With a nod to Iambiguous’ threads inspiration, a thread to discuss the philosophical implications of various paintings. Style and content each, perhaps, implying something about the nature of the world.
I and my Village, Chagall
First off the sizes of the ‘objects’ are not ‘realistic’. I put the latter term in citation marks because to me this painting seems more realistic than paintings that are considered realistic. The animal (or the other) is huge compared to the houses. So is the self – the Chagall in the painting. We are centered on the relation, which is given as a line. You can remember a day, at home, before sleep, with everything proportioned like they are supposed to be as measured by scientists. Underlying the entire day, though, may very well be a single relationship. We may not even be thinking, consciously, of this relationship. We may mull over before going to sleep a hard day at work, the various projects and obstacles, when in fact the relationship with one’s father was really the underlying background in all motivation, anxiety, and self-evaluation. Sizes, at the very least for our own experience and what is shifting underneath it, are not scientific. Or lay scientific, in any case.
So I appreciate this painting - despite my wish that Chagall in general was subtler with colors and more of a master of them - because the painting reorganizes reality to match what the actual priorities and sizes and dynamics.
A bit like a dream can. I have had dreams where upon waking I realize that the dream was more real than all the thoughts I have had for weeks or years. That it cut through the BS to what the real underlying motors are. The painting functions like a dream collage or cross-section.
But, Yo, Moreno, it’s an animal. All right, yes. It is an animal. And while I know – from reading - that how the painting hits me is actually not what Chagall intended, I see the animal as representing the Other, regardless of species…it could even be God. It is the Other encountered by a child – I see much of the child’s view in Chagall’s work. In an encounter with an Other everything fades into the background. So yes, something like Buber’s I/thou – no doubt partially coming to mind due to Chagall’s Jewishness, even though, as I said, my interpretation and Chagall’s are not the same.
The encounter with another being is the core of life, and also that that encounter reorders everything else – the village jumbled and small. One might, from that lay scientist model of reality in the mind, think that this is merely due to the irrational perspective of the human, or feel like there is a friction between the way things are and the priorities and causal patterns actually running things in the human mind. To meet Chagall’s I and the Village is therefore very gentle for me. It mirrors back what might be considered distortions, here simply shown as This is the way the world is. Call it a trope if you must. I think of this mirroring as good and a resistance to the hegemony of a certain view of the world.
Note: the sizes can represent the phenomenological sizes – in memory, in priority – OR the unconscious sizes (the underlying causal priority of the ‘things’.)
Sticking with paintings sends me to neoclassical works, since classical painting had more limited materials and does not show classical values as well as, say, classical sculpture. So, Ingres….
Jupiter and Thetis
The values are symmetry, clean lines, individuals separated from the environment, mathematical bodies, shapes. I feel like there is something inhuman about this art. Note: I like many neo-classical works, I think it is a valid and interesting aesthetic option, but when it dominates it has more than a whiff of fascism for me. Think 80s male fashion models. Why would this be so? The Platonic ideal is very much mathematical. A perfect form that earthly forms can only remotely approach. Emotions except vague character notions like pride and nobility, disrupt the harmonious lines.
It admonishes us to move towards a kind of static perfection. Motion, imbalance, asymmetry, blemishes (or beauty marks perhaps) detract and move the individual further from THE FORMS.
You can see these ideals in both communist and Nazi propaganda films from the 30s.
A great fairly recent rendition/parody of neoclassical values is
Here the immaculate suits and business cards and coldly perfect architecture and the main characters sculptured body conceal horrific violence (and sexism). I Think this is an inevitable result of holding such ideals, that what is suppressed comes back with a vengeance.
Is it from the Classical cultures that Chritianity took on some of its absolute transcendant ideals?
IN any case there is a nice dovetailing with the idea of fallen man, even Babies already in a state of fallenness, the implicit hatred of the material World and ‘this life’ and the hypervaluation of perfect intangible forms that one is to love and strive to be like.
Classical images look static, but they hide the biggest running away imaginable.
Jupiter’s arm and the placement of Thetis make the painting asymmetrical, but the bodies themselves are symmetrical and ideal.
Fuseli’s The Nightmare.
What is that imp pondering?
Why is the horse frightend?
Is the woman a victim?
This is a romantic era painting telling us, in a very fruedian way, about our own unconsious or about what civilization does try to repress. It’s a painting that contains an image of the sublime-- the deep, dark recesses of our mind. What do you guys think?
The imp or demon seems aware of us. As if the unconscious knows more about others than the woman herself. If he is meant to be sleep or dreaming or the unconscious he is dominating her, her posture even has an air of rape victim. We do tend to so dissociate from portions of ourselves we Think we are victims of an OTHER.
I can’t quite read the horse’s expression. I figures the horse might be a night mare, but on second thought I Think that is incorrect etymology. A freudian, however, might consider it a slip of the image.
Now that you ask this, it makes me wonder if the reason the demon stares at us is because he is us, rather than some portion of her. She is having a nightmare, this in turn caused by our unconscious attack - known to us in flickers of desires and rage we don’t identify with or try to suppress. The painting being a kind of ‘this is who you really are image.’
I would have said it showed the uncanny rather than the sublime - see my thread here…
The imp seems more than a bit disturbed ~~~ “how can she possibly fall asleep while I’m here?” ~~~ that the woman is so unafraid of him that she has fallen asleep. She’s having no nightmare…she’s simply totally abandoned to the moment. Look at her arms. She appears to have put herself in a vulnerable position but she doesn’t seem to care. Perhaps she trusts her demons, knows them, realizes them, has fought them and can allow them to perch on her as she sleeps. The imp in turn does not like that - you can see by his face.
Nope. She’s the conqueror. She can sleep in peace because she realizes as Nietzsche said that "wisdom is a woman who loves only a warrior. Look how exhausted she is? Veni Vidi Vici - as I will again and again and again… and now I must sleep.
No suppression/repression going on here. look at the imp. He’s trying to hatch within his mind new ways to best her. …as she sleeps peacefully in harmony with her demon. He just can’t figure out where he went wrong. lol
I don’t think that the horse looks scared. From my perspective, he seems to be mocking the imp. Look at the horse’s eyes? They are saying "Are you for real? Give it up already, you silly imp.
if she simply looked utterly relaxed and asleep, maybe. But her head is dangling off the bed. This looks more conquered to me and would not be a pleasant position to Wake up from.
This is how I read the previous image. The imp is the artist, the horse wanton lust. The woman, potential victim but unharmed as suggested by her unruffled dress. The imp represents the devilish potential within, yet he has not acted upon his desires thus he is an imp and not a monster. I see the woman’s pose as this: prior to the imp’s arrival she was sleeping soundly, upon his arrival, the violence within him disturbs her pose but does not go beyond this. It’s all potential…simmering, brewing, violent potential, but not actual. Maybe the imp’s contemplation represent’s our ability to become aware of ourselves and our passions and to halt them from causing chaos…cool picture.
