Archive for PBS
Death of Marat: Wizardry of Images
(Simon Schama’s Power of Art, PBS, Mondays, 10 p.m.)
“The Power of Art” with Simon Schama was a good diversion into the art history world for a Monday evening. But I take issue (and what else would you expect)…? Yes, I dare criticize the latest PBS art history guru in a way I would never DARE talk back to Sister Wendy.
The first installment in this 8-part series was regarding Jacques-Louis David, the so-called propaganda painter of the French Revolution. Above, his painting of the revolutionary icon and tyrannical figure Marat portrays the subject in Messianic light.
And Schama HATES David for propagandizing. Doesn’t forgive him one bit. One simply can’t use art for that purpose, he states, but why not? I ask. So what if he did, I ask. David was a product of his environment and his own mind, which was horribly scarred and humiliated. Of course he would become a devoted, if terrible, protector of those who would challenge the status quo which disabled him…of course David would paint Marat to look angelic, martyred.
That the image became associated with Revolutionary virtue attests to the mindset of the time, not necessary any artistic villainy. How can we place the artist under the jurisdiction of authenticity — when has art ever been done for art’s sake, purely, and not filtered by the response of the artist’s mind?
Of course it’s despicable. If David had painted Marat as he was: ugly, tyrranical, and plagued with a skin disease instead of milky-white, it would have been a different picture. But that wouldn’t have been true to what was going on in David’s mind, and THAT would have been a breach of art, in my opinion.
I’m guessing Sister Wendy might have something more interesting to say about David. Let’s bring her back, shall we…?
What’s more interesting about all this is the power of image to create reality. The artist, in this case, created an image with resounded with the desires of the French collective in 1789. David’s image of Marat may have been manipulative, but only so far as the collective allowed it.
Which just goes to show: be careful what you wish for…or what you dwell on…the universe may just hand it to you.
