“Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft
brown earth, with the grasses waving above one’s head, and listen to silence.
To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be
at peace.”- Oscar Wilde, The Canterville Ghost
An
unimpressed Ruskin, after viewing Whistler’s Nocturne in Black and Gold- The Falling Rocket (c. 1875), accused
the painter of merely “flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face” with this
unconvincing depiction of firework display amidst a foggy night sky. Whistler, duly
exasperated, quickly sued the art critic for libel. In what followed as probably
one of the most famous trials in the history of art- I doubt there were many - the
defamed artist won the lawsuit, but it was only a pyrrhic victory. The artist
was awarded a mere farthing in nominal damages- an even greater ignominy for one
who squandered half of his fortune to reclaim his dignity and reputation. Whistler
soon thereafter faced long years of bankruptcy.
Despite
Ruskin’s overt incredulity of Whistler’s capacity as an artist, to any
indiscriminate eye the artist’s singular talent is of little doubt. Throughout
his career Whistler had been aiming for a perfect parallel and consonance between
music and art, the two that seemingly so compatible with each other, but are in
fact difficult to be coaxed into unequivocal affinity. Not many of us are
capable of conceiving music with paintings, or vice versa. Our minds are
usually so dull and unimaginative that we need everything to be transparently
articulated so we can fully comprehend the meanings. How often are our
interpretations informed by the title of the painting? Therefore I think
Whistler’s entitling of his work was deliberate. Without indicating that such
and such are “symphonies” or “arrangements,” it is very likely that the
paintings are to be regarded as yet another depictions of ordinary lives and normal
people.
The music
in Whistler’s paintings are usually in mild tempo, gentle flow, very rarely is
there any ripples; even in their most violent we feel that the volume is loud
and strong but not overbearing. Occasionally, we hear silence. The water can be
so still and unperturbed; the ruffles of a lady’s skirt so resistant to the sway
of the power of winds. There underlies every piece of Whistler’s oeuvre a
serene, elegant beauty.
In Symphony in Flesh Colour and Pink: Portrait
of Mrs. Frances Leyland (1872-3), the colours of the lady’s dress and that
of the background are almost identical. What one sees, at one moment, as a
pleasing effect of tonal harmony, turns into an impression of dreary and
unnerving the next. We sense a gradual and peculiar blending-in of the figure
with its background. With her head slightly turns towards the viewers we see,
written vividly on her face, that of unaccountable sadness and weariness. Elegance
proves to be merely a semblance of life, beneath which banality locks up the
lady’s soul to frost. She appears to be even more lifeless than the white
blossoms, the presence of which she listlessly acknowledges. We are not looking
at a portrait of Mrs. Leyland. We are looking at a still-life.
Whistler’s
people are rarely in a good mood. In any frozen moment they often appear
pensive and troubled. In Wapping (1861),
we seem to see a precedent of Degas’s L’
Absinthe (1876). The men chat away, the woman looks on, unamused and
detached. In the woman’s furrowed brows we read self-alienation, we discern
her disenchantment with life frittering away in meaningless leisure. She
suffers within herself a slow death, a barely perceptible process of decaying. Following
her hand that tightens around the rail- some might want to interpret it as a
silent call for help- there reveals a splendid view of harbor. The ships and water
are bathed in yellow sunlight. All are a-flutter in preparation for a glorious
day of sail. Again, there is a marked contrast between the liveliness of the
background and the inanimation of the figures.
We cannot
resist asking: what are plaguing those people? What is the cause of the
nameless malaise? The tranquil beauty of Whistler’s paintings, engendering mostly
from the prevailing use of pearl-like colours and elegant contours, is
nonetheless undercut by a mounting feeling of gloominess. Time dutifully ticks
by just as any other day. The lives of the people trudge on in the wake, only
reluctantly. At any given moment how they wish the day could halt to a frozen
point. Ruddiness would bleed out of the cheeks of those beautiful people. They
are the phantoms, who roam the world like mists upon a lake.
In Nocturne: Blue and Gold- Old Battersea
Bridge (1872-5), time is now the forbidding bridge that watches on whilst a
lone figure, writ small, traverses through the water. Life is now weighing
heavily upon the back of the person, but, unlike most of Whistler’s characters,
he does not cravenly flee from responsibility by transforming into a frozen
phantom. Death is beautiful but life is reality. To be alive is to hear that
subtle palpitation of heart, however small the sound as comparing to the
deafening howls of the river, the thunder, nature, and to know one’s
significance to the world. The lone figure, hastening on to his destination,
hears it all.
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