My Kid Could Paint That

Landscape with Saint John on Patmos, Nicolas Poussin, 1640

Sometime near the end of his life, Saint John, exiled to the island of Patmos, authored the Book of Revelation, an apocalyptic text derived from God-given visions and a key element of the Christian religion. For the most part, Revelation doesn't contain a whole lot of hope. Seas turning to blood, plagues and pestilence, wars and famines, and destruction on excessive scales fill the majority of the text. Since Saint John appears to be writing something in this picture, I don't find it illogical to assume that he's transcribing his visions to parchment. One might assume that, after seeing such horrific visions, one would be, at the least, agitated, if not straight-up insane. However, John lounges comfortably among the serene ruins of Patmos, unbothered by the impending death of millions. Perhaps, because of his dedication to his faith, he believes he'll survive the end of the world unscathed. Perhaps John is mentally unstable. We shall never know.

Nicolas Poussin, although native to France, spent the majority of his artistic career studying in Italy, where he became familiar with classical Roman architecture, which consequently found its way into his artwork. Poussin crafts a painting that guides the eye through each layer. He begins by highlighting the foreground with the figure of Saint John wearing warm, bright colors and inserting bold, powerfully illustrated ruins rich with age. The two clusters of trees frame the middle ground as a river weaves its way through the landscape, leading the eye towards the architecture in the background. The gathering of marble is consequently upstaged by the majestic mountain that thrusts upward, which combines with the rest of the piece to create an irresistible forward movement and almost tangible depth.

Bernini, Project for the Louvre façade,  1664

Bernini began his first Louvre project in 1664. Ultimately, this and two consecutive plans for the French palace failed. Specifically, the plans were for the East Wing of the Louvre. Bernini's first design featured a bold concave façade with a projecting entrance that bulged in the opposite direction, simultaneously welcoming and imposing. The plans, bursting with bold, handsome Roman characteristics, would've been entirely out of place in the Paris, whose architecture subscribed to more elegant and subdued beauty. Considering Bernini's overall dissatisfaction with the state of the artistic world in France, his attempt to inject his preferred style comes not as a surprise.

After the rejection of his first design, Bernini submitted another, basically the same design with the convex portion scooped out, leaving the indented half-circle to operate on its own as an entrance. The second design was rejected for similar reason: a Roman building just wouldn't do for the newest Parisian landmark.

Bernini's third and final design drew heavily from the design for the Palazzo Chigi-Odescalchi, the façade of which was originally created by Bernini, but has since been redesigned several times. The Palazzo Chigi-Odescalchi, however, is also Roman, with a powerful, broad façade and grounded, blockish stories. This third design failed to pass, and Bernini left Paris's architecture uninfluenced.

Edward Hopper, Office in a Small City, 1953

Hopper's painting accesses a unique emotional dichotomy. It communicates a loneliness, an empty, blank perspective, a man who, while above the city, has no connection to it. He sees the city as it truly is, and thereby separates himself from it.  The simpleness, the pure uncluttered nature of Hopper's piece builds on the emotion, or lack thereof, of the painting. On the other hand, the soft tones and easy lines make the piece consumable. It's easy to look at, to take in. It'scomfortable.

Beyond these two elements, however, lies a third: it's relatable. Not person among us hasn't felt empty, or meaningless, at some point. Everyone views themselves, in one way or another, as detached from society. Most of all, everyone has sat at a desk, looked out a window, and wished themselves somewhere else.

"My aim was to try to give the sense of an isolated and lonely office interior rather high in the air, with the office furniture which has a very definite meaning to me," Hopper said in regard to his work. He attempts, and succeeds, at creating a separated and elevated sense of space. The man looks down at the city from its highest point, but by doing so removes himself from it. Or vice versa: he separates himself in order to view the city from above. Superiority comes at the cost of loneliness.

Henri Leopold Lévy,  The Death of Orpheus, 1870

The tale of Orpheus goes thusly: spawn of Apollo and Calliope, Orpheus had a supernatural gift for music. With his sick tunes he tamed wild animals, wooed women, and drowned out the cries of the Sirens. Orpheus marries Eurydice, and then, on the same day, Eurydice steps in a viper pit and dies. Lyre in hand, Orpheus descends to the Underworld and makes a deal with Hades. Eurydice may return with Orpheus, but only if Orpheus can lead the way without once looking back at his wife. He fails. Eurydice fades back into the Underworld, this time as a permanent resident. Myths abound describing the nature of Orpheus's death. In the thralls of grief he kills himself, or Zeus strikes him down with lightning. Two fit with this painting: one, he is torn apart by female followers of Dionysus, called Maenads, because Orpheus refused to worship.  In the other, Orpheus has sworn off women, and an angry mob of would-be lovers murder him for it.

In the distance, Orpheus's killers rejoice. The head, divorced from his body, lies at the center. While pale and deathly, a slight yellow glow radiates from it, and his body clings still to his lyre. Even in death, he lives on. Through his music, through his legend. Doves flit over the corpse, representing the purity and devotion of the musician. Despite the naturally grotesque subject of the painting, Lévy minimizes the gore. Orpheus's head leaks only a few red brushstrokes, and the body, while grayed with death, has no contortion about it, but stretches gracefully on the shore, as if in sleep. His eyes are not open in terror, nor his mouth agape with fear. He has peace in death, because he knows who waits below.

Compositionally, Lévy's piece centers on the head. The two streams cross exactly at that point, and the brightest colors revolve around Orpheus's decapitated dome. The bottom river creates a diagonal, further dividing body from head. While the body may have stopped moving, the head, symbolizing the soul, has one journey left.

Jacopo Tintoretto, Raising of the Brazen Serpent,  1575

The backstory to Tintoretto's piece comes from Numbers 21:6-9. The Jewish people were wandering about the desert, slandered against God. God, not a fan of being slandered, sent to plague the Jews "fiery serpents." The serpents bit and killed many a slanderous Jew until they had enough of dying by snakebite. They went to Moses, and Moses went to God. God commanded Moses to forge a bronze snake and stick it up on a pole, and anyone who gazed upon the snake would live.

Tintoretto plays with intense light-dark contrast, which also serves to draw the eye to the focal point of the painting - the healing of the damned. The upper portion features dramatically poised angels. The lines follow the edge of the clouds down to the feet of the hanging angel, forming a downward triangle towards the slightly off-center centerpiece. The lower half serves also to point to the bright miracle. The path of writhing bodies and discolored corpses surges upward, and Tintoretto creates a gradually increasing brightness along this path, further enforcing its motion.

Yet for all the stress Tintoretto lays on this point, it still only composes a mere fraction of the piece. The darkness far outweighs the light, and the corpses outnumber the living. Though God chooses to offer salvation for the afflicted, Tintoretto reminds us that God also chose to afflict them in the first place.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Beggars, 1568

I am disturbed by this painting. The pain bleeds raw emotion through Bruegel's strokes. These men are at the absolute, ultimate bottom. Emotional, physical, and societal turmoil bombards them on all fronts. Degraded even further, the five parade around in a circuitous spectacle. They are ignored by the passerby, who keeps his head down, staring at the object in his hands. Ignored and ridiculed, disfigured and degraded, they represent the lowest a human can sink.

A closer look at the headwear of these figures reveals a layer of Bruegel's token social critique. The leftmost beggar wears a paper crown, and following to the right: a paper shako as worn by the soldiers of the day, a beret to represent the bourgeois, a simple cap typical of a peasant, and a bishop's mitre. Bruegel uses this attire, placed upon such lowly individuals, to comment of the equality of man and the futility of class structure. Beneath any social standing hides a the soul of a human, however hideous that might be.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Christ Carrying the Cross, 1564

Forget the title of this painting, and look at it with fresh eyes. Bruegel scatters a crowd across an awe-inspiring landscape of lush greens and browns, giving nature center stage and contrasting the immensity of the environment against the relative littleness of humanity. This re-prioritization, this turning the tables, gives away Bruegel's piece as classic Northern Renaissance.

Despite Bruegel's emphasis on the natural world, he puts an immense amount of detail into his people. Note the red-clad soldiers dabbling about various parts of the landscape. Bruegel painted these fellows' uniforms to resemble those of the Spanish invading forces who occupied Flemish territory during Bruegel's lifetime. On a larger scale, the reds serve as a colorful connect-the-dots, leading one's eye across the painting to the main event (main according to the people, of course), Golgotha. Golgotha, a.k.a. Calvary, marks the location of Christ's crucifixion. Translated, it means "place of the skull," and Bruegel inserts a large animal's cranium into the bottom right corner of the painting to acknowledge this.

Now let me draw your attention to the frontman of this piece, the ubiquitous Jesus Christ, messiah, son of God, and, in this case, spectacle. Bruegel's painting doesn't put the spotlight on Jesus. He hides him, better than most Where's Waldo puzzles, amongst the masses. Although in the center, Jesus doesn't appear larger than his fellow humans - in fact, he crouches beneath the cross he struggles to carry. The humanization - almost degradation - of Jesus offers a perspective more accurate to the time of his crucifixion. On the road to his execution, Jesus wouldn't have been glorified or put on any sort of pedestal, he'd be humiliated and ridiculed and spat on.

Bruegel's masterpiece manages to send a trifold message - one to emphasize the glory of nature, one to make a socio-political statement about the Spaniards, and another to portray the iconic road to Calvary scene in a fresh light.

Donatello, Habakkuk, 1425

Donatello's Habakkuk, often known as Pumpkinhead, was the eighth of twelve minor prophets in the Old Testament of the Bible. As Habakkuk's self-titled book reveals next to nothing about the prophet himself, Donatello took some artistic license while rendering Habakkuk's form. Donatello departed from the traditional  way of portraying prophets and other significant biblical figures as perfectly handsome, relatively young men. Instead, Donatello created a more realistic version of the eighth prophet, one thin and tired from fasting and devotion to God.

This sculpture acquired its nickname, Pumpkinhead, from the oddly proportioned head that Donatello gave to the prophet. The problem corrects itself, however, when viewed from the position that the sculpture was originally designed for. Donatello customized each of his sculptures, keeping in mind the perspective that the viewer would have, and adjusting the proportions accordingly. What at first appears to be an error, upon a closer inspection, reveals yet another level of Donatello's genius.

The skillfully crafted drapery tells of the muscular form beneath, and Habakkuk's posture and expression give the sculpture a sense of weariness and age. Habakkuk has obviously persevered through trial and persecution alike, and his form, although thinned by time, won't be giving up anytime soon.

Benozzo Gozzoli, Journey of the Magi, 1459

Gozzoli painted this fresco for the Medici Palace in Florence, and it's meant to picture the journey of the three wise men to Bethlehem, on their way to visit the newborn Jesus. Upon closer inspection, however, you might find some discrepancies with this. The clothing resembles, instead of traditional biblical attire, clothing of the modern age. Gozzoli went to great lengths to incorporate the Medici family into his work, painting in family members and using their faces as prototypes for the kings themselves.

The fresco actually spans three different walls in the Medici Palace, one for each king. This one features the youngest king. It has been speculated that he is meant to resemble Lorenzo Il Magnifico, but Lorenzo was, at the time, not more than ten years old and hence not able to be painted in. Cosimo de Medici's elderly figure sits atop the brown mule, the mule crowned with shining gold harnesses to separate him from the crowd. Gozzoli did a self-portrait in the third row, and is signified by his hat, which has his name on it. The castle in the background, meant to be Jerusalem, bears a resemblance to one of the Medici's villas.

The procession crowds the painting, and the perspective isn't entirely correct, but the piece features some improvements from the paintings of the pre-renaissance era. The trees and undergrowth depart from the unrealistic Giotto style, and, although still a far cry from complete accuracy, seem much more realistic than before.

Gozzoli's work doesn't necessarily come close to perfection, but it takes a step in the right direction.

Edward Hopper, New York Movie, 1939

At first glance, Hopper's piece bespeaks loneliness and seclusion. The doorwoman, excluded from the people and the screen, seems to hide in the back of the theatre. But I choose to view her separation from a different perspective. What if, instead of stuck back there in some sort of banishment, the doorwoman seeks a kind of refuge from the noise, the light, the rustling of popcorn chewers? Rather than exiled to this niche, she chooses this banishment to escape from all the motion of the movie. She simply takes a break from everyone else's life, and uses it to reflect on her own.

These moments are the ones I treasure. Not for the memories they create, but for the relief they give. True, these little breaks won't be things you look back on in your old age, or the stories that you tell your children and grandchildren, but these are what get you through the day. When you can take a step back from the crowd, and appreciate the moment.

Hieronymus Bosch, Procession to Calvary, ca. 1515

Crowded. Chaotic. Overflowing. Faces and figures flood the canvas of Bosch's Procession to Calvary, creating a sense of bedlam. The piece feels uncomfortable as one scans the visages, the bulging eyes and open mouths. Then, one spies Christ's face. The closed eyelids, the shut mouth, the face devoid of expression and wrinkle - they all communicate serenity and calm. A visual oasis in a desert of panic. He's welcome refuge from the movement and loudness  he stands out among the masses because he lacks the frantic, overwhelming energy of the surrounding figures. Silent and calm, his simpleness separates him.

Dante's The Inferno holds within its pages a dark parallel of this concept. In Canto XIV, while journeying through the seventh circle, Dante and Virgil come upon a massive crowd of tortured souls, stumbling naked through a desert, cracked and barren, moaning in torment as fire rains down on them. They all squirm, whimper, and rage against their eternal punishment. All except one, who lies prone on his back, staring up in unflinching defiance against God. He alone refuses to acknowledge the pain, and silently focuses his hatred upon the heavens. Unmoving and unrepentant, his inaction separates him.

Perugino, Christ's Charge to Peter,  c.1481

Perugino's painting tells three stories: one in the foreground and two in the middle ground. The former displays the story of Jesus bestowing to Peter the keys of heaven. The story is taken from Matthew 16:19, where Christ says to Peter, "I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven". Henceforth, the idea that Peter awaits in the afterlife, keys at the ready, granting or denying entry into heaven. The middle ground displays two scenes: the Rendering of the Tribute Money on the left, and the stoning of Jesus on the right. The Rendering of the Tribute Money comes from Mark 12:13-17, where the Pharisees question Jesus on taxes. The Stoning of Jesus comes from John 10:31: "Then the Jews took up stones again to stone Him."

Perugino painted this with symmetry in mind. The key sits at the exact center of the foreground, with equal amounts of followers gathered behind Jesus and Peter. The background has three buildings: the temple of Solomom, situated directly in the center, and two arches to either side of it. Perugino divides the ground into tile-like sections, adding to the symmetrical nature of the painting.

Giotto, Flight into Egypt, c.1305

This scene from Giotto di Bondone's Life of Christ series in the Arena Chapel depicts Joseph, Mary, and Jesus being led to Egypt by an angel. King Herod has heard of Jesus' birth, and, fearing that the infant will one day depose him, orders that all the boys under the age of two be killed. An angel appears to Joseph in a dream, telling him to take his wife and child and flee to Egypt.

Mary and Jesus are the center of this painting. Easily the largest figures in the piece, Mary and Jesus are brought even further into the foreground by the mountain framing them from behind. This same mountain is home to Giotto's signature trees. Giotto creates a sense of depth, using the mountains to suggest a background, layering of the travelers to make a middle and foreground. Note the sloping nature of the path in foreground. It seems to drop off just in the foreground of Jesus' group, furthering the illusion that Giotto has captured a moment in time rather than painted Jesus and his family on a two-dimensional wall.

Giotto also displays mastery of emotional depth. Joseph appears obviously worried, Mary has that intense protective mother look , and the rest of the party are immensely expressive, with faces engaged and hands gesturing.

Giotto organized the fresco symmetrically. The vertical line of the central mountain carries down through the upright body of Mary. The angel in the sky balances the mountain in the left background, and the three travelers on Mary's left balance Joseph and his companion on her right.

Giotto's mastery of the fresco shines through this piece, showing his attention to detail, symmetry, depth, and emotion.

Sebastiano Ricci, The Last Supper, 1713/1714

"Will you speak up, please? I still couldn't hear you."
"Yes, sir. I said that I didn't say that you couldn't punish me."
"Just what the hell are you talking about?"
"I'm answering your question, sir."
"What question?"
" 'Just what the hell did you mean, you bastard, when you said we couldn't punish you?' " said the corporal who could take shorthand, reading from his steno pad.
"All right," said the colonel. "Just what the hell did you mean?"
"I didn't say you couldn't punish me, sir."
"When?" asked the colonel.
"When what, sir?"
"Now you're asking me questions again."
"I'm sorry, sir. I'm afraid I don't understand your question."
"When didn't you say we couldn't punish you? Don't you understand my question?"
"No, sir. I don't understand."
"You've just told us that. Now suppose you answer my question."
"But how can I answer it?"
"That's another question you're asking me."
"I'm sorry, sir. But I don't understand how to answer it. I never said you couldn't punish me."
"Now you're telling us when you did say it. I'm asking you to tell us when you didn't say it."
Clevinger took a deep breath. "I always didn't say you couldn't punish me, sir."
"That's much better, Mr. Clevinger, even if it is a barefaced lie."
 - Joseph Heller, Catch-22

This passage from Heller's celebrated novel communicates a unique kind of discord associated with bureaucracy and government and leaders who have no idea how to lead. The confusion evident in the passage, and throughout the whole text, owes its existence such incompetence.

Ricci's vision of the ever-popular last supper displays a similar kind of chaos. Ricci offers a glimpse into the world of the elite, and in the realm of Christianity, who's more important than Christ and the twelve disciples? The painting feels different from other versions of the scene, like the peaceful breaking of the bread, or the intense accusation of Judas. Instead, Ricci has the disciples in a state of obvious confusion,  murmuring and discussing amongst themselves some alarming subject, and one disciple to Jesus' left has collapsed, exasperated or distressed, into the crook of his own arm. A chair has been overturned as another disciple (possibly Judas - note the tightly grasped money bag) makes a hasty escape. Jesus' eyes, when examined closely, appear to be crossed out with little black X's, suggesting that, despite his relatively calm appearance, he too cannot see the truth. Nevertheless, he still raises his finger as if to teach.

No one controls either situation, yet no one will admit how little they know. Each leader refuses to expose his confusion, even when doing so only furthers the chaos of each situation.