My mouth never sinned, without the consent of reason, of having incited a passion that would later end up in tears.
Lorenzo Da Ponte.
Posterity is puritanical. Just remember what has been purified. So the great libertine repent before he died, leaving a memory clean, without blemish, and his posthumous image is the one worthy of homage.
The last years of Louis XIV were those of a king obsessed with chastity, this led him to drive from Paris to the Italian artists of the Commedia dell'Arte. The theater returned to France with the reign of the licentious Duke of Orleans, after the king gave his life, previously given to the excesses of love, sex and food, their bodies devoured and poisoned by the gangrene that caused the drop. The king dead, long live comedy.
That was the world that seduced Antoine Watteau. This painter is what we call an artist today pop, died at age 36 of tuberculosis and left a work sensual, voluptuous and full of plump meats inspired by the work of Rubens.
Watteau worked at a workshop of copyists recorded in series, consistently reproducing images of the king and religious themes, with this training workshop came to Claude Gillot specializes in the Commedia dell'arte scenes, and found the passion the theater and its characters.
Forgot religious archetypes, transformed the attributes of the pious saints by the passions of love, rivalry, jealousy and the tears that were shed by the mistakes and love affairs. These scenes were located in settings that are purely theatrical countryside, in gardens, woodland pools that are framed by curtains skies are blue, orange, wet, submerged in the mild climate of an evening of celebration.
Watteau never had clients or patrons in the nobility, that he gave his work a unique opportunity that became the basis of the rococo aesthetic: the invention of the "gallant festivals." Only painted folk, bourgeois and actors of comedy, Pierrots, maids, Columbian, musicians, in a celebratory, peaceful delivery.
In many of these images can be found Watteau himself among those who have fun, sing or listen to poems, but what has sparked the imagination of researchers and novelists, is his obsession with a woman who always looks back. In an era when theater works were still staged with rigid rules and inviolable, that the concept of the fourth wall was not yet invented, let alone naturalism, the staging of Watteau's paintings are disturbing.
For example "The Pleasures of the Dance", in the center of the composition, in a majestic white marble arcade and blue, with niches that hold Greek gods, opening a garden in the background, in this little paradise, a group of elegant bourgeois dance, while a couple presides at the celebration, he is facing with his foot lifted slightly tilting the body to the rhythm of music, and she backs to the audience, we, the temporary witness this scene, his red hair hairstyle highlights her silk dress and a lace collar, the lady gets up her dress to follow his partner. Do not see your face, imagine that is the most beautiful and jealous Watteau hidden. The excitement of having it and show distress.
And so we continue immersed in his paintings and found a beauty that refuses to mirarno, In The Rest "travelers stop to rest under a tree and she on one side, dressed yellow silk to get our attention, is a point of expulsion, is a cry, and he's back, her skin soft, cold, a long neck, delicate head touched by a flowered hat. Watteau portrayed as he looks into an abyss seduced by the approach of panic. In "Two cousins" does the same, is a situation intimate, melancholy, in a garden with a pond in the center, two beautiful girls watch the afternoon, enjoy the captivating pleasure of the day that changes in the reflection of water, the color of the plants, the air temperature. A maid insists cover one with a red scarf, but she refuses, her breasts are exposed, it seems that can not be contained by the golden gown neckline. On one side, standing, tyranny, and the beauty of a long back, serene, endless neck, white, surmounted by a brazen head, the hair is collected to see those shoulders, that skin just waiting to be touched, kissed . Watteau made of the prohibition, seduction, selfishness how to get involved for fear of revealing that the object of fascination that he himself destroyed.
The only function of his paintings is hide who she is, telling us that there is but we do not have a right to know how to see your eyes. At the height of delight and despair naked Pt "The Judgement of Paris ", the evocation of sodomy, which years later would fashion the beheaded queen Marie Antoinette, is the center of the composition, Helena discover and Paris is about to give the golden apple. A scene in which all the characters they see you face, except us. Watteau's paintings are the passion of concealment. Pascal Quignard says that those who love hide and survive only stories that have no witnesses.
0 comments:
Post a Comment