Neue Pinakothek
Again a great deal to see. In fact we were pretty much here for the whole day, so late leaving that we’d missed lunch altogether and went straight for a Hellesbier and early dinner, feeling we’d earned it. The Neue Pinakothek picks up where the Alte Pinakothek left off, exploring the full range of nineteenth century art. The most famous stuff is probably the Impressionist paintings, the Van Goghs and Manets and Monets with their self constructed imperative of painting en plein air – being outdoors, whether on the moving space of a boat or on more solid, usually rural, ground. Nevertheless K- commented that Van Gogh’s depiction of an Arles farmscape, framed by a wide grid of dark vines, seemed to be painted from some place of distance and enclosure – the mental prison bars from which Vincent found himself unable to escape, despite his plans for a painters’ colony.
Three paintings of the many that have stayed in my mind’s eye.
First this realist but still extraordinary portrait by Gabriel Cornelius Ritter von Max of Anna Katherina Emmerich, German stigmatist and visionary of the early 19th century (1774 – 1842). Coming from a poor family she went into service until entering an Augustinian convent at the age of 28. Her health deteriorated and she developed the supernatural phenomena of the stigmata, manifesting the wounds of Christ on hands and brow. Well – an alarming and sensational occurrence, as anyone who has studied the mystics from Saint Francis onwards knows (or you might just have seen ‘Stigmata’ the film with Patricia Arquette in it, bless her). Many though not all stigmatics were young women, perhaps manifesting psychosomatically in the visceral language of the body what they lacked in education and authority. However Emmerich has left words too, dictated to the poet Clemens Brentano (who now takes the flak for some aspects of Emmerich’s text showing racist or other prejudiced pronouncements); of her extremely graphic visions of Christ’s Passion; his capture, condemnation and death. ‘The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ’ 1862, is a substantial text, available online here . A brief extract:
At the termination of the scourging, Mary came to herself for a time, and saw her Divine Son all torn and mangled, being led away by the archers after the scourging: he wiped his eyes, which were filled with blood, that he might look at his Mother, and she stretched out her hands towards him, and continued to look at the bloody traces of his footsteps. I soon after saw Mary and Magdalen approach the pillar where Jesus had been scourged; the mob were at a distance, and they were partly concealed by the other holy women, and by a few kind-hearted persons who had joined them; they knelt down on the ground near the pillar, and wiped up the sacred blood with the linen which Claudia Procles had sent.
Very vivid. And if you saw Mel Gibson’s The Passion does it seem familiar? It should: apparently Traditional Catholic Gibson drew extensively from Emmerich’s text. She was beatified in 2004; so now is one canonical step away from canonisation. This painting was complete well before Gibson’s project was ever conceived of course, and is very discrete in its suggestions of both bloody stigmatic wounds and visionary text. You might hardly notice it, next to the larger and distinctly more ghoulish picture entitled ‘The anatomist’ next to it on the Pinakothek gallery wall. Curiously there is no image or even mention of the painting in the otherwise pretty comprehensive guidebook, nor is there any postcard to be obtained from the otherwise extensive gallery shop selection, as though Emmerich hovers between erasure and a white flare of publicity.
Above is Fernand Khnopff’s 1891 Pre-Raphaelite inspired (but definitely not Pre-Raphaelite itself) ‘I Lock the Door Upon Myself’. This second painting is not a portrait but a symbolist meditation on a Christina Rossetti Poem, ‘Who Shall Deliver Me?’ from 1876
God strengthen me to bear myself;
That heaviest weight of all to bear,
Inalienable weight of care.
All others are outside myself;
I lock my door and bar them out
The turmoil, tedium, gad-about.
I lock my door upon myself,
And bar them out; but who shall wall
Self from myself, most loathed of all?
If I could once lay down myself,
And start self-purged upon the race
That all must run ! Death runs apace.
If I could set aside myself,
And start with lightened heart upon
The road by all men overgone!
God harden me against myself,
This coward with pathetic voice
Who craves for ease and rest and joys
Myself, arch-traitor to myself ;
My hollowest friend, my deadliest foe,
My clog whatever road I go.
Yet One there is can curb myself,
Can roll the strangling load from me
Break off the yoke and set me free.
Rossetti was very religious and this poem is written in the voice of a would-be nun. Not that Khnopff draws particularly on this potential narrative fragment. But he takes what is possibly the most resonant line from this poem, perhaps echoing some of Rossetti’s own quixotic, reflexive playfulness with his dreamy yet puzzling painting. The only pallor in this painting is in the strange winged ornament, and the woman’s skin and particularly her eyes, external perception fading in the face of her creative imagination, though one doubts she is having ecstatic visions the like of Emmerich’s.
Finally, a Paul Gauguin Painting entitled ‘The Birth of Christ’ from 1896. Gaugin lived in Tahiti and his painting includes elements of Tahitian beliefs as well as the Christian connotations of the painting’s title. The woman (?) in a blue robe standing at the centre of the painting, in a direct diagonal line from the prone woman who has just given birth, is actually a mythical Tahitian angel, with green wings – discernible once you know to look for them – waiting to receive the newborn soul into the afterlife. The little baby has a halo and is tenderly passed on its way by the midwife or friend in white. The mother, also with her subtle golden halo, lies exhausted with one hand stretched towards us – or to Gauguin. For as the guidebook explains, ‘The picture was painted to mark the birth of a child, in 1896, to the Tahitian woman Pajura, whom Gauguin had taken as his wife. The child died a few days later.’ Gauguin has perhaps attempted to come to terms with his and his wife’s loss by raising their experience into a transcendent spiritual narrative. And it is a beautifully composed painting; balanced, luminous, human. And - is that a little white cat nuzzling the foot of the woman on the bed? Perhaps a domestic echo of the cattle in the right background, themselves echoing the traditional nativity stable in Bethlehem.
Enough really except just to note that the audio guide for a rather unremarkable painting by Corot spoke of his theory that every painting must have one – and only one – ‘point of maximum luminosity’ to which the eye is drawn. I’ve been thinking about this. I agree and differ at the same time. Compositionally I’m sure he’s right, but sometimes the hidden details are the key to finding some dialogue with, some insight from, some lesson of peace from such various art.
Three paintings of the many that have stayed in my mind’s eye.
First this realist but still extraordinary portrait by Gabriel Cornelius Ritter von Max of Anna Katherina Emmerich, German stigmatist and visionary of the early 19th century (1774 – 1842). Coming from a poor family she went into service until entering an Augustinian convent at the age of 28. Her health deteriorated and she developed the supernatural phenomena of the stigmata, manifesting the wounds of Christ on hands and brow. Well – an alarming and sensational occurrence, as anyone who has studied the mystics from Saint Francis onwards knows (or you might just have seen ‘Stigmata’ the film with Patricia Arquette in it, bless her). Many though not all stigmatics were young women, perhaps manifesting psychosomatically in the visceral language of the body what they lacked in education and authority. However Emmerich has left words too, dictated to the poet Clemens Brentano (who now takes the flak for some aspects of Emmerich’s text showing racist or other prejudiced pronouncements); of her extremely graphic visions of Christ’s Passion; his capture, condemnation and death. ‘The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ’ 1862, is a substantial text, available online here . A brief extract:
At the termination of the scourging, Mary came to herself for a time, and saw her Divine Son all torn and mangled, being led away by the archers after the scourging: he wiped his eyes, which were filled with blood, that he might look at his Mother, and she stretched out her hands towards him, and continued to look at the bloody traces of his footsteps. I soon after saw Mary and Magdalen approach the pillar where Jesus had been scourged; the mob were at a distance, and they were partly concealed by the other holy women, and by a few kind-hearted persons who had joined them; they knelt down on the ground near the pillar, and wiped up the sacred blood with the linen which Claudia Procles had sent.
Very vivid. And if you saw Mel Gibson’s The Passion does it seem familiar? It should: apparently Traditional Catholic Gibson drew extensively from Emmerich’s text. She was beatified in 2004; so now is one canonical step away from canonisation. This painting was complete well before Gibson’s project was ever conceived of course, and is very discrete in its suggestions of both bloody stigmatic wounds and visionary text. You might hardly notice it, next to the larger and distinctly more ghoulish picture entitled ‘The anatomist’ next to it on the Pinakothek gallery wall. Curiously there is no image or even mention of the painting in the otherwise pretty comprehensive guidebook, nor is there any postcard to be obtained from the otherwise extensive gallery shop selection, as though Emmerich hovers between erasure and a white flare of publicity.
Above is Fernand Khnopff’s 1891 Pre-Raphaelite inspired (but definitely not Pre-Raphaelite itself) ‘I Lock the Door Upon Myself’. This second painting is not a portrait but a symbolist meditation on a Christina Rossetti Poem, ‘Who Shall Deliver Me?’ from 1876
God strengthen me to bear myself;
That heaviest weight of all to bear,
Inalienable weight of care.
All others are outside myself;
I lock my door and bar them out
The turmoil, tedium, gad-about.
I lock my door upon myself,
And bar them out; but who shall wall
Self from myself, most loathed of all?
If I could once lay down myself,
And start self-purged upon the race
That all must run ! Death runs apace.
If I could set aside myself,
And start with lightened heart upon
The road by all men overgone!
God harden me against myself,
This coward with pathetic voice
Who craves for ease and rest and joys
Myself, arch-traitor to myself ;
My hollowest friend, my deadliest foe,
My clog whatever road I go.
Yet One there is can curb myself,
Can roll the strangling load from me
Break off the yoke and set me free.
Rossetti was very religious and this poem is written in the voice of a would-be nun. Not that Khnopff draws particularly on this potential narrative fragment. But he takes what is possibly the most resonant line from this poem, perhaps echoing some of Rossetti’s own quixotic, reflexive playfulness with his dreamy yet puzzling painting. The only pallor in this painting is in the strange winged ornament, and the woman’s skin and particularly her eyes, external perception fading in the face of her creative imagination, though one doubts she is having ecstatic visions the like of Emmerich’s.
Finally, a Paul Gauguin Painting entitled ‘The Birth of Christ’ from 1896. Gaugin lived in Tahiti and his painting includes elements of Tahitian beliefs as well as the Christian connotations of the painting’s title. The woman (?) in a blue robe standing at the centre of the painting, in a direct diagonal line from the prone woman who has just given birth, is actually a mythical Tahitian angel, with green wings – discernible once you know to look for them – waiting to receive the newborn soul into the afterlife. The little baby has a halo and is tenderly passed on its way by the midwife or friend in white. The mother, also with her subtle golden halo, lies exhausted with one hand stretched towards us – or to Gauguin. For as the guidebook explains, ‘The picture was painted to mark the birth of a child, in 1896, to the Tahitian woman Pajura, whom Gauguin had taken as his wife. The child died a few days later.’ Gauguin has perhaps attempted to come to terms with his and his wife’s loss by raising their experience into a transcendent spiritual narrative. And it is a beautifully composed painting; balanced, luminous, human. And - is that a little white cat nuzzling the foot of the woman on the bed? Perhaps a domestic echo of the cattle in the right background, themselves echoing the traditional nativity stable in Bethlehem.
Enough really except just to note that the audio guide for a rather unremarkable painting by Corot spoke of his theory that every painting must have one – and only one – ‘point of maximum luminosity’ to which the eye is drawn. I’ve been thinking about this. I agree and differ at the same time. Compositionally I’m sure he’s right, but sometimes the hidden details are the key to finding some dialogue with, some insight from, some lesson of peace from such various art.
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