Tintoretto's "Susanna and the Elders": Image vs. Text, Part II

Figure and Ground

We saw this painting at the De Young’s “Masters of Venice” show a few days ago; at 57” x 76 ¼,” it takes up most of one wall and is absolutely luminous.  It is the second of Tintoretto’s known versions of the story (the first is in the Louvre) but this is the one that … well, everyone swoons over. The Biblical story behind “Susanna and the Elders” begins with a habit: she frequents her husband’s gated orchard at the same time each day. The “elders” of the title know this, and arrive as she is deciding to take a bath; Tintoretto captures the moment before they see her and before she sees them. Susanna refuses their advances, for which they punish her by accusing her of adultery with an (unknown) young man; at the trial, their lies are discovered and the elders are killed.  Many painters give us the moment when Susanna becomes aware that the elders see her; Tintoretto shows the elders just getting into position.

Despite the many stories we could follow here -- Susanna’s chastity (in these times, faithfulness after marriage was just as important as virginity before, and the Susanna of this painting was often used as a model to follow), or the idea that “the truth will out”  -- but I would like to follow a line of argument about figure and ground, to see if we can’t tie it back to -- text.

Here is the painting with some lines I have added to trace the peculiarities of the ground:

Take a look at the whole picture, with these outlines; you can see that the painting does not really hang together. To begin with the farthest-away portion, framed in yellow: a beautiful, pastoral garden, with deer to the left, ducks floating in water to the right. This clearly suggests Eden, innocence, perhaps to give us the idea that nature empathizes with our heroine; the eye doesn’t linger there, however, because it moves on to the title characters, who, oddly, are really part of the ground and not figures in their own right. The elders, outlined in red, bookend the hedge. The elder to the right of the hedge is tucked into the dead center of the upper portion of the painting, something that escapes us at first, because he is mirrored by a statue to the right of the archway that leads back to yet another level of paradise.  He, and the un-articulated statue, are, essentially columns, supporting the arch.  Perhaps Tintoretto has done this to let us know that this elder will not present any real problems in the long run.  The second elder is curled into a space behind the hedge. If his robes were green, they would be a grassy hill. He cannot see Susanna yet, and as a non-actor, seems more ground than figure: he is given no shoulder-space and no real second arm, so he is, like the other elder, compromised, already.

Now look at the tree trunks behind Susanna, outlined in green; she could not possibly be leaning against them -- where are the roots?  What is the relation between the bath, a squared edge filled with water (not outlined) and the trees?  Another bit of ground is the vertical hedge: why does it appear to be wrapped in burlap, like a canvas in transit (did Tintoretto paint what was in the studio)? Why are the roses so evenly spaced? Why are there no breaks in the hedge, no pieces of light?

The strangest part, though, seems to me the ground that I have framed in blue, which is divided into at least two separate perspectival planes.  First, along the hedge, the ground rises in a triangle back to the elder and the pastoral distance; and the source of that perspective would be the elder at front left, if he were in position to see Susanna -- but he cannot see Susanna, and we can.  The ground inside my blue line is very difficult to read or reconstruct. It doesn’t make sense as real terra firma.  Even the ground that surrounds Susanna’s clothes and borders the pool in the front is dark and vague.  This makes no sense. Grass is easy to paint. Susanna is solid, but the ground she rests on is not. She is not sitting on dirt, or lovely little grasses and flowers, or a tree-root. Even the elder in the top center of the painting seems to be looking down, trying to find his footing… where can he step?  The ground cannot be visually understood, mapped, or defined. It comes at us, as if we were overhead, in an apparent anticipation of Cézanne’s tipped-up table (see below, from 1890-4, “Still Life with Apples”):

So the ground is tilted, almost as if we were standing over Susanna, or standing in front of her. Oh, that’s right – we are. There is a second carefully-constructed perspective that gives the audience a role. We are supposed to see Susanna nearly head-on.  David Rosand, in Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese: Rivals in Renaissance Venice, notes that, in this painting, the viewer is “a voyeur, but with even more privileged, and aesthetically sanctioned, access to the bathing body. Pictorial desire and sensual desire are conflated” (p. 181).  So, whether we “desire” to be or not, we are the elders, except, of course, that we are not in a position to harm Susanna, to save her, or even to breathe Susanna’s air. She is, for us, like the figures on Keats’s Grecian urn, frozen in time: “For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!”  But the question remains, as Robert Hahn notes: “If the painting could make me feel I shouldn’t be looking at all, why was it painted, and why in this particular way?” (“Caught in the Act: Looking at Tintoretto’s Susanna,” Massachusetts Review, Vol. 45, No. 4, Winter 2004-5, p. 635).

So, perhaps there are answers in the last bit of un-articulated ground, the mirror.  Why have we not seen more than a bit of satin and an hair-ornament reflected there?  Why is the mirror there at all? What sort of woman carries her comb, her powders, and her vanity-table mirror with her into an orchard?  She is not using it to apply make-up. Why is it there? I think the mirror is there so that Susanna has somewhere to look besides out at us.  She looks happily at her own reflection, a female Narcissus.  We are thus meant to be -- just like the elders -- voyeurs.  (It is worth noting that in the earlier version of “Susanna and the Elders,” Tintoretto shows her looking out  -- “as frankly as Manet’s Olympia,” Hahn says, p. 637).  Here, I think there is meant to be more innocence -- on her part -- and more guilt, on ours.

So is there anything in the figure that relates to, or is in marked contrast with, this uncertain ground?  Susanna, to begin with, is one solid piece of work.  I wrote in an earlier blog piece (11/30/2011) that “she is all we see.”  Sometimes, as would happen later with Rembrandt’s Saskia or Manet’s Victorine Meurent, an artist paints the same model in several different pictures. But Susanna is unique. Nude artists’ models were not readily available in sixteenth-century Venice, so Tintoretto often sketched from wax figures that he created, and he also drew “male nudes” and translated them later into “female figures” (Claus Virch, “A Study of Tintoretto After Michelangelo,” Department of Painting, Metropolitan Museum of Art). Susanna seems to have been modeled on a pretty hefty, almost manly, scale. Her arms and legs are muscular, and the one visible breast seems more male than female. Susanna’s strength and almost surreal calm make her seem sexually powerful, self-contained, as if she doesn’t need anyone else (rather like Matisse’s “Blue Nude – Souvenir de Biskra”).   The ground is terribly ambiguous, the main figure, a rock. Why?

Because of … Text

I think it all returns to text.  The ground is uncertain because it is an afterthought. The figure is certain because it obeyed the rules: all the naked ladies painted in Tintoretto’s time brought their texts with them, and so were guaranteed safe passage. They were goddesses or mythological or Biblical women.  They were not Venetians.  Griselda Pollock, in Differencing the Canon, writes that in this era, the genre of “the erotic female nude … was emerging … shifting the connotations of the female nude from its traditional iconographic association with truth towards its modern significance of (masculine) desire and its privileged visuality” (p. 105).  So Tintoretto has done well to choose Susanna -- for his viewers.   But what about the precise moment that he chooses?  She looks at her reflection in the mirror with apparent pleasure.  The elders are not yet completely on their marks.We look at her looking (as in this photo, below, from a New York Times review of an earlier Tintoretto show):

Why not choose another, later moment, as Anthony Van Dyck did, in 1621?

I think we can see why Tintoretto rejected this idea. Van Dyck’s Susanna is not calm, not a study in nude perfection, but a terrified young woman, confined in a small space with two men and three very large hands.  (His aim is very different, of course -- he is a devout Catholic and an emotional painter of religious works).  Van Dyck’s painting resembles a document: “Exhibit A.”  Tintoretto’s vision, in contrast, is so painterly, so light-filled, that it leaves us with just enough room to mock the elders.

Tintoretto wanted achievement: “il disegno di Michelangelo ed i colori di Tiziano” (the drawing of Michelangelo and the color of Titian) was written on the wall of his studio.  The shape, precise outlines, the delineation of the ground in this painting was unimportant to him. “Susanna” was painted in 1555-6, when he was 38, which would be young for an artist now, but in his time… he needed to get going.  “Tintoretto took up either techniques or subjects utilized by the older, more established artists in order both to challenge himself and present his talent” notes Dan Clanton (in The Good, The Bold, and The Beautiful, p. 123). Tintoretto wanted to set off that body. He wanted it to be the first and last thing anyone saw.  Robert Hahn asks, in all seriousness, a question he doesn’t exactly answer: “Is Susanna just another hot babe employed to strip for the bozos?” (p. 645).  And the answer is, in pursuit of text, just … maybe.

Hanging (on) the Ineffable: Is "Text" the Difference Between 'Fine Art" and "Stuff"?

André Malraux invented le musée imaginaire, where works could be seen “without walls,” pulled away from their art-historical categories and their countries (and, I am assuming, the world of money).  It is now possible to create that musée imaginaire in our thoughts and … online … and the musée we create keeps us alive.

But artists and their audiences still need to see art, really see it, the brushstrokes and nail holes and scrapings and chisel marks, to stand close to the canvas, to walk across the room, to see the scale of the work and see what the artist saw as the work was progressing.  

We began a visit through the quiet rooms of a series of art galleries in San Francisco. About five galleries into the day, happy, we stepped into a small space and saw a solo show with drawings, paintings, and tapestries.  I had some questions, as I found the art rather uneven and its reach overly ambitious: the drawings tended towards kitsch (many, however, were sold!), the monumental paintings were perfectly cold and accomplished, but the tapestries –-carefully done and brimming with color-- were gorgeous. (I did not write down the price at the time, but on another gallery’s website, a tapestry by this same artist, a wide brush on a variegated field, is selling for $9,800). The assistant drifted away, and the owner materialized.  The tapestries were contracted out to Belgian weavers, he said; the artist made preparatory drawings in some detail, and he began to elaborate.  My husband moved, as he often does, to clarify who we were; an artist, a poet, and not people who are buying.  The owner said “yes, but artists must support other artists.” We said that we were looking for inspiration; coming to galleries is a kind of support, something we can do, particularly where the prices given are in thousands of dollars.  “I have heat bills, light bills, just like you,” the owner said, bristling.

But his door had been open; the ability to look at art was -- without engraved invitation -- still on offer.  My husband said “We don’t have this kind of money … so we don’t buy art … we hang her stuff.”  That hung in the air for just a minute. And then, not really having listened, not really seeing us anymore, still apparently arguing for a sale, the owner said “this,” waving his arm at the pieces on the wall, “this is fine art … your work” he said, looking at me for the first time, “is just … stuff.” 

Now, maybe he was just using my husband’s term -- “her stuff”  -- and hadn’t just thrown out an insult.  (He hasn’t seen my “stuff,” after all, so how could he judge it?). Or, maybe, he meant it.  There it was, and couldn’t be un-said: my “stuff” vs. “fine art.” I can guess that he is enmeshed in a musée imaginaire of his own, not a nice musée, either, but a museum for the initiates only, a place where text and the explanation trump the actual art.  What he claimed for his art would “brand” it as “fine,” worthy of investment. Perhaps he would have been happier if he could display four bare walls -- and could claim that only a special coterie could see the brilliance of the works on show, a kind of gallery version of the emperor’s new clothes, “hanging,” as my husband said, “the ineffable.”

Is there such a thing as “fine art”?  The definitions run from the most inclusive (all the arts, such as dance and architecture), to a simple mention of the visual arts, to, most precisely, a painting that is “pure of discipline.”  Importantly, “fine art” generates money; if we look up the largest amounts of money paid for paintings, we can collect a list of artists, (in varying order, depending on the most recent auction): Jackson Pollock, Gustav Klimt, Willem de Kooning, Pablo Picasso, and Vincent Van Gogh (and even, in one list, Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa,” once she is adjusted for inflation).  

We can try a discussion of contemporary “fine art,” then, to escape historical certainties: how can we distinguish, in the art of our own times, the “fine art” from the “stuff”?

A critical work, Picture Theory, by W.J.T. Mitchell, on image vs. text in the visual arts, claimed that “the text is an intrusion on the image …. the wall labels in museums take more of the spectator’s time than the image” (209). I think it may be that text is the problem.  We hear text from the gallery owners, pronouncing work as “collectible,” “unique” or (really, once): “world class.”  We read dozens of artist’s statements, that day in the galleries, and many, many résumés.  We hear “experts” like the gallery owner pronounce work “collectible” in (spoken) text. The more generous the text, it seemed, the higher the prices, the “finer” the art.  

Each résumé posted in the galleries that day offered sections delineating “Solo” or “Group” shows. Every added line meant, the artist must have thought, added future revenue.  (I was solicited recently via e-mail by a man from a small picturesque Italian town, to apply to be shown in his gallery; it seemed my response would guarantee my being shown. The “entry” fee was 200 euro -- about $256 at today’s exchange rate. It turns out that he does indeed show the work that artists ship to him, at their own expense, and at their own risk of the art’s being stopped at customs.  In truth, his is a tiny gallery -- looking a bit like a former one-bedroom apartment -- in a tiny town, and it was unclear just what advantage this might bring his artists.  People ship work to him … probably in pursuit of that additional résumé line … of text).  Each line of an artist’s bio is proof that someone, somewhere, has chosen this art as “fine.”  Fine, finer, finest, as the text piles up.

Artists do talk about “when” to stop entering juried shows (competitions where a juror, or panel, selects the work); there is a discussion online now about this dilemma.  A juried show is better than an open show, everyone agrees, but not as fine, of course, as a solo show.  “Fine art” rears its ugly little head again here, I think. Even given their comparative lack of text-clout, I find juried shows invigorating -- I am delighted when my work (oops, “stuff”) is accepted.  What if Jasper Johns or Julie Mehretu entered a juried show?  Wouldn’t that be fabulous?  But they don’t need the text.; they have solo shows, retrospectives, which are, of course, the ultimate “text.”

An artist’s text on a résumé also includes work and schooling. We recently saw the paintings of a young man who works with a famous Bay area painter; he sets up the big guy’s canvases and paints, answers his phone, replies to letters.  This assistant’s work was selling briskly at a “fine art” price. The young man’s paintings?  “Fine.” Exact replicas of his boss’s work.  The text was winning, for the moment.

Then there is the art-school portion of the bio. Every artist in the galleries in downtown San Francisco mentioned an MFA.  I think that the classes in fine arts can teach materials, set-up, drying times, archival processes … but then, by the time one is in graduate school, one knows all of that.  I think that, most importantly, graduate school in the visual arts provides contacts, a.k.a., text: more lines for jobs, more lines for prizes.

(Two small asides about text:  First, I found a reference to an artist named Housep Pushman (1877-1966) whose work was terribly successful in his time -- consistently sold-out shows -- and his work is lovely and careful (see, below, his “Pushman Book, Number 555”):

But he is all but forgotten, now, and his work sells for a fraction of that of his contemporaries.  Did someone erase his text? Second, on text and success: I read that the Oscar committee is getting so many documentary submissions that they have decided to exclude any documentary for 2013 that has not had a review in The New York Times or The Los Angeles Times.  Now that’s some serious -- mandated -- text).

Suppose we got rid of all the text. Suppose we were presented with just the thing itself.  Would we know “fine art” when we saw it? Would we be able to construct a musée imaginaire that is no fairy tale?

This is the big question, for me.  Is “fine art” any more than endless, but very articulate, text?  Imagine two paintings on a wall. One was painted by an artist without much text, the other by an artist with considerable text. But you are not told which one is which.  Here they are:

The problem we face involves the very definition of “text” as I am using it, i.e., fame, marketability, etc. We know in advance the text that attaches to the famous painter.  The question is, however, can we say whether one is “better” without resorting to merely intuitive judgments?  The vocabulary of the subjective judgment of art is well known—“balance, beauty, maturity, energy, etc.”  But, the question here is whether we can we determine “objective” characterizations of both paintings that will allow us to say with certainty that one is better/worse than the other?  Are there facts about either painting that go to the question of their quality as art, as fine art, as “finer” art?  Or is it all really only a question of text?

The judgment whether one piece of art is superior to another is always entirely subjective.  It doesn’t change anything, either, that that subjectivity be enshrined in a culture of judgment, such as art criticism, or whatever.  If we now construct a musée imaginaire,  which of these two works would we enshrine?  Which do you think carries the weight of heavy text behind it?  Tell me what you think … and I will let you know which is which ... in a couple of days.

Image and text, part two: words are lines, too

... aren't they? Image and text are very closely related ... made of lines placed at precise intervals, the hand holding, perhaps, the same pen with the same grip, forming a letter or a blossom, a word or a horizon ... very much the same. And yet, Freud wrote, in Civilization and Its Discontents, that "it is precisely communities [or elements in a book or on a page, I would add] with adjoining territories, and related to each other in other ways as well, who are engaged in constant feuds and in ridiculing each other .... I gave this phenomenon the name of 'the narcissism of minor differences' .... We can now see that it is a convenient and realtively harmless satisfaction of the inclination to aggression, by means of which cohesion between the members of the community is made easier" (London: W.W. Norton, 1989, translated by James Strachey, p. 72).

It sounds as though admitting "same-ness" would actually diminish the possible cohesion within a group, because it might mean the loss of the individual, the self ... wait ... wouldn't that make it easier to bond?  Well, Freud says no ... I think he is suggesting here that small, "harmless," controlled aggression can actually increase the thing that is equally "harmless," that bit of narcissism that allows us to feel ... just a bit different. No two soldiers or schoolchildren can ever be mistaken for one another, no matter how tailored the uniforms. In fact, the uniforms (like the similarities in the faces in that I mentioned on 4/26, the faces of the Amsterdam Musketeers) actually help us see the distinct expressions of a person's face.  If we realize that people are, in these 'minor" ways, different, we ultimately come to respect them, I think.

So it must be with image and text.  The "narcissism of minor differences" can enrich us.  Since each is composed of lines, what lines can we draw between them? What lines within each reach out to the other?

Text & Image, 1; Illustration, 0

While I was working on the book for the Art House Co-op Fiction Project,  several pages presented me with the question of how best to combine text and image. I had read, a long time ago, a critic who believed that even the labels next to paintings in museums and galleries distract from, and ultimately trump, the picture. When the two come together, text seems, to many of us, more important than image.

Illustration -- think of your childhood copy of Alice in Wonderland -- can be beautiful and can engage a reader. It is always something of a shock for children to begin reading more demanding books that don't have any pictures by John Tenniel or Maurice Sendak alongside all those newer, harder words. Alice even asks "What is the use of a book ... without pictures or conversation?" But, when I read a novel now, I don't want someone else's "illustration" of what they think Moll Flanders looks like ... (I am with Tristram Shandy, who leaves us a blank page so that we can conjure up our own Widow Wadman).  I don't believe that mere illustration --- here is the description of the house in words, here is a drawing "faithful" to those same words --- is enough...because it can shut down the reader's own imagination (specifically, the picture-making part, to use a technical term).  I think it might be useful to try ... for the adult imagination ... to combine words and pictures in a way that might wake us up.

I found a series of text & image pages in a sketchbook where I experimented. See what you think; can the images and the words pull away from each other in this way... usefully? imaginatively? pulling in, or pushing away, an audience?

(above: Beach rocks... Sea Gulls...)

(above: A pier with water, vs. an abstract reference to... sky?)

(above: Sand shovel and pail, vs. common household items)

What do you think?