By now we have all heard; in some manner or form, and however abbreviated; the
“Allegory of the Cave” by the Greek philosopher Plato. Written in the 4th century BC as
part of his book The Republic, Plato’s story has stood the test of time, and today – more
than 2,000 years later – it is referenced as often in popular culture as it is in the
university classroom.
It is the analogy through which Plato famously addressed
perception, reality, and the true understanding gained through observation and
education.
In the story, the character of Socrates proposes to his pupil, Glaucon, that there is
somewhere, a subterranean cave in which a group of prisoners have been kept since
they were children. Chained to the floor, and restricted in such a way that they can only
look straight ahead, these prisoners have spent their years staring at the same cave
wall. Far behind them is a large fire, and between this and the prisoners is a walled
walkway on which traverse men carrying stone and wooden replicas of everyday
objects on top of their heads. The light from the fire shines on these objects and
projects their shadows onto the far wall – the wall at which the prisoners spend all of
their days looking. Between the moving shadow projections, and the noises made by
the puppeteers crossing the platform, the prisoners learn to define “reality.”
One day, however, a prisoner is freed, and he climbs from the depths of his
underground cell and eventually makes his way to the cave entrance and the full light of
the sun. Confronted with actual objects (objects in their most perfect and Ideal Forms),
and not just the shadows of representations of those objects, the unfettered man gains
true Knowledge. Thus enlightened, it becomes this man’s duty to return to the cave and
to educate his former comrades about the genuine nature of all things. We do not know
the final outcome of the man’s return to the cave, however, and are left to question
whether or not this man will succeed in bringing the other prisoners to the Light, or if the
prisoners will regard this man – a man no longer suited to the darkness – as a lunatic
and a threat to their complacency.
During the freed prisoner’s journey there is a moment of significance which is too
frequently overlooked. It takes place during those few steps toward the cave’s exit
when the diffuse light of the world outside softly caresses his skin for the first time. For
a moment he is caught between two worlds: the darkness of ignorance, and the fulllight of Knowledge. With everything he thought he knew about the world in tatters
behind him, and with complete uncertainty about the world before him, he is Man at his
most vulnerable.
This poignant moment of light and dark, of hope and extreme susceptibility, of transition
and growth, is a moment that artists have sought to capture for centuries. When a
skilled painter is able to take that instant and portray it on the canvas, the effect is called
tenebrism.
In the visual arts, the tenebrist aesthetic has existed for centuries. It consists of high
contrast imagery in which subjects, lit either brightly or subtly by a single-directional light
source, are placed in scenes predominated by dark backgrounds.
It was first
popularized in the late 16th century by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, but many
artists who either preceded or, especially, followed this Italian Master, practiced
tenebrism. That was the case, at least, until the 20th century, when the contemporary
art world’s infatuation with pictorial flatness supplanted their admiration for dimension
and form, and, even though past tenebrosi – such as Caravaggio, Gentileschi, Ribera,
and Rembrandt – were still held in high regard, young artists were discouraged from
working in that, or any, realism-based style. Not until near the end of that century, when
a renewed interest in Academic art began taking hold, did artists return to that particular
idiom.
At the forefront of this revival of classical art disciplines (of which tenebrism forms a
major canon), has been the American artist Adrian Gottlieb, one of the most talented
and accomplished painters in contemporary Representational Art.
Since his breakthrough, Gottlieb has been considered widely as “a young painter
possessing an Old Master’s soul,” but what was it that could have inspired an artist as
young as he to pursue an artform at a time when it was so undervalued? To inspire him
to travel to Italy as a student and acquire skill in a nearly-lost aesthetic? Perhaps it was
because tone is so important to all of us, whether we are cognizant of it or not. With
twenty times as many receptors for black and white than color in the human eye, and a
brain which has been scientifically proven to read an object’s value well before
recognizing its hue, we can be said to be hard-wired to appreciate patterns of light and
dark. Perhaps his interest was a product of his childhood; it is easy to picture Gottlieb,
born and raised in a rural, central-Vermont town – far from city lights and the
subsequent nighttime light pollution – staring into an ebon evening and conjuring
images out of nothingness (a common childhood past-time of creative individuals). Or
merely, there is just something of the lover-of-mysteries in Gottlieb so inherent and so
powerful, that it would have been anathema to him not to be drawn to the art and light of
Italy – the land which, so enamored with romance and the shadow itself, gave us not
only tenebrism, chiaroscuro, and sfumato, but which also dissected the darkness and
gave to it its proper names (umbra, penumbra, and antumbra). It could be said to be
any or all of these reasons, but truthfully, these are just indicators – smaller parts of a
much greater whole – which provide the answer. Though many years removed from
each other, the commonality which binds Gottlieb and his aesthetic kin together is the
pursuit of Beauty, and Beauty’s call, once sounded, must be answered. This is a motive
which should be universally understood, but that the questioning of Gottlieb’s affinity
with art movements of the distant past can seem so appropriate is the unfortunate
consequence of modern society’s coerced fall into cynicism.
Prior to the 1939 Partisan Review article in which New York art critic Clement
Greenberg declaimed the representational in art, there had been an unbroken aesthetic
chain – from primitive man through the early 20th century – in which Beauty, in Its many
forms, was sought. But, knowingly or unknowingly, Greenberg with his call-to-arms to
the Modern painter, severed this artistic vein, and forced Representational Art (i.e. Art
which, whether it is Realist, Naturalist, Figural, Imaginative, Classical, Idealized, etc.,
relies upon the portrayal of easily recognizable physical objects to convey meaning) into
a comatose state which lasted nearly six decades. In a time when the world was
unquestionably facing great “ugliness,” Greenberg called for truth in art – for a reflection
in art of the horrors which had been let loose in the world, and of the emotions such
horrors engendered.
There was nothing inherently wrong with this avenue of
expression, but, in the resulting widespread marginalization of Representational Art
caused by Greenberg’s adversarial stance, the art world and the world in general were
done a disservice. Although it may have been true that Beauty in art had not
necessarily reflected reality, It had, by Its simple presence – even in paintings with
”ugly” subjects – offered the world the promise of a place and time that could be better.
Greenberg had conflated Beauty with the merely pretty, and in his condemnation of the
artistic pursuit of Beauty, had re-opened Pandora’s Box, and forced Hope back inside.
Of course, Greenberg was a champion of the Abstract in art, and by eschewing
Representationalism and Beauty, he had abolished the criteria by which art had been
evaluated for centuries. The efforts of philosophers and mathematicians from the past –
people like Aristotle, St. Augustine, Pythagoras, da Vinci, Alberti, and Aquinas – to find
commonalities in Beautiful objects were ignored, and questions of proportion, rhythm,
composition, pattern, harmony, and even basic technique, were rendered relatively
moot. And what this removal of measurable standards eventually led to was a shift in
burden from the artist to the spectator as to the meaning of a work; no longer was it
necessary for the artist to render his or her work visually communicable – any meaning
deciphered by the audience was satisfactory.
If we are to examine Adrian Gottlieb’s work then, it is important to understand that the
familiar assessment of art established in the past century provides for an insufficient
method of critique.
Though unquestionably an artist of the moment, by his reconnecting to the chain of pre-20th century Representational artists, Gottlieb has set his
paintings firmly within parameters of a past – and perhaps more sophisticated – era,
where technique, purpose, readability, and the elements of Beauty matter, and all have
value.
To begin with an overview of Gottlieb’s body of work, the most striking aspect so
common to his paintings is his use of the aforementioned tenebrism. Though at first it
may appear that pictures so imbued with darkness would be easier to create, that is
actually not the case, and in these paintings we see exhibited an artist with a mastery
not only of draftsmanship and design, but also of his medium. This is because
tenebrism, with its extremes of contrast between highlight and deepest shadow,
requires exactness; any misaligned curve, any misplaced shape, or any misdiagnosed
value would arrest the eye and damage the unity of the work. From his earliest student
paintings, through his portraits, and his most recent genre pictures, it is evident that
Gottlieb has an almost preternatural ability to balance all of these elements.
These formal aspects can be seen put into practice in a work such as The Vantage
Point, painted by Gottlieb in 2010. Even if the figure were not located centrally on the
canvas, the viewer would be led to the figure through the positioning of contrasts, which
by their very nature always attract the eye. Beginning at her hairband, the lightest
object in the painting, the viewer is drawn to the large patch of light skin on the girl’s
upper chest, and down the contour of the girl’s left arm. This curve continues from her
elbow through her hip and left thigh, and then through the careful control of value, is
redirected toward the left of the image, instead of down her calf to the bottom of the
picture plane. From the left side of the picture, a tree pushes the eye upward where it
meets at the curve of a deliberately shaped dark cloud in the upper left-hand corner and
is forced back to the headband, along her cheek, and finally to the small piece of red
fabric which appears almost like a blossom protruding from her left hand. This is a
carefully designed spiral, not unlike that of the Golden Ratio, that takes hold of the
viewer and guides him or her through the painting. If not perfect, the viewer’s eyes
would leave the canvas and not stop to contemplate the image.
This is just as true for a work like Morning Roses, where once again the entire painting
would fail if any part were incongruous. Here Gottlieb shows his skill at painting nature
by placing his figure in a backdrop of carefully delineated verdure and tenderly rendered
flowering roses, where the shadows on the skin and on each diaphanous petal are so
well painted, and so full of life, that it feels as if we could whisper in her ear, or pluck the
blossom right from her grasp. Even her left hand, caught as it is in half-light without
highlight to lend it form, is so tenable as to make a viewer think he could reach out and
take hold of it – an achievement which any painter would find difficult to execute. But
despite the elements which would lend to this work a greater sense of reality and less of
the mythic than in one such as Vantage Point, each part of this work is also
painstakingly orchestrated by Gottlieb; nothing in this work is simply left to nature either.
From the intelligently controlled falloff of light and the carefully placed contours, to the
rhythmic placement of organic shapes and repeated patterns of color, are all exquisitely
developed and arranged.
Such control is no less apparent in works of reduced complexity, as in, for example, the
Rembrandt-esque portrait, A Long Life. Here the audience’s attention is engaged and
kept by the light oval form of the subject’s head, right hand, and white shirt, which exist
as if an island in the center of the canvas. The darkness which surrounds this central
mass discourages the eye from leaving the main focus. But in this larger countenance it
is also easier to appreciate Gottlieb’s virtuosity with oil paint itself. Within the overall
value scheme of the flesh and clothing, Gottlieb’s ability to manipulate his medium in
order to capture nuanced tones is readily apparent. Stretching the capabilities of the
paint from the deep shadows on the neck to the bright reflection of the sitter’s nose, not
once are the subtleties of a naturally-lit model sacrificed; the colors are all clean yet
delicate, and always in their proper place. This enables Gottlieb to capture through the
atmospheric mood of a tenebrist image, the age, confidence, strength, and melancholia
of a noble man in the height of his autumnal years.
With Gottlieb’s design skills and technical abilities thus understood, and with the
palpable disconsolate aura of tenebrsim in mind, it is then possible to delve deeper into
the meaning of the artist’s images. Second Thoughts, for example, is a painting
masterfully executed, and yet layered with multiple messages. The first of these,
though possibly only clear to the artist or art historian, is the figure’s position itself.
Seated at angle in her chair, with elbows propped on a cushion, and her chin resting on
the back of her left hand, the figure is a direct homage to Edmund Charles Tarbell’s
Reverie (1913), a paradigm of traditional painting which is now part of the permanent
collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. In so depicting his subject in the same
pose, Gottlieb has not only acknowledged his influences, but has declared to his
audience his place within the framework of art history; he is not the product of the
Modernist movement, but the successor to a long and brilliant line of Representational
artists. From there, however, the image is entirely Gottlieb’s own. Following the curving
line from the figure’s hairline, down her shoulder, and extending from her knee, the
viewer is directed by the diagonal line of a suitcase on the floor to the doorknob, and
finally to the model’s hands where she plays with a wedding ring, slipping it on and off
her ring finger. Her expression, so skillfully captured, shows the subject obviously lost
in deep thought, but what is it she contemplates? The title explains that she is having
Second Thoughts, but the situation she is in might be slightly ambiguous. It could be
that the young woman, with bag packed, is awaiting her fiancé to arrive and to take her
away for an elopement, and she is questioning her own resolve to embark on this new
life. Or perhaps she is a newlywed, dressed in her nightgown with her trousseau
propped against the door behind which await her husband and the uncertainty of a
marriage bed, a new home, and a new family. But in either interpretation the painting
speaks of women, and of the specific doubts and uncertainties facing them at this
moment of transition. That this painting was created prior to the artist’s own marriage
possibly represents concerns for his future wife’s feelings, and also an universal
groom’s anxiety that his bride might reconsider her decision to marry.
However, if we discuss Beauty and, in particular, Gottlieb’s work in the previous manner,
we are reducing it only to a series of quantifiable observations, and this is a limited and
inadequate position from which to view art. Though there are certainly traits which may
be found to be common among artworks universally considered to be beautiful, these
traits alone cannot make a great painting, just like exemplary technique alone cannot
make an exemplary artwork (though conversely, a great work will always show itself to
possess great technique). Gottlieb's work is beautiful, but this is a case where
Aristotle's maxim, "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts," must be applied; and
this is also an argument for why his artwork – truly all artwork – should be experienced
in person and in its original form (sadly, a print in a book, no matter how good, is never
a sufficient substitute).
There is just something undefinable in great art which
approaches the sacred, and which exists beyond the measurable.
This was the one thing that Greenberg understood, even though he was somehow
unable or unwilling to realize that it was just as applicable to Representational Art as it
was to the Abstract. This concept of aesthetics to which he subscribed was borrowed
from the German, Immanuel Kant, who believed that Beauty was not physically present
in a work of art, but a feeling of pleasure that originated in the viewer. It was something
which overcame the viewer when he or she found themselves, as modern philosopher
Roger Scruton writes in his book Beauty, “in the presence of something vastly more
significant than our present interests and desires.” In other words, experiencing Beauty
is sensuous, yet other-worldly: we feel that something is Beautiful because it appeals
to our higher nature – regardless of who made it, its usefulness, or its monetary worth.
Plato held similar beliefs that Beauty existed on a higher plane, and if we return once
more to the Cave allegory, we will find that it was his opinion that Beauty, like Truth, was
an Ideal, and resided in the Light of the world outside the cavern. All men might aspire
to reach the Light, but it was only through the assistance of the enlightened
Philosopher-King, the hero who was the first freed from the shackles of the underground
prison and who had found his way outside the cave, that Plato felt Man might gain
entrance to the land of True Knowledge. But these beliefs also caused Plato to distrust
art, which, at its worst was a copy of a copy of the Ideal (like the shadows on the cave
wall), but at its best, was so like the Ideal, so much an instrument of Beauty, that it could
mislead people away from the Light and cause them to follow the artist’s conception
instead. In this, perhaps, Plato was a bit short-sighted.
If the darkest recesses of the cave represent everything which is false, and the light of
the world outside is Truth, then surely where the artists stand must be near the grotto’s
exit, in the realm of Belief. Gottlieb and other painters like his fellow tenebrosi are not
Philosopher-Kings, but from their position, they can "see" the world of Light. They are
the ones perfectly suited and perfectly situated to capture Mankind’s portrait as he
struggles toward Understanding, or, through design and imagination, interpret the world
outside. They are the Observers, the visual recorders, who spend hours each day at
their easel in careful study, scrutinizing their subjects to learn all they can about them.
But they are also the Cartographers plotting destinations on Life's map. The paintings
these artists create, as reflections of the reality of the human condition and also of the
Ideal and Beautiful, teach us about who we are in the here-and-now, and offer us a
glimpse of who we can be at our best. Art is then the inducement the bona fide
Philosopher-King must use to draw all of us from our own caves. True Art, after all,
should be a clarion call, beckoning us to enter the realm of the Ideal.
Artists like Adrian Gottlieb have done their part. But it is left to us to decide if we will
answer the plea of their artwork, allowing it to change our perceptions and moving us
closer to the Light, or if we will choose to remain closed to the Beauty of art,
underground and misguidedly content in the dark.