Art and the Aspect of Life

Andreas van Dühren

The life of an artist is simple. As far as the person is concerned it most likely shows the banality, the chaos, all the high hopes and obstacles anybody has to experience. The work though does not only outlast and surpass the paraphernalia of existence – and not only in some historical perspective. It is within the same existence, that the artistic practice, as it is essentially defined by persisting concentration on something beyond anything given, leaves those particulars and contingencies which constitute anybody’s life in some blurring area, irrelevant to what manifests itself within the work. Of course, there is a different point of view, and it is legitimate. As we know that talent is just a small part, explaining little of what makes an artist’s existence, we have to admit that the rest is very similar to those constituents of „anybody’s life“, that it is a special, if not peculiar combination which turns talent into craft, perhaps virtuosity. And it is this similarity, or some blend, of that common and the extraordinary, which makes so many people believe that The Life of … should tell them something about the work, that it makes them understand the importance of Lucian Freud, for example.
Reading William Feaver’s book¹ I wondered whether is it really written with the intention to let us understand anything. This concerns the whole genre of biography, as well as my attitude towards it. To be honest, I remember that from early on I was attracted – and related – to artists and to the sometimes glamorous, sometimes disturbing conditions of their lives; I did like to listen to their stories, also to read about crucial situations, the overlapping of accidental and essential, wit and fate, all those anecdotes … But it seems that my fascination – rather my sympathy – referred exactly to this condensed form of life, its intensification, which I sensed being a paradigm of creativity itself, whereas the method of laying out the data and events of a person’s life as accurately and impartially as possible, by that suggesting objectivity while perhaps just veiling the author’s incomprehension, points in the opposite direction – almost separating the person from it’s life.   
So, there is good reason to suspect any biographer of taking the person – usually a famous one – as a pretext for telling stories, without the need to invent much, and facts without much of a context, alluding to an important work, without the ambition to cope with it on the level of interpretation – diving into some vicious circle of a life signifying art and vice versa. Again, one has to concede that there are examples of a careful investigation, resulting in some panorama which, bit by bit – but each time with sufficient evidence – does explain the connection of life and work: Richard Ellman’s biography of James Joyce is one of those, as far as I remember; perhaps in this case the enigmatic persona of an author was figured out in close correspondence to the highly elaborated objectivity of language – and figured out within the same language. But the exceptions should not distract us from a specific problem, that is, a conflict between story and art.
It is a strange coincidence that, while the distinction between figure and discourse was a postmodernist concept, the element of storytelling has overruled almost every other aspect of art theory; even what has been left from conceptual art – its perversion: the immediate contextualization of anything phenomenal, apparently in order to strip art from its greatest power, immediacy –, confirms this urge for translation, though not in any sense of transcendence: what has been considered medium specificity has turned into mere materialism – according to Comte’s definition, to explain something superior with something inferior. Still, I don’t suggest any hierarchy; it’s just that we should keep in mind this distinction between art and story: these terms refer to two different areas, each of them saving its right, its purpose, its rules, its dignity. It remains a great task for any research, to overcome our inherent reluctance against the notion that, while we cannot do without trying to understand, there are a few matters not to be explained by telling a story, one of these being art – and some may add, also life itself.
What is difficult enough in general – let’s say, in philosophical terms – becomes a specific problem with portraiture, and even more with portraiture in painting. It is hard not to feel compelled by any depiction of the human body to spontaneously accept the most generic similarity – the mere fact that one belongs to the same species – and, instead, to resist being drawn into the sphere of communication, following the basic anthropological premise of two beings of the same kind, in the first moment of their encounter, being prompted to take a certain responsibility, to react, to take measurements, make decisions – if it were just to run or to hide, to attack or to surrender … or, to understand, to find some mutual ground in that sphere; so, even though unconsciously, we step into what is known as history. And painting itself, as it is bound to considerable duration and the more the particular piece of work is shaped by layers, is historic, regardless of any subject, but in terms of its practical implications. It is inevitable, even if we were not interested in Francis Bacon, to rely on psychology to some extent, when we see his portrait made by Lucian Freud.
Of course, the all too tempting analogy, provided by the similar setting – one being more in control than the other, the latter sitting, exposed, reduced to some sujet, though, idealiter, being turned into a subject of increasing empathy –, is rather misleading: the painter is not interested in helping this particular person understanding anything, but in figuring out something worthwhile painting; that person is just a model, an example for something which has to be owned by the artist as much as by any person sitting … and what has to be considered being evident, does not explain anything, it is a picture. And whatever may be regarded as psychology in this context, does not refer to any, more or less hidden, experience, not the past; it relies on the present – this twinkle, that shade on the left cheek, a colour texture that may even be changed or ignored …
These distinctions, obviously, are not consistent with the prevalent notion of psychology – even less, of psychoanalysis: suggesting that the truth may not rest in some abyss, not even in some origin, that it may be found on the surface; that, even if we may concede that there is something like a story, this might as well be constructed on a canvas, and that this kind of story cannot be told, but only seen. Also, and still taking both terms seriously, psychology and truth may be seen in some relation different from the all too comfortable causal nexus which invites us to believe in time lines, chain reactions, patterns of reason, all making sense and ending up where explanation turns into excuse, existence into some resort. It may be challenging – not the least our vanity – to imagine that psychology is not necessarily personal, that truth does not rely on reason.
Another distinction which is difficult to learn is the one between reason and coherence, the latter being the main criterion for truth, but in a rather formal sense – or, to be sensed in a strictly formalistic way, at least in the first state, when it is not about taking sides and when right or wrong is not a matter of morals. And obviously, this is as well the main criterion for judging, even understanding any work of art; it is actually, what defines the work, its inert quality, whereas – as we got used to believing – its artistic importance depends on a variety of circumstances, influences, aspects, that is, us. On the other hand it is hard to believe – as it would make most of us quite uncomfortable – that a person should be perceived formalistically; such an approach might give us a highly realistic image, but we would not get to know the person; in order to do so, we have to recognize it as one of our kind, and we have to get involved. It is unlikely that coherence will define any relationship we may develop with that person – even if one of us manages to turn his life into a work of art, he would be fated to perceive each of his kind mainly as an object. And such a person can be fascinating, he may become a great novelist; he will definitely not write biographies.
So, there are a few reasons why this book does not tell us much about the work of Lucian Freud. It does tell us a lot, though, about a world at a certain time – England during World War II – and the ways in which a particular person became an artist, and one of a special kind: that the most famous portraitist of the century did not start out as an overwhelmingly intelligent or gifted young man, but as someone almost everyone found interesting, that this person had almost always been an object of fascination, curiosity, attraction. It would be too much of a speculation to say that this young man, having grown up with a disposition of prominence – and later, in a situation of an exiled, though privileged family –, developed an ambition for a certain usurpation, an impertinent appropriation of an existence which had been defined by ancestry and estrangement. But it is fair to say that both the curiosity and the sovereignty this artist was so eager to save included some sense for social status; Freud would not be a rare example of charisma deriving from some displacement, that is, the need to overcome it.
This interpretation, as far as it concerns the man, may be more or less true; it is relevant to the artist – even in general and to an extent that it may seem trivial, leading to the notion of repression and compensation being crucial conditions of any creativity; and this would not be misleading, only that it still implies the tendency of tracking down what could be sublime to some common ground. It is something to start with, if one asks oneself why, when it comes to painting, the human figure has remained such a treasured theme. And one does not have to step into the rather idle discussion about the reasons for photography not really coping with painting – that the latter will always offer the more profound insight, the more complete truth, the more compelling evidence … Because, even if we take it for granted, this refers to that object the artist takes as a sujet, and though the particular person may not be chosen arbitrarily, it is not that person’s truth what has to be figured out.
As with most clichés, the notion that any portrait unveils as much of the artist as of the person depicted has its considerable percentage of truth, only that, if one wants to embrace the full truth, one has to clarify what exactly is to be seen, to be read, to understand, that this can not be reduced to features, circumstances of a situation, relationships – alluding to some personality we believe to be familiar with, if not to some vague idea of human condition. The canvas here might be better sensed as an interface, where some transition from one state of aggregation to another takes place.
What seems to be so hard to abandon is the misconception of that relation between artist and model: to believe that on one side there is the eye, and on the other side there is the obvious plus the internal; that there is one who sees something hidden and who discovers it through some miraculous understanding. But the painting is not an execution of what the painter comprehended, not merely the result from an intellectual process; painting itself is primarily – and has to stay in that primary state – an action, and though we may see the painter operating, this is not a surgery, just directed at the – evident – body and – alleged – soul of a counterpart. On this one side there is the eye and the hand, and the latter takes at least the same part in what is going on inside the artist – and what is no less difficult to understand as thinking.
This action – or, even more basically: this activity – of thinking does not just happen by retrieving one system of signs corresponding to some phenomenon; it has to enact itself by finding an expression – of something that is already a translation. It seems that we cannot avoid the issue of mimesis here, only that we should at once make a step beyond traditional art theory; this abstract artist I am referring to represents the principle ambition for establishing what in the English language is called „aesthetic illusion“, but what is to be considered more precisely Schein, all the concrete possibilities of truth.
Now, the painter I am actually talking about can only react to what is given in front of him by figuring out his own thinking – balancing out these possibilities, constrained by momentary states, not the least, by rather random conditions and influences, even matters of taste … And there is that hand, embodiment of the term „technique“ – though Leonardo claimed that painting is a matter of mind –, dealing with unpredictable obstacles or goaded by sudden prospects, the material itself: this too means expressing oneself, as with anyone looking for words. And as is well known – that is, what we can learn from linguists –, the first aim of any language is not to communicate.
So, when Lucian Freud made a portrait of Francis Bacon, for instance, he did not most of all want to tell us something. Like any artist, he tried to create a perspectival illusion, without passing over the genuine chaos. It is, by the way, a remarkably mild reflection on a fellow artist who, legitimately or not, was notorious for his cruel insights. It seems to emphasize whatever hints to harmony this face might have offered, to point out the significant composition rather than the rifts which would have been all to easy to detect; the wax-like calm seals and reveals all the turmoil anyone’s life can bear.
This one portrait, although it may not be representative of Freud’s œuvre, is quite a concise example of the relation between coherence and diversity, both contributing to truth – which, as an idea, is impalpable, but as a quality is nothing but concrete; it is achieved through that relentless concentration, which defines the artist’s practice in general: rather then unfolding a secret, it induces an organized plenitude of virtuality: the smile of La Gioconda does not show anything of what that woman might have thought, it shows the artist’s thinking.
The philosopher should not have any problem with looking at art in terms of life, only that in this context life does not consist of all the apparent movements of travelling, marrying, drinking and meeting other human beings; instead, it refers to an impersonal abstraction manifesting itself in particular. The biographer, of course, has to hang on to a more consensual notion of art and life, one that can hardly afford taking literally what it is dealing with. And Mr. Feather probably thought that one of Freud’s models did resume what it is all about: „It’s that mystery of what people actually are.“