My Kid Could Paint That

Water Graves 
Gericault’s figures in The Raft of Medusa are drowning. Not in their subconscious or any other metaphorical substance as discussed in prior analyses, but physically drowning. I have examined many illusions of this type of death in my previous posts, but none have dealt with the tremulous fear of an actual drowning. Confronted with cannibalism, rotting flesh, and fading hope on a life-sized canvas, the viewer himself feels as if he is struggling to stay alive on the condemned Méduse. This canvas is not an illustration of a piece of literature, a mythological interpretation, or a projection of the creator’s fantastical mind. Gericault, after months of intense research, recreated the historic wreck of the frigate Méduse. All of a sudden, the viewer is forced to grasp that Gericault’s shipwreck hanging on a red wall in the Louvre, a monstrous amalgamation of rotting flesh and salty water, happened. Drowning, and in a more general sense, death, becomes instantly palpable, as the eye moves across dismembered limbs and green bodies up to a wind blown piece of fabric floating in a dark and shadowed sky.

I have seen many disturbing paintings as an Art History student, but for me, Gericault’s Raft of Medusa is perhaps the most unsettling. I assume my fear of it comes from my own diluted aquaphobia. Who else would focus an entire collection around drowning? This collection has allowed me to investigate the cruel, yet at times forgiving, nature of the sea, and how artists and fictitious characters entrap themselves in illusions of drowning. The ocean can be a marvelous place, but with beauty always comes sadness.

The arms of the ocean, so sweet and so cold. All this devotion I never knew at all. And the crashes are heaven, for a sinner released, let the arms of the ocean deliver me.

Never Let Me Go, Florence and the Machine

Water Graves 

Frida Kahlo, What the Water Gave Me, 1938

"I am what the water gave me, a smoke-ring in a jar, the braided rope, my ladder-to-the-light, my shivering bird heartcaught." Pascale Petit, What the Water Gave Me: Poems After Frida Kahlo 

Frida Kahlo’s What the Water Gave Me renders simple child’s play in a bathtub into a grotesque scene with Bosch-esque miniature characters. Kahlo replaces toy boats and rubber ducks with skewered birds and nude women. The water supports floating memories of life and death, of love and loss, unable to stay permanently under the water. Images representing various periods of Kahlo’s past breech the surface and trap Kahlo in the tub. Every object appears solid and heavy, yet they all stay afloat—a volcano, a skyscraper, various flora and fauna. A miniature figure of Kahlo bobs in the middle of the tub, strangled by a tightrope connected to the other objects in the composition. Kahlo has become entrapped in the web of her subconscious, drowning under the weight of her own memories. This concept becomes more complex when we bring the Kahlo submerged in the bathtub back into the picture. These miniature bathtub scenes are projections of Kahlo’s mind. In this context, the image of Kahlo being strangled by her past becomes even more disturbing, as she is the one imagining this. This painting is ultimately an exorcism for the artist, a hope to escape from a haunting past by confining it to the canvas. Unlike Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, the undesirable experiences and memories once forced under the water have resurfaced, and the subject must encounter them again.

Water Graves 

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus,  1558

“Proud of his success, the foolish Icarus forsook his guide, rising upon his wings to touch the skies; but as he neared the scorching sun, its heat softened the fragrant wax that held his plumes; and heat increasing melted the soft wax—he waved his naked arms instead of wings, with no more feathers to sustain his flight. And as he called upon his father's name his voice was smothered in the dark blue sea, now called Icarian from the dead boy's name.” Metamorphoses, Ovid

In another of Ovid’s myths, Icarus, son of the craftsman Daedalus, is given a pair of wings made out of feathers, wax, and leather, given to him by his father as a method of escape from the island Crete. Ignoring the warning from his father, Icarus flew too close to the sun, eventually melting the wax and leading him to his death.

In Bruegel’s Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, the farmer and plough seen in the foreground dominate the composition, a strange but effective choice on Bruegel’s part. The yellow-tinted light highlights the banks of the bay, drawing the eye away from the title character. It is only after the eye moves toward the right of the composition that the viewer sees Icarus. Well, part of Icarus. His flailing legs are the last to plummet into the cold green sea. Icarus will inevitably drown, a consequence brought about by his ignorance. But in a way, Icarus, in this depiction, has already drowned. He has drowned in the landscape of this chaotic composition, his existence forgotten. Such is the nature of the cruel sea.

His suffering will forever be ignored as the peasants of the foreground continue to wade through long days and short nights. In his poem, “Musee des Beaux-Arts,” W. H. Auden writes “In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away/Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,/But for him it was not an important failure” (14-17). It is a tendency for man to bury things he cannot withstand or cannot worry himself with. He buries them in work, play, and love. We all have memories, regrets, and losses condemned to the benthos of our subconscious. We just pray that they don’t resurface.

Water Graves 

Eurydice, Valerie Morignat, 2009

“So Orpheus then received his wife; and Pluto told him he might now ascend from these Avernian vales up to the light, with his Eurydice; but, if he turned his eyes to look at her, the gift of her delivery would be lost. They picked their way in silence up a steep and gloomy path of darkness. There remained but little more to climb till they would touch earth's surface, when in fear he might again lose her, and anxious for another look at her, he turned his eyes so he could gaze upon her. Instantly she slipped away. He stretched out to her his despairing arms, eager to rescue her, or feel her form, but could hold nothing save the yielding air.” Metamorphoses, Ovid

Perhaps the most tragic of Ovid’s myth, the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice encapsulates the strength, devotion, and misfortune of young love. Determined to resurrect Eurydice from Hades, Orpheus played his most cathartic music to gain access to the underworld. Even the bloodless ghosts themselves wept. He was allowed to take his wife from the underworld under one condition—he could not turn around to look at her. Inevitably he did, and she died a second death.

In Valerie Morignat’s photograph, water is the medium by which Eurydice reenters Hades. The disturbed surface of the water shows that the photograph has captured Eurydice mere moments after Orpheus looked back. Morignat interprets the young bride’s second death as a drowning. Not only does the water engulf Eurydice’s body, but it also consumes any memory Orpheus had of his bride. In stage productions that include the retelling of this myth, such as Mary Zimmerman’s Metamorphoses and Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice, on-stage water is used as a symbol of forgetfulness. In both productions, Orpheus is doused in water as memories of his beloved Eurydice gradually wash away—a baptism. In essence, this is what Morignat captures in her photograph. Orpheus, unseen, reaches for Eurydice as she sinks deeper and deeper into the water, her reflective porcelain flesh the only visible semblance of her existence.

Water Graves 

Roy Lichtenstein, Drowning Girl, 1963

Roy Lichtenstein’s Drowning Girl is a tidal wave of clichés. Literally. Lichtenstein’s mastery comes from his ability to make an emotional scene feel impersonal and distant. In Lichtenstein’s panel, the subject seems to be drowning in her own tears, shouting “I’d rather sink than call Brad for help!” above the crashing waves. The death of the character is meant to be taken lightly, a mere vehicle for Lichtenstein’s dark humor. The clichés of heartbreak, young love, and old Hollywood damsels-in-distress are specialties of Lichtenstein’s, as one can deduce from this hyperemotional frame.

But in this scene, Lichtenstein subverts the conventional ‘victimized female’ complex and projects a feminist message. For the forlorn girl, enabling drowning declares her independence from her hurtful ex-lover, and in extension, from any semblance of male aid. What does this say about the ability of women to free themselves from their male counterparts? Must they resort to a premature death in order to escape? Well for Hamlet’s Ophelia (see previous post), it was the only option. Death meant escape, and drowning in a substance associated with femininity sends a message that is too clear. These women have drowned in their own stereotypes and stigmas, unable to livingly free themselves from their respective patriarchal cultures—sixteenth century England and mid-twentieth century suburbia. Lichtenstein’s usage of Ben-Day dots, typical in mass-produced images such as comic strips, gives the female character a certain universal quality. Anyone can be the Drowning Girl. So step back and ask yourself, “Do I need Brad?”

John Everett Millais, Ophelia, 1851

"There on the pendant boughs her coronet weeds
Clamb'ring to hang, an envious sliver broke,
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide,
And mermaid-like awhile they bore her up,
Which time she chanted snatches of old lauds,
As one incapable of her own distress
Or like a creature native and endued
Unto that element. But long it could not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pulled the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death." Hamlet, William Shakespeare

Similar to Lemoyne’s Narcissus, Millais’ Ophelia depicts a subject haunted by demons of the mind. While Narcissus suffered from an insatiable love, Ophelia suffered from a fantastical love. It has been argued that Ophelia was not melancholic, but was afflicted with erotomania, a type of delusion in which the person affected truly believes that another person is in love with him or her. In Millais’ painting, Ophelia rests on the brink of drowning, mouth agape in the pleasure of the release that accompanies death. Millais’ Ophelia evokes comparison with Bernini’s St. Theresa in Ecstasy. In addition to her erotic facial expression, Ophelia lies in a position that is almost saint-like: arms elongated, palms upward toward the heavens. For Ophelia, the water is an escape—an escape from her inner demons and her harsh reality. She moans in pleasure for she has become unbound from her mortal body and the water is her source of delivery. She sinks into a garden of foliage, a free woman embracing purely feminine scenery. Drowning, in this work, is not a death. It is a rebirth, a passage from the waking world to one that is entirely Ophelia’s own.

Editor's Note: For their final project, the students in Modern Art History held an art fantasy draft of seven works. These works then become an exhibit based around a subject. Enjoy, as the posts should delight all through the summer. 


Water Graves 

Narcissus Contemplating His Image Mirrored in the Water, Francois Lemoyne, 1725-1728

“Here Narcissus, tired of hunting and the heated noon, lay down, attracted by the peaceful solitudes and by the glassy spring. There as he stooped to quench his thirst another thirst increased. While he is drinking he beholds himself reflected in the mirrored pool—and loves; loves an imagined body which contains no substance, for he deems the mirrored shade a thing of life to love. He cannot move, for so he marvels at himself, and lies with countenance unchanged, as if indeed a statue carved of Parian marble.” Metamorphoses, Ovid 

In Narcissus Contemplating His Image Mirrored in the Water, Francois Lemoyne recounts one of Ovid’s most popular myths: that of Narcissus, his reflection, and the nymph Echo. We encounter Narcissus perched on a riverbank, lost in the reflection of his eyes. So moved by his own image, Narcissus becomes paralyzed like a statue, transfixed by the handsome specter in the water. His reflection is almost a siren, drawing the man closer and closer to the water with a sense-pleasing vision. In Lemoyne’s work, and in Ovid’s myth, Narcissus does not drown, but dies of the sadness that accompanies falling in impossible love.

As this collection is entitled Illusions of Drowning, we must clear the image of man plunging to the bottom of the ocean floor. Instead, let’s look at how Narcissus drowns in his own psyche. When he encounters his reflection, he loses all sense of reality. The world falls away as he falls deeper and deeper into his self-absorption—a metaphorical drowning. Lemoyne paints Narcissus’ gestures and fabric as to flow to the left of the composition, his downward glance at the mirrored river the only stationary and straight aspect of the painting. The background—moving trees, flowing fabrics, a swirling sky—resembles waves of water, yet the actual water in the painting is still and calm. This draws further attention to center of the composition, where Narcissus is rendered statuesque in the presence of his unwavering reflection. Forever doomed to an afterlife of insatiable desire, Narcissus still stares at his reflection in the waters of the river Styx.

Frida Kahlo, Henry Ford Hospital, 1932

In one of her most touching works, Kahlo places her internal struggles and pain on display. Henry Ford Hospital, painted in 1932 after a residency in Detroit with Diego Rivera, is a comment on the mechanical nature of medicine, the fragility of the female form, and the pain that accompanies the loss of life. Trying to rein in six escaping, floating images, Kahlo rests on a hospital bed in the Henry Ford Hospital of Detroit. With bleak metal factory contraptions lining the horizon, Kahlo paints herself terminating her second attempt at conception in an unfamiliar land. The floating fetus represents her unborn, now dead, son.

Anchored by the heavy machinery in the bottom left and upper right corners, the fetus has undergone an unnatural, man-made process. The two anatomical images in the upper left and bottom right corners allude to Kahlo’s past. As a teenager, Kahlo was injured in a car accident, breaking her pelvis and puncturing her uterus, inhibiting her reproductive capability. The pelvis and uterus in Henry Ford Hospital represent the inescapable memories that Kahlo must carry. Finally, Kahlo paints the orchid given to her by Rivera in the lower half of the composition. However, she paints what was a fresh, turgid flower as flaccid and pale—perhaps a reference to her less-than-perfect marriage to the flower’s donor.

These images-within-an-image certainly mystify the painting and add a bizarre aurora, but in the context of the life and struggles of their creator, they seem as commonplace as red in a Rothko.

John Singer Sargent, The Misses Vickers, 1884

John Singer Sargent focuses once more on the fantasy of the femme fatale in his 1884 painting The Misses Vickers commemorating the eldest sister’s 21^st birthday. In this pseudo-Velazquez work, Sargent brings the dark palette, depth, and eeriness used in The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit to the canvas.

Even though the dark background screens out the detail of the room the three sisters are posing in, the viewer can tell by the hint of light in the upper right corner that the room extends quite far back. Yet Sargent does nothing with this space he has created, randomly placing a few reflective objects here and there. But such is the mystery of a Sargent painting—three sisters, huddled together in a pitch-black room with eyes of innocence and lips concealing sin. The eyes immediately converge on Evelyn, the sister to the far left.

The only young lady dressed in a light, pastel dress, seems to illuminate against the stark background. The middle sister looks villainous in black with a hint of pink emerging from her bosom. And finally, Mildred, the sister to the far right, has a beige tint to her skin and wears a brown dress to match the cushion of the chair she awkwardly sits in. This cacophony of colors, fabrics, and positions certainly makes the foreground appear disjointed, but also succeeds in highlighting the individuality of each sister. Yes, they are painted as a group, but this is as much a solo portraiture as it is a trio snapshot.

We cannot know everything about this painting—which secrets have not been told, what lies behind the spot-lit women—but we do know that Sargent’s technique is one to be admired and not one to be imitated, for he truly demonstrates his mastery of conveying mystery and seduction in The Misses Vickers. 

Francisco Goya, Saturn Devouring His Son, 1819-1823

Edvard Munch, The Death of Marat, 1907

Jean-Paul Marat has been immortalized on canvas by the likes of Jacques-Louis David, Pablo Picasso, and Edvard Munch. Depicting Marat on his deathbed, these artists see the event with unique perspectives, each bringing inimitable technique, experience, and emotion to the work of art. Munch, in his 1907 painting The Death of Marat, violently depicts the politician’s death, bringing his signature, horrific elements to a hackneyed subject.

Georges Seurat, Parade de Cirque, 1887-88

John Everett Millais, Ophelia, 1851-52