An interesting quirk came up during further readings into Nordic Art. Eilif Peterssen did his amazing Summer Night painting in 1886. (Those of us who attended A Mirror of Nature: Nordic Landscape Painting 1840-1910 at the Minneapolis Institute of Art (MIA) will remember this piece.) It is good. It is phenomenal. It is deemed by Art Historians (who know such things) to be the standout work of the Evocative Period of Nordic Art. It's on the cover of the exhibit catalogue, on the Oslo Museum's home-page, and it is well-regarded on the web. An amazing landscape...
...yet this masterpiece was not enough for painter Eilif Peterssen. Imagine him smoking a gitane, beret askew as he leans over the half-empty glass at the bar, contemplating, What next?... What next?...What could I possibly paint next? -- Another absinthe, barkeep!" For how does a creative individual surpass a personal best?
The creative individual, in this case, returned to the scene. This is what he painted next, Nocturne.
Eilif Peterssen, Nocturne, 1887(I couldn't find a color image)
What a ... tone-deaf... image. Put it over a bar somewhere and raise a glass to the maiden every time you say, "Bottoms up!"
Why did Eilif do this?
Torsten Gunnarsson (cited in the book you bought this summer, Kate) thinks it's because Eilif read his own reviews, specifically, a positive review the critic Andreas Aubert wrote for the 1886 autumn exhibition of Summer Night. Aubert said that the strong realism in Summer Night made the spectator feel he could "go in and rest his arm on the tree-trunk, lean his head against his hand and stare down into the depth, lost in the wakening dream of the night."
So Eilif read that, and that's exactly what Eilif painted, 'cepting his model forgot to put any clothes on.
And I find all of this compelling because Summer Night works - it is sublime - the viewer feels the immediacy of the moment - filling in the given nouns with adjectives (cold water, wet grass, moist odors) from personal experience. And I agree with Aubert ~ I want to "rest on the tree-trunk, lean [my] head against [my] hand and stare down into the depth."
But where Peterssen has painted exactly that, we get a dud. While Nocturne is sumptuous, it is also over-the-top Victoriana, an image that totally misses the point from the 21st c. perspective (cf. "Bottoms up!") The viewer has been pushed aside by the nymph - so she gets the view and we get the backside. The plane of the painting is in the immediate foreground - one doesn't see past the foreground, past the nymph, essentially neutralizing the backdrop. So here we're experiencing someone else looking at a landscape, not the landscape itself. What matters is what she sees in the landscape, not what we find there. How very ... very... Victorian.
Or not.
Amy says I should call this an eSsay, as it's more than a casual comment (and online). Maybe, but I don't mean to be lecturing anyone. I am struck by the difference between the two paintings, and why they evoke such different responses (evocation in one, laughter in the other) and I thought you might be too.
-- Andrew
PS. The repositioning of the moon is an interesting visual necessity. He couldn't leave it next to the young woman's bottom - so where to put it? The final location seems off, but I can see no other place to put it.
PS2. I wonder if Eilif suffered the painterly equivalent of Writers Block. Don't know what to paint? Let someone else tell you what to daub and throw in a naked woman for variety.
PS3. Go in and rest his arm on the tree-trunk, lean his head against his hand and stare down into the depth, lost in the wakening dream of the night: "Gå in och vila hans arm på det träd - trädstam , mager hans huvud emot hans hand och stirra ned i djupen , förlorad inne den wakening dröm om natt."
4 comments:
How really interesting, Andrew. I remember this picture mainly because it reminded me of the island - it's the ideal type Northern wilderness landscape.
But you're completely right that the naked lady ruins the whole. I like your point about the position of the observer in the picture and how the landscape gets lost once you put a fleshy Victorian bottom in the foreground.
The other thing that's missing is the dead birch that has fallen in the water in the first picture. There is something evocative about that birch and I think it is what saves the first picture from being idealized -- makes it recognizably a real landscape.
By taking the tree out and putting the figure in, it becomes unreal and not very interesting.
btw. Would that be Homo Dommus?
Yeah, I thought about "Homo Dommus" but the household is weird enough as it is, I didn't want to raise further questions. Not that anyone reading this blog would wonder.
Anyway, wouldn't "Homo Dommus" be "Man House", rather than "Man Of The House"? Is there a Latin-speaker on the blog who knows the possessive in Latin?
I found it fascinating, Andrew! It was so interesting to see how the artist changed the image--take away the birch, add irises, naked lady. I loved the original painting, but scarcely looked at the second.
I hope you will put up other art musings from time to time.
the bride, sybbrig, I believe what you are looking for is "homo domi." "Man" is in the nominative case; "of the house" is genitive singular.
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