The Treachery of Paintings
Contentment, memories, and emotions
There comes a day in your life where you look at a Van Gogh, a Monet, or a Picasso and wonder what exactly am I supposed to feel here? Certain paintings seem stubborn where we are left to wonder on impressions, improvisations and compositions. Sometimes, leaving you with a void of unanchored interpretations.
This article isn’t a promising start on how to engage in that matter. However, this may be an exciting start where you may find the next painting you see less stubborn, moving little with your imagination and not leaving you with a void of anchored interpretations.
Landscape with the Fall of Icarus
Landscape with the Fall of Icarus is a painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. This is an oil painting on a canvas measuring 73.5 by 112 centimetres. There are two tragedies about this painting: the original piece has not been found, or they say, and the second one is, well, if you look closely, you’ll see it. To know about what’s happening in this painting, we need to start with Daedalus. Daedalus, a mythical Greek architect, and sculptor who is well known as the creator of the Labyrinth on Crete, which contained the Minotaur. There are fascinating stories about Daedalus, but this story revolves around one of his two sons named Icarus.
Daedalus and Icarus were kept imprisoned in a tower by Minos, the king of Crete, so that the Labyrinth’s secret would not be spread to the public (I’m basically skipping a fascinating parable here because that deserves a whole another article). To escape, Daedalus created two sets of wings using beeswax for himself and his son Icarus.
Daedalus, before taking flight, warned the boy on flying too close to the sun. But Icarus, the impetuous boy, ambitiously soared high and flew too close to the sun. The beeswax holding his wings together melted, and he plunged into the sea and tumbled down into the waves to his death.
Now for me, this is the exciting part. We see Icarus, the main subject of the painting, not in the middle, but if we look carefully, we can see Icarus’s legs as he drowns in the far distance of the painting (Figure 1) even if it is your name on the painting.
This work has been the subject of much moral speculation. We see ships sailing, a farmer ploughing his field, a shepherd glancing up towards the sky, and gazing at the sky, and not even the angler who is so close gives a whim. Life goes on, even when someone is dying and no matter how important that one is. For someone, a much hostile interpretation might be to wonder whether this reflects humanity’s indifference to other people’s suffering.
No one cares. Life goes on.
The Death of Socrates
This is one of my favourite ones, from reading a canvas left to right or right to left. The Death of Socrates is a painting by Jacques Louis David. This is an oil painting on canvas measuring 129.5 by 196.2 centimetres completed drawing in the year 1787. This story revolves around the philosopher Socrates, as the painting’s name says. Socrates was convicted and sentenced to death due to the accusations, denying the state’s gods, corrupting youths’ minds, and introducing new divinities. Choosing not to flee, he spent his last days in the company of his friends making a statement, treating his execution as his final lesson lecturing about how he believed in the immortality of the soul, and so he did not fear death but embraced before drinking the executioner’s cup of poisonous hemlock.
Few things we can notice in this canvas are Jacques Louis Davi, the painter, idealizes Socrates. Socrates would have been around 70 and was unlikely to have looked quite so fit, but what we see is a middle-aged Greek god’s body. There are also some differences between the story about Socrates’ death as described in Phaedo, which was written by Plato and this painting. In Phaedo, there are 15 people present at his death, while in this painting, there are only 12 other people, possibly a reference to the death of Jesus.
Now I said early this is one of my favourites, that’s because when we read this canvas from left to right (We can read this either way), we see an older man on the bench, Plato (also drawn in the same colour as Socrates), who was absent at the death of Socrates and he was young when Socrates died unlike depicted here. Plato is the one who popularized Socrates, we know Socrates became famous because of Plato’s writings about him and his philosophies, and there would be no Socrates without Plato. An attractive, plausible interpretation is in this context, Plato is thinking back on that day, exploding memory (Figure 5). Behind him, the death of Socrates plays out as memory vibrant and bittersweet.
Mona Lisa
Who doesn’t know this, right? Why is this so popular? Well, only a tiny number of Da Vinci paintings have survived, where this is one of them. Stolen about 100 years ago, and the theft brought attention to the painting. That being said, Look only into her eyes and wonder what emotion she is expressing? Then look at her facial emotions; is it the same emotion? Mona Lisa’s smile has repeatedly been a subject of many wildly varying interpretations. So I’m leaving this one to you.
Last, I acknowledge that any of the above interpretations are not my own interpretations. This article is purely a compilation of little notes and outgrowth that occurred because of my interests in a field in which I’m only a novice.
