An
ordered vision of the world
Isabelle Frank
Can artistic representation tell us
something about an artist’s relation to the external world? Does the
development of Renaissance perspective, for instance, reflect the artists’
unconscious desire for an ordered world, while the Mannerists’ subversions
of order signal, instead, a new mastery of chaotic nature? These
questions, which lie at the heart of Echopolyglot’s current issue, have
fascinated historians such as Jacob Burckhard since the nineteenth
century. In his famous The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy,
Burckhardt tied the artistic and political achievements of Renaissance
rulers to their psychological sense of themselves as active forces within
their historical periods.
A few decades later, art historians such as Alois Riegl and Heinrich
Wölfflin posited direct relations between artistic styles and the artists’
cultural, psychological responses to the external world.
In their most radical form, as published in Wilhelm Worringer’s
Abstraction and Empathy, for instance, such theories held that periods of
abstract, less realistic, art reflected society’s confident relation to
the natural world, while periods of more ordered realism stemmed from a
fear of a threatening universe.
These historians
attempted to “read” visual forms as symptoms of shared cultural beliefs,
or Weltanschauung, buried beneath the external political, religious, or
social content of the art. And as they “read” visual forms (in a Hegelian
mode) they also attempted to classify them into two alternating, universal
styles, be it naturalism and abstraction (Worringer), haptic and optic (Riegl),
or painterly and linear (Wölfflin).
In our modern, or
postmodern epoch, we have moved away from overarching historical and
psychological readings of artistic styles, just as we have discarded
bipolar, categories of stylistic classification. Nonetheless art, like
all human artifacts, contains traces of the maker’s culture in both its
content and its formal characteristics. Thus the challenge for art
historians today is how to acknowledge an artist’s creative innovations,
place them within a historical period, while resisting the urge to tie
both to a larger spiritual or national quest.
The challenge for
contemporary artists is of another kind. In an environment already
saturated with a dizzying array of images, artists are expected to respond
to these in a deliberate and self-conscious manner. Artists even offer
analyses of their own work, through accompanying texts and interviews, in
order to control how their art is interpreted in relation to the social,
political, economic, and psychological meanings of these background
images. In effect, practicing artists are confronted with two options:
that of taking on the external world in their work, with its plethora of
visual information, or of withdrawing into personal reflections on art and
creativity.
The American artist
Laura McPhee and the French artist Edouard Nono have both opted for a
third possibility, that of bridging these seemingly separate paths. In
their recent work each artist uses photography to explore larger issues of
identity, history, and environment, within detailed, almost minituaristic,
representations part of whose content is the artistic process itself.
That both have chosen photography as their vehicle (and that I am focusing
on two photographers) is not by chance. Photography is a schizophrenic
medium, capable of documenting the “real” while simultaneously creating
fantastic, illusory visions; photographs are both scientific tools and
artistic productions, mystifying the viewer with a veneer of impersonal
accuracy. The technique of photography strengthens its claims to veracity,
not only by banishing human traces from the finished product but also by
hiding the artistic persona—the eye—behind the lens, as it selectively
transforms the future object of our gaze. For these reasons, the medium
of photography is uniquely situated to explore the nature of artistic
representation in our digitalized society.
The disparate
approaches of the two artists also help to reveal the breadth of the
photographic medium. In her views of India and Sri Lanka, Laura McPhee
transforms travel photography into a reflection on human history,
geography, intimacy, identity, and absence. (http://www.lauramcphee.com/)
And with a gesture to botany, Edouard Nono reveals the unfamiliar beauty
of the natural microcosm in his monumental images of plant fragments.
Despite their different subjects, both artists avoid figural
representation in a major portion of their work. The double-edged power
of photography emerges through their formal and aesthetic choices which
challenge the conventions of traditional photographic genres (be it
botanical studies, still-lives, interiors, or even portraiture). Finally,
both exploit the structure, composition, and infinite detail of the
photographic medium to elicit a sense both of intimacy and detachment in
their statuesque still-lives.
To appreciate fully
the artistic creativity behind McPhee’s ethnographic or documentary
images, one must first acknowledge her careful visual strategies. For
one, she separates animate from inanimate content by presenting, on the
one hand, Calcutta interiors devoid of inhabitants and, on the other, tea-pluckers
in Sri Lanka posed against abstract, magisterial landscapes. The
composition of both the interiors and the portraits reflects formal poses,
arranged settings, and chosen perspective. These large-scale documentary
images are achieved through long exposures, whose minutiae of detail
create an illusion of what we would see, or better what we should see,
had we photographic rather than human eyes.
What we do see in The
Meat Range, New Market, Calcutta 1998, reveals itself only after careful
looking. Carcasses of meat dangle above wooden stalls, posed at a slight
angle to the viewer; the stalls recede back in seemingly infinite
regression within a covered nineteenth-century market girded by iron
columns and arches. The market is empty, the stalls covered, and the meat
wares apparently abandoned for a pause or a break. A large yellow sign
dominates the image, giving thanks to Allah in at least 4 different
languages, including English. Below it dangle many sections of meat on
parallel metal hooks, whose formation reflects that of the original
animal—with the rump section still flaunting an impressive tail. Slightly
more to the left hang even larger pieces of carcass interspersed among the
strong vertical lines of the columns.
The Meat Range’s
sharply defined details, trapped within the hyper clarity of the
photographic surface, demand close inspection. As we scan the image a
familiar face suddenly emerges, that of Steffie Graff, on a torn newspaper
image pinned to one of the vertical shafts next to a light bulb. Off to
the left, colored tinsel garlands decorate another meat stall evoking
perhaps, for Americans, left-over Christmas decorations. Hindu posters
appear on some other walls. As one moves from the foreground into the
background obscurity, one discerns other wares left on stalls, presumably
cuts of meat as in the front. And yet, with shock, one recognizes a human
leg and foot between two large animal carcasses. A sleeping figure, whose
leg is covered by textile, lies buried within the image. But even this
human figure is an unconscious fragment, as oblivious to its external
surroundings as the animal forms hanging above. In the hands of another
artist the contrast between the partial sleeping figure and the meat
carcasses would become the raison d’être of the photograph, as would its
unequivocal social, human, and political meanings. For McPhee, this
chance intrusion is simply one of the many narrative threads running
through her textured image, thereby defying easy classification. Neither
documentary nor travel photography, these images lightly touch upon the
traditional themes of familiar versus exotic, religious versus secular,
West versus East, poor versus rich, endowing them with original poignancy
and beauty.
McPhee’s other
interior settings are similarly discreet, layered, and visually
overpowering. Deserted rooms and almost-classical courtyards beckon with
the allure of the private and the hidden. We are, as it were, surrounded
by decaying spaces, once opulent centers of British style mansions. As
remnants of this colonial past, the rooms are also historical sets, frozen
in time, with their walls of ancestral portraits, satin couches,
chandeliers, bookcases, and mirrors. Some bedrooms, with peeling walls,
or a torn canvas painting, appear almost abandoned, though a bed or couch
signals the contrary. And like museum period rooms, these have no
disturbing signs of life—the textile surfaces are smooth and taught, the
spaces sparsely furnished, the furniture bare of papers, knick-knacks, and
ephemeral objects.
As on a set, we are
never truly invited into the interiors, but kept back by the flat plane of
the image itself, often parallel to the plane of the room. Khelat Hall,
North Calcutta, India, 2001, for instance, offers a perfect cross section
of a two-storey trabeated courtyard. Heavy columns, with peeling red
plaster and stylized capitals, support a double layered cornice. We could
be in a Roman palazzo, but for the strange arch on the right, sporting an
Islamic, pointed, ornamental arch. Although inside the courtyard, we are
also floating above it, as indicated by the absence of any ground. The
artist and camera are perhaps perched on the opposite ledge in order to
frame the architecture perfectly within the camera, eliminating evidence
of the viewer’s physical support.
The illumination and
the long exposures enhance the timeless quality of these architectural
settings, bringing out the shifting colors of the walls, textile, stone,
and carved ornament. In a stunning view of a store, colorful fabrics
displayed in the vitrine are framed by signs advertising Banaras, Stoles,
Sarees, as well as Kimonos and Pyjama, reminding us both of continuities
and disjunctures between the past and the present. We wonder where the
inhabitants and shoppers have gone, and who could even dwell in these
immobile interiors, caught between eras, civilizations, and castes.
While we never
encounter the inhabitants of Calcutta, we can examine McPhee’s portraits
of Sri Lanka tea pluckers. These are working women, bare-footed for the
most part, wrapped in old canvas bags, but wearing traditional gold
jewelry when possible. Posed frontally, either alone or in twos and
threes, the women patiently confront the camera. The formula is clear.
They share similar composition, background, and framing, each standing on
a path, overlooking a high mountain against which is etched their
silhouette. The camera shows them full-length, centered, always in the
same proportion to the unfocused surrounding landscape. They are
uncomfortable and yet willing, statuesque in their enforced immobility.
McPhee isolates them, scrutinizes them, putting them under her lens, in
order to establish an unexpected connection between us and them.
Most similar in look
and feel to nineteenth-century ethnographic illustrations of foreign
peoples, these portraits nonetheless subtly reject the appeal of the
exotic. The artificiality of the images, acknowledged both by the
photographer and her subjects, becomes itself the main content of the
representation. We are privy to a relation already established by McPhee
with these women, one which remains self-consciously formal and direct,
and which translates visually into gravity and respect. Just as in her
architectural images, the content here reveals itself in stages, rewarding
the patient viewer. Neither documentaries, nor travel images, nor
portraits in the traditional sense, these images transcend particular
genres, offering us above all insights into human relations, both intimate
and formal, established by the artistic process itself.
Edouard
Nono, in contrast, does not travel far to explore the unfamiliar.
In
his still-lives he uses the camera and scanner to dissect plant forms and
fragments, focusing on abandoned remnants of nature. As in botanical
illustrations, Nono isolates his flowers, nuts, and seeds against a
neutral ground, magnifying them out of proportion to their actual size.
Each specimen is flooded with artificial light so that their luminous
surfaces become like veneered finishes, as in the cases of some grains/seeds,
or like burnished wood, as in the cracked walnut shell (fig. 1).
The scrupulous,
analytic quality of Nono’s images directs our expectations as we
instinctively attempt to identify specimens, plant parts, and prepare to
move on. How
ever,
we are held by the visual features of these studies—strange crevasses,
unusual textures, soft contours, and luminous surfaces. A tulip flower,
for instance, or its remains, revels in
varying shades of yellow, brown, and green, from its calyx up through the
remaining vertical shafts of the flower (fig.2). As in a sculpture, the
central pistil dominates the whole, whose curved volutes are
gracefully outlined in black pollen dots dispersed by the fading stamens.
The original position of the flower is unclear, though it is here
presented upright, enhancing its overt symbolic meanings of fertility,
sexuality, decay, and rebirth. But like McPhee, Nono controls these
familiar interpretations by means of his clinical and aesthetic
presentation. The image is above all a study of abstract conical
surfaces, rendered in inimitable variations of yellow, greens, browns, and
black. It becomes a sculptural form outside the boundaries of the “real”
world, challenging us to resist the flower’s transparent symbolism.
Throughout the
artist’s work, the formal, visual impact of the plant fragments undercuts
their apparent symbolism. To the artist’s delight, for instance, a cracked
walnut reveals a luscious interior meat, full of ridges and shadows, which
contrasts with the external smooth surface of the shell (fig. 1). Oval,
rounded, and brilliant, the nut is bursting from its inners as it
disintegrates. Rather than an exercise in decay, or perhaps fertility,
the walnut’s jewel-like presentation and isolation transform it into a
study of contrasting, exquisitely revealed surfaces. In so doing the
artist is drawing on several visual and mimetic traditions. For one, his
detailed presentation of still-life participates in the celebration of
inanimate objects, reminding us of the eternal fascination of the “nature
morte.” The mimetic tradition has always privileged the highest level of
verisimilitude which can deceive humans and animals into mistaking the
illusory for the real. At the same time, Nono’s presentations borrow the
artificiality of display from commercial advertising, which offer
tantalizingly real objects for consumption. Yet, the very objects of his
studies reject both traditions for what Nono beautifies are useless
remnants, discarded by nature, now presented for our delectation.
Nono’s
collection of left-over nuts, seeds, deflowered tulips both invites and
rejects interpretation. A white bulb, for instance, barely emerges
against a white background at the base and end, offering an exercise in
shaded light and of white on white (fig. 3). The contest between
representation and abstraction is here never truly resolved. Similarly, a
wonderfully suggestive, half-broken shell sits on its side, evoking
extravagant head-gear as well as exotic sea animals (fig. 4).
The
light lovingly catches the hatched parallel lines of the curved external
form, the smooth interior echoing of the lines, the darkness of the inner
curves, and the clean-cut edge of the surface. Like the bulb, the actual
object is of little concern to the artist; its evocative form teases our
imagination while revealing the dynamics of its frozen movement.
The line between
photographic document and photographic illusion begins to blur as we react
to the vegetal forms and to their sensuous colors while seeking
identification and certainty. Nono reminds us of the subjective choices
which inform all mimetic representations. By providing a botanical
framework for his odd assortment of still-life, he initially plays into
our expectations.
In
a second moment, we realize that what he is offering instead is a personal
interpretation of decaying fragments, normally overlooked, and yet which
come to life animated by the artist’s brilliant light and willful
magnification. This tension between abstraction and representation comes
to the fore in an image of splayed stamen ends, lying amidst a scattering
of pollen (fig. 5). Shot in reduced tones of grey and purple, the
photograph represents the still, visual play of black cones, furry with
pollen, set against a white ground, itself dusted with black and purple
dots. However, the artistic hand has carefully placed the four stamen
ends in different directions across a rectangular surface, and surrounded
them with pollen dust. There the aesthetic choices have trumped the messy
realities of nature.
Both McPhee’s and
Nono’s photographic images establish a space between the real and the
ideal in which to exploit the medium as an expressive force. The play
between objective documentation and subjective creation dominates their
work, while becoming part of its content. In each case the artists return
the viewer to the artistic realm itself, developing the self-reflexive
quality of their work in new directions within different photographic and
imagistic traditions. Whether it be the artificial immobility of McPhee’s
tea pluckers and empty interiors, or Nono’s monumental plant fragments,
the viewer is swept up by their visual, corporeal presences, fleetingly
allowed to experience the illusion of an equilibrium between multiplicity
and unity.
© 2004 Isabelle Frank
Isabelle Frank
received her Ph.D. from Harvard University in History of Art. She is
currently Associate Dean for Undergraduate Programs at The New School
and was previously Associate Director of Academic Programs in the
Northwestern University School of Continuing Education. Ms. Frank was
also a program officer at the American Council of Learned Societies and
was Assistant Professor of Art History at Bard College Graduate Center for
Studies in the Decorative Arts. She has edited two books, The Theory of
Decorative Art (Yale, 2000) and Die Rhetorik des Ornaments
(Munich, 2001), and publishes on art history and theory.
