St. Francis of Assisi in His Tomb, painted by Francisco de Zurbarán, is a striking dominant piece that stands at six feet of dark Baroque intensity. Yet, there is something different about the imagery that has always scraped the back of my mind.
It is a little-known fact that St. Francis of Assisi died fairly young, at 44 years of age. He had been battling an illness and was known to place a human skull on his breakfast table to contemplate his impending doom. It was a representation of his old friend, Death, that he even wrote about in The Canticle of Brother Sun and Sister Moon.
What was the symbolism there? For that matter, what was Zurbarán's message? Why did the interest in Zurbarán's work fade in time? Why did skulls appear in his other work? Was this also a form of self portrait? I don't know if I will ever have an answer. What I do know is that between the 1950's and 1960's Zurbarán was what "all the cool people" were talking about.
Here, for example, is a clipping from 1965 talking about how this painting was inspiring fashion in Spain.
A more potent example of how influential Zurbarán was can be seen in Salvador Dali's 1956 painting called the Skull of Zurbaran.
In this painting, I can see the conversation Dali is having. There was a lot he struggled with in regards to tradition, death, and religion. Much like his views of the constraints of time, which are represented with his famous melting clocks, here I see "the few" constructing an effigy to something beyond their ability. Was that how he saw Zurbarán, an artist beyond his own ability?
Unfortunately, Dali was even more twisted in his head than even his paintings let on. He, for instance, was obsessed with necrophilia, preferred to masturbate in front of a mirror, and was terrified of female genitalia.
I imagine Dali studying art history and being perfectly fine with Heads Severed by Theodore Gericault. Then flipping a page to be met with L'Origine du Monde and scream in terror. His mustache would shoot out like a cartoon in his iconic style, and he would swear epitaphs in Spanish. The topic of the famed Magic Realist Georgia O’Keefe would come up at a party, and I could see him having a “melt down” over her famously vulvic flowers.
Because that is what she is remembered for, not her unique cityscapes or her abstracted-form studies; her vulvic flowers.
Art history is weird like that, a collection of taboos following the mythos of the artist around like a three-legged dog. Zurbarán is all but forgotten, Dali is not remembered for his psychosis, and Georgia is remembered for vulvas. She is not remembered for paintings like Head with Broken Pot, a piece of work that is as nuanced as both Zurbarán's and Dali's work that hearkens to the fragility of mankind and to human life.
I guess the moral of this story, if there even is one, is that artists view the cycles of life in abstract ways trying to make sense of what, "it all means". Paint becomes a snapshot of those moments, mixing in pigments of consciousness and primal urges even when they don't belong. We the viewers become a part of that in our remembrance of those moments.
Something about that process seems like a death, living, and resurrection to me. But perhaps, I've been looking at art too long.
turnnoffyourmind
kianamaiart
kaledo-art
germansingergirl
ellievsbear
vaporwave
