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.

Paranoid Modernism

Colleagues in paranoia, pen and wash, January 2010


I have just finished reading Paranoid Modernism by David Trotter (Oxford University Press, 2001), something I have intended to do since it was first published. I highly recommend the book, it sheds light on so many issues, including how charisma came to be so much more significant than expertise in the battle for cultural capital.

Ambitious art critics are as desperate as artists in the hunt for renown, so there is plenty of scope for paranoid collusion between the critical establishment and those engaged in "new" production, whereby the righteous claims of both to superiority is only strengthened by a presumption of hostility.

Given that a claim to avant-garde status is innately exclusive, it has always puzzled me how the establishment of the 'cult of the new' stresses the virtue of its democratic approach. In reality, disdain of the viewer's inferior sensibilities, intellect, attitudes or expectations, which must be endlessly challenged, is the main if not only signifier as to what belongs within its realm and what does not. Anything that does not is dismissed with haughty contempt as either reactionary or amateur - or populist, indeed! Luckily for the status quo of this official avant-garde, a lot of people do actually seem to love being challenged in this way, even if it is the same old challenge yet again, perhaps in a different guise. Or perhaps it is because the challenges being offered don't really challenge enough, so they are safe little encounters in a world that more generally doesn't feel so safe anymore.

To get back to the paranoid modernist - a sad aspect, from what I have understood, is the initial self doubt about being a "man of qualities" capable of accumulating cultural capital. I imagine somebody with the ambition to be a "somebody", to stand out from the mass, monolithically erect (even if female!), but brooding under a great fear of inadequacy. The paranoid structure is to turn this insecurity outwards by means of perceived persecution, believing that persecution signifies the specialness of its victim. It is a symmetrical and stable structure which enables the professional, with whom paranoia is especially associated, to flourish in the belief that he/she has a uniqueness more valuable to society than that conveyed by any "common" professional standards (including, for example, possession of skill at one extreme and possibly even the law at the other). I hope I have explained it well enough - obviously the book has to be read to appreciate the proposition David Trotter makes and to digest its full texture and scope.

I suspect the seeds for paranoia within the practice of the visual arts (Trotter refers mostly to literature) were sown in the studios of Paris in the 19th Century, with the collapse of the Academy's heirarchy. For, surely, in spite of all modernism's claims to be anti-authority, it is that very cultural capital (reputation, respect, good income, influence) once assured by the Academy heirarchy which remains the primary goal of ambition. Outside the Academy, artists were, after all, only skilled tradesmen. To earn a reputation and a living that matched the rejected but desired status of academicians meant engaging with enterprise far beyond the development of one's expertise as an artist. It meant building a new heirarchy, fought over between colleagues, for which the qualification to succeed depended on invention, on self-belief (or the will to denounce others) and on the ability to generate authority through propaganda - a good breeding ground for paranoids.

In fact it is hard to imagine how, nowadays, any professionally trained artist finds the strength to persist without a touch of paranoia, myself included: though I can think of some, like the great Eric Peskett, for example, who continued in homage to life and to art itself, as it were, in pursuit of knowledge and revelation for its own sake, and indifferent to lack of recognition.

I am wondering wether the main thrust of modernism emigrated from Paris, along with Duchamp, because the French finally appreciated the visual arts enough to resist the dominance of paranoid modernism and the subsequent eclipse of aesthetic quality as signifier of creative value: perhaps they loved life too much to act as host to modernism's inherent hostilities: or perhaps, as the cultural elite of the avant-garde might say, they were just not "democratic" enough in their outlook. That would be an interesting article to read - somebody who could deconstruct references to 'democracy' in Fine Art. After all, the term seems to be used by some these days as just another word for capitalism, the freedom of the market, the freedoms of consumerism. I think democracy was meant to mean more than that and I would love to read some thoughts about this by a good writer.