Myths, History, and Art by Basil Markesinis

Author:Basil Markesinis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
Published: 2020-01-30T16:00:00+00:00

The Six-Winged Seraph,8 composed in 1904 while Vrubel was hospitalised in Moscow, deserves closer attention not only because of its importance to symbolists – to whose movement Vrubel belonged for a time, but also because of its use of an amazing combination of dark greens and blues, with touches of red scattered around the golden crown of the Seraph. How impressive this colouring is, becomes instantly obvious to the viewer from the reproduction shown above.

Yet, behind this beautiful if strange image lurks an important but dark Pushkin poem of 1826 entitled The Prophet. In it, we find a theme, which gripped Russians, writers and artists alike, throughout the 19th century. This movement treated artists of all kinds as mediators between the world one perceives through one’s senses and another world, which one understands only intuitively. So, according to this poem, man is struggling, lost in the desert where he can neither see nor hear nor speak the truth. So, when the Seraph approaches him, he removes his heart and replaces it with a burning piece of coal which suddenly ‘fires him up’ enables him to see and understand the world around him, and is now expected to spread God’s word.

Vrubel’s pictures, however, were not only colourful in the very literal sense of the word used above; the survival of many of his pencil drawings or aquarelle sketch reveals a considerable talent in sophisticated drafting. Since in the absence of colour, movement is the major if not the sole way of attracting the attention of the viewer, these ‘lesser’ works deserve careful attention to be paid on lines depicting movement

Among them, I would include and urge my readers to track down and judge for themselves Vrubel’s Rider galloping in pursuit of a deer, drawn in 1891. I insist on this sketch not only because it captures perfectly the gallop of the horse but also because it can provoke more than admiration for the artist’s ability to include much detail in a remarkably free-flowing sketch, but this little gem of a sketch can take viewers with easily excitable imaginations much further, something that always makes a work of art more interesting to study.

For instance, the present author tried to imagine the said sketch with the addition of a small child clinging to the rider’s chest. Such an addition, if well executed, could end up being the ideal pictorial expression of, for example, Geothe’s Earl König poem. Such a combination of drawing with words, enjoyed while simultaneously listening to Franz Schubert’s divine music, offers, especially to imaginative minds, a uniquely rich sensation of varied images reaching the brain through the eyes as well as the ears; a combination which truly brings to life Goethe’s galloping father, desperately trying to prevent Death snatching his boy from his arms.

In the case of the Sitting Demon, this inter-connectivity of various forms of image-generation arises because the painting so closely reflects the contents and feelings generated by Lermontov’s 9poem, composed largely while the poet was doing his military service at the Caucasus.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.