October 14, 2007 | 12:00am
What is the power of art? Can it change the way we see the world and ourselves? These are the questions explored in the compelling BBC television series, Simon Schama’s Power of Art. The series looks at the life of eight artists whose vision and work opened up new ways of appreciating art and its connection to life. Schama, the award-wining writer, Columbia University professor and art critic for The New Yorker, is among the most eloquent and engaging presenters on television today on the subjects of history or art. He makes no distinction between them as each enhances our understanding of the other. Here, Schama takes us further than most feature presentations. He goes beyond flat narration to spirited storytelling. He puts us squarely in the time and place when great artists were called upon to define a moment. Masterpieces of art are not always born in the atmosphere of serenity and calm that we tend to imagine. Schama invites us to look at art and what it does from an entirely different perspective. Here’s how he puts it: “The hushed reverence of the gallery can fool you into believing masterpieces are polite things — visions that soothe, charm and beguile — but actually they are thugs. Merciless and wily, the greatest paintings grab you in a headlock, rough up your composure, and then proceed in short order to rearrange your sense of reality.”
Caravaggio, Bernini, Rembrandt, David, Turner, Van Gogh, Picasso and Rothko are among the great artists who challenged conventions, changing our perceptions of art, its purpose and its power. It was a turbulent life for them with more than its share of twists, turns and contradictions. But their redemption would only come later. You would never think that the artist who gave the world some of its happiest paintings was a man who suffered from mental illness. But that is essentially the story of Vincent Van Gogh. Pablo Picasso, the artist who once said that “art must be free from sentimental attachment to time and place,” gave the world a haunting political message in his masterpiece, “Guernica.” Picasso’s most famous work “has always been bigger than art — it is the shared heritage of humanity and a mirror of suffering civilians in every conflict,” Schama points out. Such men imbued art with a realism that linked the eternal to the here and now. So Schama sheds light on those works that speak to us on a personal and universal level. This is about art that moves us and works in service of the truth, whether it pleases the eye or hits us straight to the gut. Think of Van Gogh: the brilliant colors and heavy brushwork on his canvases said more about the artist’s take on reality than reality itself. It was about art coming from within — a revolutionary idea that gave birth to Expressionism. Schama tells us that it is with “this independent life of formed blocks of color that Vincent Van Gogh creates modern art.” In Van Gogh’s “Wheatfield With Crows” (1890), he turns his back on the rules of landscape painting. “Here, perspective is reversed and the road goes nowhere. All our signals about how to read visual signs are scrambled. But it is total immersion into the power of nature — colors tremble, pulse and sway,” Schama explains. “You feel the rush of life in his painting in ways that nothing more polite or literal could ever possibly convey.” Although Van Gogh suffered from bouts of depression most of his adult life, it never hindered his creative vision. He gave us vibrant and exuberant images of nature that still resonate with viewers beyond the bounds of time and place. Van Gogh painted feverishly during his happy moments — exploring color and nature in all it richness. He gave us those transcendent moments and paved the way for other artists to do the same. This spring, The Neue Gallerie in New York mounted an exhibition of Van Gogh’s work in recognition of his singular influence on Germany and Austrian artists of the early 20th century. His legacy, Schama tells us, is that “people could feel the life of his pictures through his colors and brushwork” and in this way, “he reclaimed what belongs to religion: the consolation of our mortality through the relish of the gift of life.”
As you move from the time of Caravaggio, reputedly the most powerful painter of Christian art in the 16th century, to the time of the Abstract Expressionist Mark Rothko in the 20th century — roughly a span of 400 years — the subject of paintings had gone from lofty themes to address the conditions of contemporary life and, in particular, the exploration of emotional states. In short, art had been democratized.
Modern art turned away from the stories and histories of kings and aristocrats that was the mainstay of classical art. Rembrandt van Rijn, Holland’s greatest painter, was one who believed that “art should exist to tell the truth about the human condition.” In the 1630s, Schama tells us, “Amsterdam was the economic lord of the world and the discount supermarket of the 17th century.” It was a time when Rembrandt was in demand. He understood his powerful clients and was adept at capturing the personality behind the pose, the details and finery that exuded wealth and status. Rembrandt loved oil painting, and it is said here that “no one in his century explored its texture more lovingly.” He was also a great storyteller who melded craft with imagination. In the controversial work “The Night Watch” (1642), he depicts Amsterdam’s merchants as heroic figures. But for reasons unclear or unknown, the most important patron of the commissioned work was deeply unhappy with the painting. Soon, the corporate titans of Amsterdam who once sought Rembrandt’s work turned their backs on him. But it became a turning point for the artist. “Gone was the flamboyance as the artist switched on an inner radiance,” Schama points out. Rembrandt explored the ordinary and the real aspects of life in paint just as the mood in Amsterdam was brightening. The town moved into a period of peace and prosperity and was in no mood for pensive paintings. So the demand for the artist declined and the commissions soon dried up. A string of misfortunes fell upon Rembrandt before a once-in-a-lifetime commission came his way — the chance to tell the story of the Dutch Republic for a new and lavish town hall. “The Conspiracy of the Batavians under Claudius Civilis” (circa 1666) told how the Dutch built a nation on the heels of an insurrection against the Roman Empire. Instead of the refined picture that the establishment hoped for, he painted the scene in the most graphic manner possible — bringing out the rough and wild aspects of rebellion and giving the Dutch an honest account of their history. The painting was eventually deemed unsuitable for the hall and was taken down. Then Rembrandt did the unthinkable — he chopped up his masterpiece. Yet for Schama, who highlights the rescued part of this painting, it represents “the greatest triumph of his visual imagination — a reminder that eloquence does not always come with pretty face.” Rembrandt put a human face on a momentous event in Dutch history by breaking away from the conventions that ruled classical art. This was the moment he chose to define: his moment of truth. It would be Rembrandt’s lasting legacy to art.
If Rembrandt shook the Dutch establishment with a rough portrayal of history, Pablo Picasso gave the world a history painting that would immortalize the terror that gripped the town of Guernica in the north of Spain. This legendary work relives the death, destruction and chaos that fell upon the town in 1934. It is a stark reminder that acts of terrorism are not unique to our time. The outrage we feel when we learn about the bombing of Guernica is the same outrage we feel when today’s terrorists inflict untold pain and suffering on innocent civilians. And this is what Picasso wants us to feel when looking at his masterpiece. He connects us to our humanity. Schama lays out the historical context in which this tragedy unfolded. The small town of Guernica was the ancestral homeland of the Basques who staunchly opposed the regime of General Francisco Franco. To strike fear in the hearts of those against the new politics sweeping Europe, waves of German and Italian aircraft dropped over 5,000 bombs on the defenseless and unsuspecting town in 1934. The “nocturnal inferno burns itself into Picasso’s imagination,” Schama recounts. And thus began Picasso’s work on “Guernica.” Monumental in scope, size and intent, “Guernica” (1937) was a landmark painting in history. It was the point when history and art came together. It is, as Schama says, “paint on canvas, but it had all the authority of stone.” At the time, it was the boldest statement that art ever made about politics. For us today, “Guernica” remains relevant. As Schama asserts, “this is what all great art must do: it must crash into our lazy routines. ‘Guernica’ fights the sickness of our time and Picasso’s time — the habit of taking violent evil in our stride.” And so we wonder what art can really do in the face of tragedy. “It can instruct us on the obligations of being human,” Schama concludes. The legend of this masterwork did not end with the passing of Franco or Picasso. In February of 2003, when the United States was making the case for armed intervention in Iraq in the United Nations, someone noticed a tapestry reproduction of “Guernica” behind the wall where then US Secretary of State Colin Powell was to hold a momentous press conference. The picture, it was felt, would evoke the horrors of conflict which were better left unseen. So the tapestry was covered with a big blue drape. But “Guernica” still wields a symbolic power because integrity in art matters — it is why art exists in the first place, just as Rembrandt believed. Art illuminates our vision of the world and our place in it.
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Simon Schama’s The Power of Art, the BBC series and the companion book, can be purchased at Amazon.com.
