Chilkat Blankets

Is this not a gorgeous, entirely arresting, awe-inspiringly beautiful peice?

Thinking about pieces for this blog assignment, I was drawn to either taking a native basket or a blanket as an aesthetic art piece to look at.  This will probably not surprise anyone who has seen the fiber-heavy leaning of my blog posts so far in this course!

I was particularly interested in the way that many non-western art pieces which were not produced in what we might think of as the modern age, were originally purposed either as functional or as spiritual objects.

One sees, for instance, baskets and embellished clothing and decorated spears/hunting equipment, that are very much classifiable as art objects.  They are, however primarily if not exclusively used and intended as very functional objects.  (Interestingly enough, this is a trend in the fine arts world that we see a movement towards in the present day, with ‘art objects’ ranging from dishes and dinnerware to clothes and jewelry to rugs and curtains and desks and tables.)

Alternately, in many non-western, native, or traditional societies, one sees what is now classified as the ‘art’ of that group serving in religious or spiritual functions, such as masks, rattles, pouches, bowls, totems, amulets, and statuary.

The Chilkat blanket serves in these capacities: it can be a purely functional item (keeping one warm, the wool shedding the southeast alaska rain and drizzle), but is and was most commonly worn as ceremonial gear in dances and at potlaches – gatherings that both cement community and serve a religious or spiritual function whether telling the ritual tales or honoring and releasing the spirit of the deceased.

The Chilkat blanket is a beautiful beautiful kind of artwork.  It utilizes form-line design principles, the design and symbol system and style considered typical of Tlingit and Haida art work.  Formline design creates highly stylized pictorial representations of both humans and the natural world.  Images (as well as stories, objects, blankets, masks, and other shaagoon) are culturally ‘copyrighted,’ so any image you see on a Chilkat blanket is either an original composition of the artist or is an image she has been given by an individual, moiety, clan, or family.

Though today’s Chilkat blanket weavers may use pure wool yarn, either commercial or handspun, the traditional (and very very labor intensive) medium was a mixture of cedar bark and goat or sheep wool.  Traditionally, the man’s job was to supply the fibers to the woman for her to then process and weave.  The inner bark of the cedar tree (naturally a very stringy and pliable substance) was gathered and processed and then spun with wool.  The wool would either have been harvested off of the hide of a mountain goat or Dall sheep that had been hunted for meat, or would have been gathered off of rocky outcrops and bushes in small to large clumps in the spring when the wild animals shed.   The resulting yarn was dyed with natural dyes.

It took approximately one year for a skilled weaver to create a single blanket.

For a long time, it was thought by anthropologists and researchers that the Chilkat blankets were woven on warp-weighted looms (the warp hanging free from the top beam and weighted by stones in bags tied around the end of the warp) in a similar way as the Ancient Greeks are recorded having woven on their standing looms.  This is not the case.  The Chilkat blanket is finger twined and finger woven without a fixed tension on the warp.  Why was this thought then you may wonder? Because some westerners who had never seen anyone weaving Chilkat blankets saw a picture an early explorer in Alaska had drawn of the loom used to weave the Chilkat blankets.  The picture showed bags tied around the ends of the warp threads.  So, reasoned the white westerners writing learned books on the subject, they MUST use weights just like the ancient greek!  So it was published and became truth for many years.

Because no one thought to speak to or ask the weavers.

Fortunately this misconception has been largely corrected, and the made up western truth is no longer being disseminated.  The Chilkat blanket is woven in vertical sections, and the bags on the ends of the warp are just that – bags… scraps of hide or cloth or what have you tied around the ends of the warp to keep them clean, to keep them from fraying and unravelling, and to keep them organized and untangled.

It is also particularly interesting to note the way in which the Chilkat blankets (this phenomenon can also be seen in many other cultural millieus from Innupiaq design and fur work, Athabaskan quilling or beading, Navajo blankets, Indonesian batik and ikat, Guatemalan and Mayan weaving traditions -specifically the huipile, and Peruvian textiles among many many others) serve as a sort of signifying language telling the viewer information about both the weaver/artist and the wearer : where they come from, who they’re related to, what their status is.

http://hudsonhudson.netfirms.com/clarissa/

Home

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennie_Thlunaut

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilkat_weaving

http://www.alaskanativeartists.com/

Butoh: Dance is the space between your feet and the floor

(Performers in my Butoh troupe performing in Constitution Park a couple of years ago)

Kazuo Ono, one of the creators of Butoh says this: “There are an infinity of ways in which you can move from that spot over there to here. But have you figured out those movements in your head, or are we seeing your soul in motion? Even that fleck at the tip of your nail embodies your soul… the essential thing is that your movements, even when you’re standing still, embody your soul at all times.”

Butoh is an amazing modern movement art form.  It came, conceptually, out of the post atomic experience in Japan.  Where many forms of dance, such as ballet, focus on the form of the body, and the aesthetic qualities of the human body and the beauty of the shapes it can make, Butoh focuses instead on the grotesque.  It is a way of expressing the human potential for lack of self, for destruction and death.

The picture below shows 3 performers engaged in the movement called “Silent Scream”

It is traditionally performed in white makeup derived from Japanese Noh theatre, and has much in common with Noh stylistically, as well as with traditional Japanese puppet theatre.

Butoh is often very very very slow.  Its inverse is kabe, which can happen in the middle of a butoh peice, where a burst of energy from outside the self envelopes or takes over the performer’s body causing a short lived intense and fast movement.

As a performer, Butoh comes about when you enter a certain sort of meditative state.  The goal is empty body and empty mind with distant gaze.   Your eyes are unfocused, or intensely focused on what is called the “distant horizon,” so that you can be looking at someone, but really you are looking through them.  In empty body – empty mind, you as a person and performer have little volitional control over your body.

In empty body, your body is an empty form in space that is controlled externally.  This is accomplished through imagery work.  Of course, it is actually your muscles and sinews that move your body, but the idea is to relinquish that idea and let the butoh move you.  There are a variety of imagery systems that butoh artists use, but the one I am most familiar with is the idea of strings.  Basically you envision your body as a big marionette, with strings coming from any and all parts of your body.   The weight of your body as a whole hangs from either a meat hook string at the base of your skull or through a top-of-the-head string.  This keeps you upright.  All other bodily mechanisms are released and relaxed, until a string brings them into action.  To take a traditional basic step, it is through a knee string which lifts your knee (your shin and ankle and foot hang loose), this action naturally brings your foot a couple of inches forward from where it was.  As the knee string slowly lowers your suspended leg, your foot comes back to the ground.  Once it is solidly planted your weight shift to be even on both feet again.  This movement – a single step – can easily take a full minute.

Strings can come from your finger tips, knuckles, abdomen, eye lids, toes, elbows… any part of your body, and can move your body in any direction.

The strings can get very intricate, controlling facial expressions and finger’s movement:

The goal of empty mind is to release all attachment to you mind and to your body, entering a very zen like blank, meditative state.  In this state, it is not you that controls the strings moving your body, but a force outside of your self, whether it is your teacher/choreographer’s voice, or an amorphous energy from the universe.

To attain this very meditative state, deep DEEP breathing techniques are used.  Performers will often do breath meditation for up to an hour before a performance to release control of mind and body.  Within this total muscular release, you will find your self drooling (if you’re not drooling, its a good sign you need to go deeper … strings of drool to the floor!), and often your nose will run and your eyes will release tears.  In this way it is a very visceral performance medium.

There’s a strange tension between choreographed butoh performance peices and Butoh.

Here is the actual piece of artwork that I am critiquing in this blog post.  Please watch it, you’ll get a much better idea of what I mean by the idea of empty body.  I don’t think that you can really appreciate or understand butoh if you don’t understand at least a very little of what it is, how it is done, and what goes into it conceptually before hand, hence the preceeding part of this post.

This is one of my favorite Butoh pieces that is on YouTube:

watching this you can really see the the simultaneous connection and disconnection from the body and the self that occurs, as well as see the incredible strength that a good performance can demand.

Though its aesthetics certainly are not classically beautiful, and do not really fit into any normative definition of beauty; one has to accept the art on its own terms: that of the grotesque.

In its own way, I find Butoh to be incredibly beautiful.  It absolutely accesses that eternal and metaphysical connection with the essence of reality which is (or should be, I believe) the essence of all good art.

Japanese art after 1945 : scream against the sky
Munroe, Alexandra.

Dancing identity : metaphysics in motion
Fraleigh, Sondra Horton,

Dancing into darkness : Butoh, Zen, and Japan
Fraleigh, Sondra Horto

http://www.butoh.net/butoh/Home.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butoh

http://home.earthlink.net/~bdenatale/AboutButoh.html

http://www.sankaijuku.com/sankaijuku_e.htm

That’s me in the cage performing “Wrath” in a butoh piece that I choreographed entitled “7Deadly Sins” shown as part of and in conjunction with TheatreUAF’s “No Exit”

Contemporary Tapestry – “Southwest Passing Forward”

Weaving is a tradtionally female task or art form.  The preparation of textiles in general has been, across cultures, within the domain of the feminine.  A really great book for more depth and breadth on weaving and textiles as women’s work is Elizabeth Wayland Barber’s “Women’s Work: The first 20,000 years:Women Cloth and Society in Early Times.”

In the middle ages, Tapestry as an art form was more respected than paintings were, it was a way of showing off economically, patronizing the arts, and keeping your castle warmer and less drafty all at the same time.  In the Renaissance, tapestry faded as a premier art form.  The industrial revolution further marginalized the socio-political importance of textiles, as cloth was now cheap and plentiful (factory woven).

In the past century tapestry has begun to re-claim a place in the world of fine arts and contemporary tapestry is now found in museums, private collections, and public institutions around the world.

I chose to focus on specifically southwestern tapestry in this virtual exhibit because the southwestern united States has a rich weaving history from navajo rugs and tapestry blankets to the hispanic Rio Grande styles.  The area is today a thriving modern textile and fiber arts area.  I spent a few weeks there a couple of summers ago, at the New Mexico Fiber Trails Festival, and actually saw a couple of the pieces you’ll see below.

This is a collection (gallery exhibit) of contemporary women tapestry artists.  The pieces have been selected to explore the theme of a transition into the future.

“Carribean Doorway” – Donna Loraine Contractor -2002

I chose this one because of the cross cultural references.  Turquoise has a rich history in (especially native) history of the southwest, and also evokes the tropical ocean.  Such cross-cultural references place this artpeice specifically in its own modern context in a globalizing world.  The image of the open door suggests transitions and the welcoming of change, while acknowledging the aspects of the unknown.  I think its use of color is really gorgeous.

“Image Unfolding” – Rachel Brown 1997

I chose this tapestry because of the way in which it takes traditional motifs – the sort of zig-zaggy chevron bits – seen at the top and bottom of the tapestry, and changes and reworks them, as though they are being seen through a pool of water.  This sort of refraction and reflection is the process that any traditional art form undergoes as the modern world reuses and reinvents it.

Its particularly cool to see this being done in light of the geometric styles of both navajo and hispanic traditions of southwestern weaving.

Rachel Brown was born in 1926.  She went to Radcliffe College for a BFA and then Harvard Graduate School of Design.  In 1956 she moved to Taos and began weaving.  Her first exhibit of her tapestries was in 1964 at the Santa Fe Museum of International Folk Art.  She own and operates Weaving Southwest in Taos New Mexico.  In 1994 she received a Life Time Achievement Award from the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington D.C.

“Halcyon Daze” – Rebecca Mezoff – 2006

I just really really like this one.  I think its utterly gorgeous.  It does tie in thematically, because the bold and saturate colors are pretty typical of southwestern art,  the spiral is symbol of growth and change as well as ancient wisdom. Also the sort of blurred line effect in the background mimics a textile resist-dye effect called ikat that is a very traditional technique in Japanese (and other pacific) weaving traditons, it’s cool that she integrates other geographical old or ancient and traditional weaving references into her modern tapestry.  Its another way of playing with the global dynamics of our world heritage.

“Meridians” – 2007 – Rebecca Mezoff

The windows in the piece above function similarly to the motif of the door, as a site of transition.

Rebecca Mezoff says of herself “I grew up in northern New Mexico. I lived in other parts of the United States after graduate school, but finally returned here in 2004 to re-experience the slower passage of time and the beauty of the mesas, mountains, arroyos, and people who live here. My experience of nature informs my life in many ways and the diversity and mystery of the natural world certainly is one inspiration for my weaving. Natural phenomenon contribute heavily to my design process and frequently the colors coming out of the dye pot were something I watched in a Colorado sunset or found on a rock face somewhere between Abiquiu and Gallup, New Mexico.I became interested in weaving as a child standing by my grandfather’s 60-inch Macomber loom while he wove curtains. Many years later I came across my own loom and I started weaving myself in earnest. I began tapestry weaving in 2004 at Northern NM College in El Rito, NM doing traditional Rio Grande tapestry. My current work is more contemporary in nature, but I still draw inspiration from the weaving traditions that surround me. I currently use two or three-ply wool yarn for all of my pieces. I dye the yarn myself using synthetic acid and natural dyes. The rhythm of the loom and the slow process of dyeing and weaving forces me to slow down and pay attention to the essential nature of what I am creating in my art and in my life. The outcome is often unexpected and has the potential to lead me to a new place. The metaphor of weaving a life is always present for me as I work, and weaving becomes a way of expressing interconnectedness of all life forms, one thread at a time.I currently live between Santa Fe and Taos, NM on a mesa overlooking the Rio Grande river.”

“Blue Windows” – Skaidrite McKeag – 2009

I thought this one was really cooled and tied into the theme in a new way with the architectural influences that are apparent in the piece.

“Embers” – Skaidrite McKeag – 2007

THis one also exemplifies some architectural influence.

Both of McKeag’s peices are particularly cool in the way they take some of the geometric abstract-ism that’s more prevalent in the modern painting world and interprets it with fiber.

McKeag was born in Latvia in the 1930’s.  Her mother wove.  She moved to Taos in the 1960’s with her husband and devoted herself to weaving.  Her work has been shown in many galleries.  She is a long time member of the American Tapestry Alliance.

“Fiesta Vision” -Karen Benjamin – 2005

“Ventana I” – Karen Benjamin – 2005

“Adobe Curves” – Karen Benjamin – 2006

In all of Benjamin’s pieces above, you see the theme of the window as a place of transition, the bold colors of the southwest, and in the last tapestry, she incorporates a path or trail which is evocative of the continuing journey of tapestry as an artform.

Karen Benjamin started her art career as a painter. In the late nineties she began weaving, mastering the techniques and beginning to apply them to the geometric forms that inspired her.  She has become one of New Mexico’s top tapestry artists.

She says she “firmly believes that meditative space and mood are expressed better through weaving that any other medium – that weavings’ quiet, accumulative working process shows up as content in the completed piece.”

Karen Benjamin received the Best of Show award at Fiber Celebrated ’99, an international juried fiber art exhibit at the Albuquerque Museum

http://www.americantapestryalliance.com/

http://weavingsouthwest.taoswebb.com/

http://www.newmexico.org/hispanic/learn/weaving.php

http://www.nmfiberarts.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tapestry

Georgia O’Keeffe

It can be hard to see a surface reference or correspondence between O’Keefe’s paintings and the advances in technology that were so characteristic of the early and mid 20th century.  This may well be because O’Keefe’s work is to be seen in contrast to these advances.  While many other modernist artists and writers idolized speed and progress and all things new and modern such as cars and trains and telephones and skycrapers and depression artists responded to the economic hardships and the bleak reality or super glizty hollywood ideal that corresponded to it; both within the literary and the artistic world there was a sub-current these aspects of Modernism, one which appreciated and was inspired by the beauty of the natural world.  As a culture we privilege the mainstream and conventional vision of the history of an era, and institutionalize that vision within our education systems and museums, but in almost every era and artistic/literary/political movement there was, is and always will be a counter-current.

Piedascalzo quotes O’Keeffe’s philosophy thus:  “O’Keeffe believed that nature was the equal of technology, a powerful new force in New York City. Physical objects in nature, such as bones, flowers, and mountains had power and were as forceful and strong as a New York skyscraper” (noma.org).

There was also a strong focus in this era on presenting the subject within its (often socio-political) context.  This can be seen in the Depression photographs and the WPA commissioned murals among others.

Interestingly enough, O’Keeffe was in the forefront of a certain aspect of the mainstream artistic trend that was instituted as policy by the WPA’s mural project.  That is the intense regionalism of American art at the time.  The WPA chose local artists to paint locally inspired murals on Post Offices across the nation, this while intended to foster American patriotism (as well as fund the economy and create jobs), actually served to cement the regional differences between areas of the United States.  O’Keefe’s landscape work, such as “My Back Yard” (1937) (see below), and “Summer Days” (1936) (see below) is prototypical of this movement of celebrating the local, regional identity of the southwest, though it prominently does not display any images of humans and “american life.”

O’Keeffe was also influenced artistically by the technology of the camera.  Her gallery-owner husband also happened to be an avid, and quite good, photographer.  She served as his model many many times, and eventually became interested in the way the camera and the photograph manipulated an image.  “It was the nature of the flower that interested her, not the space inwhich the flower existed. After posing for many of Stieglitz’s photographs, O’Keeffe becameinterested in the aesthetics of photography. She would isolate elements from photographs,resulting in her unique style of exaggerated focus and magnified objects” (noma.org).

“Black Iris No. 2” – 1936

Oil on canvas painted at Ghost Ranch in Abiqui New Mexico.

O’Keeffe’s flower paintings are why I fell in love with her as an artist.  They are utterly gorgeous and speak of the beauty and inherent sensuality in nature.  She denied claims that she was really painting women’s vulvas abstracted into flowers, claiming rather that she saw the flower “for what it was.”  She said once “Nobody sees a flower – really – it is so small – we haven’t time – and to see takes time like to have a friend takes time…So I said to myself – I’ll paint what I see – what the flower is to me, but I’ll paint it big and they will be surprised into taking time to look at it – I will make even busy New Yorkers take time to see what I see of flowers.”  These claims of sexuality however, have surrounded her artwork since its very first exhibit.  I personally believe that to a certain extent the artist or author’s intent does not really matter, it is the effect on the viewer/reader that matters.  These flowers are beautiful as such to a child and are still beautiful to a mature and experienced person.

Click to access OKeeffe.pdf

http://www.tragsnart.co.uk/arthub/okeeffe/okeeffe.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_O’Keeffe

Impressionism – Love it!

Not only is Impressionism an absolutely aesthetically gorgeous movement, producing such deservedly famous paintings as Monet’s “The WaterLillies” (more on specific paintings later), the Impressionists live up to their creed and stated goals in a way that many art or literary movements do not.  For example, during the same period, literary artists such as Ezra Pound, H.D., The Futurists, and Mina Loy published ‘manifestoes’ which stated their artistic goals for their poetry.  The variously did and did not actually live up to these professed goals in the concrete art which they produced.  Pound in particular has recieved much deserved criticism for NOT living up to the goals he states in his manifesto on imagism.  He responded by creating the much more vague literary movement “vorticism,” whose vague goals he arguably did live up to!

The Impressionists on the other hand, state that they want to portray the ephemerality of the moment, of light and movement.  They wildly succeed in doing so!

Here are some great examples with commentary following:

“Bridge at Villeneuve-la-garenne” was painted by Alfred Sisley in France in 1872.

In the above painting, you can really see the ‘transitory effects of light’ which the Impressionist aim to capture.  The “messy” and broad brush strokes facilitate the effect, especially on the water, the way in which the shadow the bridge casts is portrayed also works towards this.  Instead of seeing a kind of ‘crystaline’ or ‘crystalized’ moment in time as was previously common, where a horse might be mid-rear but frozen as though the artist had pressed pause, in this painting, the light, the shadows and the clouds seem to be between on moment and another.

“La Promenade” by Claude Monet was painted out of doors in the countryside (then) surrounding Paris in 1875.

The transitory light and motion effect here is gorgeously rendered via the clouds as above, and here via the grass as opposed the water.  The technique used to characterize her veil is also lovely.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impressionism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monet

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Sisley

Ramazani, Jahan, Richard Ellmann, Robert O’Sinclair, eds. “The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry: Vol. 1 Modern Poetry.”  New York and London: W.W. Norton and Company, 2003.

Classical Music – Tartini

I chose the so-called “Devil’s Trill” sonata mainly for the stories surrounding it.  I had wanted to do a piece by Paganini that I heard on Performace Today, but found that he’s actually in the Romantic period, not the classical period.  Tartini was the virtuoso violinist a generation before Paganini and folks say that Paganini carried on Tartini’s legacy.

Here is a clip of the Sonata:

I chose this clip, though it is only the first portion of the sonata, for a few reasons: I could not find a full length recording, the entirety is almost an hour; its is very well and feelingly played; and I really like the image.

The reason this Sonata in G Minor is known as the Devil’s Trill Sonata is twofold.  Firstly, there are some extremely difficult technical bits, most noticeably the trills (!) that absolutely require virtuoso skill on the violin.  They’re devilishly hard to play.  Secondly, and more interestingly, Tartini wrote this piece after having a dream in which he variously accepted the devil as a student and asked him to play in order to judge his skill level, accepted him as a servant and asked him to play, or flat out challenged him to a music-duel.  At any rate, everyone agrees that in his dream, Tartini heard the Devil playing the violin.

When he woke up he frantically wrote down what he could remember of the piece, and eventually it became “Sonata in G minor.”  Apparently he was none too pleased with his effort, as it fell SO far short of what he had heard.  But everyone else in the world thought it was amazing, and they still do.  It got the name of “devil’s trill” sonata in the 19th century, because of it being so difficult to play.  Some people thought that you had to make a pact with the devil to get good enough to even be able to get through the thing.  One legend had it that Tartini had six fingers on one hand, making it that much easier for HIM to play it!  (On a slightly related note, on youtube, there’s a 13 year old doing a fantastic job on the piece!)  I really like the way that these stories surrounding this piece are a continuation of the folk-lore traditions that connect the devil with music, and, in the 1800’s, with the violin specifically.

Giuseppe Tartini lived from 1692-177o, composed from around 1720 onwards, and composed sonatas starting in the 1730’s.  Dating his music difficult, as he never dated any of his manuscripts nor put them in order.  Tartini himself was of an aristocratic family, and his parents intended him for a monastery.  In his early training for this vocation, he got some musical background.  He had little interest in a religious life, being passionate about music. He took violin lessons while at school studying Law and Divinity in Padua.  His father would not hear of it and cut off his allowance.  Tartini began to teach the violin in order to make a living, so though he was technically an aristocrat, he lived a middle class lifestyle and succeeded artistically.   Before he was 20 he secretly married a 15 year old very middle-class beauty named Elisabetta.  Unfortunately, a cardinal was also in love with Elisabetta, and he charged him with abduction.  To escape the law, Tartini ended up going to the monastery after all!   There, after seeing a famous violinist play, he reportedly locked himself in his room and did nothing but play the violin for days on end to improve his skill.  Eventually, the Cardinal dropped charges and Tartini returned to his beloved Elisabetta and they lived happily ever after in Padua!   He worked as the leader of a church orchestra there, wrote lots of music, and also was a cutting edge music theorist, coming up with the concept of sum and difference tones.

He was an acknowledged and famous maestro and teacher, pupils of all social classes came to study with him from all over Europe.

His success was due not to patronage by one wealthy patron, but by his own skill and inspiration which was recognized by society at large which in turn lead to his fame.  He was a ‘self-made’ musician, and composed for the sake of music and beauty not to cater to the tastes of a patron.  This sense of succeeding on one’s own merits and work and personal success depending on comercial/artistic/etc success is key to the social reconfiguration that led to the rise of the middle class.

Sources:

http://www.classical.net/~music/comp.lst/tartini.php

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giuseppe_Tartini

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil%27s_Trill_Sonata

http://www.renaissancemagazine.com/music/devil.html

Baroque

The painting “Penelope” by Leandro Bassano currently resides at the Musee des Beaux Artes et d’Archeologie in Rennes, France.

Time-wise, this is a fairly early example of the Baroque style, but it epitomizes many of the characteristics of Baroque painting.  Bassano’s master and teacher, Tintoretto, was a late Renaissance painter who anticipated many of the elements of Baroque painting.  Tintoretto’s painting “Arachne and Athene” was my first choice for this post, but the dating puts it in the Renaissance era and I didn’t want to blur the lines too much.  It is exceptional for its use of a very unusual point of perspective, from underneath the loom at which the women are weaving (http://www.jacopotintoretto.org/Athene-and-Arachne,-c.1475-85.html).

Bassano was the son of a successful painter of religious works and portraiture.  After his father’s death, he took over the family studio in Venice and became quite famous in his own right, eventually earning a Knighthood from the Doge of Venice.

This painting though showing a contemporary woman, by being titled “Penelope,” explicitly enters into the tradition of illustrating classical myths.  Penelope, of course, is the ever-faithful wife of Oddyseus who staves off her hordes of suitors by weaving a shroud for her father in law by day and unweaving it by night, telling them all she’ll choose someone to marry when she’s done weaving.

Portrayals of Penelope are often of a larger scope, including either servants or suitors or both and a much larger view of her surroundings.  The intimacy of this portrayal places it explicitly within the private sphere – the domain of women and the home – rather than the public sphere – the domain of men and Literature and Art and Religion and State and etc.

Weaving is historically and stereotypically “women’s work.”  In medieval hagiographic traditions it is explicitly connected with the Virgin Mary.  In the Middle Ages however, weaving as an occupation was brought out of the private sphere and into the public sphere, with influential guilds regulating prices, practices and licensing.  Occasionally there were female guild-sanctioned weavers, but generally only if she was operating a late father or husband’s shop.  As textiles became an increasingly profitable trade item, it moved increasingly into the man’s domain.  Bassano’s very intimate portrayal of the scene, the fact that the subject is obviously wealthy (as seen by the quality of the fabric, the detailed construction, and the pearls on her sleeve) and would therefore be doing it as a hobby or decorative art rather than as an occupation, combined with the overt classical reference to the figure who embodies wifely virtue and faithfulness allows the subject matter to be acceptable.

Mostly I was struck with the sheer beauty of the painting, much of the appeal deriving from the masterly use of chiascuro technique, the close-in and intimate perspective, and the general sense of peace in the painting.

Also, I’m a weaver and always like to find and talk about weaving images!  The attention to detail and the correctness of the loom in the image are great!

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leandro_Bassano

http://www.the-orb.net/encyclop/religion/hagiography/women1.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penelope

Renaissance

This portrait of a merchant named George Gisze was completed by the Renaissance painter Hans Holbein the Younger in 1532.  It was created as a commission from the subject of the portrait as a gift for his soon-to-be-fiance.

Hans Holbein, the artist of this painting,

The painting intrigued me for two reasons:

Firstly, I’ve been pretty interested in the sort of visual/symbolic language that was used in portraiture in the Renaissance for a long time now: the book by Patricia Phillipy in my sources list is really interesting, and a good place to start if anyone is interested in following up on this idea… Examples of this ‘language’ are the dog in the Arnolfi portrait meaning fidelity, as other class members have pointed out, and the standard pose for women in portraits being hands clasped in front of the abdomen symbolizing chastity, conventional femininity and virtue.

Being more familiar with how such a language is applied to women, I was curious to see how this portrait utilized it for men…

I was a little disappointed to find out that aside from the fact that he is surrounded by the instruments of his trade – those of a merchant – which serve to denote him  as such, and a successful one at that, there is actually very little in the portrait that functions symbolically.

The vase with the roses is one of these: they are to symbolize the subject’s romantic intent towards his soon-to-be-fiance.   One source suggested that the placement of the vase and of various instruments close to the edges of the table and shelves rather than in the center symbolizes a world that is out of control and veering towards chaos, but as no other source suggested it, I find the interpretation rather suspect.  I also don’t see how that message fits into the overall message of the portrait.

What was more interesting to think about was a point made by Wolfe.  She points out that “Holbein habitually represents his sitters alongside the tools of their trade” (97), which is a rather unremarkable insight, but then goes on to discuss the way in which “The collection of objects in Renaissance culture is part and parcel of the larger task of constituting the self as an object of display” (98).  I found this very interesting, especially as applied to a masculine subject, as the creation of a feminine subject in the Renaissance has much more to do with interiority than with the self as a display object.  A further discussion of this can be found in “The Renaissance Everyday.”

The second reason that I chose this painting was because of its incorporation of  the Anatolian carpet covering the table.  I am very interested in textiles and this use of them as a central element in portraiture really caught my eye.

Modern Anatolian carpets with this pattern are called ‘small pattern Holbein Carpets,’ others are called large pattern Holbein capets.  This is due to his use of them in painting such as this one and also in “The Ambassadors.”

“The Small Pattern Holbein carpets are named after theGerman renaissance painter Hans Holbein the Younger(1497-1543) who depicted this design in his painting “GeorgeGizse” (1532, National Gallery, London). It has beenestimated there are only seventy or so antique Small PatternHolbein carpets still in existence, mostly in museums, withsome in private collections. Like the Lotto pattern carpets,their manufacture between the 16th and 18th centuries isattributed to the Ushak region of Central Anatolia.The Small Pattern Holbein, which is considered to be a precursor to the Lotto, is alsocharacterized as an endless repeat, here with two interlocked larger “guls” (medallions) and oneor two smaller ones. In what are considered the most highly developed designs, although theoverall configuration of the guls repeats, the color details of each one varies, which gives thepattern a kind of vibrating quality.The major borders most often found on the Small Pattern Holbein carpets include the variationson the “Kufic”” (Jozan).

In all, I find it a very interesting, and arresting portrait.  The way in which George seems to be looking directly at the viewer is very arresting.  Though it may not be a ‘beautiful’ painting, in that it attempts, and largely succeeds to portray a real person and a real environment, rather than an idealized one, it is a beautifully executed portrait.
Sources:

Jozan. “Oriental Rug Magazine.” page one.  Accessed at <<http://www.jozan.net/2007/Classical-carpets.pdf>&gt;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Giese

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Holbein_the_Younger

Wolfe, Jessica. Humanism, Machinery, and Renaissance Literature. 2007.  accessed at http://books.google.com/books?id=tPNoMvitUtkC&pg=PA97&lpg=PA97&dq=holbein+%22george+gizse%22&source=bl&ots=62-BGJy1Gs&sig=LucmZcoCsbz9ZAqmde-8JQnsqV8&hl=en&ei=MdV1S5vPJoXgNbDp1JcP&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CBoQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=holbein%20%22george%20gizse%22&f=false

http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/201001/threads.on.canvas.htm&usg=__SVFHJUoPogaUSe2KCjZxrW78hNU=&h=552&w=538&sz=165&hl=en&start=6&um=1&itbs=1&tbnid=qwugWzmgCbI6QM:&tbnh=133&tbnw=130&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dthe%2Bring%2Bof%2Bthe%2Bdoge%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26sa%3DN%26um%3D1

Philliipy, Patricia. Painting Women: Cosmetics, Canvases, and Early Modern Culture. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 2006.

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