Hans Holbein's The Ambassadors (1533), is a fine example of anamorphic painting. The two envoys to the court of Henry VIII look very grand in their robes, but mortality haunts them, making them just the same as any other man. The brown smear on the floor is puzzling when viewed from the front, but seen from the right it is transformed into a skull. For the full effect, go and walk around in front of the canvas. The pleasure for me is in the dawning realisation of just how mind-bogglingly clever and able Holbein was to pull off such a trick.
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JMW Turner's The Fighting Temeraire, tugged to her last berth to be broken up (1839) is a milestone in the artist's journey from painter of landscapes and maritime scenes to painter of light and, arguably, a signpost towards Impressionism. He called the painting "my darling" and wouldn't sell it. I have spent a very long time standing in front of it and see something different on each occasion. Apropos of nothing, there is a Temeraire St in Rotherhithe, a lasting reminder, one imagines, of where the breaking up was done.
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Joseph Wright of Derby, who completed An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump in 1768, was a master of representing artificial light, moonlight and traversing from light to dark. In this picture his technique plays up the horror on the faces of the observers but also seems to show the dispassionate mindset, or perhaps the wonderment, of the experimenter, who stares ahead, oblivious of his audience: it is as if he is conducting the experiment for us, viewers of a later age.
2 comments:
An Experiment, one the most undervalued works of art in the history of the world. The style's not usually my cup of tea but it scares me even to look at it just on the computer. There's a whole life story in every person there. You feel like one of them is going to notice you at any moment and ask you what on earth you're doing.
I can spend hours day dreaming in art galleries, I am hoping to make the Hogarth exhibition, but I expect you will beat me to it.
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