A Reflection Paper for my Art Stud 194 class last October 2020.
To aid my reflection on our discussion so far, I decided to visit Italy digitally. To afford a ticket going there and assure my safety to visit is a pipe dream at the moment but thanks to the internet I can feast my eyes on masterful artworks by Italian painters. This is why, even though Marquard Smith listed how things could go wrong on the internet (privacy & security threats, credibility, intellectual property issues, etc.), I want to utilize the internet for my research in practice. And with the initiative of public and private institutions, in this instance Google Arts and Culture, I’m able to digitally walk through the thirty-one halls of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy. The searchability and distributabilty of information (Smith 375-403) have made it possible for the internet to become a plastic time machine. As I click on ‘Explore’, I have transported approximately 10,380 kilometers away and five thousand years back in time without moving an inch and still wearing my pajamas.
In 1560, Giorgio Vasari designed the Uffizi Gallery for Cosimo I de Medici. Originally it was only supposed to function as a home for the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, but it has since become the venue that houses a vast collection of Italian art. In a way, the Uffizi Gallery is the institutional representation of Joseph Alsop’s personification of art history and art collecting with Siamese Twins (Alsop 107-136). The historical and esthetic motive of the Uffizi Gallery in collecting pieces has made it possible for them to create this grand image of Italian art history. A grand image and story that the whole world admires and appreciates because of their efforts in preserving art pieces and making them physically and digitally accessible.
In 360° view, after much tinkering with the awkward angles, I saw the masterpieces from Giotto, Simone Martini, Piero della Francesca, Beato Angelico, Filippo Lippi, Botticelli, Mantegna, Correggio, Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo, to Caravaggio. But I won’t gush over everything and everyone and focus on one – Judith and Holofernes by Artemisia Gentileschi. A dark scene, both in theme and in color, depicting two women beheading a man in his bed. The man is struggling but the woman in the middle is fighting him off while the other woman, with anger in her expression, mercilessly begins to slice his head off with a sword. If I wrote this just a month ago, the visual artist in me will only be able to appreciate the painting as it is. The use of chiaroscuro and facial expressions were enough to give me this aesthetically charged feeling of justice. However, recently a Facebook post stumbled upon my timeline showing this painting and explaining the history behind it.
In reading about Artemisia Gentileschi, I discovered that her visual interpretation of the Biblical story of Judtih and Holofornes was a way of executing justice for herself (Carlton, 2020). At the age of 18, Artemisia was raped by her teacher – Agostino Tassi. A seven-month-long torturous trial happened. She recounts: “He then threw me onto the edge of the bed, pushing me with a hand on my breast, and he put a knee between my thighs to prevent me from closing them. Lifting my clothes, he placed a hand with a handkerchief on my mouth to keep me from screaming.”. Despite this, she was still tortured to force the version of “truth” that the court wanted to hear. In the end, her rapist walked free because of his connections. After the trial, she channeled her anger and rage onto the canvas, with influential and powerful women as her muse.
This biographical approach (Vasari 22-26) to analyzing this painting gave it more meaning and depth. Now, when I look at the painting, I get the same feeling of satisfaction.
If I dig a little deeper and present you with the Biblical context of this painting, I might exceed the limit of your patience. The point is, at this moment, an organic situation (Panofsky 181-195) has happened. The combination of knowledge in Art, History, Autobiography, and Religion has elevated this painting from just a stained canvas to a story worth telling. It is a testament to art being a nexus of phenomena (Potts 119-134), an interconnected system of a vast range of disciplines (Preziosi 7-11).
As I click off my trip to Italy, I come back to my reality here in Manila with questions, concerns, and hope. First, does the National Museum also have this 360° view walkthrough available? I checked their website and there is a virtual tour. However, I have to download Adobe Flash (which is obsolete) or a browser that has JavaScript (which is limited). For a person who is not knowledgeable about technology, they might just give up right there and then. Access to information and materials is a real issue in appreciating and studying Philippine Art. From foreigners owning the best of our artifacts to the inaccessibility of resources – may it be because of the lack of connections or subscriptions. It seems like Philippine Art is that rare old book lost in a vast bookshelf that you can only read inside a library that is accessible by invitation only.
So, what can we do now, as Filipino researchers in the arts? From what I synthesized in our discussions, my positioning as a researcher is a significant factor in how I will study and present the knowledge I have gathered. An examination of the researcher’s intentions and motives is a must to come up with a substantial output that is both subjective and objective.
And as I examine my progress so far, I am not only reminded of the learning goals that I have set for myself in this class, I gravitate back to the reason why I even chose to study again. The memory of my professor, back in 2015, asking me if all I could say about The Starry Night by Van Gogh was how it made me feel, became a pivotal moment in my awakening as an art critic and historian. At that moment, I decided to always look beyond the canvas and discover a factual narrative.
How I started this class was somehow a shot in the dark. I said I wanted to recall, be critical, and ask questions. I quickly discovered that there is not much to recall, as the topics were all new to me. Oftentimes I find it difficult to even digest the readings for their key points, let alone digest them critically. And sometimes, the only question I could ask was what did I just read? But despite all these challenges, my curiosity becomes my driving force. And the hope that someday I can help make Philippine Art reach from point A to point B.
Reference:
• Alsop, Joseph. “The Siamese Twins” in Alsop, Joseph. The Rare Art Traditions: A History of Art Collecting and its Linked Phenomena Wherever These Have Appeared, 1987, 107-136.
• Carlton, Genevieve. “This Baroque Painter Was Denied Justice After Being Raped – Then Got Revenge Through Her Art.” All That’s Interesting, All That’s Interesting, 7 Apr. 2020, allthatsinteresting.com/artemisia-gentileschi?utm_campaign=fbpdpih.
• “Gli Uffizi: Le Gallerie Degli Uffizi.” Pagina Principale, www.uffizi.it/gli-uffizi.
• Panofsky, Erwin. “The History of Art as a Humanistic Discipline,” in Fernie, Eric Ed. Art History and its Methods. London: Phaidon, 1995, 181-195.
• Potts, Alex. “The Artwork, the Archive, and the Living Moment.” What is Research in the Visual Arts? Obsession, Archive, Encounter. USA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 2008, 119-134
• Preziosi, Donald. “Art History: Making the Visible Legible,” in Preziosi, Donald Ed., The Art of Art History: A Critical Anthology. Oxford Press, 2009, 7-11.
• Smith, Marquard. “Theses on the Philosophy of History: The Work of Research in the Age of Digital Searchability and Distributability.” journal of visual culture 12:3, 2013, 375-403.
• Vasari, Giorgio. “The Lives of Artists.” in Preziosi, Donald Ed., The Art of Art History: A Critical Anthology. Oxford Press, 2009, 22-26.