The Power of Art and the Art of Freedom

The one work of art I should love to see, that I know I never will see, is Filippo Lippi’s drawing of his Moorish master.  Done in 1423, when he was seventeen, with a fire-blackened stump on a white-washed wall, it was the portrait that freed him from slavery and saved him from a premature death, chained to the oars of a Moorish galley.  Regardless of it’s technical merit, it must rank as one of the most sublime examples ever of the power of art.

Filippo probably had little idea that the drawing would earn him his freedom, but something drove him to produce it all the same.  Perhaps he had some notion that by flattering his subject he might make his own life a little easier.  He had been a compulsive scribbler since the age of eight.  That is why when the Prior of the Carmelite Convent where he was educated, found that little Filippo had drawn all over his prayer book, he turned him over to a drawing master.  Now, with things at their worst, Filippo Lippi simply turned to what he knew best.

What’s certain is that we cannot ascribe to Filippo, at that time, the popular view of the artist as concupiscent, tormented genius churning out expensive artefacts for the privileged few.  And I doubt very much that his master had any thoughts about preserving the drawing or dismantling the white-washed wall and selling it.  As an investment then, it would have been worthless, but by granting him his freedom, Filippo’s owner made a direct investment in the life of the artist himself. The whole of Filippo Lippi’s life’s-work sprang from that moment, when the master of slaves gazed at his portrait and recognised in it more than his own face.

So how does this square with today’s painter?  Many of us paint as a hobby, a pastime - and we feel there’s something inferior about that idea, don’t we?  But is that actually any worse than painting for money?

What would you rather be? A professional who does it for money or an amateur who does it for love?

Many of us, like Fillippo Lippi, simply feel compelled to do it.  But why?  Are we day-dreaming?  Merely doodling our time away?  Do we mind at all if all we create fulfils its destiny in the dusty space under the bed?  If that’s so, is painting for us just an elaborate form of therapy?

Good paintings, though, seem to work on several other levels too.

Firstly, the colours and marks alone may engage us with their vivacity in the same abstract way as music can.

Secondly, there is the story that the artist is attempting to tell.  It may sound banal but every picture does tell a story. 

When Monet paints a landscape, for example, he might be telling you a story about the passing of time; when Millet paints a landscape, that story might be about the life of the French peasant; when Van Gogh paints his landscape, it could well be the story of his own mental disintegration.

Thirdly and most importantly, every painting needs a viewer, just as every piece of music needs a listener or it might as well never exist. 

And what happens in the mind of the viewer can be utterly magical.

Think of the Moorish slave master.

Be aware of the power of Art in the minds of others. 

And draw and paint, if you feel so compelled, but do it like Filippo, as if your freedom depended upon it.

The Colour of Snow - Part 1

When Andrew announced that he was holidaying in the French Alps over Christmas and asked for some homework, I charged him with the task of finding out what colour snow was. On his return, he emailed me the conversation he'd had with his four-year-old grand-daughter, Jodie, which I reproduce here with his permission:

A: Jodie, what colour is the snow?
J: White.
A: Are you sure?
J: Yes.
A: What colour is the picnic table on the balcony?
J: White.
A: But it's not the same colour as the snow.
J: No.
A: And it's still white?
J: Yes.
A: What colour are the walls of this room?
J: White.
A: And they are a different colour from the snow and the table, and they are still white?
J: Yes.  And those are white (pointing to the kitchenette tiling).
A: But not the same colour as the others?
J: No.

"So there we have a reliable observer,'" wrote Andrew, "unshakeable under cross examination."

Monet, who made a habit of painting the snow, didn't seem to be quite so certain. Here are the colours Monet uses for snow in four different paintings. Of course, they're not single colours but complex juxtapositions of complementaries.

The sample, second from the left looks like the kind of snow that Frank Zappa warned us about and apart from the one on the far right, the others seem way off the mark.  But if we accept that white light stimulates all three colour-sensitive cone cells on the human retina, then looking at snow can give us the impression that we're looking at many colours rather than none. In that case, painting snow need not be a matter of merely blanking in a region of nothingness between other more interesting landscape elements. Instead, like Monet, we can work with every colour under the sun.