Carl Gustav Jung said: “There can be no transforming of darkness into light and of apathy into movement without emotion”. Emotions drive us, drown us and lift us. Emotions are life. Therefore if one truly wants to capture life, one needs to capture emotions. And what could be more representative of emotions than the looks, postures, and gestures contained in the human emotion? The exhibition “Artistic Expressions” displayed at the Réunion des musées nationaux - Grand Palais (Paris), features sixty paintings spanning from the fifteenth to the twentieth-century made by different artists in a range of styles. The paintings are grouped into eight categories covering emotions from tenderness associated with an early childhood to ordeals of adolescence, sprinkled with laughter, soddened with melancholy and ultimately balancing between power and fear. The circle of life. Love and Death.
The theme of tenderness opens the exhibition. Maternal tenderness is showcased through the painting by Rubens of his second wife Hélène Fourment, whom the master married in 1630 despite condemnation for their almost forty years of age difference. She is looking with gentle admiration at their son sitting in her lap, while their slightly impatient little daughter is standing next to them. This theme is continued by Tamara de Lempicka’s Mother and Child. The painting from de Lempicka’s stylistic development period, combining refined cubism with the neoclassical style, illustrates a young mother softly hugging her sleeping infant, both heads reclining towards each other in serene tenderness. In the June 1931 review of the work found in Beaux Arts, Mother and Child is referred to as a “study” rather than a finished painting. Nevertheless, the distinctive style of de Lempicka is very apparent here and the artistic intent of this painting looks accomplished.
A different shade of tenderness can be perceived through the allegorical double portrait An Old Man and his Grandson by Domenico Ghirlandaio. This painting is an outlier in the fifteenth-century Florentine portraiture, generally idealizing body proportions and leaving faces devoid of expression to convey character. Here intense admiration and intimate warmth are shared between a young boy and his old grandfather. The young boy is looking upward, his hand softly lying on the old man’s chest, while the old man is warmly embracing the boy and watching him with apparent affection. The view through the window at the background of an endless winding road, hills and a volcanic mountain provides an additional dimension to the emotionality of this painting.
Another theme explored in the exhibition is seduction. Viewers are greeted by the detached frontal gaze of Edouard Manet’s Olympia — lying on her bed naked, exposed, a black choker around her neck and one of her high heel slippers casually off. Manet was inspired by Titian’s Venus, yet provocatively reconsidered her as a prostitute (naming the painting after the term associated with prostitutes in mid-nineteenth century Paris). Young Woman Going to Bed by Jacob van Loo is showing a totally different nude, this time from her back to onlookers, glancing backward with a coquettish half-smile, as if she is checking whether you dare to follow her. This painting gives a completely other impression compared to Olympia, suggesting that there are myriad ways to seduce and, hence, to illustrate seduction.
To contrast the previous emotions, the theme of torment is illustrated by a range of dark, earthy-colored paintings. Amongst them, Saint Francis in meditation by Guercino, depicting the painter looking deeply preoccupied as if meditating on the idleness of this world. An interesting inclusion in the theme is one of the first paintings by Rene Magritte — The Double Secret. It depicts a detached man’s face broken off, which opens up an abyss with hanging sleigh bells inside. This suggests that there is a strange and disturbing space inside even a seemingly calm and impassive man, and makes one pause and reflect on one’s own ghosts.
The exhibition continues by exploring another range of emotions: complicity, laughter, melancholy, power, and fear. All emotions showcased are portrayed by artists of different gender, style, ethnicities and centuries. Interestingly, all represented emotions are straightforwardly recognizable, which could be owing to the focus on portraits. Abstract paintings in this sense have a larger potential for diverse interpretations; whereas with human subjects, it is indeed easier — comparing looks, gestures and poses with personal experiences — to make an unambiguous conclusion about the emotion displayed. Does this mean that the language of emotion is a timeless universal language? I reckon it is, and paintings included in the exhibition by their versatility and at the same time recognizability of an emotion portrayed support this point of view.
Going from one painting to another I also could not help but wonder if a painter deliberately chooses an emotion or an emotion overwhelms a painter in the process of creation? It appears as though some painters prefer a particular emotion. For example, Jean-August Dominique Ingres, at least in the paintings included in the exhibition, seems enkindled by power. Torment and melancholy seem to fascinate Theodore Gericault. On the other hand, for instance, Georges de La Tour (likewise represented with several paintings) skillfully illustrated both tenderness and an absolutely different emotion — complicity. Therefore, it could be that emotion still comes first and mesmerizes a painter, becoming dominant in his work, but as appears from artworks displayed at this exhibition, there are also painters who excel at capturing and illustrating various emotions.
To draw the line, the exhibition “Artistic Expressions” provides bountiful, mindfully assembled and structured material to reflect on emotions which capture the attention of artists and visitors alike. Moreover, by diverse examples of the same emotion, it is possible to discern varied means of conveying it through an artwork. Finally, by putting attention focus on emotions, this exhibition provides a new angle to contemplate some famous paintings from, unveiling yet another dimension of each masterpiece.
The online exhibition reviewed can be found at the Arts and Culture project of Google following the below link:
This essay has been first submitted as the final assignment for the course “Writing for the Art World” at Sotheby’s Institute of Art (scored 4/4).
The online exhibition reviewed can be found at the Arts and Culture project of Google following the below link:
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