ART AND ABSURDITY
“The man who cannot visualize a horse galloping on a tomato is an idiot.” —André Breton
The first thing you see here is some odd individuals nestled in a rustic landscape. You will then notice that they are way too big for the shrubbery. You might recognize some of them as they, like the landscape, are icons of Euro-American Modernist painting. But you have no idea why they are all here in one place. Let me explain.
The impressionist background is Camille Pissarro’s c.1867 “The Hermitage at Pontoise.” One of the insets was created a couple of years before the Pissarro, it is Edward Manet’s 1863 “The Luncheon on the Grass” The others were painted afterward. First is Odilion Redon’s 1898-1914 “The Cyclops” Next to come, in 1922, was Pablo Picasso’s “Two Women Running on the Beach (The Race)” then his American contemporary Edward Hopper painted “Office at Night” in 1940.
“The mind loves the unknown. It loves images whose meaning is unknown, since the meaning of the mind itself is unknown.” —René Magritte
Why these? While they seem to our 21st-century eyes, museum-worthy masterpieces beloved and understood by all, they all have ironic undertones, some are even sarcastic. Picasso is simplest, rejecting his avant-garde stance briefly and goes ironic—it is The Roaring 20s and The Jazz Age and he is one of The Lost Generation—and takes a classical theme, Nereids (minor female deities in the ancient Greek pantheon) frolicking, and paints it a classical style
Moving on the Redon, he is playing fast and loose with classicism, too, but he gets more specific; the cyclops is Polyphemus of “The Odyssey” fame, but here, earlier in his story, he has the hots of Galatea (a nereid, by the way) and he believes that because he’s an artist he is as attractive to her as she is to him. Of course, he’s wrong. The Redon shows Polyphemus voyeuring the sleeping and naked Galatea before he makes a fool of himself.
The irony of the Manet, unlike the Picasso and the Redon, caused quite a stir when it was first shown. It’s so loaded with sarcasm that even the old boys at the Academie des Beaux-Arts got it. Again parodying a classical theme this painting X-rates (by mid-19th century standards) the well-loved and suitable for all audiences theme of naked deities and well-dressed mortals picnicking together by subbing Parisian Bohemians for the goddess and her pals.
Finally the Hopper. Here we have a stereotypical office scene where the male bureaucrat studies a document at his desk while the female secretary standing behind him files or retrieves more of them. The irony here is that he, the theoretically superior man looks weak, overwhelmed by an ill-fitting suit, and trapped by his desk and the traditionally submissive “Girl Friday” stands tall and proudly sexual, dominating a phallic file cabinet.
“He was perfectly conscious of the absurdity of his behavior, but he was incapable of changing it. This absurdity was an essential part of him. It was probably the most basic element of his personality.”
― Roland Topor
And how did I pastiche my appropriations like the good postmodernist I am? By inserting a self-reference, of course. Look closely at the “peasant” in the foreground. Peasants figure strongly in landscapes as markers of scale, insignificant compared to the immensity of nature. They are rarely individuals, but are rather just a few splotches of color. Where that sketchy rustic would be, I have put a well-drawn artist—look at his tools of the trade in the cart—who, like the customary villein, has done his work for the day and is slogging home.
I didn’t have to do anything to Picasso’s neo-nereids; they aren’t serving argonauts or running to—or from—artists or cyclopes here. They are already, as we said in the 60s, “letting their freak flags fly.” Then I drew Redon’s Polyphemus no longer perving on the sleeping Galatea, but now “eyeing” Manet’s naked (not nude!) picnicker who, as in the original, looks us straight in the eye. Finally, I put the artist/laborer in Hopper’s secretary’s line of sight instead of her boss. Her downcast expression is no longer from weariness and loathing but from contemplation of the absurdity of life.
The only thing I can recommend at this stage is a sense of humor, an ability to see things in their ridiculous and absurd dimensions, to laugh at others and at ourselves.” —Vaclav Havel
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MoMA | Surrealism
Post-Impressionism: The Beginnings of Modern Art | Wondrium
The Hermitage at Pontoise | The Guggenheim Museums and Foundation
Maurice Denis – Spearhead of the Nabis Movement – The KAZoART Contemporary Art Blog
The Significance of ‘The Luncheon on the Grass’ by Edouard Manet
Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe – Wikipedia
Odilon Redon: Prince of Dreams | Escape Into Life
The Cyclops [Odilon Redon] | Sartle – Rogue Art History
Women Running on the Beach Pablo Picasso
Office at Night, 1940 by Edward Hopper
GALATEA (Galateia) – Nereid Nymph of Greek Mythology
American Writers in Paris During the 1920s: A Lost Generation – Owlcation
‘The Tenant’ by Roland Topor | Intermittencies of the Mind
