The Body in Art

Discussing examples of how the human body has been depicted in the visual arts throughout history, from the ancient world through the middle ages and Renaissance to the present.

Introduction:
In this episode, we delve into the captivating world of the human body in art, exploring its evolution, representations, and significance across various historical periods and cultures. From the idealized forms of ancient Greece to the raw realism of the Renaissance and the challenging perspectives of contemporary artists, the body in art reflects not only aesthetics but also cultural and societal values.

Segment 1: Archaic Greek Sculpture

• The ancient Greeks' perception of the human body as a representation of divinity and perfection.
• The shift from stiff, lifeless figures to dynamic representations, exemplified by the Artemisian bronze.
• The significance of depicting gods in action, such as Zeus with a thunderbolt, and the emergence of the Venus Pudica genre.

Segment 2: Classical Sculpture

• The transformation of sculptural representation from idealized gods to mortal athletes in classical Greece.
• Exploration of Miron's Discobolos, a snapshot capturing the splendor of the human body in motion.
• The portrayal of prominent Romans in portraiture, showcasing realism and individuality.

Segment 3: The Body of Christ

• The evolution of depicting Christ in art, focusing on the Gero cross in Germany.
• The contrast between temple sculpture in Khajurahu, India, showcasing eroticism, and the more reserved representations of the West.

Segment 4: Renaissance Man

• The Italian Renaissance's embrace of classical ideals and the resurgence of pagan influences.
• Exploration of Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man, emphasizing the meticulous study of the human form and its proportions.

Segment 5: Anatomy

• The transition from medieval prudishness to naked classicism, leading to the study of the body in form and movement.
• The role of anatomical drawings, like those of Vesalius, in understanding the human body's intricacies.

Segment 6: Impressionism and Beyond

• The impact of mechanical reproduction on art, challenging traditional notions of originality.
• The emergence of impressionism, marked by works like Monet's 'Impression: Sunrise,' challenging established conventions.
• The evolving role of art in confronting the harsh realities of life, as seen in the works of Rothko and Bacon.

Segment 7: Contemporary Perspectives

• The controversial sculpture of Alison Lapper, challenging societal norms of beauty and disability.
• Reflections on the changing perception of the body in art, from classical ideals to diverse and inclusive representations.

Conclusion:
The journey through the body in art reveals a rich tapestry of cultural, historical, and individual perspectives, highlighting the ever-evolving nature of artistic expression.

Works Referenced:
Cover: Alison Lapper and Parys by Marc Quinn
Aphrodite of Knidos by Praxiteles
Getty Kouros (Young Man)
Peplos Kore (Young Maiden)
The Artemision Bronze

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Transcript

06. FINAL_The Body

Introduction

Hello, my name is Darren, and this is the Makers Rage Podcast. The Body. Specifically, the human body, traditionally conceived as a model of perfection in movement and thinking and utterance; lower than the angels and the gods, but not unlike them; perishable, like animals and plants, but with dominion over them. Because we can reason, we can make things, transform our surroundings to adapt to us. We may not be able to contend physically with the lion or the hyena, even some of our pets, but what we make with our hands, stacks the odds heavily in our favour. When our ancestors stood upright in the savannah, began to socialise, to speak, to plan, to build, why wouldn't we come to believe some deity or several of them created us in their image, and that the human form is adequate for representing them in art and sculpture. Especially as it appears during the prime of life. And in the best possible condition it can appear: Lean, muscular, nude, and oh, yes, male. In case you haven't guessed, of course, I'm talking about the Greeks. 

Archaic Greek Sculpture

It took quite some time for the female form to be put on the same pedestal, as it were. The Aphrodite of Cnidos by Praxiteles, came late. And although she's naked, with a robe in one hand, her other hand covers her shame, making her among the first in a genre of sculpture known as the Venus Pudica, where though the goddess is represented naked, she's nevertheless concealing with her hands the most intimate parts. The word pudica means 'modest', and while the male gods can be depicted standing upright, confident, thrusting their genitalia and our faces, to see a goddess thus can get you killed. As Acteon found out: seeing the virginal Artemis bathing, she transformed him into a stag, and he was ripped apart by his own dogs. 

The very earliest Greek sculpture was inspired by the monumental stone figures of ancient Egypt. The Kouros, which means 'young man', looks very much like an Egyptian pharaoh, or high official, and this was a formula for the human figure the Egyptians followed for 1000s of years, with little variation - upright, cubic, starkly frontal, broad shouldered, with a narrow waist, the arms held close to the sides, fists clenched, both feet planted firmly on the ground, the left one slightly advanced. But whereas the Egyptian figures often served an explicitly religious function, the Kouroi, more often or not, were commissioned to depict local heroes, such as athletes who succeeded at the Games. Similarly, the female Kore didn't have attributes identifying them as goddesses. They were often shown gesturing in a manner suggestive of offering or gratitude, indicating perhaps that they were representations of young girls in the service of a goddess. They stood stiff and cubic, like the Kouroi, except they were fully clothed. The heavy tunic or Peplos they wore did evolve over time into a lighter, more graceful chitin. But as mentioned, it would take quite some time before the female nude would become a commonplace in Greek art and sculpture. 

So, without having a strictly religious function, Greek sculptors didn't have to adhere to the sacerdotal prescriptions that fixed the geometric style in ancient Egypt for so long. As the Greeks' understanding of human anatomy improved, so their statuary became more naturalistic. By the end of the Archaic period, the figures were no longer cubic and frontal, nor the arms and legs rigid. And having solved the problem of balance, Greek sculptors soon left their Egyptian precursors far behind, and turned their sights to elaborate gesture and depicting the body in action. Take for example, the Artemisian bronze, which was recovered from the sea about 100 years ago and was sculpted around the middle of the fifth century BC. Scholars dispute who the sculptor was, and even who the subject is. We see a muscular, bearded figure, slightly over lifesize, its weight shifted primarily onto the one foot, the left foot standing forward, and the left hand pointing straight ahead. In the right, well, whatever was in the right no longer exists, which is why scholars dispute who it is. They agree it is a God. Possibly, Poseidon or Zeus, most agree it's Zeus, and that the missing object in his hand was in fact a representation of a thunder bolt. 

Classical Sculpture

The point is, we no longer see in this example a forward-facing figure, standing stiff, lifeless, almost fitted for a coffin. In showing us a figure in the very act of throwing something, or preparing to throw something, we see a snapshot of a body not contained by the space surrounding it, not standing out of time, like the Kouroi or the Egyptian figures, but in in the process of completing an action very much in time. And as with all snapshots, it suggests the infinite sequence of moments leading up to it. What provoked him to pick up his thunderbolt and aim at so decisively at an unknown target? And then the aftermath - the release, the follow through, the swoop of his limbs and curve of his torso, like a javelin thrower at the Olympic Games. Miron's Discobolos or 'disk thrower' is indisputably a man, a mortal, an athlete, and yet proportioned as flatteringly as Olympian Zeus, a statue that is rightly famous for depicting an event that still exists in the Olympic Games. Another snapshot of the myriad that comprise a very familiar act, even after two and a half thousand years. And yet Miron privileges this moment above the rest because it shows the body at its most splendid. 

At this point, it's worth noting that despite the apparent realism of these kinds of figures when compared with previous models in Egypt and the Near East, the affect is of course, illusory. No human being has ever had the proportions of the Artemisian bronze. Although the form is clearly that of a man, it is idealised. Of Miron's 'Disc Thrower', I will quote the historian Kenneth Clark, who writes in 'The Nude', quote, "Myron has created the enduring pattern of athletic energy. He has taken a moment of action so transitory that students of athletics still debate if it is feasible. To a modern eye, it may seem that Myron's desire for perfection has made him suppress too rigorously the sense of strain in the individual muscles", close quote. So despite early attempts at realism, idealised proportions were very quick to take hold on the Greek imagination. By the time Polycleitus carves his Dryphoros or 'spear bearer', we see a two metre tall exemplar of idealised beauty and mathematical precision. It is no accident that around this time, the middle of the fifth century BC, Pindar was composing his Odes to celebrate the achievements of athletes at the Games. In his seventh Olympian Ode, on Diagoras of Rhodes, the most famous boxer of the ancient world, he takes a moment to laud the famous sculptors who hailed from the same city. Quote, "The grey eyed Goddess Herself gave them every kind of skill to surpass mortals with their superlative handiwork. Their streets bore works of art about in the likeness of beings that lived and moved. And great was their fame."

Roman Portraiture

Many of the Greek sculptures which come down to us, are actually Roman copies of originals now lost. So despite Rome having burnt in the city of Corinth and enslaving its population, despite it having plundered Athens of its treasures. it was Greece who had the last laugh. To quote Horace, "Græcia capta ferum victorem cepit, et artes intulit agresti Latio" ("Captive Greece made her savage victor captive, and brought the arts to rustic Latium"). And the Romans did little by way of innovation, when it came to representations of the human form. They mainly riffed off their Greek precursors as the archaic Greeks did with their Egyptian forebears. The Porta Prima, depicting Caesar Augustus, was even carved by Greek sculptors, the long friezes of the Ara Pacus or 'altar of peace', as spectacular as they are, clearly derive from Greek precursors, like the Parthenon marbles or the friezes on any Greek temple for that matter. And moreover, if you were a senator, or a Caesar, and happened to be short, bald, hunchbacked, you could find a Greek sculptor to carve you like Apollo. 

One area where the Romans did depart from the Greek convention of idealised representation was in portraiture. Doubtless there were many paintings and frescoes done, which no longer survive, except for a few tantalising examples, from Pompeii, or Herculaneum, and only because these were preserved under the ash, like the portrait of Terentius Neo, featuring a couple believed to be husband and wife, shown side by side, shoulder to shoulder, of equal status. He holds the rotulus or rolled up piece of writing material. She's holding a stylus, and a wax tablet, indicating both are educated and literate. Their features, idiosyncratic unpretentious, unidealised. You feel anyone who knew them would have seen this and recognised them instantly. And ironically, it's thanks to Vesuvius that such depictions even survive. A Fresco is not as durable as stone and only the very wealthy could afford to commission a portrait in marble or bronze. 

Remarkably, though, even these busts of prominent Romans depict them unflatteringly, warts and all. The bust of Lucius Caecilius Iucundus is representative. Also a resident of Pompeii. like the couple in the fresco. A wealthy banker, whose house still stands in Pompeii today, the walls adorned with frescoes that wouldn't have otherwise survived, but also graffiti, including one message that reads, "May those who love prosper. Let them perish who cannot love. Let them perish twice over who veto love." John Lennon couldn't have said it better. And what we learn about the people of Pompeii, from the frescoes that survive, including the pornography we see on the walls of what once were brothels, is that these people weren't so different from ourselves. And that throughout history, wherever there is an opportunity to depict the human form, we don't have to look too far to find the sex. 

And yet such depictions tell us as much about ourselves as they do the Pompeiians. Being able to zoom in and see them as individuals, though separated from them by so many centuries and millennia, even, especially the less prominent individuals who lived and died before we were ever a glint in our ancestors eyes, in almost every case, is wholly on attainable. But nonetheless when we look at the bust of Lucius Caecilius Iucundus, we see the face of a person, the wrinkles and the blemishes, the bags under the eyes, the prominent nose, and ears, one higher than the other, an asymmetrical countenance, like mine, and yours, although by most beauty standards, below average, and yet he commissioned it. One can imagine him insisting to the sculptor, "Don't forget the large wart on my left cheek." The expression in his eyes evoke dignity and command, but not necessarily over others. Over himself. 

You feel such Roman period portraiture was commissioned mainly for the friends and relatives of the subject, who would have expected a recognizable likeness, and who would have perhaps mocked the pretence of a 60-year-old Senator depicting himself looking like Apollo or Zeus. And although Greek idealisation was still prevalent in the sculpture of the Roman period, it was the realism of the portraiture that is most striking, and makes these ancient people look alive. Like the bust of Lucius Caecilius Iucundus, or the couple in the Terentius Neo fresco. Or the many funerary portraits dating from the Roman period, found in Egyptian tombs, especially at the oasis of Al Fayum, executed on wood and placed under the bandages looking more alive than the desiccated face those bandages cover. All the effort the ancient Egyptians put into making their dead appear incorruptible when all they needed, was a talented portrait painter with a wooden tablet and some pigments mixed with liquid beeswax. After the decline and fall of the Western Roman Empire, and it went more with a whimper than a bang, the so called Dark Ages, or early Middle Ages wasn't exactly a high point for depicting the human form. 

The Body of Christ

And while the West was in decline, Islam was very much on the rise, and like the Protestant Christians, centuries later, likened depictions of the human body to idolatry. But like the Hebrews, they privileged the word over the image. And while literacy was fading fast in the West, the Abbasids were building houses of wisdom, translating and preserving much of the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome, wisely looking past their love of idols, while adding much of equal value to that great store before the Mongols, who had seems had little time for wisdom, sacked Baghdad, and set it all ablaze. But thankfully, not before this body of wisdom was transmitted to the Western Islamic world, Spain, especially - beyond the Mongols reach, and while the Alhambra in Grenada had its harem walls adorned with geometrical shapes, instead of Venus's and nymphs, not that far north, one body in particular, held the Christian world in thrall, that of the dead, mutilated Christ, hanging from a cross. 

In Germany, to Gero cross is the earliest known depiction of Christ on the cross while dead. Earlier depictions had him still living. The slumped head and twisted body with knees bent sideways would become a standard. The Gero figure is six foot two in height with its arm spanning five feet five inches. A gilded sunlike oval surrounding it, which would have made quite an impression on anyone entering Cologne Cathedral its day or even today. Interestingly, there are 108 gargoyles on the exterior of Cologne Cathedral, functioning, as all cathedral gargoyles do, both as spouts for conveying water away from the roof and the sides of the building and as apotropaics or guardians to ward off evil spirits, and thoughts of those entering the sacred space within. 

Temple Sculpture

If we look at the near contemporary Lakshmana temple located in Khajurahu, India, the Shiva and Brahma sculptures inside the temple sanctum are stiff, geometrical, recalling the monumental sculpture of Egypt, and kouroi of archaic Greece. But if you take a look at the outer walls, It is a very different story. You see a Carnival of Animals, lions, boars, camels in decorative coverings, caparisoned elephants with their riders. You imagine the red sandstone brightly coloured in its day, as the figures on the Parthenon would have been in its day. But as interesting as the animals are, it's the human figures that really catch the eye. It seems the eminently gifted sculptors were given licence to depict an orgiastic riot of erotic contortionism that would have made Caligula blush, males and female nudes equally represented, not a hint of modesty or restraint, with all the imagination of the Kama Sutra manifest on the outer walls of this sacred place. 

And it seems their purpose, like cathedral gargoyles, was to keep such imaginings outside the Sanctum Sanctorum to remind visitors to cleanse their thoughts before they visit the gods. The greater challenge would be wiping these images out of your mind - after seeing them for the first time, especially. Perhaps the challenge was not looking, despite their allure. There is one interesting figure on the Lakshmana temple, representing us, I'd say - a young woman covering her face with her hands, but with one eye peeking out. Such depictions would have scandalised the bishops in the West, who commissioned the great cathedrals, although I imagine the Masons would have responded positively, at least to the craftsmanship of the unnamed Lakshmi sculptors. 

The names of the Masons and craftsmen and sculptors who build the cathedrals in the West, are also lost to us. The bishops, because they supplied the money, took the credit for the whole undertaking. One sculptor whose name we do know, Gislebertus, who decorated a cathedral of Saint Lazare in Autun, France, would, I imagine have been spellbound by the Lakshmi sculptures. You take a look at his temptation of Eve, featuring the first large scale nude in European art since antiquity, with its sinuous grace, you feel if Gislebertus had visited India, he'd have looked past the overt eroticism of the Lakshmi figures and saw in their makers, kindred spirits. Incidentally, we know his name, Gislebertus, Latin for Gilbert, because it is found carved on the west tympanum of Autun cathedral: "Gislebertus hoc fecit" (Gislebertus made this). Such was his fame, it seems he was given permission to carve his name on the works of his hands, the first ever found on stonework from the Romanesque period. Looking forward to the Renaissance, it seems sculptors are starting to see themselves not as anonymous hands laboring for the glory of God and his representative on Earth, the bishop, but as creative individuals in their own right. 

Renaissance Man

And with the Italian Renaissance, although initially the subject matter wasn't changing much, bishops and popes were still commissioning dead Christ's and Madonna's, it was clear the technical mastery of the artists they commissioned was reaching a new pitch, especially artists like Duccio and Cimabue, whom Giorgio Vasari noted was the teacher of Giotto. Their Madonnas of course, always modestly dressed, like the Kore in ancient Greece, Jesus relegated to secondary status, when depicted alongside his mother, both in size, as an infant, and often in representation, with some baby Jesuses looking like homunculi, as if the artists looked on him as an afterthought, compared with the real star of the portrait, the Virgin Mary, and of course the crucifixion portraits, where Jesus was the Star were still a plenty. But what really marked the Renaissance as a rebirth, was Italy's reconnection with its ancient pagan past. And I suppose it is the figure of the Vitruvian Man that exemplifies this most starkly. 

In Plato's Theaetetus, the philosopher quotes his predecessor Protagoras, with whom he vehemently disagreed, as having said, "Man is the measure of all things, of the things that are, that they are, of the things that are not, that they are not." It is a statement that seems to espouse relativism, that each individual is the measure of how things are perceived by that individual. Something is true, according to how the individual perceives it. You can see why Plato demurred, who believed there were overarching truths that exist in spite of the individual. But you can also see why a statement that privileges the individual as the centre of his cosmos would resonate with the hyper individualistic Renaissance Man.

Vitruvian Man

Leonardo's Homo Vitruvius, a drawing executed primarily with pen and light brown ink, shows a single nude figure with two overlapping poses, one with arms stretched above his shoulders, the other with arms perpendicular to them, one with legs together, the other apart, one inscribes a circle, the other a square. 

In his De Architectura, the Roman engineer Vitruvius writes, "In the human body, the central point is the navel. If a man is placed flat on his back, with his hands and feet extended, and a compass centred at his navel, his fingers and toes will touch the circumference of a circle thereby described, and just as a human body yields a circular outline, so too a square may be found from it. For if we measure the distance from the soles of the feet to the top of the head, and then apply that measure to the outstretched arms, the breadth will be found to be the same as the height as in a case of a perfect square." In fact, Leonardo's version of Vitruvian Man corrected inaccuracies in this account. By utilising research from the work of his contemporary, Leon Battista Alberti, instead of the navel, Leonardo made the scheme work by using the man's genitals as the centre. 

When you look at the figure with his outstretched arms, it's hard not to see intimations of Christ on the cross. But this is no defeated, crucified figure. He stares out at us with a forbidding look, stern, defiant, this is the artist as hero. This is what Shakespeare must have thought when he wrote in Hamlet, "What a piece of work is a man, how noble in Reason, how infinite in faculty. In form in moving, how express and admirable. In action, how like an angel. In apprehension, how like a God. The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals." And being the paragon of animals, worthy of study, in the minutest detail. Which is why so many artists in the Renaissance became expert anatomists, like Leonardo, of course, whose anatomical drawings are so famous. And, conversely, why great anatomists like Vesalius we're expert draughtsman. 

Anatomy

Now that mediaeval prudishness gave way to naked classicism, it was deemed necessary to study the body in form and movement. And for the latter, it required understanding what happens under the skin, as evinced by the drawings of Vesalius in his De Fabrica, featuring skinless bodies enacting heroic poses that would become known as 'the muscle men'. I suppose he knew his audience. He even includes interesting landscapes the backgrounds of most. Unfortunately, like the Greeks and the Romans before them, it seems once again, the male figure was privileged. And you can see it as exemplified in the Sistine Chapel no less, where it's obvious Michelangelo's spent less time studying the female form. With his Eve, the five Sibyls, and other female figure looking like bodybuilders. But of course, Michelangelo would have thought he was flattering them in making these formidable women so physically imposing. 

Of course, there were many great artists contemporary with Michelangelo and Leonardo and many great artists long after them who knew they didn't have to cut up dead bodies in order to paint them. And although some speculate Botticelli half-concealed a pair of lungs in his masterpiece La Primavera, there's no real evidence dissection helped or hindered his painting of his famous nude, the birth of Venus. And the same goes for Artemisia Gentileschi. Being a woman herself, there was no need for any grave robbing to paint her version of Venus, reclining seductively on a bed - to satisfy her patron, no doubt; or to paint her Lucrezia, likely a self-portrait, to satisfy herself. Lucretia or Lucrece was an ancient Roman noble woman, who was raped by Tarquin, son of the last king of Rome, and having killed herself, being disgraced, a rebellion ensued, which led to the overthrow of the monarchy and the establishment of the Roman Republic. Lucretia became a national hero to the Romans. Her rape warned against the folly of kingship and unchecked power. Her suicide signified a refusal to submit the that power and a martyrdom to the ideals of the Republic. 

Gentileschi

Depictions of Lucretia by male artists were usually eroticized, portraying her young, nude, desirable. Gentileschi shows her in early middle age, as the artist herself was. Her bare, muscular thigh, looking more like that of Jesus in Michelangelo's the Last Judgement than Botticelli's waifish Venus. A dagger in her left hand, her right hand seizes her breast. Looking up, her expression is anguished, though resolute. It's clear, this isn't the 17-year-old Artemesia who was raped by Agostino Tassi in 1611, and who was subjected to torture as part of her testimony in order to ensure she wasn't making it all up, with metal rings being placed around her fingers and tightened she spoke, causing agony, and potentially jeopardizing her blossoming painting career. Of course, Tassi wasn't required to undergo the same treatment. And although he was ultimately convicted and banished, the sentence wasn't enforced. 

The 33 year old Gentileschi was one of the most successful painters of her age, one of the most gifted followers of Caravaggio, and while painting her Lucrezia, I'd like to think it was a testament of survival, instead of suicide, and of her decision not to submit to the expectation that she marry her rapist, as even her father suggested, since being tainted in the eyes of our contemporaries, her prospects of making a good marriage had been significantly reduced. Her resolution instead, or perhaps always had been, to become a great painter. There are no warts in Artemesia's self-portraits, but certainly brute authenticity, and in the 1620s when the Lucretia here was being painted, in the Netherlands, Rembrandt Van Rijn, began his own self-portraits. 

Rembrandt

No artist in history has more candidly revealed the evolution of his face, from youth to old age. Shakespeare, who said so much, was only recently dead, and we've no real idea what he looked like. Without saying a word, Rembrandt seems to disclose all of himself to us in that expressive, changing face. In an age before photography, self-portraits were, in essence, selfies, except the process of creating one, or of acquiring the skill to do so, of having access to a canvas, to pigments, of having the luxury to set aside the time to paint yourself, is clearly more involved than using your phone to take a snapshot and then add a few filters. The motivation is the same though. If you look at his self-portrait in a plumed hat, done in his 20s, it is a flattering depiction. He wants us to see him at his best, and wearing his best, and self-portraits of artists were not commissioned by patrons. They were usually done to evince the skill of the artist and encourage patronage. If he can paint himself so well, I'm sure he can do so for me, or my wife, or my children, or perhaps a whole group of people, like the Syndics of the Draper's guild or the Night Watch. 

34:59

You feel the people depicted didn't have to point themselves out at the unveiling because the artists had recorded their features so accurately. By the time he painted the 1658 Frick Collection self-portrait, the commissions had dried up. It seems Rembrandt had fallen out of fashion. He was eventually forced to sell most of his paintings and cherished collection of antiquities to avoid going bankrupt. His beloved wife, Saskia, whom we painted so often was dead 10 years, and he was having a relationship with his much younger former maid Hendrickje, with whom he had a daughter. But he couldn't remarry, or he'd lose access to the trust he and Saskia set up for their son, Titus. So with demand for his paintings evaporating and his personal life in disarray, he finds time to create perhaps his most extraordinary self-portrait, showing himself at 52, ageing and regal, wearing an exotic costume, vaguely Eastern, reminds me of Byron's famous portrait and Albanian dress, except Rembrandt is no young aristocrat doing a grand tour of Eastern Europe, and despite his downward trajectory, would have us see him arrayed as one who was an aristocrat in virtue of his talent. 

You may declare him bankrupt and take all his paintings, but you cannot take from him his capacity to create. This he retains with the same easy assurance with which he holds in the portrait that silver tipped ratan cane. Long after photography at supplanted painting for portraying the body and face Van Gogh made a point of shunning the camera. Even today, we recognize him more in paint than in photography. And I think this was done self-consciously, in order that he like Rembrandt could have total control over every aspect of his image. And doing so in paint, the medium he knew best. There's a reason the BBC entitled their documentary, 'The Genius of Photography', not of photographers, per se. Because there's so much about the art that is accidental, adventitious, compared with painting or sculpture, where the artist is responsible for every strike of the hammer, every brushstroke. A photograph can be taken on impulse, by accident, and what it records completely out of the control of the photographer. No painting is ever executed by accident. 

Photography

But for portrait painting, the writing was on the wall as soon as Louis Daguerre made his invention public in 1839. And to echo what I said before about the pornographic frescoes in Pompeii, whenever there's a new opportunity to depict the human body, you don't have to wait too long to find the sex. And so within a few years of photography's invention, there was a proliferation of pornographic daguerreotypes, calytypes, tin types, etc, etc, across Europe and beyond. And suddenly, there was a debate that couldn't be had before. If you look at Gustav Courbet's 'L'Origine Du Monde', ('The origin of the world'), featuring a model lying back with her legs apart, showing her vulva. Is it pornography, or art? If a skilled artist executed it on a canvas, put a frame around it, and exhibited in a museum, does that make it art? What if the model was merely photographed, and the photograph reproduced and sold on a street for a penny to lascivious passers by Rembrandt, who did make prurient paintings and drawings, including one of a woman who may or may not be Saskia, his wife, urinating in the chamber pot, would have nonetheless painted 'L'Origine Du Monde' in his own style, and art connoisseurs would have recognized it as his. The photograph removes the veil that is the painter's style and presents to us the thing itself. 

As powerful as Goya's paintings are, showing the atrocities committed by Napoleon's army during the peninsular wars, imagine the impact photographs of the scenes depicted in his 'Disasters of War' prints would have had on his contemporaries, one of which features the body of a dismembered man impaled on a tree branch. Or instead of the stylized presentation of his 'Third of May 1808', as revolutionary as that painting was at the time, imagine a photograph of the scene of a Spanish captive about to be shot so he could join pile of his dead comrades surrounding him. Well, we don't really have to imagine it. There is a photograph taken some time in mid-1941 featuring a man kneeling over a mass grave, looking straight at the camera, and a member of Einsatzgruppen D pointing a luger at his head. The title of the photograph is 'The last Jew in Vinnitsa.' "Leave us some unreality", said Oscar Wilde, "do not make us too offensively sane." If photographs like this are exhibited in a museum, it's never to admire as works of art, but to bear witness to the atrocities of war, and to crimes against humanity, and civilization. 

And it's this ability of the photograph to rend the veil of artifice and show us the all too real that led to a crisis of confidence in the visual arts. Not only was the photograph quicker and cheaper to produce than a portrait painting, it showed people as they truly were, without the intervention of the artist's individual style. Only the rich could afford to commission a talented painter. But in the late 19th century, the photograph was becoming accessible, even to the poor, some of whom could only afford a single photo, featuring the whole family together, and seated among them, one recently deceased, but dressed in their best and made to look alive before being laid to rest the following day, never to be looked on again, except alongside their loved ones in this single family photo. We need no longer forget the faces of the dead we loved. Or remember them only with imperfect miniatures kept in lockets near our hearts. It was clear photography would democratize the image, and the other visual arts couldn't hope to compete with its immediacy and its accessibility. 

Impressionism

And so, a new approach was needed, or several, some of which were first exhibited in April 1874. At the studio of the photographer, Nadar. The critic and humorist Louis Leroy, derisively entitled his review 'The Exhibition of the Impressionists'. He supposedly attended with a certain Joseph Vincent who on encountering August Renoir's, 'The Dancer' said, "What a pity that the painter who has a certain understanding of colour, doesn't draw better. His dancer's legs are as cottony as the gauze of her skirts." And after dismissing the canvases of others like Sisley, Pissaro, Corot as either unfinished or too finished, he arrives at Monets 'Impression: Sunrise', after which the satirical review was titled, and the movement would later be remembered, saying of it, "Wallpaper in its embryonic state is more finished than that seascape." But Cezanne's 'Modern Olympia' really piqued his ire, quote, "A woman folded in two, from whom a negro girl is removing the last veil in order to offer her in all her ugliness to the charmed gaze of a brown puppet." Finally, his doltish companion, Vincent, pretends to mistake a guard for an exhibition portrait, quote, "Is he ugly enough? From the front, he has two eyes and a nose and a mouth. Impressionists wouldn't have thus sacrificed the detail." 

Well, that was the point. From then on, detail would be sacrificed. Or at least de-prioritised in the service of what the artist was really after. Not the image as in itself it really is, but the impression that it has made upon him or her. Sometimes the strict lineaments of a figure walking in a field don't contribute much to this compared with the interplay of light and shade, and how all the colours interfuse. And we should remember, colour was rare to non-existent in 19th century photography. And since premixed paints in tin tubes were made available for the first time, artists would no longer have to mix their own paints. And they were moreover, no longer constrained by the artist’s studio, but could bring their canvases and tubes of paint outdoors, where they could explore all the possibilities of this new technology, which included the introduction of vivid synthetic pigments like cobalt blue, Viridian, Cadmium Yellow, and synthetic ultramarine blue, all of which were in use by the 1840s actually, before Impressionism, but at exactly the same time photography was taking off. 

So, it was colour and all the possibilities of colour that will 'shape' the future of painting. So, whether for the Impressionists or after them the post impressionists, who wanted to prove that painters could still draw, while at the same time showing that even colour need not be naturalistic, an approach Van Gogh, of course, evinces most spectacularly, who painted 36 'unnaturalistic' self-portraits in 10 years, but you can count on one hand the number of photographs of him that survive. With the 20th century and the dawn of film, it seems painting's response was to retreat ever further into the abstract. Picasso's 'nude, green leaves and bust'; Duchamp's 'Nude Descending a Staircase' would have utterly bewildered anyone who painted a nude before the invention of photography. And there was yet another perceived threat to the integrity of painting as an art form, which some might have interpreted as a declaration of war by an erstwhile rival: the photographic reproduction. 

Mechanical Reproduction

More than 10 million people per year visit the Louvre to look upon an image they are already totally familiar with. If the Mona Lisa was ever put on sale, who knows what it would fetch. The term 'priceless' has often been used to describe the value of such works. And yet, Andy Warhol's 'coloured Mona Lisa', featuring reproductions in black and white, yellow, pink and blue, not of the canvas itself, but of the image as it appeared in a single Met Museum brochure. And in May 2015, this painting sold for $56.2 million at Christie's. You may look at the Warhol Mona Lisa and think to yourself, 'I could do that.' But that's exactly the point. Anyone can take a photograph of the original, and share it, turn it into a meme, make it so utterly familiar that it becomes invisible. Is it sacrilege therefore to stamp the image in various colours, upside down, on its side? Or perhaps draw a moustache upon it? If we still think so? Then we have to ask why. 

There was a time not that long ago when there was only one Mona Lisa. Once we develop the technology to reproduce it, is there any more need for the original? And yet we keep them in sacred spaces, like relics. People flock from all over the world to see her, to photograph her, as if photographs aren't already readily available online. Because each person wants evidence that they were in the presence of the original. Walter Benjamin writes, "Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space; its unique existence at the place where it happens to be." One of my favourite paintings is the Rokeby Venus by Velazquez. I remember for a long time at college, it was my laptop wallpaper. It didn't take long before I forgot it was there every time I turned my laptop on. And I've never visited the National Gallery in London to see the original. And I'm sure when I do, my interest in it will be renewed. Although there will always be something inscrutable as the blurred features of the model, her back to us, looking at us through a mirror, dimly. 

This is what a work of art keeps to itself. The artist's intention. The identity of the model. It's the secrets we keep when sharing images of ourselves on social media to present a version of ourselves that maximises positive reinforcement, while keeping out of frame or behind a filtered veil, imperfections of one's person or one's lifestyle we prefer our audience never see. And these could be friends and family members who knows well, something as simple as an Instagram posts showing the spouse and kids gathered together in some Idyllic setting, smiling insistently, looking almost too happy. To give the impression that they've arrived at the goal: white picket fence, 2.3 kids, half a cat, etc. Or a physique update flexing in under the perfect lighting in the gym. See what hard work can accomplish after adding the requisite filters Of course. Some apps even have automatic filters or invisible filters. So when you see yourself, you're not actually seeing yourself. And I've seen videos suggesting how to remove these, one of which is waving your hand back and forth before the lens. As if to wipe the illusion away with an invisible cloth, how long before our mirrors have this feature? 

We grow accustomed to our mirrors, and new mirrors have this strange effect of alienating us from the familiar reflections we see at home. Mirrors we use to prepare our faces for the world. We look better in the mirror we check at home every day before stepping out the door, than in the changing room mirror of an unfamiliar clothing store. Am I really that fat? I thought I had more hair than that. What if mirrors always showed us at our best despite what others see? Unjustified confidence in an illusion is better than confronting the naked truth. And as the technology becomes available, the more control we have over what we see, and what others see, whether it be our bodies, or those of others, but especially ours, the more we will exploit that technology, whatever our level of vanity. Every filtered selfie, is an idealized self portrait, in a sense. Every physique update is an attempt to present ourselves like the Artemesian Bronze, or the Aphrodite of Cnidos. Technology has enabled us, for good or bad, to become free artists of ourselves. And yet, the imperfect original, we will hold back or keep in a sacred space., for those lucky few, we invite into the inner sanctum. 

And yet one of the effects of social media is that it makes that space smaller and smaller, as less and less of us is withheld from the world. We want to keep to ourselves that which is as yet undisclosed. And to do so we seize as much control as possible, over what others see. So much, that it can become consuming, because on receiving what little positive reinforcement we may get - 25 likes, a few more than last time - we become addicted. And when this is tied in with profit, it becomes all-consuming. And by investing so much into fabricating an image of ourselves, that doesn't accord with the original, because we've A/B tested and concluded the unflitered original yield fewer likes, fewer shares, and so less positive reinforcement. Is it possible though, to be free artists of ourselves, or of our self image, and also live authentically. Van Gogh would have thought so. But then again, he wasn't living in the age of social media. In the middle of the 20th century, the abstract expressionist Mark Rothko, understood well mass media's exploitation and commodification of the reproducible image. And though, in his early work, he was painting self portraits and nudes like everyone else, he eventually landed on a style so bear and parsimonious, there was no indication of place or time or figure. Only colour. 

Rothko and Bacon

And those canvases you did name were given titles that would in no way prejudice the viewers interpretation of what is being perceived beyond the colors being named. For example, 'black on maroon number 61', 'rust and blue, 'orange, red and yellow', which you feel Van Gogh would have liked. And some of his paintings were huge. And when he sat before them, they were supposed to suck you in. The colours, portals into memory. If you see black and think race, fair enough. The painting doesn't tell you to. If you see rust and think decay, or yellow and think daffodils, this is what is brought by the viewer not prescribed by the artist. There are stories of people fainting are sobbing like babies in front of them. He himself spent hours, days even sitting in front of his paintings, just thinking, getting a feel for what to do next, what colours to add. And when someone asked him how long it took him to complete one of his paintings, considering how simple they seem on the surface, he said his whole life. Alas, I don't think poor Mark Rothko would fit in with the Tick Tock and Instagram crowd. 

But did he live authentically? He would probably say he tried his best. As much as a painter can anyway, and he said, 'painting is a risky and unfeeling act', which is sad really considering feeling, raw feeling is exactly what he tried to capture in his work and evoke in us. And many who visit his paintings to this day agree that he succeeded. But when we look at the walks of Rothko or Jackson Pollock, or other abstract painters who subvert our expectations of what it is to represent something in a work of art, the initial response is often bewilderment. And in a museum, we perhaps spend more time than we'd like in front of them so as not to appear too dismissive, too uncultivated. Some paintings force you too stay longer by their beguiling title. You have to look very hard to see the nude in Duchamp's 'Nude Descending a Staircase' mentioned earlier, and how many of us would describe these paintings as, quote unquote, beautiful. Some artists like to set beauty standards, others enjoy subverting them. And sometimes maybe the point isn't to be ugly or beautiful. 

Francis Bacon's triptych 'May to June 1973' is difficult to look at, when you consider it was painted in memory of his lover George Dyer, who was found dead in their hotel bathroom from a drink and barbiturates overdose. The triptych features him as he was found by hotel staff, slumped naked on the toilet seat. Not a heroic pose, but ignominious undignified, because that's the way it was. And Bacon had little time for romanticism. Paintings like this can be unsettling. They take you places you likely don't want to go. But if all art did was entertain and delight, it wouldn't help us to confront the ugliness of life. And by ugly, I mean, death, disease, starvation, mass murder, killer earthquakes and tsunamis. Mental illness. I certainly don't mean an overweight model on a magazine cover. And yet there are some among us who would react to the latter as if the collapse of civilization was at hand because they subvert quote unquote, 'normal beauty standards'. I won't bother defining what 'normal' here means, but I guess the latest Victoria's Secrets lineup is representative. 

That said, Reubens Rembrandt, and others in the Baroque would have looked at his lineup and said "Next". If you look at Rubens' 'The Three Graces" from 1635, you'll see plainly why. These certainly aren't the waifish super thin figures you see stalking open down catwalks today. In the 17th century, artists like their models 'thicck'. But even if you don't take an extra bit of flesh objectionable on your Venus, there is nothing untoward, ethically or aesthetically, with an artist's decision to subvert our expectations of what a Venus should look like. 

Alison Lapper

In 2005, an 11 foot tall, 13 tonne sculptural Portrait of the Artist Alison Lapper was unveiled on the fourth plinth of Trafalgar Square. Lapper agreed to be cast in the nude by the British artist Marc Quinn. But this isn't why the sculpture proved to be controversial. You see, Lapper was born without arms, and with shortened legs. And when Quinn did the cast, she was seven months pregnant. 

The absent arms recall the Venus de Milo, except hers weren't broken off sometime in the past 2500 years, and an artist herself, she paints with on mouth and feet. It reminds me of why are named as podcasts 'the makers rage', and how those who have that rage to create, will surmount the greatest obstacles for the sake of it. Some have called Quinn sculpture a distasteful publicity stunt. Lapper herself says this: "In most societies, even in Britain today, pregnant women are not considered to have a beautiful shape. On top of that, short people who are missing both arms, are generally considered even less beautiful. I was someone who currently combined both disadvantages. How could Mark possibly think I was a suitable subject for sculpture that people would want to look at? Statues are created ana exhibit to give pleasure, to be admired. Would anybody be able to admire the statue of a naked pregnant, disabled woman?" 

She calls her pregnancy a disadvantage because of the shape it gives her. Medieval artists avoided painting the Madonna pregnant, and certainly not naked. I suppose they could only barely wrap their head around an immaculate conception. But not an immaculate pregnancy. Quinn sculpted lapper using Carrara marble, the same marble Michelangelo use the sculpt is David. And earlier, his Pieta, of course featuring a youthful and beautiful Madonna, cradling the body of her son. A single mother herself, Lapper named her son Paris, who by the way, didn't inherit or disability. The Venus de Milo may give you more pleasure to look at. It may conform better to your expectation of what a beautiful sculpture should look like. But what's missing is more than just the arms. There is an untold story there. "Love's mysteries in souls to grow," says John Donne in 'The Ecstasy', "But yet the body is its book."