A
Painting for Dancers
Choreographing
Crowd Scenes:
Rubens' "The Road to Calvary"
by
Paul Parish
Some
composers, like Bach and Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky,
really speak to dancers—and so do some painters
and sculptors. One of these for me is Rubens—he
uses bodies and orchestrates movement like a choreographer
(Lavrovsky, Fokine, probably Noverre). I've come to
this conclusion after going back over and over to visit
a painting of his; not an important Rubens, just an
oil sketch, a preparatory study for a larger work, not
even in color, really, just black and white and sepia,
bought in the 1960's for less than $100,000 -- but still,
it's the most appealing painting in the Bay Area to
me. For a sketch, it's brought up to a high level of
finish. The physicality of the brush-work is as hot
as any action-painter's, and more delicate - check out
the white threads in the horse's manes, on the satin
skirt as it molds to Veronica's thigh, on the Roman
soldier's helmet, in that exultant hunting-horn. The
painting itself is about as broad as my shoulders, nearly
two feet high, and wears a frame of dark wood about
as wide as my hand. It's hung too low: the top of it
is level with my hairline (about 5'7") *
A
painting is of course not a moving picture, but it can
contain or suggest motion, much as a building can; a
wall can undulate, Baroque columns often spiral. Indeed,
the function of religious architecture, painting and
sculpture in the Baroque period was to break down the
barrier between the ordinary world and the eternal,
using optical illusions to surround you with a sense
of the miraculous, to make the mythic seem present.
First
of all Rubens uses the muscularity of the human body
like a choreographer for plastic, emotional, and dynamic
effects—look at the energy animating the giant
who's lifting the cross off Jesus, or the soft but unstoppable
surge of compassion bearing Veronica towards Jesus to
comfort him. There are numerous mini-dramas going on
within the surging crowd. But they are all subordinated
to the push-pull of the drive up that hill, the forces
that want it to make it and those that want it to fall
back. It's like a river going uphill—all those
naked backs, working like waves, with cross-currents,
undertows, flows of weight and intention—which
is greater than the sum of its individual wills and
reveals general, even cosmic laws in operation. (The
whole composition is organized in a spiral around a
central axis going up the hill and has that fundamental
spiraling line one sees everywhere in Baroque art—for
example, in the columns on Bernini's baldacchino over
the high altar in St Peter's.)
The
tensions within the picture reflect the push-pull emotions
Christians feel about their salvation—the crucifixion
which takes place at the end of this road, which Jesus
undertakes willingly, though not gladly, will save the
whole world, and which therefore, though we lament it,
it is the cause of our joy—we can not wish it
undone.
Rubens'
subject came to him ready-made—this scene is one
of the Stations of the Cross, number 6, in fact: "Veronica
Wipes the Face of Jesus"—a guided meditation
which was formalized during the Counter-reformation
and most Roman Catholics still practice today. When
I was a boy, my family went to the Stations of the Cross
and Benediction every Wednesday evening during Lent.
It's a powerful aid to reflection. The object was to
imagine what Jesus went through, always remembering
that it was worse than you CAN imagine, as his love
for us (it implies) is also greater than we can imagine.
**
(I
don't mean to sell Christian doctrine—I don't
"believe" it myself any more, any more than
I believe in Giselle or King Lear;
but the depths of the experience can't be touched without
giving the story "poetic faith.")
Rubens
has subordinated many effects to one powerful complex
impression—Jesus has fallen under the cross, and
his head is situated so that he looks out of the picture
into your eyes; the look in his eyes asks you,"Do
you see this? What are you going to do about it?"
(Unfortunately, the picture needs to be seen from below
for the perspective to come into play; suddenly, the
figures become solid, the sense that YOU ARE THERE suddenly
jumps out at you, in a way you can't see from the otherwise
beautiful reproduction. The look in Jesus's eyes becomes
truly penetrating.) It is an effect that war- and famine-photographers
have cultivated; we see faces of starving Somali children
looking out of Oxfam posters.
What a web of interlocking bodies—3 horses, a
couple of donkeys, a pair of babies, 2 women (both of
them saints), and how many men, not to mention the commotion
of lances, spears, swords, a flag, an Asiatic hunting-horn,
gnarly chaparral, the rocky road itself, and storm-clouds
in the distance. Rubens has found an arresting moment
to focus all this —Jesus has fallen under the
cross, and the parade has stopped (but only in the way
that parades DO stop—the front men carrying ladders,
who're already round the bend almost out of sight, have
no idea what's happened behind them and haven't slowed
down at all).
Veronica
is like us a bystander, and she acts FOR us; she intrudes
into the scene at this moment. But within the action
there's a guy pulling Jesus by the hair, and another,
a GIANT lifting the cross off of him, while poor Simon
of Cyrene*** stuck at the bottom end of the cross, struggles
to lift it but he can't budge it at all from his angle,
it's like having a bad grip on a refrigerator you're
trying to get through the front door so far as he's
concerned. And meantime, a magnificent Roman soldier,
the lieutenant in charge of this detail, is shoving
the blunt end of his lance into Jesus's flank, mostly
as a gesture of impatience, since it's not doing anything
efficient except asserting his authority. (In fact,
all of the Romans are making highly rhetorical, classical,
and ineffective gestures—It's hot, they're tired,
the Romans are looking VERY antique, in majestic poses
with their backs in magnificent contrapposto curves,
getting nothing done. Without making a BIG deal of it,
Rubens is contrasting the temporary power of Caesar
with the abiding power of God, which rises from compassion
and inheres in Jesus and those sympathetic to him.)
Veronica in particular needs to be seen from the right
perspective—I mean, literally, from below, for
the sense of movement to come into play. She is rising
into the scene, kind of squatting on the left heel and
lifting from the right, totally unself-conscious, completely
stirred by compassion— her gesture is so soft,
but powerfully supported, as she presses her exquisite
embroidered kerchief against Jesus forehead. The look
in her eye is the same as the expression of her whole
body—"O my God! What have they done to you?"
Just
behind Jesus, there's another Roman soldier pulling
the hair of a half-naked peasant with his hands tied
behind him. The Roman is rocked back on his heels—his
head is jerked back in astonishment, his helmet is almost
falling off, and the look in his eyes is shocked—while
the man whose hair he is pulling is looking at him like,
"Man, I am so exhausted, I can't believe you're
trying to get more work out of me!'
That
pair mirrors Jesus and the guy pulling his hair—which
makes you realize that the exhausted prisoner is probably
one of the two thieves who's going to be crucified with
Jesus—but which one? I've been looking at this
painting for 20 years, and most of the time I think
it is the "good" thief, the one whom Christ
pardons from the Cross and tells,"This day thou
shalt see me in Paradise." But some days, the look
in his eyes seems so "FUCK YOU, bastard!"—really
murderous—I find myself wondering if maybe he's
blood-minded for all eternity, and the meek one next
to him is the guy who goes to Heaven. The fascinating
thing about it is that the whole thing is SO real, so
lifelike, that it changes every time you see it—it's
ambiguous, it does not impose a simplistic interpretation
on you, the expressions are those you could see on the
bus, on the subway, anywhere around you in real daily
life, and you don't know one-tenth of what's going on
in those relationships, even though you try to interpret
and sometimes think you KNOW, you know you don't.
A
pair of Pharisees wearing turbans help lead the procession
as it coils up the mountainside, look small and pleased
with themselves; one is blowing a glorious horn, kind
of a cross between a French horn, a hunting horn, and
one of those biceps-ornaments they found in Tutankhamun's
tomb, as if they have turned their backs on he human
drama taking place behind them and 'know not what they
do." They sit their donkeys in a very comfortable
way and look satisfied that they are doing the right
thing—I find myself liking them. Unlike the Romans,
who know they're doing something brutal, the Pharisees
are light of heart, clear about their function, right
is on their side. The horn-player is the happiest creature
in the scene— happy in the German sense, selig—he
is innocent, there is no ill-will in him.
It
a relief to see that Rubens is not anti-Semitic: he
has not slanted the picture toward melodrama, and certainly
has not "blamed the Jews" —nor the Romans,
nor the foot-soldiers who do this because it's their
job.
This
affects how I read the look in Jesus's eyes: it's like
a close-up in a movie, very complicated. For his home
audience, Rubens has made him look like "any one
of us" — i.e., he looks SO Flemish, I know
a guy from Amsterdam who looks just like this Jesus.
The cross sits on top of him in the worst possible way—he
can't possibly get up, and the help others are "offering"
is only pinning his right side down the harder, but
he's not whining about that. He's not whining at all.
He has "agreed" to this: as the creator of
all things, Christ Pantocrator, he was there from the
VERY beginning—and yet as Jesus of Nazareth, he
has to go through with it, and ..... it is a bitter
cup. (Socrates could have said almost exactly the same
thing.)
He
does not notice Veronica —though he is not unkind
to her, he is looking at us; though as I've said, where
the painting is hung in the Berkeley Art Museum, you
have to kneel down in front of it for the expression
to become "real." From that posture, you find
yourself in awe of the MIND of the central figure. He
is in this sense NOT like the waif in the Oxfam poster—the
expression does not accuse you. And it stays alive,
mirrors back to you what's at the back of your mind
today. Most recently, it seemed to me that he is challenging
you not only emotionally but also intellectually: "Don't
you see, this is how it IS?" His expression is
not simple: it's not agonized, not ecstatic, not in
extremis—he's looking at you as both God and man—he's
going through with it, he knows the stakes, he's doing
it for you, and all of us, and the question is, DO YOU
GET IT?
The
challenge is, as Rilke said, "You must change your
life."
Incredible
painting.
...........................
Postscript:
The
turbaned figure at the top of the picture, above Mary
and Veronica, silhouetted against the clouds and turning
to look backward, is a marvellous composition. His head
is like the finial of a spiralling line passing upward
through the bodies of the two women. Indeed, when my
eye first lights on him, he seems to be a woman, for
the pelvis is so wide, his outline is so like an hourglass
or violin - i.e., the classic female shape - he evokes
the image of Lot's wife, looking back with regret on
the cities of the plain. But then I see the donkey's
long straight neck, the plain ridge of vertebra so clear
under their unappetizing stubbly mane, his simple stubborn
donkey intention, and realize that the wide pelvis belongs
to the ass, not the man. This makes it clear who this
is (a Pharisee carrying the staff of office, in charge
of seeing the law is carried out). But the question
what's he turning around to look at is NOT answered.
The
more you look at his noble face, the more he seems to
be pondering something rather than checking out what
went wrong back there. He mostly seems to be responding
to the sound of the horn-blower . The curve of his back
is not parading any importance (as the Romans postures
so loudly ARE parading their authority); his shoulders
are rounded, ample, like Veronica's. The ambiguity of
his pose is infinitely suggestive, and encourages a
further cycle of reflection.
Over
the years I've nicknamed the babies, one leaning into
the scene, the other recoiling: "Pity" and
"Fear" -- after the two emotions that Aristotle
thought tragedy was created to fine-tune in us. Rubens
clearly has this in mind, and has posted the babies
there to remind us, if we needed it, that this is not
realism, this is TRUTH we're looking at.
Notes:
*The
scene is very theatrical - and it comes from an era
when Bernini could design the Cornari chapel and place
statues of the Cornari family in "boxes" where
they observe the altarpiece (the Ravishment of St Theresa)
as if they were at the opera.
**The
stations of the cross is a processional ritual that
goes back to the Crusades. For those who had not made
the pilgrimage to Jerusalem and climbed the Via Dolorosa
for themselves, the Franciscans instituted a series
of shrines that could be used as substitutes. The current
system of 14 became extablished in the Netherlands in
the 16th century. Nowadays, the priest will make his
way around the church, stopping in front of each station,
which will be represented on the wall by a painting
or bas-relief sculpture depicting the scene, and preaches
a little homily appropriate to each, which is followed
by silent meditation before he proceeds to the next
station. As you can imagine, there are now virtual stations
of the cross: here is a link to a devout site: http://frpat.com/stations.htm
The
stations are as follows:
I
Jesus is condemned to death.
II Jesus takes up the cross.
III Jesus falls the first time.
IV Jesus meets his Mother.
V Simon of Cyrene is forced to help Jesus carry the
cross.
VI Veronica wipes the face of Jesus.
VIISesus falla a second ime.
VIII Jesus speaks to the women.
IX Jesus falls a thrid time.
X Jesus is stripped of his garments.
XI Jesus is nailed to the cross.
XII Jesus dies on the cross
XIII Jesus is taken down from the cross.
XIV Jesus is laid in the tomb.
***
To summarize a whole chapter in "An Outline of
European Architecture, by the great architectural historian
Nikolaus Pevsner, Baroque art (unlike that of the renaissance)
was essentially popular rather than intellectual or
designed for an elite. It took the forms which the Renaissance
had made familiar and used them to reassert the emotional
allegiance of the Catholic peoples to their customs,
their beliefs, and the saints who had been protecting
them all these years and were now being called into
question by the reformers. The art is designed to take
thoughts you're familiar with and surround you, ravish
you with sensory PROOF of them. If you were having difficulty
imagining a nun being ravished by an angel, Bernini's
magnificent statue of St Theresa in ecstasy will make
it all clear for you.
Pevsner
finds "the line that curves in three dimensions"
to be the fundamental Baroque structural idea. It is
rich to see him describing a church in Rome (San Carlo
alle Quattro Fontane) as "rolling and rocking"
(p 245) —since it is probably the case that the
best current analogy for Baroque energy, for the application
of fabulous talent and imagination to asserting heartfelt
truths, is to be found in Gospel music and the practices
of the sanctified and Holiness church.
copyright
Paul Parish
The
photograph of the painting is reproduced with permission
of the University of California, Berkeley
Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. The painting
hangs in gallery 6 in the Museum's permanent collection.
There
are links to related works of art on the side bar, top
right.
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