Archive for category: Focus On

After a deep discussion of Jacques-Louis David’s (that’s Dav-EED, the French way) Oath of the Horatii in my 19th century art class, I am absolutely convinced that this might be the most perfect painting ever painted. OK, maybe that’s a little bit of an exagerration… Or is it? My list of reasons why it’s perfect, below.

Jacques-Louis David, The Oath of the Horatii, 1784

The Three Reasons Why Oath of the Horatii is Perfect
1. The composition. At first, it seems simple. Deceptively simple. It illustrates the story, certainly — of three youths swearing their allegiance to Rome, their city, with the blessing of their father, about to go off to war against the three sons of another family. To the side, the women and children of the family mourn the family sons’ departure, foreshadowing the deaths about to take place.What seems to be plainly laid out is actually painstakingly so. Set against a dark, muted classical background, the painting is divided into three distinct parts, each aspect clearly delineated by the background curves of an archway. From left, there is the trio of young men, leaving for war; in the center, the father acts as a bridge between the outside world and the world of the family, which is represented by the women in the right side of the painting, whose undulating curves form a melancholic collection of curves that act as a stopper for the composition. David’s placement of figures and forms in the canvas act as a way to tell the story of this history painting clearly, but also offer more subtle hints to the educated viewer, who knows what is to happen next.

2. The contrasts. The Oath is a study in contrasts: male and female, young and old, sheer will and sheer sadness. In the shapes of the figures of the men and women, the difference is clear: the men are straight, in shapes of solid triangles, wheras the mass of women to the right is more fluid and oval, curving arabesques of shape that show the contrast of their melancholic worry to blind, noble determination of the men.Within the stances of the men are the visible signs of how they differ in age and emotion. The three youths are stoic and firm, built of strong muscle and straight diagonals, making up a triangle of determined confidence. Meanwhile, though he is equally as overcome with emotion, their father’s knees buckle slightly; he leans backward in a slight curve; his feet are not on parallel ground — he is, in other words, older.

3. The details. My favorite part of the Oath, though, are its details. There are two that are my favorite, that bring even more to the story of the painting. First, look closely at the three sons and their swords:

Jacques-Louis David, The Oath of the Horatii – Detail, 1784

The end of the story is that the sons triumph over the rivaling family. But at one expense: the death of one of the sons of the rivaling family. This is particularly a bummer for the women of the Horatii family, because one of the sisters of these three brothers (who is pictured at the right of David’s painting) was betrothed to them. After they return victorious, the “widowed” sister curses Rome, distraught over the death of her beloved. So enraged by the curse of his country, one of the sons murders her in cold blood. (After this act, their father makes a speech defending this son’s honor. Oh, men, and ancient Rome…)

Anyway, can you guess from the detail above which son commits this atrocious deed? Well, if you’re looking closely, you’ll notice that one of them is enshrouded in shadow, his gaze downcast, dark, and fiercely determined. Not only this, but two more details related to this kinda evil son: his hand, which reaches above those of his brothers to the highest point. To me, I get the sense he’s ambitious to the point of obnixiousness — pushy and ruthless. And finally, check out the swords their Daddy Horatii holds: Two are bone straight, reflecting the noble honor of the sons — and one is slightly curved, pointing almost maliciously. Bet you can’t guess to which brother I suspect that curvy one belongs?

The last detail is one that was pointed out to me by my professor, a detail whose poignancy simply breaks my heart:

In the figure grouping of the nurse and the two children, we see her enshrouding them protectively with the symbolic coat of night as she mourns, hiding their faces. But one of the children, the eldest boy, pushes her hand away from his eyes as she tries to shield, to protect him from the sight of this dangerous war — his huge black eyes are transfixed by the scene before him, utterly engrossed in the Oath that’s taking place, already swept up in the blind honor, the grandiose scene happening before him, as if he’s ready himself to take an Oath, leaving behind the world of women. David even places this figure group at the very edge of the third division of the painting, along the column that separates the women from the “bridge” of the father into the dangerous realm of the nobility, and danger, of war.

This series on Japanese art history — a subject sadly underrepresented in most introductory art history courses — was originally published on the culture blog Paperfoxes Run Run. Thanks Sarah!

Part 1. THE JOMON PERIOD

Flame Style Storage Vessel, c. 2500 BCE, Cleveland Museum of Art

Things are blurry in 10,000 BCE, but right now archaeologists are pretty sure that the oldest pottery vessels ever found come from Japan. Historians tend to have extremely clear dates for the history of Japan, and even though things are muddy way-back-when in the Jomon period, most historians divide the period into roughly three parts: Early Jomon, Middle Jomon, and Late Jomon — makes sense. Some even divide it further, but there’s really no need to for our purposes. Why is pottery like this interesting? Well, it tells us a lot about the people who made them — stuff we could never know without the vessels’ existence.

Vessel, Early Jomon Period, Tokyo National Museum

Early Jomon
First, let’s look at an example of early Jomon work (what you see above is Middle Jomon; we’ll get there). These simple, portable vessels (left)were made by hand by hunters and gatherers — that is, a people who moved around, and weren’t settled — using the coil method, around 10,000 BCE. The coil method is a fancy term for rolling ropes of clay and then ‘coiling’ them into a vessel-shape and smushing the sides flat together. Most of these vessels have patterns impressed into them using common objects like fabric or rope — in fact, “jomon” means rope in Japanese, and thus came the term for the period itself.

Middle Jomon
A huge shift occurred around 2,500 BCE, when vessels like the one at the top of this article appeared. You can tell these vessels are much more fragile, with elaborate protrusions and more decoration. Moreover, they’re extremely well preserved, not an easy task for delicate low-fired pottery. So, from vessels like these, we can guess that our Jomon friends became more sedentary, settling in one place long enough to create ceremonies in which vessels like this — dubbed “Flame-Style” — would have been used.

Statuette, Late J?mon Period, Tokyo National Museum

Late Jomon
Historians date the final period of Jomon to around 1,500 BCE. Ceramic dolls like this (right), called doku, were made as well as vessels, and we believe they were part of an elaborate ritual, perhaps a burial one, or even one that had to do with sympathetic magic, in which the doll would ‘receive’ the illness of a person. Notice in this large-eyed example the missing leg — many of these elaborately decorated dolls have limbs broken off, which hint at its ritual purpose.

Unfortunately, since this stuff is so old, we don’t have concrete information about any of it — no writings of any kind exist. But even though we can’t say with absolute certainty what any of these vessels or dolls were used for, they give us enough clues for us to make very well-educated guesses.

Go more in depth at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Timeline of Art History: Jomon Culture essay.