Essays on Art during my studies at Goldsmiths University
THE MENZALIAN SIUBJECTS AND THEIR POWER TO ABSORB
FIGURE 1. Adolph Menzel, The Théâtre du Gymnase, 1856, oil on canvas, 46x62, Nationalgalerie, Berlin.
In this essay, the act of attention is being foregrounded. As Michael Fried has observed years ago: “the demand that the artist bring about a paradoxical relationship between painting and beholder – specifically, that he find a way to neutralize or negate the beholder’s presence, to establish the fiction that no one is standing before the canvas.” Here, Fried suggests, is a shift happening in what once was understood as complete painting, is now entering the realm of the autonomous. The central thesis in this paper is based around Friend’s concept of ‘theatricality’ and ‘absorption’, and its relation to the ways we address paintings after Denis Diderot (1713- 1784). The concept of ‘absorption’, was originally found in Denis Diderot’s studies on new principles of organization of pictorial space. Diderot achieved this by dwelling on paintings of Chardin and Greuze, proving that they form a new ethical and aesthetic value system, and a new theory of composition that overcomes the ‘’intimately decorative’’ reaction of the Rococo period, which had a tendency to turn the picture into a kind of theatrical stage, towards the ‘’high seriousness’’. According to Diderot, the tendency of inexhaustibility in a work of art must always give a reason for the game of an imagination. By developing Diderot’s ideas, Michael Fried conceptualizes observations made by Diderot and provides us with new insights into works of art. ‘Theatricality’, in Fried’s terms, is not about the performance or a spectacle per se, but a beholder. It opens up a question whether a painting has to include a spectator in order for it to be complete, and if so, the work can be considered as theatrical. If it can perform autonomously, it is then denied of it’s ‘theatricality’. What is important to consider when exploring Fried’s theory is that the act of representation is no longer external, and instead is built into the painting. Regardless of the fact that Fried’s concept of ‘absorption’ was mainly concerned with early and mid-1750s French paintings, his ideas have managed to attain an international recognition. Menzel’a paintings, however, were epitomized Germany. By being confronted with Fried’s complex theory, I have made an attempt to apply his ideas to Adolph Menzel’s paintings, in particular his later pieces such as ‘’Supper at the Ball’’ and his other fascinating pieces ’Crown Prince Frederick Pays a Visit to the Painter Pesne on His Scaffolding at Rheinsberg’’, and ‘’Marketplace in Verona’’. Along with the play of sensations that the painting can provide us with, the properties of ‘absorption’ and ‘theatricality’ show a dual role in the process of overcoming the theatrical painting: first, it becomes the basis for the emergence of a new kind of Realism that is radically different; secondly, it’s mechanisms to achieve self-worth and autonomy in paintings as such, as the necessary conditions for the birth of modern art.
Adolph Menzel’s life and work celebrates the conditions, attitudes and tastes of Prussian culture, primarily the city of Berlin. Menzel’s hand has developed the stylistics of German Realism with a strong narrative. The artist was influenced by his predecessor Caspar David Friendrich, one of the leaders of German Romanticism. Later on, the classic of German painting has inspired Edgar Degas, who considers himself as Menzel’s successor. The art historian Peter Paret has suggested that Menzel’s compositions are ‘’daring, and his free brushstrokes possess great suggestive power; his narrative expresses a penetrating intelligence’’.
FIGURE 2. Adolph Menzel ‘’Supper at the Ball’’,1878, oil on canvas, 71x90, Nationalgalerie, Berlin.
Another art historian, who is also fond of Menzel’s oeuvre, Peter Peret, has observed the great ethos in Menzel’s narrative. He claims; ‘’At his best, he uncovers infinite riches in everyday life. But when he moves from sketches to a painting, narrative pushed too far may damage its cohesion and impact. Menzel’s oeuvre is marked by an unusual combination of opposites.’’ Perhaps, Menzel’s rapid brushstrokes indicate that his subject cannot remain stationary in order to be drawn accurately. The painting ‘’Supper at the Ball’’ (Fig. 2) tends to fall under Peret’s category of a ‘’narrative pushed too far’’, as ‘’the chaos we see here –one overflowing with both complexity and specifity-is best described as a studied chaos.’’ The compositional balance is broken, and instead the painting is overpopulated with the exclusive crowd of Prussian court, both men and women struggling to find a place to rest or encounter. However, nothing in the painting’s motif is repressed in favour of the other, nothing is given a secondary significance, which is peculiar. Such complexity can be seen alongside Mannerist paintings, which stylistics and objects were rendered and compound in an act of ‘’movement’’. Menzel is shown to be an artist who not only explodes our temporal understanding of events, but positions his figures in an essentially disorganized framework.’’ Neither the beholder, not the extravagant public depicted on the canvas acknowledges that they are or can be watched. One can perhaps suggest that ‘’Supper at the Ball’’ falls into Friend’s category of a successfully ignored beholder. However, at the same time, the public has gathered there to be seen. All these lavish costumes and respectable titles worn by high status men and women are insisting on attention. But is that signal directed to the beholder in front of the painting or the people in the panting before whom they appear so immaculately attractive? At the same time to Michael Fried, the concepts of ‘absorption’ and ‘theatricality’ have been associated not so much with the audience, but the figure of the character being depicted. As Fried suggests; “This was to be done in the first place by depicting figures so engrossed or (a key term in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century criticism) absorbed in what they were doing, thinking and feeling that they appeared oblivious of everything else, including the beholder standing before the painting. To the extent that the painter succeeded in that aim, the beholder’s existence was effectively ignored or, put more strongly, denied; the figures in the painting appeared alone in the world (alternatively we may say that the world of the painting appeared self-sufficient, autonomous, a closed system independent of, in that sense blind to, the world of the beholder), though it was also true that only by making a painting that appeared to ignore or deny or be blind to the beholder in this way could the painter accomplish his ultimate purpose – bringing actual viewers to a halt in front of the painting and holding them there in a virtual trance.”Can one suggest that Menzel’s characters are autonomous?
This centrality on the act of attention, which have also been taken up by Jonathan Crary in Techniques of the Observer (1990), has created a new paradigm in what he calls the ‘’autonomization of sight’’, an endless oscillation of senses, in which, as Michael Fried have agreed, emerges a ‘’newly ‘’purified’’ form’’ of vision. It is seen, in many art historical texts, that nineteenth-century subject, which gave birth to genre painting, Realism and Impressionism, was announced to be the greatest time of optical experience and modernization. Our attention is changed and no longer demands a passive participation. Crary’s argument lies in this shift from the global balance to an act of touch. You become aware of the touch of the brush differentiating the parts, as seen in Menzel’s work and the actual ‘’touch’’ in the painting’s subject. Taking Crary’s observations as the basis for further discussion, the following points can be made. Fried draws an analogy between Menzel and the Frenchman Gustave Courbet, as he also painted in the nineteenth-century. Fried has proclaimed Courbet for his ability to ‘’ transport himself as if corporeally into the painting’’ and express the sense of his ‘’own embodiedness and to negate or neutralize his status as first beholder’’. His paintings contained emotionally and materially weighted subjects, as seen in ‘’The Grain Sifters’’ and ‘’Self-portrait (Man with Leather Belt)’’, in which Fried particularly emphasized on the physicality of the human hand. What Fried seems to develop in his thesis on theatricality is a theme of bodily identification. Alongside Gustave Courbet, Menzel’s artwork can be treated in a similar manner Fried has treated Courbet. There is a range of multiple operations being performed in ‘’Supper at the Ball’’. Amongst them are the movements, such as ‘’the near-impossibility of eating a buffet meal while standing up’’. Fried writes, that in order to understand the composition, one has to unbind the composition and look at it in detail. This is where the concept of absorption becomes active. Sooner or later our attention becomes taken by a man trying to balance his hat within his legs meanwhile consuming his dinner (as seen towards our left on the canvas when looking at it), or an abandoned plate, a champagne glass and pieces of cutlery on a chair next to this man on the right. In the same manner, another of Menzel’s paintings titled ‘’Crown Prince Frederick Pays a Visit to the Painter Pesne on His Scaffolding at Rheinsberg’’ (Fig.3) is an obvious comparison containing these seemingly unnoticeable details likewise in ‘’Supper at the Ball’’. The abandoned dishes left on a chair, (which Fried has pointed out in ‘’Supper at the Ball’’), is being replicated here, although, here we see a single wine glass being left on a piece of decorative balustrade. Amongst the intricacy and brilliance of the interior décor in Menzel’s gouache piece, we are also witnessing the apparent vivacity of inanimate objects, such as a wooden mannequin being rested on the floor with his hand stretched out, the unexpected splashes of paint and the silence of a played violin. Similarly to Courbet’s ‘’Painters Studio’’, our gaze ‘’roves continually, coming to rest first here, then there, without settling permanently anywhere’’.The viewer becomes absorbed as he tries to grasp these small, but integral parts of Menzel’s ‘’Supper at the Ball’’ and ‘’Crown Prince Frederick Pays a Visit to the Painter Pesne on His Scaffolding at Rheinsberg’’. Such examples are theatrical, as they arrest our attention and invite us to intertwine with these seemingly temporal performances. Within this play of imagination, Fried sees ‘’Supper at the Ball’’ as a painting which was done with respect to momentariness and duration, as if the ‘’artist had a moment before put his dinning utensils down in order to paint his picture.’’
FIGURE 3. Adolph Menzel, ‘’Crown Prince Frederick Pays a Visit to the Painter Pesne on His Scaffolding at Rheinsberg’’, 1861, gouache on paper, board backing, 24x32,Nationalgalerie, Berlin.
Margaret Iversen, by reading a close study of Fried, writes that ‘’Friend’s ideal of coherence is completely internal, even hermetically sealed- the type of painting he admires is ‘‘self – sufficient, a closed system which in effect seals off the space or world of the painting from that of the beholder’’.Fried’s interest in painting tend to lie in the heart of Ponty’s argument, in which he states that concealment is part of a perception process as well. As I have mentioned before, ‘’Absorption is a total enthrallment to the point of self-forgetting’’. It is the state of obliviousness that becomes so absorptive. There is also a sense of temporality in both of the paintings. There is this precise moment which Menzel chose to depict that allows him to capture both the fleetingness and the crush of the crowd. The use of oil paint as a medium contributes towards flexibility. Painting here is a performance of traces and brush marks full of ambiguity and meaning. Subjects are rendered through light and dark contrasts. The painter allows marks to remain marks on purpose. Certainly, in Menzel’s work one must concentrate on little aspects in order to create a narrative. The viewer is put into participating dialogue with the painting. Margaret Iversen then continues; ‘’Absorption is a guarantee of plausible narrative; the figures are not guilty for posing for the spectator because they are so manifestly oblivious to being observed.’’ These ultimately undefinable faces of individuals who are engaged in social interactions in ‘’Supper at the Ball’’ contrasts with the size and density of the larger crowd, where everyone seems to be getting in someone else’s way. Menzel’s intentions in this painting involve actions unfolding. It almost as if even Menzel when creating this piece didn’t rely on a reliable story plot, rather allowed his subjects to open to the viewer unintentionally. Fried, has also observed this consistency in Menzel who ‘’was passionately concerned with evoking aspects of his subject-matter that could not strictly or directly be seen but could only be intuited, or otherwise imagined on the basis of the visual evidence.’’ If these were in fact Menzel’s implications, precisely that sort of unconscious action is a sign of intense absorption.
Alongside Iversen’s response to Fried’ interest in the inaccessible and veiled, Louis Edmond Duranty responses to Menzel’s ‘’Supper at the Ball’’ by giving favour to its compositional wildness. He praises this:
‘’...wild and deformed hidden beneath these embroideries and laces, this hurly-burly, these contrasts, the outburst of instincts, of appetites, under the levelling down of usages and moeurs, the few physical or moral elegances swimming across the violent of faded vulgarity of civilized man, the strangeness of this crowd, of this animal, or its forms, its habits, its manias, all the elements of the immense curiosity, the immense raillery and the immense stupefaction...’’
In Duranty’s approach, the artist is associated with extremeness or absoluteness of the idea of spontaneity, an involuntary response to the world around him. By reading Duranty’s response, one can say that Menzel’s compositions are a subject of contraction, as its elements are being divided and almost cut out if we look at ‘’Supper at the Ball’’ and ‘’Marketplace in Verona’’ (Fig. 4). Both canvases tend to project the ‘’bodily difficulty of the multiple operations’’, a space without boundaries which creates this stunning virtuoso experience. ‘’Marketplace in Verona’’ is depicting a crowd of an Italian town citizens and tourists shopping and working on the market. Fried associates this scene with Simmel’s critique of the metropolis, although Simmel’s theory postdates Menzel’s paintings by almost twenty years, Fried sees a great resonance with what Simmel calls a blasé attitude. The essence of Simmel blasé attitude consists in ‘’an indifference toward the distinctions between things.’’ Each individual is being so absorbed in their own routine, that no one pays attention to what is happening around, neither to the observer who might be watching them at a distance. See for example a man who has climbed on top of the canopy to catch something (towards the left) or that woman carrying a small child making her way home after purchasing some necessary groceries, or even that old woman behind her who is so oblivious to the crowd around her in the foreground of the painting. Simmel main argument in his essay lies in individualism, an emotional alienation from everyone. This ‘’bodily proximity and narrowness of space makes the mental distance [between individuals] only more visible.’’ The ‘’Marketplace in Verona’’ can be seen as a primal form of what we now call cosmopolitan city. Indeed, each of the Menzelian character has a life of their own. They can exist separately, such as that man who I have mentioned previously who attempts to balance his hat between his legs while consuming food in ‘’Supper at the Ball’’, that solitary musician playing a violin in ‘’ ’Crown Prince Frederick Pays a Visit to the Painter Pesne on His Scaffolding at Rheinsberg’’, and this scene of a disorientated crowd in the middle of a piazza in Italy.
FIGURE 4. Adolph Menzel, ‘’Pizza d-Erbe in Verona , (Marketplace in Verona)’’, 1884, oil on canvas, 74x127, Gemaldegalerie, Neuer Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlunge, Dresden.
Throughout this essay, I was in the position to consider Adolph Menzel’s masterpieces within the framework of Fried’s theatricality and absorption, although he himself claimed that he would be ‘’mistaken to assimilate Menzel’s art to the paradigm of absorption.’’Although, ‘’Supper at the Ball’’ seems to fall under Diderot’s concept of the tableaux, a new stage dramaturgy that you would find in painting, rather than theatre. Fried stresses this in Absorption and Theatricality: ‘’Diderot urged playwrights to give up contriving elaborate coups de theatre (surprising turns of the plot, reversals, revelations), whose effect he judged to be shallow and fleeting at best, and instead to seek what he called tableaux (visually satisfying, essentially silent, seemingly accidental groupings of figures), which if properly managed he believed were capable of moving an audience to the depths of its collective being.’’The tableaux of ‘’mere proliferation of incident’’ in a painted scene provides us with an intense ‘’pictorial dramatic experience than the French theatre had hitherto envisaged.’’Michael Fried approaches Menzel’s art with a compelling idea that the viewer is ‘’repeatedly invited to perform feasts of imaginative projection‘’.This means that the act of viewing a painting invites the viewer to participate in this appearance of complex and kaleidoscopic plot cluttered with detail. What we are witnessing in Menzel’s paintings is that play of imagination, which Diderot himself appreciated and found as a true spirit of theatricality.
Claude Keisch and Marie Ursula Riemann-Reyher, ‘’Adolph Menzel 1815-1905: Between
Romanticism and Impressionism’’, (New Haven & London: Yale University Press,1996). Crary, Jonathan, Suspensions of Perception: Attention, Spectacle and Modern Culture,
(Cambridge, Massachusetts & London: The MIT Press, 1999).
Fried, Michael, ‘’Absorption and Theatricality: Painting and Beholder in the Age of Diderot’’,
(Berkeley, Los Angeles & London: University of California Press, 1980).
Fried, Michael, ‘’Menzel’s Realism: Art and Embodiment in Nineteenth-Century Berlin’’, (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2002).
Fried, Michael, Courbet’s Realism, (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1900).
James Gurney, Drawings and Paintings, (Mineola & New York: Dover Publications, 2016).
Margaret Iversen, ‘’Alois Riegl: Art History and Theory’’, (Cambridge, Massachussets & London: MIT Press, 1993).
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, trans. Colin Smith, Phenomenology of Perception, (London: Routledge, 1962).
Paret, Peter, ‘’German Encounters with Modernism 1840-1945’’, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
Simmel, Georg, ‘’The Metropolis of Mental Life’’ in G.Bridge and S.Watson, The Balckwell City Reader, (Oxford, Malden & Massachussets: Blackwell, 2002).
Wood, Paul,‘’Jason Geiger: Modernity in Germany: the many sides of Adolph Menzel’’ in The Challenge of the Avant-Garde, (New Haven & London: Yale University Press,1999).
Other Sources:
‘’Adolph Menzel, The Supper at the Ball [Das Ballsouper], 1878’’, accessed on 26th of
October, 2016, http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_image.cfm?image_id=1268.
‘’ Differing Views: the Tuileries Gardens, Paris, France’’, last modified August 31st, 2015,
https://eclecticlight.co/2015/08/31/differing-views-the-tuileries-gardens-paris-france/.
