Art Eyewitness Book Review: Art: the Whole Story

 

Art: the Whole Story

                                   Edited by Stephen Farthing                                       Thames & Hudson/$29.95/576 pages

Reviewed by Ed Voves

In 2017, a study of the time spent by museum visitors, looking at paintings at the Art Institute of Chicago, computed the average or mean time per work of art at 28.63 seconds. A similar 2001 study at the Metropolitan Museum of Art had calculated the duration of patron-painting interface at 27.2 seconds.

Before exulting at the increase of slightly under one and a half seconds, an additional finding of the 2017 study needs to be considered. Many of the 2017 "brief encounters" included precious time spent taking "selfies" in front of the paintings.

How much attention people devote to works of art is their own business.  Heaven knows, I've breezed by many a painting or sculpture myself. But I can't help thinking that art lovers would be well-advised to devote some serious time to reading Art: the Whole Story. After reflecting on the abundant wisdom in this beautiful, modestly-priced book, they might want to slow down a bit.

Originally published by Thames and Hudson in 2010, the new edition of Art: the Whole Story shows how well it has stood the test of time.

The basic premise of Art: the Whole Story is the selection of major works of art for close study. Both as singular masterpieces and as representative examples of the epochs during which they were created, these works rate as the "best of the best." A supporting gallery of "focal points" - significant details - provide insights for appreciating each of these landmarks of visual expression. 

                        Art: the Whole Story book page spread, showing                        the Amitabha Triad, Goryeo Dynasty of Korea, 14th century

When judiciously used to guide our perception, Art: the Whole Story is a powerful research tool and a template for stimulating awareness. The subtitle of the book, however, is cause for concern. Despite its merits, it is not "the whole story" or even the final word about the works of art it examines. 

The editorial team is well aware of the dangers of a "quick fix" approach to art. Noted art scholar, Richard Cork, writes:

There are no formulae available, no surefire ways of arriving at the requisite sense of alert, probing observation. Each encounter with a particular work of art demands its own singular approach ... Those who argue that audio guides are the answer, providing instant commentaries on a select number of exhibits should think again. How can you formulate an authentic response of your own when a voice, lodged intimately in the ear, is telling you precisely what to think?

The answer to that question is provided by enhancing the power of human perception. This is one of the primary aims of Art: the Whole Story.

Let's explore a case study of how the editorial team of Art: the Whole Story helps us to formulate "an authentic response" to famous works of art. 

In 1821, the British Museum purchased fragments of frescoes from the tomb of Nebamun, an official in the government of Amenhotep III (c.1390-1352 BC). Amenhotep's reign was the high point of ancient Egypt's New Kingdom. The fresco episode showing Nebamun and his tabby cat hunting in the marshes of the Nile is especially well-known and beloved.

     Unknown Artists, Inspecting the Fields for Nebamun, 1350 BC

A different, more prosaic scene was chosen for study in Art: the Whole Story. This shows the normal workday routines underway on the estate of Nebamun. At center, two chariots are being readied for use. One of the chariots is harnessed to a team of mules or onagers.

Detail of Nebamun fresco, showing chariot team of mules or onagers 

To the left, stands an elderly farm worker, standing before a white boundary marker. Unlike Nebamun, who appears in a very stylized fashion in the other fresco scenes, the aging man is portrayed "warts and all" or in his case "wispy beard and all."

             Detail of Nebamun fresco, showing elderly farm worker

Why would a lowly worker in the fields be depicted with lifelike individuality that was denied to a powerful official like Nebamun? Dr. Craig Staff, who wrote the commentary entry on this fresco, observes that "realistic details... would never have appeared in depictions of gods and pharaohs."

The old farmer was imbued with naturalistic detail which was neither needed nor desired in the depictions of Nebamun. It was this farmer's task to maintain the necessary order and harmony on the estate for Nebamun to achieve eternal life and a semi-godlike status. At least that was how Nebamun would have interpreted the proper functioning of social life. But to us, over three thousand years later, the quiet nobility of the aged farmer is the true subject of this fresco scene.

Our perceptions of great works of art change as our consciousness expands. We can see more, appreciate more, as we look further and search deeper.

This process, of course, is at work in the lives and the oeuvres of great artists.

Christian artists were charged with creating works which directed the viewer to look inward or heavenward. As a result, the art of Christendom for many centuries rejected attempts at naturalism. Russian art, following the lead of Christian Byzantium, persisted in depicting scenes from biblical history in an ethereal manner, as can be seen in this celebrated icon, painted by Andrei Rublev in 1410.

Here, three angels visiting Abraham were depicted in a way to induce a state of meditation and prayer rather than to recreate how the event might have looked many centuries earlier.

Andrei Rublev, Old Testament Trinity, 1410

By the time Rublev was painting the visit of the three angels to Abraham's encampment, artists in Italy and the Netherlands had launched the artistic revolution we now call the Renaissance. As a result, Rublev's masterwork looks anachronistic, almost primitive, by comparison. Yet, a similar jarring note was sounded when later Italian paintings struggled to reconcile religious values with the new pictorial naturalism.

A little over a century after Rublev's icon, Jacapo Pontormo painted a disturbing, perplexing view of the aftermath of the Crucifixion. Everything seems "wrong" about this picture when you see it displayed in an art textbook. The garish choice of colors, the off-center placement of Jesus' corpse, the dense tangle of the bodies of the mourners and disciples - appears out of "sync."

Jacapo Pontormo, Deposition from the Cross, 1525-1528

Appearances are deceiving. As the brilliant critique of the Deposition from the Cross by Ann Kay demonstrates, Pontormo's technique and perspective differed from Rublev. But both artists painted with the eye of faith.

The flamboyant pinks and blues of Pontormo's color palate were chosen so that the drama of the painting would stand out from the gloom of the church interior where it is displayed. Jesus is deliberately positioned away from the center point, thus heightening the sense of loss so graphically portrayed on the anguished faces of his mother, Mary, and his grieving followers.

Art: the Whole Story has a global reference point. Art from all points of the compass, from all cultures and epochs are included in this remarkable book. The same degree of insight and authority which the writers apply to Western artists is accorded to Asian, African and Oceanic art. 

Lakota "Exploit" Robe, c. 1800–1830

I especially appreciated the inclusion of Native American art in the shape of a Lakota Sioux "exploit" robe. This remarkable work, brought to Europe from the Great Plains of North America in the early 1800's, was featured in a great Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition in 2015.

An excellent example of the sensitive and perceptive treatment of non-Western art appears in the section of the book devoted to Rajput or Rajasthani painting from India.

Ustad Sahibdin, Krishna Lifts Mount Govardhan, c. 1690

Krishna Lifts Mount Govardhan, dating to around 1690, is the featured work of Rajput art. An incisive introduction notes how Hindu art continued to develop under the political control of the Mughal Empire during the 1600's. Rajput paintings integrated elements of influence from the Mughal court, while blending regional styles from across the vast subcontinent.

This wondrous work shows the blue-skinned Krishna protecting a village from the wrath of the Vedic good of thunder. Krishna holds Mount Govardhan above the heads of the villagers and their cattle herds. This myth is drawn from the ancient Indian text, the Bhagavita Purana, but it may also have served as an assertion of Hindu cultural independence from the authoritarian rule of the Mughal emperor, Aurangzeb (1618-1707).

What really appeals in Krishna Lifts Mount Govardhan are the touching details of  humanity and the cycle of nature, the beautiful gopis waving Krishna on with their fly whisks, while a cow gives birth in the fields.

Krishna Lifts Mount Govardhan (details), c. 1690

Art: the Whole Story seldom disappoints in its selection of specific works of art to analyze. I do wish that the book could have focused on at least one of the great U.S. artists who worked in America, Thomas Eakins or Winslow Homer, rather than working abroad like James McNeil Whistler. But that is a small matter, when compared with the otherwise expansive coverage and clarity of detail.

Perhaps a more controversial point is the fact that nearly a third of the book is devoted to art since 1900. Given the ever-growing complexity of modern art, the burgeoning forms of artistic media to be covered and the diversity of individual expressions, the decision to devote so much space to such a comparatively short period was understandable, indeed correct.

Paul Klee, Fish Magic, 1925

If some major modern artists are not accorded "star treatment" - Alberto Giacometti gets only a brief mention - others, like Paul Klee, receive their due. I was particularly impressed with the analysis of Henri Cartier-Bresson's 1932 photo of a man hopping over a puddle of water near the Gare St. Lazare train station in Paris. 

Life and art intersect in Cartier-Bresson's wonderful photo. The "decisive moment," as it came to be called, occurred when the French photographer poked his Leica camera through a gap in the fence to record this incredible instant.

Thousands of years ago, the "decisive moment" occurred when the first artist dabbed mineral pigment on a cave wall. The moment came again and again as Praxiteles, Michelangelo, Vermeer, Turner, et al, followed suit.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2018)

Henri Cartier-Bresson's 1952 book, The Decisive Moment,

 with the photo Behind the Gare St. Lazare at left

The decisive moment comes as well every time art lovers commune with great art. Sometimes, as we mentioned earlier, the duration of the encounter is brief - 28.63 seconds. Hopefully, we will learn to savor the moment at least a few seconds longer. 

Thanks to the wise counsel and enlightening format of Art: the Whole Story, this "decisive" moment is readily at hand.

***

Text: Copyright of Ed Voves, all rights reserved

 Art: the Whole Story book cover and image of page spread , courtesy of Thames and Hudson.

Introductory Image: Johannes Vermeer, The Kitchen Maid, c. 1658. Oil on canvas: 18 x 16 inches (45.5 x 41 cm)  Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Courtesy of Rijksmuseum.  https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/collection/SK-A-2344

Unknown Artists, Inspecting the Fields for Nebamun, 1350 BC. Fresco: 18 1/8 x 42 1/8 inches (46 x 107 cm) British Museum, London. Courtesy of British Museum, Creative Commons.

Andrei Rublev, Old Testament Trinity, 1410. Tempera on wood: 56 x 45 inches (142 x 114 cm) State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tretyakov_Gallery#/media/File:Angelsatmamre-trinity-rublev-1410.jpg

Jacapo Pontormo, Deposition from the Cross, 1525-1528. Oil on canvas on wood panel: 123 1/4 × 75 5/8 inches (313 × 192 cm)  Barbadori Chapel, Church of Saint Felicita, Florence, Italy.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jacopo_Pontormo_-_Deposition_-_WGA18113_(cropped).jpg

Lakota "Exploit" Robe, c. 1800–1830, Central Plains artists. Native tanned leather, pigment, porcupine quills, 58 3/8 x 88 ¼ in. (148.3 x 224.2 cm) Musée du quai Branly, Paris. Gift of Chaplain Duparc (71.1886.17.1)

Ustad Sahibdin (Indian, c. 1601-1700) Krishna Lifts Mount Govardhan, c. 1690. Paint on Paper: 11 x 7 7/8 inches (28.5 x 20 cm) British Museum, London. Courtesy of British Museum, Creative Commons.

Paul Klee (Swiss, 1879-1940) Fish Magic,1925. Oil and watercolor on canvas on panel: 30 3/8 × 38 3/4 inches (77.2 × 98.4 cm) Philadelphia Museum of Art # 1950-134-112 The Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection, 1950

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2018) Henri Cartier-Bresson, The Decisive Moment (Simon & Schuster, 1952), p. 39-40.  Images shown are the 1932 photos, Behind the Gare St. Lazare, Place de l'Europe, Paris, France (left) and Allées du Prado, Marseille. 

Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Decisive Moment at the International Center of Photography

Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Decisive Moment

International Center of Photography 

New York City May 23, 2018 – Sep 02, 2018

Reviewed by Ed Voves

This summer, the International Center of Photography (ICP), located in lower Manhattan, is presenting an exhibition of one of the twentieth's century greatest photographers: Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908–2004). His name has become synonymous to the English-speaking world with the expression "the Decisive Moment."

Cartier-Bresson might well have become a great film director rather than a  renowned "still" photographer, for he briefly worked for one of the legends of the cinema. In 1936, Jean Renoir hired the promising young photographer to serve as second assistant director for his film, Une partie de campagne (A Day in the Country). Except for a handful of short films, however, Cartier-Bresson was destined to be the master of a Leica 35 mm camera rather than a director's clip-board. 

To modern-day art lovers, Une partie de campagne brings to mind recollections of the Impressionist paintings of Renoir's father, such as Luncheon of the Boating Party. But there is another point of comparison. Not long after the filming was completed, a year or so  later, Cartier-Bresson revisited this theme. His photo, Sunday on the Banks of the Seine, shows a group of working-class people enjoying a glass of wine and last few nibbles of a picnic lunch overlooking a quiet river scene.

There the similarities end. Sunday on the Banks of the Seine (some prints refer to the river as the Marne) is not just a photo homage to a great film. It is a great work in its own right. It shows a "peak" experience in life and art: the decisive moment.

Henri Cartier-Bresson, Sunday on the Banks of the Seine, 1938

What is so "decisive" about this moment? There are five ordinary people finishing-up lunch. One of them, evidently a young woman, is almost unseen except for a wave of hair just visible in front of the cloth-capped gent. There's a row boat tied up to a fishing pier on which we can see two empty seats and a couple of dangling fishing poles. Nothing much is happening here.

Everything is happening here. Cartier-Bresson has captured one of the rarest occasions in human life: a moment of true contentment and real joy. Breathe in the country air. Drink a  glass of red wine. Eat that last bit of cheese. Savor the joie de vivre.

Then the fleeting moment is gone. Yet the memory of happiness remains, nurturing our souls, fortifying our hearts to survive the dark times.

The five people in this photo almost certainly were alive during the terrible spring of 1940, when Hitler's blitzkreig devastated France. I wonder if any of them remembered this sunny aftenoon during the grim Nazi Occupation? Cartier-Bresson was captured by the Germans, though he later escaped in 1943 to join the Resistance. Did he think of this picture as he planned his breakout from behind the barbed wire of the stalag?

Cartier-Bresson certainly remembered this brilliantly-composed photograph in 1952. That year, he published a large format collection of his photos. His American publisher, Simon and Schuster, entitled the book, The Decisive Moment. Those three words would define Cartier-Bresson for the remainder of his life.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2018)  Reading a first edition copy of The Decisive Moment 

Paging through the phenomenal book, in its first edition, is a unique experience. Although a faithful, high-quality facsimile of The Decisive Moment was published in 2015, I think it is fair to say that they don't make books like this anymore.

One could also make the carping criticism that great photographers like Cartier-Bresson are not around either. That would be both untrue and unfair.There a quite a number of outstanding "lensmen" and "lenswomen" still at work. The disturbing fact about contemporary photography is that the media heirarchy no longer rewards the kind of intiative and independence exemplified by Henri Cartier-Bresson.

As the ICP exhibition text notes, the French edition of Cartier-Bresson's book (with a cover designed by Henri Matisse) had a different title. It was called  Images à la Sauvette or “images on the run.” This was entirely appropriate given Cartier-Bresson's roving, globe-trotting picture taking. There was added irony, however, in that Images à la Sauvette literally defines one of his earliest masterpieces, Behind the Gare St. Lazare, 1932.

Cartier-Bresson used  his 35mm Leica camera to record the extraordinary image of a man leaping over an enormous pool of water. In the background is the Gare St. Lazare railway station in Paris. In 1873, Eduard Manet had immortalized the station, shrouded by steam, as the object of a little girl's curiosity. Here the mystery of Manet's "cathedral of progress" is revealed and deflated. It's just a mundane warehouse.

Henri Cartier-Bresson, Behind the Gare St. Lazare, 1932

Or so it seems. In a delicious stroke of irony, Cartier-Bresson shows a circus company advertisement hanging from the iron fence. The name of the circus, Railowsky, and a silhouette of an acrobat, are reflected in the water. In that mirrored image, the sense of magic returns. From being a pedestrian trying to keep his shoes dry, the leaping man is transformed into a real acrobat performing in the three-ring circus of life.

How did Cartier-Bresson manage to take this incredible photo? It wasn't posed or staged. Nor was it the result of luck. In the introduction to The Decisive Moment, Cartier-Bresson wrote about the experience of discovering the Leica 35 mm camera in 1932 and his experiments in creating his "decisive moment" style:

I had just discovered the Leica. it became the extension of my eye, and I have never been separated from it since I found it. I prowled the streets all day, feeling very strung-up and ready to pounce, determined to "trap" life - to preserve life in the act of living. Above all, I craved to seize the whole essence, in the confines of one single photograph, of some situation that was in the process of unrolling itself before my eyes.

Cartier-Bresson soon became an absolute master of encompassing entire universes of action and feeling in a single frame. And these photos speak for themselves.

Henri Cartier-Bresson, Downtown, Manhattan, New York, United States, 1947

Long scholarly articles could be written analyzing Cartier-Bresson's amazing photo of a man and a cat sitting, face-to-face, in a New York City ally in 1947. What's going on here? Is this a  glimpse of the soul-crushing anonymity of modern urban life?  Or does this photo record an act of caring by a sensitive human for a stray cat - or vice versa?

Does it matter which explanation is correct - or maybe another one we haven't considered? What matters is that this photo recorded a raw, unpredictable moment of life.

Looking at this, and Cartier-Bresson's other photos, we soon comprehend his "secret" for taking a "decisive moment" picture. The "secret" was always to being ready to open his heart and mind, as well as his eyes, to the scene that was "in the process of unrolling itself" before him.

But when to snap the picture? Cartier-Bresson explained:

In photography there is a new kind of plasticity, product of the instantaneous lines made by movements of the subject. We work in unison with movement as though it were a presentiment of the way in which life unfolds. But inside movement there is one moment at which the elements in motion are in balance. Photography must seize this moment and hold immobile the equilibrium of it.

To "seize this moment," Cartier-Bresson co-founded the Magnum Photo Agency in 1947. Fascinated by Oriental philosophy, he went to Asia where he photographed world-altering events like the Communist takeover of China in 1949. The juxtaposition of the timely, newsworthy, event, with timeless moments of apparent harmony was a notable feature of his work in Asia.

Henri Cartier-Bresson, The Last Days of the Kuomintang, Shanghai, China, 1948

When we look at this desperate scene of people trying to redeem their savings during  the Shanghai bank collapse in 1948, the "decisiveness" of the event is readily apparent. But the "decisiveness" of Rice Field, Sumatra, Indonesia, is there as well. Photographed not long after the more dramatic Shanghai picture, it shows an Asian nation which had just achieved independence from Dutch colonial rule. 

Henri Cartier-Bresson, Rice Field, Sumatra, Indonesia, 1949

The "timeless" quality of Rice Field, Sumatra, Indonesia invites further reflection. Working in the immediate aftermath of World War II, Cartier-Bresson recorded scenes of human life, little changed for thousands of years. When we open the pages of The Decisive Moment, published sixty-six years ago, we might almost be looking at photos taken in biblical times, of the people and flocks of Abraham or Moses on their journeys to the Promised Land.

As it turns out, the subject of Egypt, 1950 is as fascinating as any scene of an Old Testament patriarch gathering his followers for a trek to Canaan. In the caption to this double-spread photo, Cartier-Bresson explained that the scene was:

A village market held on graveyard county across the Nile at Luxor. The people are called “rats of the grave,” for they  are continually  digging and finding new graves to raise their meager income.

The grave diggers in Egypt,1950 explained to Cartier-Bresson that they refused to live in government-subsidized villages because they were concerned that the burial site they were digging-up for artifacts to sell might be "pillaged" by "invaders."

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2018) Henri Cartier-Bresson's photo, Egypt,1950

What an amazing photo! Looking at Egypt,1950 brings to mind the saying "you can't make this stuff up!" Now, nearly seventy years later, it would be much more difficult to find such scene. 

However, Egypt,1950 is still a timely photo. Ever timely in fact. It is an astonishing look at the combination of courage and folly, tenacity and self-immolation that is human nature. Any photographer might - with luck - take one or two photos of this caliber in a lifetime. But Cartier-Bresson spent most of his lifetime taking such pictures.

Most of his lifetime. The emphasis is on most because Cartier-Bresson began to distance himself from photography toward the end of his life. Cartier-Bresson had trained as an artist during the 1920's before taking up the camera. As he grew older, Cartier-Bresson spent more time drawing than taking photos. By the 1990's, he had largely shifted his focus entirely to sketching. 

David Hockney was introduced to Cartier-Bresson during the years as he drifted away from photography. In his book-long conversation with Martin Gayford, A Bigger Message, Hockney made a very perceptive comment on Cartier-Bresson:  

Cartier-Bresson's era was the technological epoch between the invention of the 35 mm and the beginning of the era when computers began to have an effect around 1980. He was the master of that period: a fantastic eye.He began when the Leica was invented, and he gave it up a little before Photoshop was invented.

Does this mean that the "decisive moment" in photography has passed? Hockney believes that a "pictorial crisis" is taking place in photography and in film. While agreeing with Hockney on the crisis in contemporary cinema, I am more hopeful regarding street photography.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2018) Henri Cartier-Bresson's The Decisive Moment, 1952

I believe that the deep-rooted humanity that we see on display in the ICP's Cartier-Bresson exhibit continues to hold true. Photography can still achieve "decisive" moments, regardless of the type of camera used. If the heart and mind of the photographer remain open, the camera lens will be open too.

But don't take my word as proof. Go look at Cartier-Bresson's magnificent snapshots of humanity in action and in repose. The ICP exhibit is on view until September 2, 2018. 

Follow the lead of the protagonist in Behind the Gare St. Lazare. Run, don't walk.

***

Text: Copyright of Ed Voves, all rights reserved                                                                Photos courtesy of the International Center of Photography, New York City, & Anne Lloyd.

Introductory Image:
Henri Cartier-Bresson, The Decisive Moment (Simon & Schuster, 1952), cover. © Henri Cartier-Bresson/Magnum Photos.

Henri Cartier-Bresson, The Decisive Moment (Simon & Schuster, 1952), p. 19-20, Sunday on the Banks of the Seine, France, 1938.  © Henri Cartier-Bresson/Magnum Photos.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2018) Ed Voves reading a first edition copy of Henri Cartier-Bresson's The Decisive Moment (Simon & Schuster, 1952)

Henri Cartier-Bresson, The Decisive Moment (Simon & Schuster, 1952), p. 39, Behind the Gare St. Lazare, Place de l'Europe, Paris, France, 1932. © Henri Cartier-Bresson/Magnum Photos.

Henri Cartier-Bresson, The Decisive Moment (Simon & Schuster, 1952), p. 57, Downtown, Manhattan, New York, United States, 1947. © Henri Cartier-Bresson/Magnum Photos

Henri Cartier-Bresson, The Decisive Moment (Simon & Schuster, 1952), p. 127-128, The Last Days of the Kuomintang, Shanghai, China, December 1948-January 1949. © Henri Cartier-Bresson/Magnum Photos.

Henri Cartier-Bresson, The Decisive Moment (Simon & Schuster, 1952), p. 119-120, Rice Field, Sumatra, Indonesia, 1949. © Henri Cartier-Bresson/Magnum Photos.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2018) Henri Cartier-Bresson's photo, Egypt,1950, from The Decisive Moment (Simon & Schuster, 1952)

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2018) Henri Cartier-Bresson, The Decisive Moment (Simon & Schuster, 1952), p. 39-40.  Images shown are the 1932 photos, Behind the Gare St. Lazare, Place de l'Europe, Paris, France (left) and Allées du Prado, Marseille. The copy of The Decisive Moment, held by Ed Voves, is part of the Collection of the Free Library of Philadelphia.