosphere ("ambiance"). Often likened to music or to weather, Heideggerean mood wraps itself around our bodies. It is something that we unconsciously attune ourselves too.
Indeed, it is one way we have to grasp the way the world discloses itself to us.
The concept of atmosphere was condemned to remain weak in European thought, given that, unlike the activity of cognition, "atmosphere" could not be conceived in terms of the opposition between the objective and the subjective. It is an influence that emerges from beings and things and is valid only by virtue of the impression it produces in us: it e-manates or im-parts and hence circulates inseperably between what is neither "that" nor 'us" anymore... indeed, an atmosphere is diffuse, disseminated, dispersed, elusive....
And hence, through one's in-haling and ex-haling, one breathes in landscape, atmosphere and social context and breathes out character, heart and correct behavior. It is not unlike a Confucian scholar whose meticulous actions-- perfectly attuned to the situation-- are guided by a Confucian sensibility, or sensitive negotiating of shared mood. Like the sound of jade reverberating off the walls of the great hall, the Confucian scholar just feels it-- this thing called virtue or proper conduct is something to which he attunes himself as embodied know-how. In the same way that a violin will internally reverberate when bowed, this mood is internalized in the sense that it becomes almost impossible to really differentiate between outer environment and inner self as they are indeed inter-dependent.
One of the students in class last Thursday was perplexed by the treatment that Don Quixote got from his friends.
"They trick him and put him in a cage and then let him get beaten up! Do they care about him or not?"
One of the most unnerving things about being in a room with young people is that they react to things so differently than I do. And not just that ~~~because they react to things in a way that I don't think is even possible for anyone my age. Have things changed that much?
I raised my hand, and I told them that returning to the US after two decades away, I felt that humor had really changed while I was away. People don't play pranks anymore. Sure there is humor but it is more ironic and self-reflecting. I told then about the time when I was a kid and my dad left a message on our answering machine saying, "Kathy and our two ugly daughters are not home right now..." That was funny back then! (The students looked worried). My childhood was filled with pranks! Professor Wey-Gomez said his was as well, and he told them about how he would hide in a corner in the house and read a book waiting for hours for someone to walk in so he could scare them! I suppose we are too busy now? Too busy for pranks?
And what about Nerval's lobster? I am all for taking tortoises (and lobsters) on a walk and letting them choose the pace!
Heidegger felt that it was only through play that human beings could be "released" (gelassenheit) from their relentless will to impose their subjective categories on things and to legislate the way things must be-- for he lamented that the entire history of Western metaphysics was a history of rational prescriptions about what Being must be. In this way, I imagine that Heidegger would not have been at all surprised to hear me complain that "play has disappeared."
Of course, there is no room for "play" in our world now, because nowadays everything must somehow become under our human control-- in Heideggerean terms, everything has become a resource to be used, even our own lives. Every moment must be used efficiently and replacing play we now have amusements which are in many ways aspects of "work" (since amusements are taken up with consumption and are themslves means not ends). The great Dutch scholar Huizinga, who wrote the most charming essay on the play-function of all time, also positioned archaic play in contrast to the modern condition of prosaic efficiency, utilitarianism and "the hell of the literal."
In this way "God is dead" is also to suggest that play is dead-- in our age of efficiency, consumption and earnestness.
Professor says he also wholeheartedly grieves about this. Me too.
Yesterday, in a post at 3 Quarks Daily, I declared that Don Quixote was a novel I could cross a desert with. Long ago, I once asked whether a friend had just one book that he would happily re-read over and over until the end of time? I had thought I had a my own definite answer to this question; for my "novel of a lifetime" has always been The Brothers Karamazov.
This changed, however, in an eye-blink when I finally began Don Quixote.
Like Karamazov, the Quixote is chock full of philosophical questions that would engage a reader endlessly. And what the Quixote may be lacking in religious truths, it more than makes up for in humor. And indeed, don't we want to keep laughing? The countless droll and surprising images in the book can become like little poems that a reader can carry around with them in their pocket and bring out whenever they want to smile or giggle, or to just plain fall on the floor laughing! I love el Quixote and was not surprised one bit to hear that it is one of the most requested book by the inmates at Guantánamo. (That, according to Quixote scholar Roberto González Echevarría).
But of course, my two favorite books are connected. So deeply did Dostoevsky love the Quixote that he wrote his own version of the story, in his novel The Idiot. This below is from a letter Dostoevsky wrote from Geneva to his niece as he was working on the book:
The main idea of the novel is to present a positively beautiful man. This is the most difficult subject in the world, especially as it is now. All writers, not just our, but European writers, too, have always failed whenever they attempted a portrait of the positively beautiful. Because the task is so infinite. The beautiful is an ideal, but both our ideal and that of civilized Europe are still far from being shaped. There is only one positively beautiful person in the world, Christ, and the phenomenon of this limitlessly, infinitely beautiful person is an infinite miracle in itself. (The whole Gospel according to John is about that: for him the whole miracle is only in the incarnation, in the manifestation of the beautiful.) But I am going too far. I’d only mention that of all the beautiful individuals in Christian literature, one stands out as the most perfect, Don Quixote. But he is beautiful only because he is ridiculous. Dickens’ Mr. Pickwick (who is, as a creative idea, infinitely weaker than Don Quixote but still gigantic) is also ridiculous but that is all he has to captivate us. Wherever compassion toward ridiculed and ingenious beauty is presented, the reader’s sympathy is aroused. The mystery of humor lies in this excitation of compassion.
"This excitation of compassion"
It has been so interesting sitting in on a class on the Quixote with 25 undergraduates at Caltech. They do not seem overly impressed by the hero's idealism--and indeed rather than a hero, one even referred to him as an anti-hero. They are concerned about the havoc he wrecks and the people he hurts. They also worry about his influence on Sancho. This has been very strange. Certainly DQ is no Odysseus. He is not even an Aeneas. But wouldn't they be surprised to learn that it was not just Dostoevsky who considered Don Quixote as a "Spanish Christ." No lesser figure than the great Spanish philosopher, Miguel de Unamuno, declared him to be likewise so.
To paraphrase Kessel Schwartz: like Christ, Don Quixote went out into the world with his disciple, where he was persecuted; "not so much for his beliefs but for what he thought of as the Kingdom of Heaven." He was ridiculed for trying to tend to the needs of men.
Luke 4:18-19 King James Version (KJV) 18 The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised...
I think the students would be shocked by this because, strangely, they do not seem to see him as a hero. He does cause a lot of trouble along the way...it's true.
Would love to get a copy of Unamuno's book, The Life of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. Below from Ley's wonderful essay:
His main argument, which he sustained, tongue in cheek, over more than four hundred pages, is that Don Quixote should be urgently rescued from the clumsy hands of Cervantes. Don Quixote is our guide, he is inspired, he is sublime, he is true. As for Cervantes, he is a mere shadow: deprived of Don Quixote’s support, he hardly exists; when reduced to his own meager moral and intellectual resources, he proved unable to produce any significant work. How could he ever have appreciated the genius of his own hero? He looked at Don Quixote from the point of view of the world—he took the side of the enemy. Thus, the task which Unamuno assigned to himself was to set the record straight—to vindicate at last the validity of Don Quixote’s vision against the false wisdom of the clever wits, the vulgarity of the bullies, the narrow minds of the jesters—and against the dim understanding of Cervantes.
In order fully to appreciate Unamuno’s essay, one must place it within the context of his own spiritual life, which was passionate and tragic. Unamuno was a Catholic for whom the problem of faith remained all his life the central issue: not to believe was inconceivable—and to believe was impossible. This dramatic contradiction was well expressed in one of his poems:
…I suffer at your expense, Non-existing God, for if You were to exist, Me too, I would truly exist.5
In other words: God does not exist, and the clearest evidence of this is that—as all of you can see—I do not exist, either. Thus, with Unamuno, every statement of disbelief turns into a paradoxical profession of faith. In Unamuno’s philosophy, faith ultimately creates the thing it contemplates—not as subjective and fleeting autosuggestion, but as an objective and everlasting reality that can be transmitted to others.
And finally it is Sancho Panza—all the Sancho Panzas of this world—who will vouch for this reality. The earthy Sancho, who followed Don Quixote for so long, with skepticism, with perplexity, with fear, also followed him with fidelity. Sancho did not believe in what his Master believed, but he believed in his Master. At first he was moved by greed, finally he was moved by love. And even through the worst tribulations, he kept following him because he came to like the idea. When Don Quixote lay dying, sadly cured of his splendid illusion, ultimately divested of his dream, Sancho found that he had inherited his Master’s faith; he had acquired it simply as one would catch a disease—through the contagion of fidelity and love.
Because he converted Sancho, Don Quixote will never die.
Thus, in the madness of Don Quixote, Unamuno reads a perfect illustration of the power and wisdom of faith. Don Quixote pursued immortal fame and a glory that would never fade. To this purpose, he chose to follow what would appear as the most absurd and impractical path: he followed the way of a knight errant in a world where chivalry had disappeared ages ago. Therefore clever wits all laughed at his folly. But in this long fight, which pitted the lonely knight and his faithful squire against the world, which side finally was befogged in illusion? The world that mocked them has turned to dust, whereas Don Quixote and Sancho live forever.
“If every library is in some sense a reflection of its readers, it is also an image of that which we are not, and cannot be.” ― Alberto Manguel, The Library at Night
Brooks Riley wrote so beautifully again over at 3 Quarks about her favorite obsession (except, maybe, for Wagner?): Albrecht Dürer. Like all lovers, Brooks seeks to know him. She says:
Personality is like ether, it hovers in the atmosphere long after death. Decades, even centuries later, long after the end of memories, traces of it move through the air like a fleet aroma caught at just the right odd moment. Where did that come from? It is elusive, and cannot be captured or bottled or even explained. Such is the personality of Dürer. It rises like a mist from a certain landscape seen from the train. It lurks in the amusing portraits of friends like Stefan Paumgartner as St. George, or Willibald Pirckheimer imbibing at the baths, or the selfie pointing to the pain in his spleen. It rages in two haunting, nude sketches of himself. Or radiates in that iconic self-portrait from 1500, which hung in his atelier, never for sale but as constant reminder of the perfection he would strive for with his self-proclaimed ‘diligence', that most German of virtues—a quasi-blasphemous Christ-like pose that sanctified his art through his person. Thomas Hoving once called it ‘the single most arrogant, annoying and gorgeous portrait ever created,' missing the point—or perhaps not. It was so life-like, Dürer's dog ran over to it and started licking it before the paint was quite dry. Of the plethora of explanations for this work, I like to think he painted it in case the Apocalypse predicted for 1500 really happened. I will survive, it says. And he did.
I told her about how,
I had just finished The Vanishing Velázquez: A 19th Century Bookseller’s Obsession with a Lost Masterpiece. There was so much about this book that I loved but one aspect was echoed in your wonderful post--how personality is like ether and it can outlast a human life. Much less was known about Velázquez than about Durer and the author in a very interesting manner (filtered through her own mourning over the death of her beloved father) tries to reconstruct who the Spanish painter was....there is so little to go on. She makes the point though, that in the end, we have all the evidence we need in the pictures themselves. With that in mind, looking at Durer's unbelievable self-portrait I now think the portrait of Durer in the Relic Master was too sweet. But I suppose, like you said, he didn't have a dark side and was known as an overall nice family man? And yet the self portrait!
.... And yet, how to explain Durer's extraordinary self-portrait? Salvator Mundi!
**
I wanted to ask Brooks about Durer's library. I came across a wonderful essay by Suzanne Stratton-Pruitt in a book of essays about Las Meninas. As Laura Cumming described so painfully in her book Vanishing Velazquez, there is very little information to go on about Velazquez's personality (or his inner life). One crucial piece of evidence came to light in 1925 when scholars were able to make an inventory of his library. This was a turning point in Velazquez studies. And in knowing what books he owned, we can surmise that the painter was no intellectual slouch. For informing Las Meninas are sophisticated books on mathematics, architecture and geometry. He also had two editions of Pliny. Velazquez owned 154 volumes--which was substantial for a painter at that time.
In Alberto Manguel's The Library at Night (a book that has become my Bible), the author describes a visit to the fateful home that Cervantes lived in in Valladolid from 1602-1605. Fateful because it was where he wrote his last work, Exemplary Novels (our hotel in Valladolid is named after one of the novellas in this work)-and where Cervantes got caught up in a murder investigation and was --yet again-- hauled off to jail. The house is a museum now and as Manguel wanders amongst what is left of Cervantes belongs, he thinks about the famous Inquiry of the Library chapter in part one of el Quixote. Deciding to try and help the mad Quixote, the barber and the priest decide to purge Don Quixote's library of any items which could have contributed to his madness. Manguel takes note of the housekeeper who insists the room itself must be purified, "for there might be here one of those many wizards who inhabit these books, and he might cast a spell on us, to punish us for wanting to expel them from the world."
Maguel notes that like many people who do not read (He doesn't say who cannot read but who do not read), the housekeeper fears the power of the books that she refuses to open.He goes on to suggest that the same superstition holds true for most readers as well; for the books we keep closest to hand are possessed by magic.
There is a wonderful letter, in James Elkins' Pictures and Tears, about museum goers looking at a landscape painting in Japan. The lady who wrote the letter to Elkins was in Tokyo as part of an Andy Warhol exhibition. Unable to speak the language and perhaps not all that knowledgeable about the culture, it had to be based on some kind of misunderstanding that she came to believe that the painting of a waterfall on rare display at the Nezu Museum, called Nachi Waterfall, was "a picture of God."
This painting is a National Treasure of Japan and is not displayed so often (I never managed to see it in 22 years there). So, not surprisingly, the exhibition was jam-packed full of people there to see it.
In the letter, she described how beautifully dressed the people were, many in formal kimono and some looked to be college professors. She said it was like going to the Met, except that when she finally got near the picture, she found the people around her to all be silently standing there crying.
It is an extraordinary story in an extraordinary book.
Has that ever happened to you? Have you ever been overcome to tears by a painting? (It has to be a painting and it has to be tears).
James Elkin (my new favorite writer) is obsessed by Stendhal Syndrome--and since I am obsessed by Jerusalem Syndrome, I couldn't help but find myself increasingly intrigued. I never knew that-- unlike Mark Twain (who has a malaise named after himself too)-- that Stendhal, like so many others at that time period, had become so utterly enraptured by the art he saw in Florence that he became dizzy and had heart palpitations. In fact, apparently, he had to seek medical help. Elkins says that in the old days, it was much more common to be moved to tears by art.
In fact, as far as emotional response to paintings, we are living in a bit of a dry age, he insists.
I doubt this will surprise many people, but Elkin says that Rothko is the modern painter most famous for causing viewers to cry. Exploring Art's connection to time and to God, Elkins goes through quite a lot of effort to try and figure out why exactly Rothko makes people cry (even reading over all the entries in the guestbook at the Houston Chapel), but in the end, he doesn't ever nail the reason.
The artist himself explained it simply thus:
I'm interested only in expressing basic human emotions. And the fact that a lot of people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures shows that I can communicate these basic human emotions. (Mark Rothko)
Interestingly, Elkin himself has never broken down in front of a painting--nor has the great Gombrich.
I think he is right, that crying in front of pictures is simply a rarity in today's world of disenchantment and the commodification of all our experiences. Speaking for myself, I have been deeply touched and experienced a tremendous emotional response from the art I saw as part of my Piero Pilgrimage, as well as when I finally made it to Belgium to see van Eyck's Mystic Lamb in Ghent. Piero's frescoes in Arezzo in particular were reminiscent of emotional reactions I have had to Buddhist statues (butsuzo) in Japan--which is that of feeling drawn in and immediately calmed.
In 2007 (or 2008?), NHK Broadcasting in Japan aired an amazing documentary on their Highvision channel, called the "Best Loved Buddhist Sculpture in Japan"（book version: にっぽん 心の仏像100選). To prepare for the show viewers were invited to write the station to tell stories of their most beloved Buddhist statue. NHK received 1400 letters and from those letters, they compiled a top 100 list. In a country full of tremendous sculpture, I wasn't surprised how moving the letters were. But, as they went through the list , working their way up to the #1 most popular, I was struck by the way these statues were embedded into the lives of the people who loved them. Especially elderly people interviewed, said something along these lines:
"The statue has just always been there. When I was a girl, I would come and help polish the temple floors or come here with my mom and aunties to pray. Of course my beloved mother and my beloved aunties are now long gone, but the statue remains, and nowadays when I come here, it's like I am back here again with my loved ones."
Something real-- something eternal, the butsuzo for the people interviewed seemed to be an interwoven part of their lives. Rather than works of art or treasures of the nation, the statues were viewed as being members of the community. The program showed one butsuzo that needed repair and filmed as one of the village men wrapped it up in a huge long piece of cloth and strapping it on his back carried it down the mountain like he was hauling a bale of hay (or in Asia, the way women carry babies and small children). The scholars and guests were stunned. One sputtered, "Why, I have never seen anything like that."
In another scene, a group of parishioners gathered around their village butsuzo and took a group picture. The Butsuzo was in the middle, like one of the gang.
In yet another scene, a very elderly woman had gone to Osaka to live with her son's family. She had wanted desperately to come and visit the Butsuzo of the village; for it was always there in her heart. Finally, her son agreed to make the long trip back to the village and drove her up the mountain and helped her into the temple, where she sat on the tatami matted floor in front of the statue of Kannon-sama. Putting her hands together in prayer, she smiled as if she was in the company of a long-lost friend.
Toward the end of the program a scholar in religious studies, came on and commented how in the same way that infants respond seamlessly to the expression on their mother's faces, so too are we effected by what we see. He said, psychology and science can prove that looking at something that calms us is by definition good for us. It's true on two accounts, I think. One, that these butsuzo have a tremendous power to calm us or effect certain positive emotions. Even on the TV screen, to be honest I found myself feeling increasingly calm-- and yes, happy.
That one of the ladies, with crippling arthritis, chose to gather flowers from her garden and hike up a mountain road to the top where the temple was located at first seemed overkill. But, actually, I imagine her slow methodical pace up the hill got her blood really moving, and then at the top-- the reward. Sitting on the sweet-smelling tatami mats, she put her hands to pray and a look of great peace swept over her face. I imagine, if she is like me, that moment of calm-- spreading out from her belly up toward her face, pupils dilating, she gently closes her eyes and lets a feeling close to bliss-- but quieter-- sweep over her.
Still, that feeling of being utterly drawn in and held in awe is quite different from being floored, or as Elkins calls, it punched in the stomach.
This is something that has only happened to me once and it was so totally unexpected that I simply feel embarrassed by it. First of all, it happened in front of a picture that is so over-reproduced that it is a wonder that anyone can feel anything about it. Like the Mona Lisa, Leonardo's Last Supper is perhaps one of the most over-copied works of art in the world. Umberto Eco, for example, found something like seven wax copies just on a trip from LA to San Francisco. I had absolutely no expectation of feeling anything. In fact, were it not for my astronomer and his devotion to Leonardo, I would have just as soon skipped it. I also am not a fan of Last Supper iconography--and of the three possible Last Supper subjects, my least favorite is the one Leonardo chose: that of the betrayal.
So, I just could not believe it when I cried!
Elkin captured what happened to me as I stood there in that room looking at the Last Supper as my eyes were swimming with very hot tears:
"Pow! They are responses to the painting's sheer unexpected overwhelming presence. In each case the painting is suddenly there, exerting a real force on the viewer, knocking the wind out of him or shoving him down."
That was indeed, exactly how it felt, as a very very sudden and unexpected density and presence. And I was almost overcome by love. Elkin likens this to a religious experience ("Crying at God") and says,
If you love a painting, and are overwhelmed by it--perhaps even to tears-- then you may be aware of a certain presence, an immediacy or even a nameless pushing. Those words, like the word "God," some from a place that cannot be reached by language. Most of the time they can be called by any number of names, but there are also occasions when they need to be named directly.
The painting of the waterfall I mentioned at the top, by the way, perhaps moved the people at the exhibition in the same way. This same work also greatly intrigued Andre Malroux. Actually to say "intrigued" is to put it mildly; for it was standing in front of the painting that Malroux experienced a spiritual epiphany-- what he called the "transmission of the sacred." Malroux considered all works of art to be "signs" that illuminate the questions of our inner reality--not the answers, but the questions. And it was standing in front of this picture in which he discovered what he called "primordial forms." Whoever painted the picture would have liked that interpretation since the painting has not traditionally been considered to be a mere landscape. It is rather viewed as an example of religious art, or suijaku-ga (paintings based on Shinto-Buddhist unity). Suijaku are "traces" of Buddhist nature as pictured in the guise of a Shinto deity (ie, in the case, the waterfall). So, in a sense, the picture is of "God;" though maybe better is to say it serves to capture our attention as a mandala does, embodying Buddhist cosmology or truth.
I've written here about the plague of our disposable society (also definitely see Jalees Rehman's piece here), and wondered if then, there is really no escape from "man the eternal consumer?" Not only are the neo-liberal practices of production and consumption ruining the planet, but they are ruining our lives. I really believe that. As I wrote last June, my astronomer is more optimistic. He thinks that erotic love is the last frontier by which a person can access the numinous. Beyond pure efficient instrumentalism, love is--as Badiou and Zizek write--all about madness and yes even violence. My beloved believes that purely practical people can still fall madly in love and that this experience is something --in today's world more than ever-- that is deeply hungered after. As always, I guess I am more pessimistic and agree with Zizek that it is gradually disappearing as well (as Badiou says, "Love is not a contract between two narcissists"). For in a truly disposable culture what things or experiences will have the power to move us beyond what Carl Sagan called the prison of the self? It's no surprise, I guess, that this dead-end in the search for meaning is where all roads end in ruins in Continental philosophy today....
