Alongside of the
portrait as a painting of the soul should be placed pictures of ideal
characters; ideal, not in the sense of good, but in the sense of more
highly complex and unified than actually existing persons. Such pictures
symbolize for us the quintessence and highest level of definite types
of life. Manet's "Olympia" and Goya's "Maja" belong here equally with
Leonardo's "Christ" or "Mona Lisa," with Raphael's Madonnas and
Michelangelo's gods and angels. In them is attained the most intense
concentration of psychic life possible.
It is now pretty generally recognized that the unities of time and
space exclude from the sphere of painting story telling and history,
which require for effective representation more than the single moment
included in painting. In order to tell a story in painting, one has
to supplement what is seen with ideas which can be obtained only from
a catalogue or other source external to the picture; one has to add
in thought to the moment given on the canvas the missing moments of
the action. But a work of art should be complete in itself and so far
as possible self-explanatory; it should not lead us away from itself,
but keep us always to itself. If the scene represented be a part of
a story, the story should be so well known that its connection with
the picture can be immediately recognized without external aid, and
should admit of a certain completeness in its various parts. The life
of Christ is such a story; everybody knows it and can interpret a
picture portraying it forthwith; its various incidents and situations
have each a unique and complete significance in themselves.
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