|
The Model
Selection copyright © 1997 by Rictor Norton. All rights
reserved. This
edition may not be reproduced or redistributed to third parties
without
permission of the author.
[From Essays Speculative and
Suggestive, 1890. The short excerpt is from a long
essay that originally appeared in The Fortnightly
Review, December 1887. Symonds's deliberately
provocative celebration of the superiority of nature over art is
based on his close study of photographs of the male nude, of
which he wrote to Edmund Gosse on 12 July 1890: "I have
quite a vast collection now — enough to paper a little room
I think. They become monotonous, but one goes seeking the supreme
form & the perfect picture." He collected hundreds of
photographs of Neapolitan boys by Guglielmo Plüschow.]
Those who have attentively studied a fine nude model, observing
the gradations of colour, the play of light and shade and shadow
upon the surface of the flesh, attending to the intricate details
of muscular and bony structure thus revealed, marking the thrill
of life in pulse and respiration and slight alterations of
attitude, such students will perforce concede that no drawing,
whether it be by the hand of Lionardo da Vinci or of Ingres, can
bear comparison with the living miracle displayed before them.
In so far as the drawing conscientiously portrays the model, it
calls forth admiration by its exhibition of the draughtsman's
skill; it instructs a learner by the revelation of his method.
Yet it remains a poor and feeble shadow of the truth. Art, we
say, is immeasurably below fact, so long as it attempts to rival
the glow and richness of the living man by its mere shadow-scheme
of imitation.
In a second degree such drawings are inferior to really
careful photographs from the nude. I have before me a
reproduction of the celebrated study of two naked men, which
Raphael sent as a specimen of his skill to Albert Dürer, and
also a photograph from a model in almost exactly the same
position as one of Raphael's figures. The model in my photograph
is somewhat coarse and vulgar. Yet no one, on comparing these two
forms (the crayon study and the photograph), can fail, I think,
to acknowledge the superiority of the more literal transcript
from nature. Cunning as was Raphael's craft, there is slovenly
drawing in the hands and feet, exaggerated markings in the knee
joints, unmeaning salience of muscle on the back, and a too
violent curve in the outline of the belly. The sun drew better
than Raphael; and the photograph of this common model is more
delightful to look at, because more adequate to the infinite
study of nature, than the masterpiece of the great draughtsman
of Urbino. Every detail of the body here is right, and in right
relation to the whole; every sinew explains itself without effort
and without emphasis; and the ripple of light an shade over the
whole flesh surface exhibits vital energy in a way which no work
of art has ever done.
It will, however, be objected that to contrast a chalk
drawing with a photograph from nature is not fair. The former
must always, to some extent, resemble a diagram, while the latter
represents at least the fullness and completeness of life. I
therefore pass on to a third degree of comparison; and for this
purpose I will select companion reproductions by photography of
Flandrin's famous study in the Luxembourg and of a living model
in the same attitude. (Flandrin's picture, it will be remembered,
represents a young man seated naked on a rock above the sea, with
a craggy line of coast in the far distance. His legs are gathered
up to the belly, and clasped with both hands above the ankles;
his head is bent upon the knees, so that nothing of the facial
expression is visible.)
Any unfairness in this comparison will certainly be to the
injury of the model; for Flandrin's picture has all the advantage
of the most consummate brush-work, and of the most careful
attention to light and shade upon flesh surfaces. It is in fact
an elaborate oil-painting of high technical excellence and
elevated style. My photograph from the model is a comparatively
poor one; the subject has not been selected with care, and the
print is flat. Yet I learn from it innumerable niceties which
Flandrin has not worked out þ something about the spring and
strain of tendons in the wrist and forearm where the hand is
clasped; something about the wrinkles in the belly caused by the
forward bending of the back; something about the prolongation of
the muscles of the pleura due to the stretching of the arm in
that position. The model, moreover, is more interesting, more
rich in suggestions of vital energy and movement. From the point
of view of uncompromising realism, there can be no doubt which
is the more satisfactory performance. The photograph of the model
is second, the photograph of the picture is third, in its remove
from nature, from reality, from truth. If the aim of art be to
render a literal image of the object, then the art of the camera
in this competition bears away the palm.
Nevertheless there is equally no doubt that Flandrin's study
is a painted poem, while the photograph of the nude model is only
what one may see any morning if one gets a well-made youth to
strip and pose.
What then gives Flandrin's picture its value as an artistic
product, as a painted poem? It tells no story, has no obvious
intention; the painter clearly meant it to be as perfect a
transcript from the nude, as near to the vraie
vérité of nature, as he could make
it. The answer is that, although he may not have sought to
idealise, although he did not seek to express a definite thought,
his picture is penetrated with spiritual quality. In passing
through the artist's mind, this form of a mere model has been
transfigured. while it has lost something of the vivacity and
salient truth of nature, it has acquired permanence, dignity,
repose, elevation. It has become "a thing of beauty, a joy
for every," in a sense in which no living person, however
far more attractive, more interesting, more multiformly charming,
can be described by these terms.
Art will never match the infinite variety and subtlety of nature;
no drawing or painting will equal the primary beauties of the
living model. We cannot paint a tree as lovely as the tree upon
the field in sunlight is. We cannot carve a naked man as
wonderful as the youth stripped there upon the river's bank
before his plunge into the water. Therefore the thorough-going
Realist ought frankly to abandon figurative art, and to content
his soul with the exhibition and contemplation of actual nature.
This, however, is not the conclusion to which our argument leads;
for after we have admitted the relative inferiority of art to
nature, we know that are has qualities, all of them derived from
the intellectual, selective, imaginative faculties of man, which
more than justify its existence.
The brain, by interposing its activity in however slight a
degree between the object and the representation, is bound to
interpret, and in so far to idealise. The primary reality of the
model, the secondary reality of the photographic portrait, are
exchanged for reality as the artist's mind and heart have
conceived it. Thus what a man sees and feels in the world around
him, what he selects from it, and how he presents it, constitute
the differentia of art. He may falsify
or faithfully report, elevate or degrade, eliminate the purest
form from nature, or produce a grotesque satire of her most
beautiful creations. This intervention of the artist's mind
between the object and the figured representation makes him an
interpreter; it invests all works of art with some mood, some
tone, some suggestion of human thought and emotion. And whether
this intervention be voluntary or involuntary matters little. The
point to fix on is that the artist's mind cannot be inoperative
in the processes of art. The imported element of subjectivity
will be definite or vague, according to the intensity of the
artist's character, and according to the amount of purpose or
conviction which he felt while working; it will be genial or
repellent, tender or austere, humane or barbarous, depraving or
ennobling, chaste or licentious, sensual or spiritual, according
to the bias of his temperament.
Now it is just this intervention of a thinking, feeling
subjectivity which makes Flandrin's study of the young man alone
upon the rock a painted poem. We may not, while looking at this
picture, be quite sure what the meaning of the poem is: different
minds, as in the case of musical melody, will be affected by it
in divers ways. To me, for instance, the picture suggests
resignation, the mystery of fate, the calm of acquiescence. The
ocean which surrounds that solitary form, and the distant coast-
line, add undoubtedly to an imaginative impression of the sort
I have described. These accessories are absent in the photograph
of the model, which only suggests the interior of a studio. In
so far, therefore, as they contribute to the total effect of
Flandrin's picture, the mere model is at a palpable disadvantage.
Yet we might transfer the model to a real rock, with the same
scene of sea and coast painted behind him for a background; or
better, we might place him in position on some spur of Capri's
promontories with the Sorrentine headland for background; but in
neither case should we obtain the result achieved by Flandrin.
A photograph from the model in these circumstances would not
influence our mind in the same manner. The beauty of the study
might be even greater; the truth to fact, to nature's infinite
variety of structure in the living body, would be undoubtedly
more striking; the emotion stirred in us might be more pungent,
and our interest more vivid; yet something, that indeed which
makes the poem, would have disappeared. Instead of being toned
to the artist's mood by sympathy with the ideas — vague but
deep as melody — which the intervention of his mind imports
into the subject, we should dwell upon the vigour of adolescent
manhood, we should be curious perhaps to see the youth spring up,
we should wonder how his lifted eyes might gaze on us, and what
his silent lips might utter.
Return to Symonds Table of Contents
|
