On Nov 12, 2010, at 10:39 PM, Chuck Grimes wrote:
> But what has narrative to do with Painting? Any figurative painting
> is atemporal, a frozen moment. What narrative is there in "The Garden
> of Earthly Delights?" You can supply any narrative you want
>
> ----------------------
>
> Here's the image we are discussing:
>
> http://www.computus.org/journal/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/the-garden-of-earthly-delights.jpg
>
> Shane you are wrong, deeply wrong---but for a highly interesting
> reason. I am putting on my art-nun habit as shown on PBS to explain.
> This gives me a chance to play art history professor
I think we are taking the word "narrative" in different senses. For simple me it just signifies story-telling. By "frozen moment" I meant some scene (or for the triptych, scenes) from a story as told in some particular tradition, and by "any narrative you want" your imagination's ability not only to retell the story in many different ways incorporating that frozen moment, but even to incorporate it in many possible stories most of which have nothing to do with the narrative within which the painter consciously operated. Seeing a painting of a beautiful woman seducing a long- haired man and asked to tell a story incorporating that scene, how many people would put the collapse of a temple into their narrative? (unless they had been told that the title of the painting was "Samson and Delilah" and they had seen the opera or read the book). But you seem to take the word "narrative" in a much more elaborate sense as signifying the ideological significance of the choice of subject and the symbolic details that an artist displayed to a public suffused with that ideology. Of course, that also has its place.
Shane Mage "L'après-vie, c'est une auberge espagnole. L'on n'y trouve que ce qu'on a apporté."
> First thing to notice is the painting is a tryptic, which means it
> could have been or probably was installed in a church and folded
> shut. The left swings counterclock wise and the right panel swings
> clockwise to cover the middle panel. This explains the 1/3, 2/3, 1/3
> physical proporition. You have to be pretty good at geometry as a
> craftsman to construct this painting. You construct two panels of
> about any size of the same LxW and saw one in half. The latter are
> your side panels. The technology is high, because very likely the
> panels are painted wood. The wood panels are made in an interlocking
> well joined checkerboard (lapped join) of highly seasoned hard wood,
> sanded very smooth and coated with many thin layers of water based
> gesso--marble dust ground with water and binders (usually rabbit
> skin or some other organic glue). The painting materials were
> probably a combination of tempera and oil. The oil was used as a
> toned varnish (umber earth) overlay to help create a three
> dimensional effect. The more coats you apply the darker the image.
> This varnish was made with damar resin, soaked in turpintine which
> comes from distilled wood pulp---probably made locally. Dammar gum
> comes from a tree native to India and South Asia---which also might
> have been grown in the Middle East. Many of the pigments probably
> came from Italy.
>
> The painting is also a material product that reflects-embodies the
> economic and trade system of the period. The main route in Germany
> to all the necessary materials not available in Germany was Venice---
> and or trade routes up the Danube. The Danube empties in the Black
> Sea. Either way you end up in Arab Muslim territory. Art history is
> actually driven by political economic geography. Nevermind.
>
> Getting back to the narrative. The narrative of the right panel is
> the gardin of eden with adam and eve. All the visual elements of the
> panel are a fairequeen world of happiness with little birdies
> sailing blues skies, unicorns drink in the river with snowy egrets,
> antelop and domestic cattle. About the only predator is a small fox
> carrying a rat away to munch on. God, somehow mysteriously the son
> of god holds eve's hand to explain the apple tree behind them. A
> magic pink fountain of purity, health, and eternal youth feeds the
> river. Even the imaginary creatures coming out of a hole or cave in
> the earth seem beign curiousities. Blinking creatures in sunlight.
>
> The central panel depicts the fall from grace. In the near
> foreground the carnal nature of fallen mankind is centered on eve
> eating the apple and adam sitting nearby. Notice also racial mixing
> on the foreground left, as well as many other sins. In the high
> background the pink fountain has been ruined.
>
> On the left panel we have hell proper of endless night, endless war,
> and fear. And much of that world is associated with the begiling
> pleasures of music which isn't for God's glory but our own sensual
> pleasure.
>
> In effect this is the illustrated hand book of Dante's Divine Comedy.
>
> These kinds of panels were used to deliver sermons, illustrate the
> Catholic calendar which also reflects the Christian cosmology and
> lecture the feudal masses on their evil ways, and how to gain the
> road to redemption, follow church orders in the wonderous journey
> toward the hierarchy of beatitude.
>
> The psychological depths of these narratives had a tremendous hold
> on the collective mind of society. We are no longer compelled by
> them entirely, although we have the residue to reconstruct them
> them. We still share much of that world. Just consider nudity itself
> is still subject to universal taboos almost everywhere.
>
> CG
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Bardo Thodol
