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Contrapposto

First published in The Guardian, 30 April, 2014.

The more I think about it, the more it seems to me that the development of contrapposto was one of the most important events in the history of art. There was already a few thousand years of stiff, static figures in art, so it was by no means inevitable that sculpted figures would become more naturalistic. Someone had to think it through and break the shackles of tradition. Actually it probably wasn’t someone heroically breaking the shackles of tradition; more that a society had developed that tolerated and even encouraged new thinking. This truly, truly remarkable event happened in Athens, reaching a peak of inventiveness and refinement in the 5th century BCE, before everything started closing down again.

I had the idea of contrasting a guy in a relaxed contrapposto pose with a more formal, stylised way of representing the human body. Egypt was the obvious example. Ancient Egyptian art depicted the shoulders and torso frontally while the head, legs and feet were shown in profile. Once I put those two different modes together it was a small step to imagining an ancient Egyptian returning from a holiday in Greece. The cartoon offers a pretty good explanation of contrapposto so I won’t elaborate. Over time the concept of contrapposto was pushed further into more twisting, S-shaped curves. If we pretend that the Renaissance was the true and natural extension of ancient classical art (ignoring the gap of more than 1,500 years of Rome and the Middle Ages where they followed different principles) we can see how far and how much fun an artist like Giambologna had in developing intertwining, twisting figures.

With the invention of contrapposto the ancient Greeks were rebelling against the very stiff, formal look of earlier art, which they found really nerdy. It is hard to imagine a Greek statue staying at home on a Saturday night. There are many sculptures of Apollo smoking a cigarette for example. Not only did the ancient Greeks paint their statues but there is mounting evidence that they clothed them as well. A statue of Hermes was recently found wearing a leather jacket. Experts are still debating whether a pair of jeans found on a statue of Heracles had decayed over time or were ripped from the start. No belt was found which suggests the jeans hung low, revealing his underpants. So, so cool.

If you like this you’ll love my new book – The Untrue History of Art – available in the Amazon shop of your country. 

www.amazon.co.uk (UK)

www.amazon.com (USA)

Or in French:

Amazon.fr

Librairie Flammarion

 

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True Romance

First published in The Guardian, 16 April 2014

 

Cinderella’s life story is a  true rags to riches fairytale. She went from nothing to ultimately marrying the most desirable man in the kingdom. Prince Charming was ridiculously good looking – a fortunate genetic accident that partially compensated for his extreme stupidity. By asking every single woman in the kingdom to suck on the end of a shoe while he tried to light the heel, he managed to infect them all with a rare colon disease, the only known cause of which is the ingestion of horse dung. Within six months every single woman in the kingdom, with the exception of Cinderella, had died an agonising death. Indicted by The Hague on charges of crimes against humanity, Prince Charming desperately tried to flee to countries without extradition treaties to the International Criminal Court. This didn’t happen because he kept ticking the yes box on the visa forms to the question “Have you ever been charged with crimes against humanity?”. He was sentenced to life imprisonment.  Cinderella had the marriage annulled and immediately became the most desirable (and only) single woman in the kingdom. Of her thousands of suitors she fell “head over heels in love” with a 74 year old billionaire with lucrative business interests in coal mining, rainforest logging, and banking. She lived happily ever after. No more treading in horse shit for her.

 
 
The painting in the first panel is Rene Magritte’s famous ode on the nature of painting “The Treachery of Images”. Under a very realistic painting of a pipe are the words “Ceci n’est pas une pipe”, French for “This is not a pipe”. It makes the point that this is just a representation of a pipe, not a real pipe. I could have told him that before he started. 
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Wankers

First published in The Guardian, 2 April, 2014.
Manet was a radical artist in many different ways. His painting technique was not the standard polished perfection of the time but had visible brushstrokes that veered between sketchy and thick and creamy. He created stark juxtapositions of light and dark, often doing away with mid tones altogether. He mixed up standard conventions so that critics found it hard to comprehend his purpose. His compositions were often arranged in a deliberately jarring manner. No wonder he got under the skin of the critics.
There were lots of nude women in paintings in the 18th and 19th centuries but this was not considered pervy because these representations of women were shown under the “acceptable” veneer of religion, history or classical mythology. I guess it was begging to be done by someone but this hypocritical cloak of respectability was pulled away by the 31 year old Edouard Manet in 1863. In two paintings of that year, Olympia and Luncheon on the Grass, he called it for what it was – checking out ladies in the buff. Olympia is simply a naked prostitute, in a similar pose to Titian’s revered Venus of Urbino. Luncheon is particularly provocative. Two men in contemporary clothes  having a picnic with a woman who has taken all her gear off. These are normal people – there is no pretence that this represents any scene from the repertoire of “culture”. It’s not mythology or religion or history – it’s just a woman starkers with a couple of blokes.
 
I had increasingly noticed that Manet had a habit of making his models stare directly at the viewer. His already provocative imagery is ramped up a few more notches by this confrontational tactic. His work must have been incredibly shocking in its time. When you look at samples of officially sanctioned nudes in the yearly Salons of the 19th century it is increasingly obvious that the respectable cloak of myth or history barely covers the fact that the point of the picture is to check out hot bods. Eventually Manet just called a spade a spade and did away with the hypocrisy. Don’t get me wrong – there’s nothing wrong with admiring a nude form. Manet was just being blatant about what was actually going on.
 
The model staring straight back at the viewer makes the viewer even more self-conscious and uneasy about their perving. They are caught in the act. But, of course, when the model looks at the viewer she is, in reality, staring at the artist who is painting her. In attempting to come up with an idea for a cartoon I tried to think of a reason why Manet’s models would keep staring at him. A physical deformity perhaps? Some weird personal mannerism or tic? Ah! As many people are aware, one form of Tourette’s syndrome is the involuntary exclamation of obscene words or socially inappropriate remarks. Thinking about which swear word I could get away with I remembered that the winner of UK Big Brother a few years back was a guy with Tourette’s who would uncontrollably yell out “Wankers!” whenever he got excited. That was prime time TV so I figured I was safe with it. Bizarrely his name was Edouard Manet. I’m joking about the last bit, but since I can’t remember the guy’s name, there is a very faint chance that his name WAS Edouard Manet. If that is the case it would mean that I am not an original thinker but a forgetful copyist. I’m not even going to look it up on the internet now. My dashing, ground-breaking self-image could be crushed.
 
Sherlock Holmes was just a handy tool, from the right time period, to drive the cartoon. Throwing in something silly like that in an effort to get from A to B to C often leads to unexpected scenarios. I was amused when the cafe scene came about. The “Gosh, he’s very French” comment makes me laugh. It’s very satisfying when the attempt to tie it all together leads to funnier side things. I imagine this happens to novelists all the time. You feel like a spectator because you didn’t see it coming.
 
Sherlock Holmes would never experience this lovely feeling because he sees everything coming. Every time I accidentally step into a pothole and smash my face I feel the warm glow of confirmation that in a crucial respect I am superior to Sherlock Holmes.