Lad, this is the Titian (most likely an extract from a previously larger work) I was talking about. I want to say something profound but instead I am going to say its charming. Whilst condescending I think that is appropriate. As a side note, I think, from memory that its painted around 1570, just before the old boy popped it.

So much about this painting is brilliant. The theatre of its frotnality, the way marsyas is hung and presetned to us, the oppressive intensity of the shallow plane of viewing enhanced through Titian’s vibrant brushwork.

The small cutsey dog, however, is perhaps the most disturbingly brilliant detail I can think of off hand in any painting I know. Its the same type of dog which sits so placidly in his earlier Venus of Urbino. Instead here is hungily laps up the pool of blood which lies below the flayed and tortured Marsyas.

Here is a really good article which discusses this work and Titian’s ‘Late style’, it is written by Matthias Wivel at the Metabunker.

This huge masterpiece has been excessively written on, but most of the text, in my modest opinion, is spurious. The painting refutes the continual attempts to find specific social and political dimensions. It has continued to frustrate in its refusal to be fully contextualised.

Most commentators refuse to start with the work itself, seemingly ignoring the need to place it in a visual context. When we do this it becomes clear that the work is Davidian in plastic construction, think of ‘The Crowning of Josephine’ and Rembrandtian in handling. This later stylistic observation, when removed from its connection to a Dutch heritage, has mistakenly been used as evidence of political and social subversion. Viewer’s comments that the work was ‘ugly’ and offensive are merely evidence to eyes trained on a different aesthetic.

David’s ‘The Crowning of Josephine’

Beyond these general observations it is the visual dynamics of the piece which I feel reveal its meaning.

A noticeable difference can be spotted between the circle of mourners in the final painting and the preparatory sketch. In the final painting the second row of figures is no longer lost behind the front row. Courbet has raised the point from which we view, lifting the figures higher than strict perspective rules allow. Tonal contrasts of their costumes are used to frame them, creating a wall of black punctuated by the continued row of fleshy faces and white hats.

In the sketch we view across, like a procession in a frieze. In the painting we are actively engaged in the act of viewing, with the mourners arranged into a processional circle which our eye joins and rotates around. It is a new rhythm which unites the individuals as a whole, a community at one in grief. It reveals the central meaning of the painting, not the individual’s death but the communities’ reaction to it.

This fact is reinforced by the position of the body/coffin. It is placed to the far left, at an oblique angle, only half in frame. This creates a sense of the moment of arrival and the transience of human life. This is what people are waiting for. It about this specific moment before burial, where mourners must very soon make a philosophical decision over what they believe happens to the physical remains.

The specific condition of their mourning is revealed by the apex of the circle of mourners. The point they will all come to rest, is central and directly between the two key men, the priest and the man in a blue suit and socks. They have to make a choice between the two sides the men represent, religious and secular. The space between the men resonates with meaning. Courbet understands the poetics of space- one which not only awaits a body but which asks each viewer and mourner to fill it with meaning.

Such a reading is reaffirmed by the two most prominent iconographical signs. That which pierces the horizontal and that which lays across and below the horizontal.

The cross is the only thing to break the horizon line, so gaining a prominence. In doing so it reasserts its visual sign, the vertical breaking the horizontal, and also its symbolic reference, the transcendence from a profane to sacred a realm.
The grave also reasserts its sign and signification. In reality a grave is hole dug for remains, visually it references the idea, placed on the bottom horizontal and continuing beyond its edge. Symbolically the grave is the place where the body will be placed and rot and in the picture its continuation into nothingness symbolises this.

What we are left with is a kind of mid 19th century philosophy of the funeral, not the last judgement of heaven or hell but the choice of an afterlife or end of life. The need for the community to make their decision. A work about their communal mourning and freedom and need to choose what they believe. In this sense it relates to both the last judgement and to Christian funeral scenes.

At some point I would like to discuss some ideas I have about the meaning of Titians work for Alfonso d’Este of Ferrara’s Camerino. With a growing interest in pictorial narrative, however, I would like to initially consider one of the works in the cycle, and its construction of narrative. That painting is the National Gallery saturated gem, ‘Bacchus and Ariadne’. In doing this I am finally fulfilling my promise to continue from Andy’s observations on the same work a few weeks ago.

The painting is the second of three works Titian painted for the patron’s studiola. As with all the others the commission was given to Titian due to another misfortune. Raphael had already completed a sketch for ‘The Indian Triumph of Bacchus’ but unfortunately pontificated and then died in 1520. As such Titian was handed the job. Documentation suggests the work was delivered and then completed on site in January 1523. This remains likely despite some convincing scholarly speculation that ‘The Bacchanal of the Andrians’ came before.

The National’s squarish masterpiece draws inspiration from a hybrid of literary sources. With extracts from Cattullus and Ovid its primary inspiration. The Camerino was supposed to be a contemporary equivalent to the kind of picture gallery described by the ancient writer Philostratus. Specific translations seem to come from Battista Guarino, in an edition dedicated to Alfonso. The Ovidian sources are ‘Fasti’ and ‘Ars Amatoria.’

Cattallus’ text informs the painting in its description of Thetis and Ariadne’s love, his subsequent sea bound departure and her grief. Ovid’s Ars Amatoria describes the tumult of Bachhus and his followers returning triumphantly from India. Also describes the dramatic confrontation between Ariande and Bacchus, which results in his proposal and their embrace, with Ariadne being transformed, through divine love, from a mortal into an eternal constellation of stars.

The problem that Titian is presented with is finding a way to draw the various strains of the complex plot together into one coherent singular moment, seen from one angle. The manner in which he does this is the works outstanding feature. Aspects such as its brilliant colouristic devices are subordinate to such genius.

If we consider various elements of the work than we can see how Titian resolves the equation and points the way forward to the poetic brilliance of his later ‘poesie’.

The central female character, Ariadne, is pushed up to the far left of the picture plane. She occupies her own blue vertical rectangle. Within this space both her past and future are suggested. A pre narrative is present in Thetis’ boat, on the horizon, as suggested by Ridolfi and a post narrative implied by the constellation of stars; her earthly misery and her divine fate. Colouration and pose indicate the temporal flow. Her twisting body, highly Raphaelesque, enhanced by the twisting drapery, suggests that her spinning movement through space relates to the narrative movement through time. From looking out to sea and longing for the departed Thetis to her awareness and magnetic connection to the arriving Bacchus, past sadness and future happiness. The rise of fall of a mortal heart reduced to one graceful spin. His ability to relate figural movement to narrative and emotive events is as sophisticated as anything I have seen in central Italian art of the period. It is matched by a colouristic play, where the blue of her dress reflects the colour of both the sea and the sky, which provide the context to her past and future, the boat of Thetis and the Cretan crown into which she will transcend and transform. The formal properties of the vibrant blue are harnessed for poignant theatrical effect.

Beyond Ariadne the painting is significantly effected by the role of the supporting cast. The sense of the returning party of followers is created with specific references to the text. The noise- the thrill clang of their semi circular symbols, the figures twining their waists with belts of writhing snakes. The life and energy of the crowd is imbued with a forward momentum from right to left, with pointing arms, thrusting legs and flowing drapery. They seem to throb with noise yet it remains as inaudible to our ears as the activities of gods should be. This explains why Ariadne has not heard them and the moment of her realisation is as plausibly sudden as her pose suggests.

The horizontal energy points to Ariadne and pushes her to the edge. From right to left, however, the pace of the followers seems to slow from right to left, until it reaches the full stop of the outward looking putti and is counterbalanced by the opposing direction of the small dog. As we move through space, from right to left, we move through narrative time. From the celebration through the forest, to arrival. The reduction of speed echoing the narrative shift and the arrival at the key dramatic moment. The satyr-putti looks out as to say, we have arrived, this is the defining moment, rest here. This device allows Titian to invest the moment with its direct past context without providing a distraction from the main event.

That main event is entred around the iconic leap of Bacchus. This central action is the crux around which the rest of the painting and plot unfolds. His leap separates him from his followers, which arrests Ariadnes attention from sea bound melancholy, which leads to their embrace and her divine fate. Titian harnesses the actions to bring the separate narrative elements together.

His movement; his trailing leg, arms and drapery remember the space he has moved through. Vertical and horizontal vectors are created by the repeated arched shape of his legs and arms, point upwards and across, indicating the energy of his leap.

His front leg draws a vertical divide over which the rest of his body is perfectly balanced. His position just of centre, the horizontal clouds in the sky and his magnetic gaze all contribute to the forward going energy. His body led by the vision of Ariande on which his eyes are locked.

The two cheetahs, a nod to the menagerie of Alfonso, bridge the gap between the two figures, thus describing and intensifying the space between them.

The reconstruction is not narrative. A series of key moments are quoted to invest the dramatic moment with a context, its history and destiny, its beginning and end. Each serves and intensifies the central drama. This is not a narrative progression between sequential parts. Complex dynamics are resolved by the balance of formal properties. This is not an epideictic illustration of text. It combines an array of literary sources to create a totally pictorial drama. The poetry, emotions and romance are all formed by exclusively visual means. Crucially the various moments are united by one central dramatic gesture. In finding a pure pictorial solution Titian’s work finds some autonomy from its literary sources. It thus looks forward to the equally brilliant Venus and Adonis.

“From Rise onwards I realised that it was very important not to have a direct opposition. If there were, the colour energy would be locked up in the complimentary contrast, as though in straight jacket. It is released by instability, a freely floating flux. Each colour has to be balanced so that the slightest influence from a neighbouring colour will throw it off that very balance -and this is true for all of them in turn, whether there are three or five colours, so that they continually shift this way and that. But there also has to be an overall colour-bias which governs the entire canvas. Otherwise the sheer amount of coloured light released will lead to iridescence, light energy running right around the spectrum.”
I believe that this can be compared in some way to Toms attempts at taking one colour then moving it to its various tonal ends. They are both ways of ascending to some sort of order through limitation, Rileys is perhaps the more rounded, and allows more variation within it. The question is, can we take this theory and apply it to figurative art, the answer is most certainly yes as Bridget Riley took this idea out of her observations of earlier artists; Titian, Veronese, El Greco, Rubens, Poussin and the like. However, perhaps the most important factor for us to take into account is how do we move this theory back into the figurative without simply and blindly moving back into the same environment as the previously mentioned artists. When constructing a painting that, for want of a better description, takes a ‘realist’ stance, it is extremely difficult to simplify the chromatic field down to the level that riley’s abstract vibrations can go. There are certain conventions that we are going to have to accept, we are going to have fore-go the ‘all-overness’ that you experience in a riley, and as such the dynamic qualtities harnessed by pockets and diagonals of chromatic harmony can be released, these rhythms are where the strength of figurative painting is generated. If we utilize rileys balancing techniques within these rhythms then it seems all we will be succeeding in doing is developing a style akin to Veronese, where a grey that lies on the side of warm or cool is used as a backdrop to ‘bed-in’ the tapestry of bolder colours and hues which provide the dynamic diagonals. Is it possible to disintegrate the unifying grey into pockets of varying heats and hues that act as a disruptor, whilst being subtle enough to not break apart the image completely? I’ve probably tried this before and failed. oh well.

This is the start of a small series of blogs which in essence will deal with the same notion. Discussing which has stayed continuous throughout painting but which historians have tried to locate as specific to certain periods of time. This particular post will warble on the semiotics of paint.

At this early stage I apologise for the quality of writing. These blogs are things I have been meaning to get off my chest for a while. If I don’t try articulating these thoughts now then others things will pile up and they will be lost and unable to be furthered. So due to a rush of time, which exacerbates my dyslexia, I ask for a focus on content not style.

If you were to believe a lot of literature you would believe that the painter is a necessarily myopically focused individual, with each epoch only capable of seeing one capability of paint.

Pliny and Vasari wrote extensively about the use of paint as a mimetic tool. Pliny records famous anecdotes of the legendary classical painter’s ability as alchemists; able to make paint deny itself and become the total illusion of some other substance or object. The famous story which is so parodied throughout Art History is of course the Grapes painter by Zeuxis, which seemed so real the birds came down to peck at them. We of course have to take the artists desire to deny his medium with a pinch of salt, Pliny uses the stories to aggrandise the artists ability. Vasari continues the diatribe with his length Lives of the Artists, constantly painting a picture of paint being subservient to design, of paints purpose being entirely mimetic.

If we take this as the monolithic construction against which Modernism works then suddenly the pursuit of many 20th Century painters appears to be equally singular in the other direction. We return to the Greenebrg notion that painting will only survive by a celebration of its independent properties, an inward looking focus on itself, paint as paint and nothing else.

Even when painters still work with imagery we are told the subject and image is entirely superfluous. That it is merely an empty vessel to pursue some formal ends. How convenient. Don’t tell me William De Kooning was not interested in the figure, in flesh, in the sexuality of his subject. His was certainly not only interested in the medium for its own ends.

At a somewhat waffley pace this brings me to my point. Many, most, perhaps all painters have always been fascinated by the semiotics of paint. Such a term as semiotics is of only available after the linguistic theorising of Saussure. Whilst the term was not invented the notions, even if unarticulated, would have been pertinent to all painters. The logic is that no sign is singular. We only understand the meaning of a specific sign (be it an image, a substance or a word) due to its context. The specific signification of the sign only reveals itself when placed in context. Remove it from that context and it changes its meaning entirely. It’s all relative!

It is perhaps in the Synthetic Cubism of Picasso and Braque where this is most openly explored and with unbelievable sophistication. From 1911-13 Picasso and Braque out did each other one by one in finding ways to destabilise pictorial signs. The high point in my eyes is Picasso’s ‘Guitar and Wineglass’ fall 1912. (Other high points are ‘bon Marche’ 1913/14, ‘Guitar Maquette’ and Braques ‘Fruit Bowl with fois bois’) In Picasso’s humble masterpiece so much is turned on its head. Much has been made of the newspaper cutting at the bottom of the page. ‘Les Bataille sans engage’, it reads. That frustrating strain of literature which searches for specific sociological interpretation has taken this cutting back to its original source, a newspaper article about the outbreak of War in the Balkans. Others have seen it as self referential, as referring to the battle between Picasso and Braque. If either reading is singular the second makes more sense, with the works being for a private rather than public audience. Any public political dissenting voice becomes less likely. What these writers searching for certainty forget is that everything about the work looks to destroy certainty. It is a conscious exploration in the multiplicity of a signs meaning. So why do they try and tie this one aspect down. Whilst the argument continues you can imagine Picasso chuckling in his corpse.

In the centre of the page a white disc sits on top of the pasted collage of cuttings. It is the whitest and furthest forward of all the elements. We read it as something quite different however. Due to its context between edges which read as the side of a guitar we read it as the sound hole of said guitar. Thus is read as a black hole, the deepest point of the composition. The sign becomes a signifier of its total opposition. The same game is played with the wallpaper. The same paper is pasted across the whole surface. To the left of the guitar it reads as a wall in the background. In the centre of the work it reads as the body of the guitar. Without having done anything to it, but affected its surroundings, Picasso is able to make a flat plane of pattern shift between spatial registers.

It is at this moment I believe that a conscious play between a sign and its signification is played. What I want to consider is the notion that in reality, in the case of paint, this kind of game has always been going on. To be able to use and explore the medium for a range of signification is not the privileged position of the post Greenbergian student.

In considering its various uses across the history of Painting (across in a loose sense due to my limited knowledge at this moment in time) I hope to demonstrate that there is something permanent about painting, which ensures that principally it does not change. Rather than a reason for its demise it is the reason for its survival, in the past, present and future.

The specific notion I want to look at is the history of painters who explore, without contradiction, paints ability to reference a range of things. Paint as a mimetic tool, a self referential and decorative substance, an expressive medium and a symbolic spiritual signifier.

When considering paint as a mimetic tool people still seem to buy into the Vasarian doctrine. Without traipsing over old ground Vasari states that Design, as a masculine and intellectual facet of the arts’ it’s the solid base of a painters profession. Colour (paint) is seen as the final decoration of the solid linear design. As such the paint itself is not, according to the ‘gospel’ where the image is found.

The Venetians are credited with being the school which moved away from this. It has been cited as a revolution brought about by the conditions of their practise. The geography of Venice meant Oil paint on Canvas became the norm. From here artists like Bellini and particularly Giorgione moved towards a new mode of practise in finding image. They seem to have moved in a direction suggested previously by the writings of Da Vinci. It would be interesting to know if there was any awareness of his theoretical and occasionally practical precedent.

Before trying to deal with the exact evolution it is important to realise the restrictive nature of a discussion of this kind. To reduce the History of art down to this polemical dichotomy is makes things easier to understand but is ultimately false. There was a clear Central Italian Venetian divide, and it was evident in both the work and the theorists. For Central Italy read Desegno and for Venice read Colorito. (The verb to colour not the word colour. The difference between the locations is not a case of colour but a case of process, with premeditated design being one and the discovery through application the other) However singular Vasari is it is clear the divide is less black and white then he makes out. Even Michelangelo, Vasari’s demi god, shows a kind of painterly appreciation in his late drawings and sculpture. In his unfinished sculpture we see he actually tackling the stone, searching for the figure from it’s very substance. He speaks eloquently about it in his poetry (if my memory serves me correctly). In his late Crucifixion drawings the pencil seems to continuously follow the body of Christ in some kind of hypnotic hymn. He seems to search for the form in some meditative process. I digress but merely to stress any generalisations are inappropriate. It perhaps enhances the fact that all, even the most clearly design based of artists follow a mimetic process which succeeds because of rather than in spite of the medium.

Back to Titian…Of the painters who I am fascinated by Titian is the first who I would call truly painterly. It is from this tradition that I have pretensions of following, a kind of permanent history of people interested in the same mimetic philosophy. For Titian, as for those who follow, the form is found from the medium itself, rather than form constraining the medium; it a case of priorities. We associate this aspect of Titian to his late career, but it is in evidence very early on. In his ‘Concert Champetre’ 1509-11 (often attributed to Giorgione, incorrectly I believe) the glass jar held by the nude on the left is evoked with a couple of dashes and a wash of translucent paint. These marks are all that is needed to give an impressive sense of solidity and transparency. It is an economy of means which he would spend the rest of his career developing and perfecting.

For me Titians process reaches its peak in his evocation of flesh. Whilst many of the clichés with Titian are obtuse the fact he delighted in flesh and its evocation holds true. As we move throughout his career there is a tendency towards the destruction of plastic solidity. Under drawing becomes progressively more schematic, edges become less defined, atmosphere and form begin to coexist. In his uncompleted epitaph ‘Pieta’ 1570’s we see the body of Christ constructed from a series of broken brush strokes. Form seems on the verge of breaking into light and light and substance seem to transmute into form in front of our eyes. It is a gradually less descriptive and more poetic approach.

Titian delights in the very properties of the medium and their ability to stand for the alluded form, texture and image. The oily sensuous properties of oil paint are delighted in, used to convey the comparable qualities of flesh. The physicality and tactile nature of the substance is celebrated in a fleshy delight. Paint is pulled around, the surface caressed; the act seems to be actively searching for the moment resolution is found. In the final works the paint does not just seem to stand with paint but seems alive, fulfil the classic miraculous anecdote that his paintings only lacked breathe. This feeling is create4d by the way colouristic and textural vibrations are created through and across the multiple layers of paint. It creates a sense that the flesh is breathing, moving, alive. The sense of life is found in the paint itself and its very application.

Similar sentiments could be applied to a history of artists who seem to have directly spawned from the Venetian master. Rubens is a direct descendant, actively copying numerous Titians, absorbing his techniques through osmosis. Then follows Velasquez, Rembrandt, Reynolds, Goya, Delacroix, Courbet, Manet, Turner, Rothko, De Kooning, Aurbach, and more recently I spoke at length in my dissertation about Brian Graham being one of many current painters who continue from this past.

I have a real desire to follow this path and be able to find image and form in the process. To find that moment when the medium shifts and becomes form. I believe there are aspects of ‘Image and Form, a prelude’ where I am moving in the right direction.

Beyond Mimetic ends artists have long celebrated paint for various other meanings. The most obvious, to eyes trained on 20th Century painting, of these features is the self referential and decorative. The kind of features we normally associate primarily to ‘abstraction’. There seems to be no need to discuss the lists of 20th Century artists who celebrated the decorating of the flat canvas. My point here is to demonstrate aspects of painting which are permanent and which are not necessarily normally attributed to artists of a certain period. What I want to consider is the range of artists before abstraction who had a clear fascination with the spreading of colour on a two dimensional support, artists for whom that was a key ingredient, in its own rights, in the process. It is of course natural that it should be. All painters take a colour substance and push it onto a flat surface, thus all painters instinctively must take some delight in this actual process and its results, in the manner in which substance and colour hold to, sit on and play off the support. This is not and cannot be a delight only held by artists after 1900.

Again (due to lack of comprehensive knowledge) I will begin my discussion with the Venetians of the 16th Century. The context of the Venetians interest in the paint for its own merits is obviously tied up in the same conditions of practise and approach to their art that formed my discussion of Titians mimetic process. This is the crux of my blog; that for these artists meaning was found in the medium itself.

Titians fascination with the paint itself and its decorative properties is clear in his use of colour and medium. Throughout his career he shows awareness for the decoration of colour over the surface. Consider his ‘Assumption’, that great spread of red. It has a clear dramatic narrative aim; it is the theatrical device which takes our eye from the profane robes of the apostles through the rising Mary and up to god the father. In dragging our eye up the verticality of the mammoth work it replicate her dynamic ‘Assumption.’ Whilst its intention is for a narrative end it shows an acute awareness and celebration of colour on the surface.

In Titians later work the very presence of paint begins to be celebrated in a proto impressionistic manner. This is a common thread in all the painters I discuss. As we move forward in time they feel more and more liberated and happy to fully reveal the medium.

Out of all the artists I can think of it is perhaps Veronesse and then Delacroix who seem to move noticeably foresee the picturesque brilliance of the impressionists. In Veronesse’s work colour seems to be systematically placed across the surface. He seems to unite his various warm and colds and lights and darks and then almost like a composer ensure that they are scattered evenly across the surface. It is far more subtle and sophisticated than this crass explanation describes.

Delacroix, due to his time, is able to take a similar advance further. It is known he was thinking of artists like Veronesse when he made his breakthroughs. One of the big moments for Delacroix was his trip to Morocco. There the intense light made him realise how shadows and blacks in general, were filled with colour. He started to see the complementary of the local colour in its shadow. In works like ‘Women of Algiers’ we begin to see him break colour across the surface, to detach it from its contours. There are numerous great examples of how he does this more precisely, but with Lee Johnson already having described it so beautifully in his small book I feel no need to repeat with a far superior use of words.

What most interests me about these artists, and other similar ones, is what I consider to be a musical use of paint. They seem to user the substance and colour in such a way as to create rhythms, melodies and harmonies across the surface, each individual part like an instrument in an orchestral production. It reaches its peak when Monet is at his best but still reverberates in Rothko and Pollock and even Ian Davenport, each of who play very different tunes.

It is something I have consciously been trying to do since returning to painting. Rather than get lost in romantic notions of the creative process I have approached this task a bit more scientifically. I have begun to think carefully about colour. To take a mid colour and then move that colour in two directions, warmer and colder, darker and lighter. The two resulting colours I then use across the surface, depending of course on the particular nature of the painting in hand. What it ensures is a certain unity. You have parallel opposites if you like, where by your two poles are united by the same base colour.

The manner, in which you apply, density, pressure, texture, variety, size all affects the musical experience. What I have realised is that I am not the musician. I am the conductor or even the composer. You don’t paint at a certain speed in some contrived notion that that we create a certain rhythm. You have to place your notes (colour) and beats (paint) in a construction which then allows the eye to play them. Harmony, tension, speed can all be conveyed by an almost mathematical application. All of these elements are obviously used to support, if successful, the central narrative or subject. Yet the fact is, like with pure abstraction, they have autonomy, they celebrate themselves as well as looking beyond themselves for some other end. The harmonising of this autonomous end to the mediums other referents is something I will tackle at the end of this blog. For that, ultimately, is the moment of real success. When you can harmonise separate melodies.

At this moment in time I have been finding a real pleasure in certain brown (burnt umber) where you can add say Colbalt blue to create your grey and lemon yellow to create your warm glowing orange. These seem to sit with such balance next to each other, creating a real vibration across and through the surface.

If I am honest colour is something I have not paid enough attention to in the past. Discussion with Andy and the Howard Hodgkin exhibition seem to have made me realise its importance and to think more carefully about its use.

The discussion so far has focussed on the two most obvious facets of the mediums character, self referential and mimetic. Beyond these paint can be used as a highly expressive tool. This reaches deeper and further than some clichéd notions of expressionism. Painters have always been aware of colour, touch and surface as vital tools in striking an emotive note.

In order to avoid the crass generalisations I have already moved towards I will just provide two brief examples of two pre 20th Century painters who understood the emotive powers of the medium. What I hope to prove is that for these artists meaning could be found in the medium itself. Renaissance artists, for instance, were not merely limited to figural dynamics in order to be expressive.

Titian in ‘Tarquin and Lucretia’ 1572.

The painting is a scene of unimaginable horror which induces an intense emotive response. One of the many contributors to its effect is style. The erotic fleshy seductiveness of Lucretia’s flesh is an essential ingredient. It is what causes Tarquin to commit the heinous crime and its eroticism is what draws us into the intensity of the drama. It is the seed to the internal drama and our external response.

Colour and stroke are harnessed to evoke the terror. The violent and dramatic reds of Tarquin’s socks, the sexually charged violence of the purple loins and their broad handling, the splintered proto Pollock splattering which make up his top and speak of uncontrolled violence. The manner in which the dash of white not only evokes the knife but seems to capture the suddenness of its motion, almost as if its action repeats itself to the viewer. The manner in which Lucretia’s jewellery on her left wrist is juxtaposed to her hand, one solid and detailed the other soft and seemingly ephemeral, grasping in space in her tragically futile attempt to hold Tarquin back .

The human drama, the pure emotion is captured through the very medium itself.

Dealcroix’s ‘Death of Sardanapalus’ 1827

This painting retells Byron’s story of Sardanaplus, one of gross megalomania. Sardanapalus is determined to outlive all his possessions, including slaves and mistresses. With his impending death he orders all his possessions to be destroyed whilst he watches on.

In painting story needs to be told in one instance, across space, not with word over line. Sometimes a pictorial statement can be found to equate to a whole scene. In this case Dealcroix uses colour and line to evoke the chaos of the event. We see a scene which has been titled up to the surface. A mass of sensuous curves mount chemically across and up the surface, towards the apex where the cause of the mayhem is a spectator in a relaxed pose. Line has been destabilised and is no longer purely a mimetic signifier. The rhythm of line across the surface creates a Rubenesque form and energy which is continued by a similar musical use of colour, reds pouring in and out of the various curving shapes. What is evoked is the sense of chaos that is central to the pictures subject, one of uncontrolled, selfish meglomanic and material destruction. Yet it is still ordered. Compare it to the sketch and you can see the liens have been filtered, contained and controlled within a system.

Elsewhere Delacroix uses paint in a variety of ways in various works to creates various moods. He is fully aware of its sensuous qualities, of its range and ability to convey various emotions, from the calm, to chaotic, the melancholic, the brutal fight, longing and loss.

In this sense Delacroix and Titian are not unique. Many other artists, for many centuries, have used paint to evoke the emotive. Consider Rembrandt’s self portraits. In the very medium he seems to have found the weight of humanity. It is as if the multiple layers of paint and skin also contain time. As if the literal layering of paint equates to the implied age of the skin and the artist. The medium seems to have a philosophical weight which weighs heavy on the viewers mind.

This brings me neatly onto another use of paint. Paint as a symbolic form. The most obvious abstract symbolism in paint is when paint stands for light and that light stands for some spiritual being or notion. I am not talking about when an artist equates a localised colour with light, using say a bright yellow to represent a celestial realm. Whilst effective this is merely a poetic metaphor, one thing standing for another, a kind colouristic iconography which we understand due to our knowledge of past paintings.

What I am interested in when artists seem to be capable of actually imbuing the medium with real light. Titian does it in his later works (San Salvador Annunciation, Pieta, the later Crowning with Thorns and various other works) but Rembrandt is perhaps the supreme master of this particular craft. Consider his self portrait in the National Gallery.

The skin is made up of a series of impasto layers of paint. Over this translucent glazes of vibrating hues are laid over. The mechanics of paint are harnessed to create a self reflexive light. Light pierces the skin of paint and some is absorbed, some refracted and some reflected. What is created is a warm glow which comes from within and behind the painting. This is light beyond illusion, beyond metaphor. The significance is critical as the spiritual signification is far more potent and intense. It is exactly the root cause of the sense of the spiritual, of otherness, of the mystical and the possibility of transcendence opened up by a later artist such as Rothko.

I want to conclude by reminding myself what the point of this sprawling waffle was. I wanted to prove that singular histories have no place. The reality is always more faceted and fragmented than that.

I want to go back to Titian one more time and consider a particular painting and its reception in its original context, in part to prove my waffle has not totally been the projection of Modernist thinking.

Vasari spoke specifically about Titian’s late work and in particular the poesie for Phillip II of Spain. One of these works is the masterpiece, ‘Rape of Europe’ c1862

Vasari talks about Titians style in depth. He describes how from up close we cannot fully make out the image but when we stand back the forms come into complete vision. This confirms the two fold nature of Titian’s painting and shows how such a fascination is not the privilege of a post Greenbergian practitioner.

Up close we delight in many aspects of the open brushwork. The surface as a whole presents itself to us, the relationship between the rough weave, thin translucent layers and impasto layers of paint built up at different speed and finish. We delight in the abstract qualities of medium decorating the support.
The fish on which the Cupid is riding: The manner and variety of application, from thin to thick and how it equates to the alluded image. A thin glossy wash, the last layer, is seen as paint yet reads convincingly as the slippery skin of the fish.

Our eyes are attracted to Europe’s body, but to flesh not figure, to surface not image. The layered surface has a memory as is evidence to the multiple visits of the artists Boschini spoke about. In these layers we get a sense of the various speeds of the hands, the brush and fingers pushing the fluid paint around the dense surface. Our eye delights and caresses, like Titians hand, in the seductive nature of paint and flesh, the two virtually inseparable. In the open brushwork we see the organic nature of the process, where paint metamorphosis into flesh. The relationship between matter and form is revealed to us.

This journey continues as we stand back from the canvas.

Up close we were united in the search, standing back we, like Titian, discover the moment of transmutation. Matter becomes form and form becomes image, set in three dimensional space. The fluid marks unite to form Europa’s solid form. New sensations take over, poetic feelings of fear, danger and drama.

We are actively involved in the dynamics of viewing, which are linked directly to the mechanics of production. (One the cause of the object the other its effect). We become aware of the two fold nature between surface and image. There are two time signature. The self reflexive melody of the process and the implied narrative. The later is told through time and space. Moving from left to right and background to foreground we see Europa’s journey, from safe land to threatened and unbalanced position, heading across and perhaps out of the frame.

Titian, the composer, unites the two time signatures, two melodies harmonised.

Titian is the pinnacle of a history which was supposed to work singularly towards space and distance beyond the canvas. Yet here we show how at the same time he was aware of and celebrated the surface itself. The predicament of the Alberttian window was as complex for Titian as it is for a painter today. Never has it been singular.

The same is true when we get to the end of the opposing monolithic theory in the History of Art. Greenberg spoke about a clealr move towards flatness, and Pollock was supposed to be the pinnacle of this. Yet look at one of his great works such as ‘Lavender Mist, No 1’. They play on a spatial dichotomy. This goes against the notion of him as the icon of a high Modernism which espouses a dogmatic and singular aesthetic of flatness. In ‘Lavender Mist, No 1’ (Fig. 23) the rhythmical drips do create a sense of interlocking pattern dancing over the surface, celebrating its flatness. Equally, however, the lines create a web-like matrix which seems to pulse through the plane of the canvas. The series of lines are in a constant discussion between surface decoration and depth.

This I hope illustrates my point. For anyone whoever picked up a brush, filled it with a coloured medium and spread it across a flat surface the ability for that combination to have a large range of significations was open to them. The semiotics of paint is something which has fascinated every painter and will continue, above and beyond gimmickry, to do so.

Without wishing to repeat myself I wanted to consider my intentions in the continuing Danae series. I have been working on designs explicitly based on Titian’s Danae paintings for a year now. In the last month they have translated form digital designs to painted form. One is complete and another is on its way. I thought it worth trying to articulate my aims with this particular ‘crop’ of work.

I am interested in both the pose and the subject matter of Titian’s work. As is often the case he drew his inspiration from an Ovidian source. The story of Danae appeals to my sensibilities as it is one of love, sex and ultimately death, the key ingredients of human tragedy. The Greek myth stats that Danae’s father (King Acrisius of Argos) was keen for a male heir. The tragic seed is planted by his inquisition of an oracle who confirmed he would have a grandson but that his grandson would kill him. (Proto King Lear in the kind of tragedy) In order to stop this happening he looked Danae up in a bronze tower.

Whilst in the tower Zeus took a fancy to Danae. He transmuted into a golden shower and entered through the window, thus impregnating her. This is the scene which Titian and Rembrandt showed and is the scene I am interested in. The moment in which form melts into light, the coming together of two realms- almost a metaphor for the experience of creating and viewing a painting. A painter is only given one moment and as the dramatic crux of the story this is the moment to select. This does not mean, however, that reference cannot be given to the scenes wider narrative context.

In Titian’s painting (Particularly the versions with the old nurse rather than Cupid) there is a definite dark foreboding air beneath the scene of celestial lust. It is this which I want to borrow and exaggerate. I want a moment of conception which is as sensuous as it is dark. Whilst I have borrowed explicitly from Titians figure I have looked to push other things in another direction. In my first effort I worked out the composition in a square format. I thought this would give the image more the feeling of a dramatic statement than a view into a boxed, voyeuristic stage.

It is my later (currently unfinished) work which I am happier with in construction. The format has moved from Titian horizontal rectangle to a vertical one. I hope this exaggerates the downward motion from the light above to the form below. I believe the space and shape of a canvas can be used to create a visual dynamic. Danae’s position in the bottom half of a taller rectangle should provide the means to dramatise the lustful moment.

Beyond this I wanted a sense of the sinister. The notion that the moment of lust ensures the inevitable death of her father is something which fascinates me. It is as if some unseen force of nature is at work. Call it fate, divine intervention, the zeitgeist or whatever you want. For me this is what the crow can symbolise. I think it is similar to the Crow’s symbol in Ted Hughes’s poem. As some creature which governs all humanity, whose every action has some chaos theory ramification. I see the crow as a post god controller of humanity, capable of flying through space and time. For me he is the protagonist of tragedy. Is he the antithesis of Cupid or perhaps Cupid himself in his true form, the planter of tragic seeds?

My desire is to have a sense of the crow in the painting. Not a graphic reference but a sense of otherness, a sense of a mystical form which occupies or passes through the space, which appears to be the conductor to the paused theatre. I like the idea that he kicks of a succession of events then leaves and lets havoc break lose. The notion of being disguised as Cupid is due to a belief that the succession of events he causes are ultimately tragic in that they start of with happiness of love but have an inevitability of death and depression in them.

The Crow is therefore a reference to the sense of Shakespearian tragedy I want in this painting. Firstly the right hand side of the painting has a curtain. Obviously not at all original but it gives the feeling of a stage, as well as framing one edge of the painting. This creates a stage like feel, we become the spectator and what’s more it creates a closed door on one side of the painting which suggests the other is open. I have placed him centre right. He is moving from right to left, as if exiting the stage. It is if he has some, planted the narrative seed, then left. (With only one moment, and the inability to show successive events, I believe this is very much the painter’s role, to plant the narrative seed then leave. So in this sense the crow becomes self reflexive with the painter being the unseen force, the demi god of his own worlds; self loving or what?!?!) I believe that placing the crow central with a horizontal dynamic creates a dichotomy between the central act and this supporting role. The verticality of the divine union is countered by the horizontality of the protagonist’s action and exit. A play on such spatial concerns is of course time old. Just think of the cross, the horizontal being the earth and the vertical being the move through the earth from a profane to sacred realm. The physiological tension of such dynamics only works by having one play off against the other. What is created is a dialogue between the two in which meaning can be found. In this case the vertical is the moment of lust, the moment of conception. The horizontal is both the cause and the effect. The crow as the protagonist which flutters and pulls the curtain back to start the chain of events and the knowing being which moves through time to ensure the act concludes with the fulfilment of the fatal premonition.

Thanks must go out to Bridget Riley and her book of interviews and essays for supplying much of the information and insight through which this little piece has developed. I am also perhaps jumping into deep water tackling this particular subject seeing as Tom has devoted much of the last 2 years studying paintings from this era, so don’t expect anything too spectacular.

Ok, so it is a slight exaggeration to suggest this was the first work which dealt with painting and its inherent plasticity, you only have to look at Giotto and his forebearers to understand that they were dealing with a series of flattened surfaces inherently plastic in their nature. However if we study Bacchus and Ariadne there are many formal devices which are particularly useful for painters studying their art today, as artists who are acutely aware of paintings falsities, its realities, its strengths and perhaps most importantly its limitations.

The painting is shocking even today, when we are so accustomed to shock as a tactic with which one can briefly capture a viewers attention, so how is this work shocking and how does it endure, even with our saturated senses. The prime reason appears to be the sheer volume of blue, “and what a blue!” Painters from antiquity avoided using such a large proportion of deep blue because it threatens to destabalize the coherence of a piece. Yet Titian uses it with such apparent abandon and he doesn’t attempt to integrate the blue with hues of similar intensity, which would be the choice taken by many lesser painters. Apart from some of the reds the rest of the tints are incredibly soft. Titian ties the blue to the rest of the image by the force of his narrative and the dramatic interaction between the characters, in fact he uses the overpowering nature of the blue as the kick-start to the whole story and it is perhaps apt that something as abstract as the colour of the sky is the beginning to this particular narrative, which takes place over the matter of instants. A pace which compliments the explosive, exhuberence of the story unfolding.

Titian is often known as the most Shakesperean of painters, so much attention to detail is placed on the subtleties that underscore the individuals humanistic behaviour, however, i think it is safe to assume that Bacchus… is not one of the paintings where sublety takes precedence, the characters appear more like actors on a stage, precisely because they are working to win over the viewers attention from the saturating blue, which in turn is flattening the space and creating a staged effect. The combined effort of the characters produces explosive diagonals, from the blue through Bacchus to the man wrestling snakes, and again an opposing diagonal using bacchus with his red cloak to point the way towards Ariadne with her red scarf, who seems to exist in a space all of her own, in realtive calm away from the troup on the right.

James is one of a few people to have asked me about the sources to my recent paintings. In there intial photoshop form and final painterly outcome there are certain quotations that could be close to pastiche. In certain works, Danae for instance, the quotation is clear and there is not intention to hide it. The figure and subject draws explicitally from Titians Danae series. I do believe though that in this instance I am trying to approach the issue from a slightly new position, as a 21st century young english painter, not a 16th Century Venetian artist. (I hope that sentence does not make it seem that I am comparing my little sketchy efforts to the supreme powers of Titian. I believe i am interested in a slightly darker and more tragic drama. I am also interested in pushing the figure towards abstraction. This menas the form can be manipulated and in this instance I like the notion of Danae’s body become a curved container which catches the shower of light. This has obvious sexualised resonance with the story. I could be wrong and works such as this are obviouly coming very close to touch kitche.

My image and form series do not draw explicitally from any source in terms of either the figure or the subjectg matter. This is partly due to a slight lack of specific subject matter. They do show a fondness to the figures of mr O’donohugh but the quote is indirect.

The Icarus painting draws from no visual sources. Form the classical myth and from Ted Hughes Crow. Both these have been filtered through my own vain attempt to tackle the subject in a poem. Visually, however, the figure is entirely mine. Although it does draw on certain religious precedents.

The Adonis in the river lethe work. Unfinished and still not uploaded, draws purposelly form its source. That is infact where its meaning comes. The poem, written a few blogs back, looks to construct a story of Venus and Adonis, looking back to Titians work (whichdraws from Ovid) and again Ted Hughes crow with a nod to the kind of tragedy Shakespeare was a master of. The figure of Adonis is derivved from the grasp of Venus in Titians painting. Inthis case I fully dismiss any quotation as being kitche. I have purposelly drawn from this source to strike, hopefully, a emotive note. By remembering (in death) the now absent Venus and her visual plee for his love, the tragic nature of his death is hopefully reinforced. It is a vain attempt to try and collapse the causal plot of the story into one unified dramatic statment. perhaps it does not work, but the borrowing is not derivative.

The above image is the start of the painting. I have put it up here in its fresh form to help illustrate the point.

In some cases the borrowing goes through a considered process. I was keen to borro from Titian the pose of Lucretia in Tarquin and Lucreta. The painting and the horror of the subject matter fascinate me. I am keen, however, to convey a more detached, more generalised sense of horror. Some more unknown and less specific. Her pose to me conveys a particualr type of horrow. I thought if that was removed from the context of Tarquins attack then it could stil hold weight. I pushed this notion through an organic process in photoshop, to create a design. The result is a mere design for a possible paitning. (which will hopefully be better if compelted) She is now grabbing at fresh air, grasping at darkness. I have yet decide how far this could be pushed and still think it is a bit derivative. I thought it useful to demonstrate in one instance, however, the particular process gone through from source to potential outcome.

These examples show that I am struggling with my borrowings. Two years of an intense Art History course had its impact. Being immersed in the works of so many greats i have naturally been keen to use what i have learnt. It is natural that to start with I will be a bit too attached. I hope that I can prove the borrowings are not hierachical though. It is not some excercise to boost at Art historical knowledge. Iwould be just as happy to borrow from the internet, real life, newspapers and magazines in the search to convey a particualr visual outcome. I do belive that direct observation of the figure is a root i need to coniute to pursue. I will, however, be conintuing to look directly at previous artistic solutions and borrowing poses and figures without concern. We only need to look at the work of Titian, where virutally every painting quotes some precedent (often Michelangelo.) In our postmodern, semiological aware era we should realise that we can take something and byremving it from its original context into a new one give it new meaning. Nothing is of bounds and its use, however, direct, can avoid the ktiche if its final intention is different to that seen in the original. This is obviously a dangerous line to walk at times. I hope as I develop in the next few mothns that people will see I am after more than mere self aggrandising nods to past and present ‘masters’.