Salvator Rosa

There is a wonderful article by Julian Bell in the latest edition (Vol32 No23) of the London Review of Books, titled Make Something Happen! It covers two books published this year on Caravaggio, one by Michael Fried and the other by Andrew Graham-Dixon, a book on Salvator Rosa by Langdon, Salomon and Volpi along with Painting for Profit: The Economic Lives of 17th Century Italian Painters by Richard Spear, Philip Sohm et al.

According to Bell, 'Rosa's ambitions were wide, his gifts narrow'. 'Rosa, more than any painter before him, came to live for the exhibition. "I have risked everything to achieve fame," he told Ricciardi as he pitched his powers against Veronese's - a climax to two decades in which his year had pivoted on Rome's big March exhibiton, held at the Pantheon, and its August one, at San Giovanni Decolato. Xavier Salomon....describes Rosa reaching 'a level of panic, overworking and exhaustion every summer, in the Roman heat' as he prepared for the August show.' Bell sees Rosa as 'a protagonist who summons up, through his own vivid cantakerous presence, an early form of modern art culture. That's to say, a scene that revolves around goods to hawk, strong personalities (Rosa's letters constantly brandish his own 'eccentric genius' ) and public fora.'

I mistakenly thought the entrepreneurial processing of art as commodity began with the galleries, dealers and auctions of the 19th Century. But it would seem that already in the 17th it was necessary to create novelty in order to sell - hence the 'Bamboccianti" who developed a new product line 'depicting rogues and poverty' to meet the 'fresh vogue for the plebeian that was sweeping the market'. The high achievers learnt how to bluff up their selling price, inflated on notions of genius, to "clients desperate not to make fools of themselves before a great master." Whilst an artist like Guernico, "who charged for canvases on a straight figure by figure rate," was scorned for his 'artisan practice, letting down the profession: hopelessly pre-modern.'

In looking at the low achievers in this early stage of the rat race, Bell quotes Sohm: 'The gap between poor and rich, and the uncertainty of regular employment, resemble the income inequality and working conditions of Venice's courtesans more than its master craftsmen, teachers or bureaucrats. '

For some reason this immediately brought to mind Manet's scathing 'Olympia' painted in 1863 - his model, herself a musican and member of the Parisian milieu of artists and bohemians, staring out the voyeur spectator with her brazenly knowing gaze. I believe she emigrated to America some time later.

I also enjoyed. in this same issue of LRB, T.J. Clark's review of Cezanne at the Cortauld - a heart-warming eulogy to Cezanne the painter, 'obsessed by looking and painting', rather than the Cezanne who inspired an avalanche of theoretical texts.

It seems to me that Manet and Cezanne, along with Van Gogh, stand out as giants of intelligence compared to the supposed philosopher artists of post-modernism. That's because, I suppose, they were rooted still in the struggle to create meaning or value through the practice of painting. It was their integrity as painters that honed their acute awareness of the challenges that faced them and gave them the resolve to push the boundaries towards a synthesis of sensibility and making process that held true. For them, art was never, I believe, a matter of art for art's sake, though the writers of art theory have since encouraged the substitution of searching practice with a magical turn of new for new's sake.

It's very reassuring, however, to read such well-written and thoughtful articles in the London Review of Books.