Being Peter Paul Rubens

A major function of the embodied mind is empathic. From birth, we have the capacity to imitate others, to vividly imagine being another person, doing what that person does, experiencing what that person experiences. The capacity for imaginative projection is a vital cognitive faculty. Experientially, it is a form of ‘transcendence.” Through it, one can experience something akin to “getting out of our bodies”–yet it is very much a bodily capacity.

George Lakoff & Mark Johnson Philosophy in the Flesh: The embodied mind and its challenge to western thought

Craig Schwartz: There's a tiny door in my office, Maxine. It's a portal and it takes you inside John Malkovich. You see the world through John Malkovich's eyes... and then after about 15 minutes, you're spit out... into a ditch on the side of The New Jersey Turnpike.

Maxine: Sounds great! Who the f**k is John Malkovich?

From the film, Being John Malkovich, 1999, written by Charlie Kaufman, directed by Spike Jonze

I have been thinking about my experience with Peter Paul Ruben's painting, Venus and Adonis. What follows is a reflection on my inquiry, Looking at Love.
I was first introduced to Peter Paul Rubens in high school. It was a grand history painting, “Queen Tomyris before the Head of Cyrus,” at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

Nothing could have seemed more foreign, more incomprehensible. The beautiful queen gazes down serenely at the severed head of her foe, which is about to be dunked in a bowl of blood. Who are all those people crowded around, in all those glorious silks and satins? I remember being impressed by the sheer drama of it all, and the excess. This painting was surely made in a time when the act of painting itself was serious and consequential endeavor.


A few years ago at the Louvre in Paris I found my way to Rubens' galley of enormous (11 feet by 24 feet or so each) paintings celebrating the life of Marie de Medici. The paintings, 24 in total, were commissioned to celebrate the major turning points in the life of the queen. Standing in the middle of this awesome gallery, it was striking that it was the artist’s name, rather than the once powerful queen, which brings viewers to gaze upon these majestic works. Teeming with anecdote and allegory, as alive to the sense of touch as to the eye, every inch seems to swirl and twist under one’s gaze. Its as close to living flesh as any artist has every gotten with oil paint and brush.

In a century when oil paint and canvas sometimes feels ridiculously obsolete, it can be a little difficult to give oneself over to these grand visions. But I when I was asked, in John Baldacchino's course in Philosophies of Art in Education at Teachers College, to befriend a work of art this fall, Rubens immediately lept to mind. We were told to pick an artwork to revisit multiple times and become intimate with (a la “The Sight of Death” by T.J.Clark.) It seemed this was finally the opportunity to spend some time with an artist who always had felt both remote and seductive.

I located the Rubens gallery on the Metropolitan Museum map and headed straight for it. Once there, however, I felt lost. Standing in front of the work, I couldn't imagine how to enter the mind of this painter who lived 400 years ago, under circumstances and in a society so vastly different from my own. I went back out to the museum store and picked the cheapest sketchbook I could find. Returning to the European Baroque galleries, a little more cautiously this time, I looked around at some of the other artists' works. Eventually I came back to Rubens, and settled on Venus and Adonis, a much smaller and simpler work than the paintings in Paris and Boston. At first I was a bit worried I wouldn't find enough in the work to sustain repeated visits. But I started to draw anyway, and in a matter of minutes, was flooded by my own intuitions of Ruben's thoughts and feelings as he created this work. Drawing became my portal into the mind of Rubens. As my pencil traced the movements of his brush, I began to imagine I was truly able to see through his eyes.

After a few visits with Adonis and Venus, I went back to Rubens' own inspiration in Titian, and even further, to the Greeks. I then turned to look at Rubens' self portrait with his young wife and tiny son, hanging on the opposite wall, and mirroring the mythological family, of Adonis, Venus and Cupid that it faces. I had been avoiding the self-portait for weeks, barely glancing at it as I entered the gallery. It was almost shocking to look the artist in the face. I was surprised by the compassion and the closeness I felt for this immensely successful man who nonetheless seemed to be grappling with his own mortality in these paintings.

But that face facing me, in its expression – in its mortality –summons me, demands me, requires me: as if the invisible death faced by the face of the other --pure alterity, seperate, somehow, from any whole -- were ‘my business.” As if, unknown by the other whom already, in the nakedness of his face, it concerns it ‘regarded me’ before its confrontation with me, before the death that stares me, myself, in the face...It is precisely in that recalling of me to my responsibility by the face that summons me, that demands me, that requires me – it is in that calling into question -- that the other is my neighbor.

from Emmanuel Levinas, Alterity and Transcendence

Looking at Love

Venus and Adonis, mid- or late 1630s

Peter Paul Rubens (Flemish, 1577–1640)

This painting is hanging in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Periodically over the past few months, I have spent time looking and sketching from this and related works at the Met, as part of my doctoral studies at Teacher's College, Columbia University.

9-11-09 “I’m looking for beautiful turbulence”--that’s why I’m drawn to Rubens. Venus is begging Adonis not to go on a hunt which she knows to be his last. She is luscious, a deity, but as such, the epitome of female humanity, her flesh warm and tender, her desire for her lover, as full of longing and fear of loss as any mortal woman in love.

Adonis seems untroubled by her concern. He reassures her lightly. Is he looking forward to autonomy, independence, freeing himself from the entanglements of human relationship? The hounds are patient, but also ready to be off. Is Adonis a personification of courage in the face of the inevitable?

I am reminded of Jonathan Lear's characterization of us humans as "finite, erotic creatures."





There is a vortex at the center: the grasping, clinging arms of Venus and Cupid. A group of middle aged European men pass by (speaking Dutch?) and chuckle at this painting. I assume they are commenting on Venus’s succulence, identifying with the 50+ year old Rubens’ appreciation of this younger woman. The painter was just about the age of these men when he painted this work. Is it simply a male fantasy? Or is there some genuine understanding (on Rubens’ part) of what it means to be a woman in love?

Is all visual language, in some sense, the language of the body---of the human body as it moves through space?
What about the centrality of grasping--the infant’s first gesture, reaching out into the world, becoming an actor through those first interactions?
How does Cupid act out Venus' deepest emotions? He is her surrogate in his no holds barred, desperate yet impotent struggle to pull Adonis back from death.

The dogs are impatient to be gone, untroubled by consciousness of mortality.

Titian (Tiziano Vecellio) (Italian, Venetian, born about 1488, died 1576)

Venus and Adonis Oil on canvas
Dimensions 42 x 52 1/2 in.

“In his "Metamorphoses," Ovid relates the story of the goddess Venus vainly trying to restrain her lover, the mortal Adonis, from departing for the hunt. The mood of playful sensuality conceals the tragic irony that Adonis is destined to be killed during the hunt by a wild boar. "

Metropolitan Museum gallery label

9-17-09 Turns out Rubens painted the flip side of this Titian composition, which is two galleries (one country and one century) distant from the Rubens room! Its startling to see this scene from the other side. It is familiar, yet completely different. Here we see Venus’ back, her trapezius and latissimus dorsi muscles so perfectly rendered, yet almost made of the pale marble of an ancient Venus. Her classical proportions are more important to the painter than the palpability of her flesh.






The transition from the Renaissance to the Baroque is played out in these two paintings. How classical grace and balance is supplanted by passion, perfection by the fallibility of the flesh.














When I go back to the Rubens, I am most struck by Adonis’ manliness. He is so much more believable as the true object of both Venus and Cupid’s longing. Ruben's depiction of Venus attests to all Adonis has experienced and is forsaking. Cupid seems to be here the young son, begging his dad not to go. How much more poignant! Titian’s Cupid was content on the sidelines, perhaps happy at the prospect of having Venus to himself again. I wonder about Cupid.

















9-24-09 I go down to the Greek and Roman sculpture galleries to look for Cupid, and find him sleeping, peacefully. He is unaware of all that has passed. The relaxed twist of his torso reminds me of Venus’ active, turning form. He seems to be a beloved child, so carefully observed that you can almost hear his breathing. I can see both Titian and Rubens in this body--as it is both perfect and real. Is it that this is how human children have always appeared, or that the Greeks taught us how to see?

Statue of Eros sleeping, Hellenistic or Augustan,
3rd century b.c.–early 1st century a.d.
Greek or Roman Bronze

10-1-09 Back to Rubens: who is this child? Rubens had children, five with Helena Fourment, the young wife of his last years who is the model for this Venus. Did his toddlers grab at his legs as he left for his workshop in the morning?



























10-7-09 This painting hangs opposite Venus and Adonis, but I’ve avoided looking at it until now.

Peter Paul Rubens
(Flemish, 1577–1640)
Rubens, His Wife Helena Fourment (1614–1673), and One of Their Children
mid–late 1630s
Oil on wood, 80 1/4 x 62 1/4 in. ]

“This magnificent portrait of Rubens, his second wife, Helena Fourment, and one of their five children has usually been dated on stylistic grounds to the late 1630s. The child's blue sash, heavy shoes, and plain collar resemble adult male attire and suggest that he is either Frans Rubens, born in 1633, or, more likely, Peter Paul, born March 1, 1637. Rubens married Helena Fourment on December 6, 1630, when he was fifty-three and she was sixteen. Helena became the model and the inspiration for many paintings by Rubens dating from the 1630s, particularly those dealing with themes of ideal beauty or love. The present composition was considerably revised during execution to shift the emphasis from Rubens, as the dominant half of a courtly couple, to Helena, as ideal wife and mother. The parrot, long a symbol of the Virgin Mary, suggests ideal motherhood, while the fountain, caryatid, and garden setting imply fertility and recall Rubens's own garden in Antwerp, where he frequently escorted Helena. “

Metropolitan Museum gallery label

10-7-09 Looking at this painting, executed around the same time as “Venus and Adonis,” adds a new layer of meaning to my previous experiences. It’s the non-fiction version of the same story. Here is Rubens’ personal Venus, the teenage bride of his last decade. Just like Adonis, he is destined to leave her, with the difference that he is aware of this inevitability. His admiring gaze is also wistful. He knows he will leave her alone too soon: she outlives him by 33 years.



But Helena, unlike Venus, is at peace. She must anticipate her fate, but at least in her husband’s eyes, she is supremely content in her role as wife and mother. Her gaze drifts past her son as her reaches up toward her. The happy child is confident she will fulfill his needs, and she bathes in the warm admiration father and son bestow upon her.
She knows she is the center of their universe, she is the answer to their question.

In the gallery descriptions of the two paintings it is noted that Rubens softened Adonis’ facial expression to be less severe, and here modified his own, initially prominent appearance in order to foreground his wife. I wish I could ask him why, and guess it was out of love.








10-13-09 Ruben’s hands are surprisingly delicate, the fingers tapered and elegant. I have been working on a series of images of my husband and my hands, interwoven, and was wondering about the hands of Rubens and his wife. I am struck by the light touch, the way his gently cradles hers, and the weightlessness of her hand in his. How odd, the leash seems to grow out of her hand, rather than be held by it, the fingers hardly grasp it… (what is that fluffy thing in her other hand, and what does it mean?)















11-8-09 I came back today for a final reflection on “Venus and Adonis” and it was gone! They were restoring that part of the gallery, and put it in storage. I felt quite frustrated, almost as if I had been stood up for a date. I had really been looking forward to one last visit, but instead returned to this painting.

When I first saw Helena, I thought she looked a bit stupid and maybe even a little homely, with a weak chin. Now I am coming to appreciate her. Her gentleness and grace…I can almost see what Rubens saw in her. Is the beauty in the object of love or in the eyes of the lover? It is almost as if a spotlight is focused on her.

She seems to be living blissfully in the moment, without regrets or fears. Who was the real Helena, and what did she really think about her husband’s work? And what was life like for her after he was gone?







11-8-09 Here is the artist, portraying himself gazing at his beloved. He chooses to ignore us, his viewers, for whom he has made this picture. He is absorbed in the act of looking.

What does it mean to look, and to see? What does it mean to truly see another human being, or even more, to see through his or her eyes? What does it mean to devote your life to this act? I have tried to see through Ruben’s eyes, and believe I have in some small measure, by taking the time to truly try to see his paintings. Making these sketches has given me new insights into his work, through taking notice of the nuances and subtleties of line and shape, color and light. There is so much about experience, about our humanity, that we comprehend through our senses but cannot articulate in words.

Art is a reflection of the ineffable in human experience.

Mind the Gap: thoughts on drawing

Drawing, both from observation and imagination, is a powerful tool in alerting us to our most fundamental mental processes. As we trace small moments of perception and invention on the blank page, we see and feel our minds at work. Metacognition, the capacity to understand not just what we know, but how we know, is often cited as one of those vital 21st century skills. The act of drawing, of coordination between eye, mind and hand, by its very nature, cultivates metacognition. Through this process, gaps in understanding are revealed and explored. Yet drawing is seen as a dispensable elective in most U.S. schools today, (particularly in middle school and high school) a mere outlet for self-expression rather than an essential skill in today’s highly visual and rapidly changing world.

I want to build a case for drawing as fundamental across the curriculum: that the habits of artists, architects and designers, who draw as a means of exploration and investigation, can benefit students at all levels. Mental flexibility, the capacity to cope with ambiguity and uncertainty, to face the unknown with courage and hope, these are all needed skills, perhaps now more than ever. In my teaching practice, I often urge students to begin by drawing what is not there. This basic technique can be expanded into a metaphor that describes an essential part of what artists do: look for the gaps---in knowledge and understanding, between disciplines---taking advantage of those small openings where imagination and invention can thrive. Drawing seems to be a common thread that crosses gaps and connects concepts, themes and disciplines, including what is, for me, a difficult divide between teaching and making art. A person has to slow down to draw, to pause and consider. In so doing, one might notice what would have otherwise slipped by. Thinking through drawing, visualizing as well as observing, one can discover and refine relationships and associations, and invent new possibilities.

In his book, “Radical Hope: ethics in the face of cultural devastation” Jonathan Lear tells the inspirational story of Plenty Coups, the last great chief of the Crow Nation. He describes how Plenty Coups stood in the void, the destruction of traditional ways of understanding the world behind him, facing an unknown future with courage. Lear writes, “Courage is a virtue, I think, because it is an excellent way of coping with, responding to, and manifesting a basic fact about us: that we are finite, erotic creatures.” (Lear: 2006, p 119) Lear defines his term “finite erotic creatures.” We are finite because we are limited in our abilities and understanding, relying on concepts that, any day, may become unintelligible. We are erotic, in the Platonic sense, because “in our finite condition of lack, we reach out to the world in yearning, longing, admiration, and desire for that which (however mistakenly) we take to be valuable, beautiful, and good” And as creatures, we are inevitably vulnerable, “it is an essential part of our nature that we take risks just by being in the world.”

So what, you might ask, does the notion of human beings as “finite, erotic creatures” have to do with drawing? The story of Plenty Coups is of a life at the extreme edge of a reality we all confront, whether we realize it or not. We live in a rapidly changing world, buffeted by forces and confronted by phenomena beyond our understanding. Yet there exists, most evident in children, and also in some artists, scientists and others, a passionate desire to know and understand the world. A teacher who can help a young person harness this passion, guiding them toward maturity without dampening their vitality, is doing something important. I believe the discipline of drawing can help this process, by helping students become more aware and learn to take advantage of the gaps in their understanding. The act of drawing makes us notice the intricacies of our own minds, the complex interdependencies and recursive loops of perception and cognition. Through the interaction of mind, eye and hand, we constantly try to bridge the gap between phenomena and understanding.

Conventional wisdom long held that perception and visualization were very different processes. Yet contrary to expectation, recent fMRI studies have revealed that perception and visualization both take place in the same areas of the brain. (Black: 2009, informal communication) In fact, both activities take place in many parts of the brain simultaneously. Cognitive scientists are learning that spatial reasoning is multi-modal, pervasive and fundamental for the way we understand and function in the world. (Tversky, 2009) When we draw, either from observation or from our imaginations, we become aware of these processes in our own minds. It is as if we are more alive, and the world around us is also more vivid, more present to our senses. I may only sketch for a half hour on a hike in the woods, or while sitting at my kitchen table, sketching a random bundle of wires. Returning to the trail, or to the tasks of dishwashing, grading papers, or feeding my family, I experience a sense of awakening, as if I had been sleepwalking through my life until the moment I sat down to draw.

It is this space, this interstice,* that we, as teachers, need to make more available to our students, so that their greater awareness of the workings of their own minds feed their natural thirst for knowledge and nurture their ability to imagine. Confronting the emptiness of the white page, and the splendor of the world as it is, and as it could be, they will continue to desire to bridge the gap between the two.


*(n. pl. in•ter•stic•es (-sti˘-sïz', -si˘z)
A space, especially a small or narrow one, between things or parts: "There is a gleam of luminous gold, where the sinking western sun has found a first direct interstice in the clouds" (John Fowles). [Middle English, from Old French, from Latin interstitium, from *interstitus, past participle of intersistere, to pause, make a break : inter-, inter- + sistere, to cause to stand, set up; see stÇ- in Indo-European roots.])

The Comic Torah Project

My friends, Sharon Rosensweig and Aaron Freeman, are working on publishing a traditional book version of their online series, The Comic Torah. They are raising seed money via Kickstarter, through Amazon, and could use all the help they can get! I think its a pretty valuable project, and if you do too, you can help make it happen (and get mentioned in the book!)

Everybody Dance!

This is a permanent art installation created by 6th and 7th graders for the front lobby at the Urban Assembly Academy for Civic Engagement in the Bronx, funded by Met Life's Art in the Schools project. These students have no regular art instruction, so it was a challenge to help them make something was an authe ntic expression of who they are, without the foundation of basic art skills. They helped each other pose while I photographed them against an improvised green screen. I silhouetted the photos in photoshop, and then they traced them onto clear vinyl with the help of a digital projector. They painted the patterns on the reverse side with acrylic paint.

In the end, I think we came up with something that truly reflects the energy and visual thinking of the UAACE students who contributed to this project. Thanks so much to Partnership Coordinator, Angela Jack, Principal Cameron Berube, School Counselors Shavon Eveyln and Raymond Warren, and everyone at Studio in a School, for giving me the opportunity to work on this project and for making it all possible. And thanks, students, (especially the after school girls who really put in the extra effort) you did an amazing job.

Christopher Walker took wonderful pictures at the celebration, some of which I show here, and more which you can see at his website, Gotham Pixels.

One student said, at the final celebration in June, "This project took us to places in our minds that we had never been before." As soon as she said it, I realized that was the whole point.

(dis)continuities: the movie!

Here is my first foray into animation in a very long time! Not sure what its all about yet, but it was fun to do....I used some of the drawings described in the previous post to create this video.

(dis)continuities

ink on paper, mounted on board, dimensions variable (7.5” x 7.5” squares)

“I am what I am not yet.”
(Maxine Greene, March 3, 2009, Teacher’s College)

In response to a seminar taught by John Baldacchino on Maxine Greene’s thought(at Teachers College, Columbia University) I wanted to create a work inspired by her ideas. I took many of Greene’s key concepts quite literally, attempting to transform them into a methodology I could use to create a work of art. I used Greene’s fundamental concept of infinite possibilities via the imaginary as the basis of the project, to create a work that had no definitive configuration, but could be endlessly rearranged and expanded. My aim was to create a set of limits within which I had the possibility for infinite exploration and increasing complexity.

I tried using a uniform paper size, such as 8” x 8”, and a category of subject matter, such as seeds and pods. I planned that the materials and visual language of depiction would continually vary, a literal translation into visual form of Greene’s concept of situated freedom. (Greene: 1988, p. 8) This approach went nowhere: the results felt too arbitrary. I had given myself too much freedom. I decided to pare down my variables, limiting myself to the simplest tools, a plain white paper and a permanent felt marker. I started with a single, intentionally banal subject: a pot of dried flowering grasses.


As I sat down to work on the first drawing of this series, early on a Saturday morning, I thought about what Maxine Greene had said a few nights before, during her lecture at Teacher’s College, about seeing things large. The more you pay attention, the more small things matter, they gain in significance. In describing what it means to see things large, Greene writes, “To see things or people big, one must resist viewing other human beings as mere objects or chess pieces and view them in their integrity and particularity instead.” (Greene, 1995, p.10) I became absorbed in the intricate interwoven structure of the plant in front of me, which grew steadily more complex and mysterious, the harder I tried to understand it. The strict limits I had imposed upon myself had liberated me. When I finally looked up, to greet my husband and daughters as they sleepily wandered into the dining room where I had been working, I was startled by their sudden vividness. These three people that I know so intimately, my family, seemed almost as strangers, unnaturally present to my gaze. Even the couch and bookcase across the room seemed more real, their existence more emphatic.

This experience was not new, though I hadn’t had it in a while. It was how I understand what Greene describes as a state of heightened consciousness, attributing this concept to Alfred Schutz, “what he (like Thoreau before him and Camus) chose to call wide-awakeness” (Greene:1994, p 436) The resonance Greene’s “wide-awakeness” has for me personally sends me back to my own adolescence, sitting on the banks of Walden Pond, in Concord Massachusetts, next to my bicycle, reading these words; “Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.” (Thoreau:1910, p 440) The idealism that was affirmed in me at that long ago, sun-dappled moment in my own life story led me to become an artist in the first place. Sitting at my dining room table that recent March morning, looking into the faces of the people I love most in the world and seeing them with such intensity, renewed my faith in the larger project of art-making.

I continued to make drawings within the confines I had laid out for myself. After making almost twenty, I needed to introduce a new element in order to create a dialectic tension in the evolving work. As Greene writes, “There is, after all, a dialectical relation marking every human situation… This relation exists between different, apparently opposite poles; but presupposes a mediation between them.” This mediation is “something that occurs between nature and culture, work and action, technologies and human minds.” (Greene: 1988, p. 8) A man-made element, in contrast with the plant forms, seemed right, and I eventually settled upon a jumble of power cords and computer cables that created curious visual rhymes in juxtaposition with the grasses and flowers I had been drawing. (My husband insists I should call this work “Power Plant.”) Here is an example of an (almost)
arbitrary arrangement:
The individual drawing, plant, knot or cord is less important than the patterns and continuities that emerge as the drawings are laid out in various arrays. In observing any particular array of drawings (one of many possible series of choices), the eye and mind connects lines and spaces from one square to those in the others, forming new, unplanned visual pathways. The continuity created in the viewer’s mind between a blade of grass and an I Pod cable is both random and intentional, designed to de-stabilize the work, to confound expectation of subject matter as a viewer moves from one square to the next. These imagined connections are the true subject of this piece, the way our minds create and hold onto threads of meaning that exist only in the individual imagination.

This is the first artwork I can remember making where theory preceded practice. Visually, it is also a marked departure from my previous body of work, consisting of large oil paintings of torn fruit. Although many similar ideas have been present in my previous work, they have only emerged into verbal consciousness post facto, while speaking with others about my intentions and their perceptions regarding a particular piece. I am encouraged that this approach opened up new territories for me to explore as an artist, and look forward to future expeditions into uncharted lands of both theory and practice.




References
Baldachino, J. (2009). Education Beyond Education: the Self and the Imaginary in Maxine Greene’s Philosophy. New York: Peter Lang.

Greene, M. (1988). The Dialectic of Freedom. New York: Teachers College Press.

Greene, M. (1994). “Epistemology and Educational Research: The Influence of Recent Approaches to Knowledge.” Review of Research in Education. Vol. 20. pp. 423-464.

Greene, M. (2000). Releasing the Imagination. Essays on Education, The Arts and Social Change. San Francisco CA: Jossey-Bass.

Thoreau, H. (1910). Walden. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co, Publishers.