Bean Kings, the Fantasy Interior and More…

I have three exciting announcements! :)

My article, “The Elephant in the Living Room: Jan Steen’s Fantasy Interior as Parodic Portrait of the Schouten Family,” appears in Aurora: Journal of the History of Art, vol. XI [12/2010].  You can also find “Enchanting the Intellect and the Eye,” my review of A. Georgievska-Shine’s book, Rubens and the Archaeology of Myth, 1610-1620, in the same volume.

Also, my most recent article, ”Bean Kings and Brawling Priests: Pairing Epiphany and Easter in Baroque Haarlem,” [no longer under contract with Ashgate] is now under peer review with a journal.

Here is the abstract for the “Bean Kings” article:

The husband-and-wife artists Jan Miense Molenaer and Judith Leyster generally are considered to have worked collaboratively during their careers. The foci of this paper are two pendant sets painted by Molenaer and Leyster before their marriage in 1636, works not hitherto duly considered in relation to each other, nor understood as parodic commentary on increasingly stratified contemporary culture. I will trace the works’ iconographical, literary, cultural and philosophical sources, beginning with Leyster’s slightly earlier paintings of The Merry Company and The Last Drop of around 1629-1631, and then Molenaer’s set of The Battle of Carnival and Lent and Twelfth Night of around 1634. As we shall see, all four paintings share a common theme: they link the two central festivals of the Christian liturgical calendar—Christmastide and Eastertide.  In European popular culture the two are bound together by an entire socially-leveling carnival season that runs from early December through Mardi Gras or Vastenavond, six weeks before Easter. In their related paintings, Leyster and Molenaer depict carnival celebrations in juxtaposition to the complimentary end of those festivities with the advent of Lent. These works share an overlooked theme of ecumenical Christian humanism and an abiding form of seriocomical philosophy that was burgeoning in select humanist circles of Haarlem and beyond at this time.

Upcoming Publications

I have two contributions in Aurora: The Journal of the History of Art, vol. XI, to be published in November of 2010.

First, my article “The Elephant in the Living Room: Jan Steen’s Fantasy Interior as Parodic Portrait of the Schoutens.”

Here’s a synopsis: The Dutch painter Jan Steen (ca. 1626–79) is well known for his topsy-turvy comic genre pieces. Steen’s handful of portraits, however, are typically viewed as conventionally decorous and flattering to his sitters. Even in his commissioned portraits, I propose Steen includes a comic mixture of genres and juxtapositions of levels of decorum that his erudite sitters found compelling. Steen’s witty, parodic images emulate the ancient serio-comical style. The focus of my paper is Steen’s Fantasy Interior (ca. 1663, Nelson Atkins Museum), a portrait of his friend Gerrit Gerritsz. Schouten, a Catholic brewer become landed-gentry. In the work, Steen contrasts Dutch social classes and family generations, comparing their looks and morals in parodic ways. Steen points to the folly of late-century forms of exclusionary classicizing etiquette and dress, proposing instead a medieval type of sociability as a preferable alternative. Steen notes the disjunctions in the seventeenth-century social fabric and explores them in his portrait. Even as Steen humorously subverts viewer expectation, he practices a comedy of inclusion versus a satirical rejection of “societal outsiders.” Thus, he creates an endlessly entertaining and provocative image that allowed Schouten both to celebrate and laugh at his own success simultaneously.

And second,“Enchanting the Intellect and the Eye,” Review of Aneta Georgievska-Shine,“Rubens and the Archaeology of Myth, 1610-1620: Visual and Poetic Memory.”

You can purchase copies of Aurora via their online subscription form.

Upcoming Publication

For those who might be interested, my latest article, “The Wise Man has Two Tongues: Images of The Satyr and the Peasant by Jordaens and Steen,” will appear in Myth in History, History in Myth, volume 182 in Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History series.  It is due out in August of 2009.

Here’s the article abstract:

“In the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, Aesop’s Fables had widespread appeal in Netherlandish culture. In particular, we find many examples of the “Fable of the Satyr and the Peasant”. In the story a wary satyr rejects the perceived hypocrisy of the peasant, “blowing hot or cold” as the situation dictates—once to warm his cold hands, and again to cool his porridge.

The Flemish artist Jacob Jordaens’ name is most synonymous with representations of the theme, for, by one count, he created a dozen versions of the story in various media.  It was one of his most repeated, most popular subjects.

It is often noted that Jordaens’ images of “As the Old Sing, So Pipe the Young” and “Twelfth Night” served as models for the Dutch artist Jan Steen.  It remains under-stated, however, that Steen also painted the Satyr and the Peasant fable several times in apparent emulation of Jordaens.

In this paper, I discuss the timing and execution of Steen’s paintings as evidence of competition with the older, more famous Antwerp artist. And, I ponder what the combination of Classical mythology and genre—a marriage of elite and popular culture—reveals about correspondances between Northern and Southern Netherlandish humanism.

The answers reveal much about the cross-fertilization between these two artists, and how they used mythology to explore the similarities and differences between their respective Netherlandish cultures and identities.”

And, here’s the book synopsis from the publisher:

“In 1975, a group of Dutch and British scholars published a conference volume of collected essays entitled Some Political Mythologies. That conference sought to examine the political myth as an object of historical study, particularly in the context of the tumultuous and exceptional history of the Low Countries. Thirty years later, a more diverse group of scholars gathered to re-examine the history of Dutch myth-making in light of developments in theoretical and methodological approaches to understanding the role of myths in national identity, moral geography, and community formation. The results of their efforts appear in this volume, Myth in History: History in Myth. The essays cover developments in history, anthropology, cartography, philosophy, art history, and literature as they pertain to how the Dutch historically perceived these myths and how the myths have been treated by previous generations of historians.”

Venus was a Nun

Venus was a Nun: and Other Things Your Mother Never Told You

Though my post‘s title may sound like a Monty Python quip, it derives from a real phenomenon, that of syncretism. Syncretism is the reconciliation of disparate or contradictory beliefs, a term first coined by Plutarch (“Fraternal Love,” Moralia [2.490b], 1st c. AD).  It regularly occurs in visual, literary and philosophical arenas as a means to unite in difference; it is a means to forge powerful compromise in cosmopolitan cultures.

On this subject, back in 1953 W.S. Heckscher published “Aphrodite as a Nun,” an interesting article written in the heyday of the faddish pursuit of tracing the Afterlife of Antiquity down through the Ages.1  Heckscher’s project charts the direct lineage of Cesare Ripa’s emblem of PVDICITIA (Chastity) from its unlikely antique roots in Venus iconography; he begins with the ancient authors Pausanias and Plutarch, continues with the Italian humanist Alciati, et al, and ends with the fertile imagination of Ripa – “the encyclopaedist of emblem makers.” The resultant chaste goddess of love thus epitomizes the cleverly described “strange unity in disparity” that characterized much of the Baroque period in Europe.2

In the headlining example, we can see how two virtually opposing ideas can circuitously be combined into a hybrid symbol.  If Antique ideas could be morphed so completely by the time of their absorption during the Renaissance and Baroque, just imagine how changed some of our ideas of the past have become today, another five centuries later.

Take, for example, the mistaken idea that the three great Monotheistic traditions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) have nothing in common, that they are singular and irreconcilable.  In fact, as Karen Armstrong demonstrates in A History of God: the 4000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam (NY: A. A. Knopf, 1993), each of these religions share parts of their history, scripture, and modes of religious experience.  These Abrahamic religions, as revealed religions, have much to share with each other about how to find divinity within each individual and how to build a community of respect.  That is, if we would take the time to familiarize ourselves with our own storied, received traditions rather than simply reading contemporary, often fundamentalist gloss. In doing so, we might recognize their intersections rather than their divisions.

It will be interesting, following the Olympics and the national election this year, to see how the popular rapport between the Middle East, Far East and West will continue to stir our imagination and perhaps syncretize our cultures over the next few years.  I have great hope it will show us how similar we all are in our humanity, especially as natural and manmade tragedies loom large in the collective consciousness.

For, when faced with great tribulation—as Erasmus of Rotterdam put it—“Concord is a mighty rampart.”

——–

1. W.S. Heckscher, “Aphrodite as a Nun,” Phoenix 7, no. 3 (Autumn 1953), 105-117.

2. Ibid., 105.