The Latest Art Mystery
Tomorrow night I will publish a story entitled “Christmas, Jack the Ripper, Shakespeare, Bullfights and Van Gogh’s Ear: An Art Mystery.” The question presented is this: Why did Vincent van Gogh cut off his ear? There are a number of theories, even that Paul Gauguin did it. After reading the biographies and the artist’s correspondence, I have a few theories of my own. To prepare you for the latest Art Mystery, Van Gogh plays a central role in our new-look Art Quiz.
The Latest Art Quiz
You have already seen the Quiz. It is the headline image. What you must do is to identify all of the paintings referenced in that picture, including the artist and the name of the painting. Some of them are obvious; others are a little harder to place. One is diabolical. Good luck! I will provide an answer key below. Before we tidy up with answers, though, let me show you my collection of Art.
My Art Collection
I owe almost the entirety of my Art collection to my Sisters, the artists. One is a painter, and the other started out beading, but has settled on silversmithing and crafting jewelry. I did create one painting myself, but you will hate it.
I hate it.
Let me first show you the jewel of my collection, which was painted by my Sister. It is a land- and seascape that measures about 7”x4.5”. I sit and stare at it for much too long; it creates peace wherever it goes. The painting shows approximately one trillion shades of blue, but my camera failed to pick up about a trillion of those shades:
Across the room from it, I have her pastel of a marshland scene. It is about the same size as its mate. I sometimes get trapped between them in the room and have to go back and forth. My Sister painted it from another artist’s work. I apologize for the quality of my photography, which does not do the picture justice. For example, the individual rushes in the foreground are very distinct in the actual painting:
Below, you’ll find the only artwork I’ve created, which is called “Red Square.” It measures about 4’ x 1’ and, as you can plainly see, it is a yellow rectangle. This painting is part of my long-running feud with Modern Art. I’m confident that Modern Art will not survive this blow.
Answer Key
Here is the Art Quiz again for your convenience, the answers follow.
1. The Last Supper, Leonardo da Vinci (1498).
Or, is it? We can’t be certain what da Vinci’s masterpiece looked like because it deteriorated so badly over the centuries. At one point, workmen cut a door through the giant painting because if you can save the Abbott fifty steps, you do it. It was bombed during World War II. Although they took precautions during the war to protect the painting, the entire ceiling was blown off. There had to be some damage. The apostle Bartholomew should be at the left end of the table. I’ve replaced him.
2. The Starry Night, Vincent van Gogh (1889).
As a backdrop for our quiz, we have the view that Van Gogh saw out of his window at the asylum in Saint-Rémy. It is similar, but even more abstract than the earlier Starry Night on the Rhône, which, in turn, was even more abstract than its earlier cousin, Café Terrace at Night. Shortly before his death, and after painting The Starry Night, Van Gogh wrote to his friend and fellow painter Emile Bernard about how he had been “fighting hand-to-hand with reality.” He decided to spend his time painting more realistic images—avoiding abstraction—but The Starry Night was a relapse. He continued: “However, once again I’m allowing myself to do stars too big, &c., new setback, and I’ve enough of that.” Letter to Emile Bernard, November 26, 1889.
3. Saturn Devouring His Son, Francisco Goya (from 1819).
I didn’t intend for Goya to be the star of our Art Quiz, but he could not be stopped. He also painted the next answer to our quiz. Saturn dominates the right side of the picture, perhaps eating his last supper? According to myth, Saturn revolted and destroyed his father. It was prophesized that one day he would be overthrown by his children.
So, he ate them.
He could have gotten a good fifteen to twenty years if he had just bought them Playstations! The Greek doppelgänger for Saturn is Chronos, and that works well with our little Art Quiz, as it sticks its tongue out at time. Goya painted Saturn Devouring His Son directly onto the wall of his dining room. Not a sight to whet one’s appetite, do you think? After the artist’s death, it was removed, placed on canvas, and now can be found in the Prado.
I almost put Goya’s The Colossus on the left side of the picture, but I didn’t want to clutter up Van Gogh’s background too much. The giant represents war, as the people of the town nearest the conflagration flee for their lives.
4. The Third of May 1808, Francisco Goya (1814).
I am going to put the entire painting below this entry because it is such a powerful anti-oppression statement. Goya created a pendant painting entitled The Second of May 1808, which shows attempted Spanish resistance to Napoleon’s takeover of Spain during the Peninsula War. The Third of May depicts the result, as French troops line up to shoot a mix of revolting soldiers and civilians. This piece by Goya was an acknowledged influence on Pablo Picasso, as he painted his anti-war masterpiece, Guernica.
5. The Girl with a Pearl Earring, Johannes Vermeer (1665?).
Acclaimed as the Mona Lisa of the North, the painting is a “tronie,” which is more of an ethnic study than a portrait. (Apparently, only rich people are reproduced in portraits.). It is called The Girl with a Pearl Earring, but the earring appears metallic to me. That question became one of my first Art Mysteries. Whatever the earring is made of, it is the most beautiful painting ever created. In the picture we used above, the earring is two white pixels and two gray pixels. Yet, it stands out like one of Van Gogh’s stars. Like Caravaggio and Goya, Johannes Vermeer knew how to use shadows as if they were exclamation points!
6. Self-portrait, Amrita Sher-Gil (1940?).
This is probably the hardest question on the Art Quiz. It is diabolical. If you got it wrong, well, so would most people. It’s a Trap! Without knowing the answer, I would have guessed that it was a self-portrait by Frida Kahlo. Yet, Amrita may be one of the most influential female artists of all time. Born of a Hungarian mother and an Indian father, she learned painting in Paris, produced a prodigious amount of genius output, then died at the age of 28. She claimed Paul Gauguin as an influence, but I think she did Gauguin better than Gaugin did Gauguin.
7. Self-portrait, Rembrandt van Rijn (1660).
Even when you miniaturize the self-portrait to ridiculous levels, you can see the careworn features and the outstanding painterly abilities. This particular painting can be found in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Like Vermeer and Van Gogh, Rembrandt died a poor man, but left an incredibly rich legacy. There are so many paintings attributed to the master and his workshop, statistically speaking, you are sitting next to one now. Rembrandt was a painter’s painter. Vincent van Gogh idolized him. In tomorrow night’s Art Mystery, you’ll find out which writer Van Gogh put on a pedestal alongside Rembrandt.
8. American Gothic, Grant Wood (1930).
This icon of American Art won the bronze medal in an exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago. At least the museum had the foresight to purchase it, and you can find the painting there now. The woman is the artist’s sister; the man, his dentist. It has been variously described as a parody of middle American puritanism, or “as a depiction of steadfast American pioneer spirit.” Adding to the bemused and mutually exclusive interpretations of his work was Grant Wood, who claimed that “[a]ll the good ideas I’ve ever had came to me while I was milking a cow.”
9. The Kiss, Gustav Klimt (1908).
Klimt was an Austrian Symbolist who depicted intimacy a lot. He painted The Kiss in oils, but then added gold and silver leaf. In 1908, at about the same time Klimt was working on The Kiss, another Austrian artist occupied a shabby hotel room in the same city of Vienna and sold his paintings on the street to make ends meet. He would later kill millions of people. His style was drab and boring compared to Klimt, who managed to achieve success during his lifetime. The other Austrian artist had his revenge, though, as his army destroyed three of Klimt’s most important works while retreating in May of 1945.
10. Self-portrait, Vincent van Gogh (1889).
Van Gogh painted at least thirty-eight self-portraits, including the one pictured, larger than life, at the table of The Last Supper. This portrait was painted after the ear incident, which we will discuss in tomorrow’s Art Mystery. The full canvas shows the squiggly lines that were a Van Gogh signature. He wrote about this self-portrait to his brother:
“Today I’m sending you my portrait of myself, you must look at it for some time — you’ll see, I hope, that my physiognomy has grown much calmer, although the gaze may be vaguer than before, so it appears to me.”
Letter to Theo, September 20, 1889. In a letter to his mother and sister about ten months later, he noted that at that time he felt “calmer than last year, and the turmoil in my head has really abated so much.” Letter to Anna van Gogh-Carbentus and Willemien van Gogh, July 14, 1890. He would be dead of a self-inflicted wound fifteen days later.
11. The Scream, Edvard Munch (1893).
In place of the apostle Bartholomew on the left side of the picture is the protagonist from The Scream. An icon of modern art, the poor fellow has been parodied to death. A pastel version of the painting sold for a record $119 million dollars in 2012, which happens to be the same amount paid for everything exported from South Korea in 1964. In a diary entry, Munch presciently described what he felt about the painting: “I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature.” What would The Scream look like today?
12. The Treachery of Images, René Magritte (1929); and,
13. The Persistence of Memory, Salvador Dali (1931).
Your Art Quiz contained two apostles arguing. One of them saying, “This is not a pipe,” while the other replies, “This is not a clock.” René Magritte was a Surrealist, who made it a point to point out that a picture of an image is not the thing itself; it is only a picture. He painted a picture of a pipe with the words “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” transcribed in fashionable cursive below it. Salvador Dali, another Surrealist, whose job was to job us, painted strange landscapes that contained optical illusions, including his famous melting clock. Some thought that Dali intended to depict the abstraction of space and time; he said that he attempted to show how cheese melts in the sun. I wanted to have one of Dali’s clocks hanging off the table, but the angle was all wrong. Then, I noticed the apostle’s arm….
14. Supper at Emmaus (detail of still life), Caravaggio (1601).
I stole from Caravaggio’s masterpiece a still life of fruit and roasted chicken. As you can see, it looks out of place on da Vinci’s table, being too dark and full of detail and shadow. Caravaggio intentionally painted it to look out of place. The bowl of fruit hangs dangerously over the edge of the table. This was an aspect of another Art Mystery about Caravaggio’s attempt to paint actual motion. The fruit bowl isn’t in motion, but a slight jog of the table, and it could fall to the floor. It represents future or potential motion. As you can see in the full painting below, Caravaggio was better at depicting the immediacy of the disaster with his delicate shadows. (I had to make my own shadows for it in the Art Quiz because Caravaggio’s were too dark for da Vinci’s table.). This image appealed so much to Caravaggio that he painted the over-the-edge fruit bowl as a stand-alone picture.
I hope to see you tomorrow night for the Van Gogh Art Mystery!
Wednesday, Nov 21, 2018 · 6:17:11 AM +00:00 · Tortmaster
Using the technique advised by asterkitty in the comments, I scanned my Sister’s paintings. I think they came out extremely well, especially the marshland pastel. You can actually see the individual rushes as I noted in the body of the diary. Here they are: