Clarity Of Vision - Isabel Quintanilla

An appreciation of the importance of the ordinary, the everyday in our lives has a long history in art.  It dates back at least as far as the early 18th Century in France with artist Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin and his painting “A Lady Taking Tea” from 1735.  The setting is unpretentious, modest even and there is an air of calm self-absorption in the scene.  The skill of the artist is in transforming an ordinary occasion with simple furnishings into something almost seductive.

Chardin, A Lady Taking Tea, 1735, oil on canvas, 81 x 99 cm

Author Alain De Botton argues that given the way the world is going, we need all the reliable, unassuming and inexpensive satisfactions we can get.  He believes that it lies in the power of art to honour the elusive but real value of ordinary life.

This may have been the motivation behind the art of Isabel Quintanilla (1938 – 2017).  In Spain, the practice of granting a special reverence to ordinary everyday objects dates back even further to the Baroque masters such as Velazquez and his ‘bodegones’; that is, art depicting pantry items, game, food and drink.  Quintanilla was a member of the Madrid School of realists who graduated from the Academia de San Fernando, where rigorous training in the traditional academic manner had been upheld since the 18th Century.

Quintanilla, Cabracho (Scorpionfish), 1992, oil on canvas, 70 x 90 cm

Like other pupils of the time, including Antonio Lopez Garcia who is arguably the most famous of the Madrid realists, she had to develop her skills against the backdrop of the intellectual and artistic repression of the middle years of Franco’s dictatorship.

While some may regard the art of the Madrid realists as minimalism, what makes them unique is their ability to “de-nude, de-code and explicate the essence of our collective consciousness”.   What we are viewing is the object itself, free of any socio/political contexts.  The subject matter of Quintanilla’s work ranges from simple still life to panoramic landscapes.

Quintanilla, Glass On Top Of A Fridge, 1972, pencil on paper,  48 x 36 cm

Viewing work like this is very instructive to me.  Occasionally I get sucked into producing grandiose scenes forgetting that some of the simplest compositions can make the best paintings - if the artist has the skill.   Perhaps it’s a matter of being in the moment, focusing on the object itself free of any distractions.

In his review of a 1996 exhibition of Spanish Contemporary Realists held in London, Edward J Sullivan writes of the absolute immediacy and intensity of their vision.  But he also argues that it’s important not to draw to close a link between their work and that of the Baroque masters of the past.  Artists such as Velazquez were operating largely under the strict guidelines laid down by the Catholic Church and the counter reformation.

Quintanilla, El Telefono, 1996, oil on board, 110 x 100 cm

Unfortunately, whether I scanned this image from a catalogue, or downloaded it off the net, I am unable to convey the absolute clarity of the vision in this work.  This is beyond photorealism and I think it’s because of the use of light.  There is an intimacy in this scene that would seem to run contrary to the cold, clinical hard-edged nature of much photo-realist art.  You get the sense that you are entering someone’s private world.

Quintanilla, Vendana (Window), 1970, oil on board, 131 x 100 cm

Views through windows have been a popular topic for artists for centuries.  What fascinates me is the suggestion of furniture in the bottom left of the composition.  There is also the cool, clear light and a sense of imprisonment in the scene.  

Quintanilla had exhibited either individually or in group shows at the Prado in Madrid, the Marlborough Gallery in London and at many other venues.  Her work forms part of the collections at the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC and in various galleries throughout Europe.

References;

Books;

“Contemporary Spanish Realists”, 1996, Marlborough Fine Art, London

“Art As Therapy”, 2014, Alain De Botton & John Armstrong

The Net;

Leandro Navarro Gallery

Goya - A Journey Into Darkness

It all seemed to be going swimmingly for Francisco Goya – until his nervous breakdown in 1792.  After that, he is credited with tearing up the rule book and reinventing what art can and should do and what it means to be human. 

He had been court painter to the Spanish royal family, who admired the rococo tapestries he had designed for the royal court in Madrid.  So they invited Goya to paint their portraits, and in the great tradition of telling it like it is, he did just that.  The result was a display of royal mockery never seen before in the history of art.  And yet, somehow he got away with it.  Flattery was not to be found on Goya’s CV.

The Parasol, a tapestry design painted by Goya, c1777

But the evil and the stupidity he saw in the world around him soon came to the surface in his art.  The catalyst for this was the nervous breakdown and physical illness that he suffered in the early 1790’s.  The exact nature of Goya’s illness has never been properly diagnosed but it left him functionally deaf and in fear of his own sanity.  Suddenly the light has gone out in his art and darkness has crept in as he explored the depths of his own imagination.

An example is “St Francis Borgia Attending a Dying Impenitent” of 1795.  From the saint's crucifix spurt drops of blood that land on the sinner's torso.  This painting is thought to represent Goya’s growing disillusionment with Christianity and its inability to explain the inhumanity in the world.

St Francis Borgia Attending a Dying Penitent, 1795, oil on canvas

In 1794, Goya painted the “Casa De Locos (The Madhouse)”, a stone gaol where all manner of appalling acts are being witnessed.  It is thought that these works represented, at least in part, all of Goya’s disappointments with the world around him.

Casa De Locos (The Madhouse). 1794, oil on panel

Around 1794, Goya painted “Yard With Lunatics”.  “The work stands as a horrifying and imaginary vision of loneliness, fear and social alienation, a departure from the rather more superficial treatment of mental illness in the works of earlier artists such as Hogarth.” Wikipedia

From commissioned portraitist, Goya had made the remarkable transformation into an artist exploring his own bleak view of the world. He claimed the painting is based on something he witnessed in Zaragoza where a yard was filled with lunatics, and two of them were fighting completely naked while their warder beats them.

Yard With Lunatics, 1794, oil on tinplate

In his book “Goya”, written shortly after his near death experience on a highway near Broome, Western Australia, author Robert Hughes discusses the profound isolation that engulfed Goya as a result of his deafness.  “Any trauma makes you think of worse trauma.  It sets the mind worrying and fantasizing about what else might be in store, and whether you can bear it if it comes.”  And with Goya’s illness not being properly diagnosed, he had no idea if the illness was temporary or permanent and what impact it would have on his career.  And all this was exacerbated by his increasing deafness.

Self Portrait, c.1815, oil on canvas

Hughes tells us that the eighteenth century was the heyday of the prison as isolator, long before the concept of prison as a reformatory was to creep into minds of European governments.  Whilst madhouses were even worse because no one had any idea of how to treat the mad, so they were simply dumping grounds for the psychotic, the deranged and the wayward.  No doubt, this fed into Goya’s exploration of the dark side of human existence.

What was to follow of course, was his famous Caprichos, his disasters of war series (inspired by Napoleon’s invasion of Spain) and the black paintings of his final years.  Interestingly, Spain went into a coma (artistically speaking) for over 50 years following Goya’s death in 1828.  Perhaps his successors were intimidated by the sheer power and darkness of his vision.

References;

Rococo  -  BBC TV

Something Wicked This Way Comes -  The Independent

Wikipedia

Sibling Nastiness; Salvador and Ana Maria Dali

I’ve discovered that Salvador Dali and Vincent Van Gogh have something in common, apart from being artists of course.  They were both born shortly after the deaths of an infant brother.  Both inherited the same Christian name as their deceased sibling and whether this accounts for their bizarre behaviour is open to conjecture, but it has been argued that Vincent was raised by a grieving mother.

In Dali’s case, the family, particularly his mother, grandmother and aunt, doted on him, wrapping him in affection and allowing him every indulgence.  Dali soon learned how to turn this situation to his advantage by regularly throwing tantrums in order to get his own way.

Dali had a particularly close attachment to his mother Felipa Domènech, an artist who drew competently and crafted exquisite wax figurines out of coloured candles.  Felipa’s death in 1921 when Dali was 16, and his disciplinarian father’s subsequent marriage to his aunt had a devastating effect on him and he looked to his younger sister, Ana Maria as the pivotal female figure and mother substitute in his life.

Figure At The Window (1925), oil on papier mache, 105 cm x 74.5 cm

Dali was 21 when he painted this scene and Ana Maria (three years his junior) was Dali’s only model until his future wife, Gala arrived on the scene. I love the cool light pervading this scene as well as the superb draftsmanship.  Ana Maria claimed that she didn’t mind sitting for hours for her brother and the experience gave her an appreciation of landscape.

Figura De Perfil (Figure In Profile) 1925, Oil on cardboard, 74 x 50 cm

Dali had been showing signs mental illness by 1929 and it was in this context that he first met Helena Diakanoff Devulina (Gala) who was a Russian immigrant, 10 years older than he and well known to the surrealists, and who became Dali’s lifelong partner until her death at the age of 88.  She became his muse, wife and (supposedly) business manager.  Both Ana Maria and their father detested her.  The fact that Gala was somewhat older and already married when she met Salvador was probably the main issue here.  According to The Guardian, during the Spanish civil war, Ana Maria was briefly arrested and imprisoned by the Republican forces and she believed Gala had denounced her falsely as having fascist sympathies.  The irony is that Salvador appeared to be one of Franco’s most enthusiastic supporters.

She also took issue with one of her brother’s notoriously unreliable memoirs where he wrote of a troubled childhood and a tormented relationship with their father.  She in turn published her own memoir in 1949 Salvador Dali As Seen By His Sister which left him enraged by her portrayal of his childhood as normal and happy.

Young Virgin Auto-Sodomized By The Horns Of Her Own Chastity, 1954, oil on canvas, 40.5 x 30.5 cm

This was Dali’s response to his sister’s memoir and is thought to be inspired by an image in a pornographic magazine. This time we see Ana Maria being assaulted by flying phalluses.

Dali survived for seven frail, miserable years following the death of Gala in 1982.  He was isolated (it’s claimed he drove away most of his friends) and was almost penniless.  He and Gala were spendthrifts with the concept of investing being foreign to them.  It was thought that fame, not money, was Dali’s primary motivation.  There are doubts as to the authenticity of many of his prints due to his habit of signing blank sheets of printing paper in his final years.

Salvador and Gala, Dali Museum

After decades of zero contact between them, Ana Maria visited her brother in hospital on what was thought to be his death bed in 1984.  The result was a raging argument between the two of them with Dali having her kicked out of the room.  They never met again and Dali died of heart failure in his home at Figueres in 1989.  Ana Maria survived him by five months. 

References;

BBC Omnibus

National Gallery of Victoria Educational Resource

The Guardian

Antonio Lopez Garcia

If there is one type of artist who I have an issue with, it's the serial achiever.  Antonio Lopez Garcia fits that description perfectly.  Born in 1936 in Tomelloso, Spain he is regarded as the most prominent of the Spanish Realists.  He is criticized in some circles for his dry, academic realism but I can still admire his technical ability.

Atocha, 1964, Oil on Wood

He is credited with an extremely subtle use of light and a delicate drawing ability.

Sink and Mirror, 1967, Oil on Wood

Perhaps he is following in the footsteps of the great baroque masters of the past.

Portrait Of Maria, 1972, Pencil

Atocha, 2008, Bronze Installation