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The Timelessness of Selfies

Even before there was the camera, people felt the urge to have artists create images in their likeness. The wealthy had artists create portraits in watercolor, oil, and even frescoes. Often these artists would paint more expensive clothes or even change history by adding false imagery at the request of their patron. In the time of antiquity, people had statues and mosaics made to display their likeness. So, this practice is not a new habit of ours.

Oddly, there is one painting that always comes to my mind when thinking of humanity's constant need to create these kinds of displays. The painting I'm talking about was of a man who suffered with hypertrichosis named Pedro Gonzalez (Petrus Gonsalvus).

The story of Pedro Gonzalez, is a strange one. Pedro Gonzalez was born in 1556 in the Canary islands (a group of islands off the coast of Spain). At birth, he was a source of local curiosity and soon drew the attention of the aristocracy.

During the 16th century, all kinds of people were seen as oddities were traded between powerful or wealthy families. So, Pedro was taken from his home and given as a gift to King Henri II.

King Henri II decided to give Pedro a Latin name (Petrus Gonsalvus) and ordered Pedro to receive an education. The King did this as a sort of entertainment; he wanted to watch the "savage" fail. Fortunately for Pedro, his education was a success.

Pedro became fluent in multiple languages. He mastered the art of the nobleman's etiquette. He even became essential for receiving foreign dignitaries and ambassadors, gaining favoritism from the King.

When King Henri II died his wife, Catherine de Medici, took power as regent. She decided that Pedro should be married in hopes of producing more "wild children" like himself. Catherine became a matchmaker and found a woman (ironically also named Catherine) for him to marry. This new Catherine was a French woman, rumored to be a great beauty.

Petrus and Catherine met for the first time on their wedding day and though it might not have been love at first sight, Catherine gave him many children (seven in total and four of their children inherited their father's hypertrichosis)

In 1581, he and his family were sent on a never ending tour of the courts. Where many paintings and studies were done on him and his children. This fascination escalated and soon they settled under the ownership of Duke Ranuccio Farnese, who tragically sent away Pedro's affected children as gifts.

I don't know why I connect this strange story of Petrus and his family to the current selfie culture, but I do. Somehow, I think we have become voyeurs in each others lives. The more bizarre or unique the narrative, the more interested we become.

We all buy into the freak-show or spectacle of life. And I wonder who are the Petrus's of today?

Art, Death, and Sex

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.