During my flight to Berlin (May 2024), I’m reading Cohen-Solal’s book on Rothko. I get to the part where she narrates the correspondence between him and Kuh and how disappointed she is when he ultimately decides to not have it published as an accompaniment to their upcoming exhibition. But, Cohen-Solal says, she understands that she can’t necessarily expect an artist to want to “write glibly about paintings still in progress.” And she’s right, as was he in declining. There isn’t anything more embarrassing than trying to explain your own work. It’s also pointless. Worse, it defeats the purpose. If I’m going to tell you what it is to me, I’m ultimately telling you what YOU see. But there’s a fundamental error in this formula: the artist doesn’t own his work any more than he owns the materials or chemical elements that he uses to make them. The artist is a conduit, a medium, not an end in itself. Certainly an artist must have their own voice and consequently their process, but it is essential for the sake of the work itself that these not be articulated to others. It’s even questionable if an artist should seek an interior or private understanding.
Understandably, this is debatable and intimately linked to the greater issue of what art is and isn’t. It would be surprising if Bosch and Van Eyck didn’t very consciously create their works. They undoubtedly understood their process and they crafted their voice. Didn’t they? Otherwise, how would you instruct your apprentices to copy your style? How could you lead a workshop if you didn’t? How else would you establish workflows involving multiple hands at work on a single piece? Yet these great masters who stood out among their contemporaries and have continued to stand out throughout history had their own voices, their own “something” that made one distinguishable from another; there is simply no way to confuse a Bosch brush stroke with a Bruegel or a Van Eyck. So that—(had to stop as my left ear felt like it would explode).
But then, what does that actually mean? You could say the same thing for any hand-crafted object, a glass, a shoe, a sword… Invariably any human-crafted item will likely have characteristics unique to the person that made them, to a lesser or greater degree depending upon multiple factors.
There is a lot to be said about the individual uniqueness of an artist’s brushstroke, however. The Gemaldegalerie has a magnificent Bosch next to a horrendous copy of a Bosch. The original, the John of Patmos and its remarkable reverse side, Passion of Christ, is an excellent example of what makes an artist unique. Not only unique but also special; what makes an artist an artist. In the Passion side particularly, his strokes are fleetingly light and simultaneously sharp, precise and confident. You can see him flying over the surface, confident, improvising, not fretting over mistakes or imperfections. That energy and that approach play out across the panel and pull you in. It is unmistakably Bosch, even though his grisaille panels are perhaps his least-known medium.
The ghastly copy of the Lisbon Saint Anthony, however, on the wall directly opposite, is almost a perfect example of precisely the contrary. It is thick, clumsy, and premeditated (perhaps as all copies must be). There is no aspect of that piece that can be mistaken for Bosch. And yet a Spanish man who saw it from across the room rushed towards it and exclaimed “Hostia, tío, es un Bosco, estoy flipando!” He clearly doesn’t know Bosch. He was mistaking the kind of things Bosch is known for, interesting hybrid monsters, for the painter and his hand. He was mistaking elements for the whole. Well, he was mistaking a whole lot of things really. So I told him if he was blown away by that rather bad copy, he’d be doubly blown away by the actual Bosch a few feet away. He didn’t accept my observation and insisted on marveling at that terrible painting.
Gemaldegalerie – At least in a museum setting, Bosch stands out among painters of his time because most were unremarkable. So comparing Bosch, or Van Eyck, to an artisan 3 or 4 centuries earlier is misleading as it overemphasizes the linear evolution of technique and technology and hides the real difference in character that exists not only between artisans of a previous era but with other so-called painters of their own. Bosch stands out in his Gemaldegalerie room because he was exceptional in his own time, because he was an artist, whereas the others in the room were artisans.
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