The artists' swan song
About the power of the late works of the great names in art history.
"The swans, when they feel they must die, sing at that moment more loudly than they have ever done before. Does Plato's parable of his master Socrates on the verge of death also apply to artists?
If old age is today a lasting age, it brings together different experiences. This leads us to think about old age rather than old age. There is a great deal of work on old age in medicine and sociology, but thinking about the old age of the artist is still in its infancy. What does age do to creation? Is creation subject to a biographical continuity as recounted in the lives of artists? Do ultimate creations suffer from the physical decline of their author or, on the contrary, does the sensation of an imminent end stimulate them?
A collective reference work published in 2021 and entitled "Art at the risk of age" attempts to answer these questions by crossing disciplines and fields, from art history to sociology, from neurology to psychoanalysis, and by giving itself a broad periodization, from the Renaissance to the present day. The book opens with the general critical modes of apprehension of late works. This is followed by an analysis of the conditions of creation and its difficulties for a number of older artists. Specific forms of self-portraiture (Rembrandt, Ingres, Dix), the insistence on transformations of the body by female artists (ORLAN, Cindy Sherman), the repetition or return to earlier motifs (El Greco, Delacroix), or even games with death (Duchamp) illustrate the diversity of attitudes and approaches. Complementing this approach, the reception of these late works is studied in the qualification of "erring ways", whether it be Poussin's trembling hand or Titian's "finger painting" and, quite simply, the quality. In the final section, the volume opens up to the age of the stage and the screen.
It is this fascinating subject that Daphné Bétard brilliantly develops this month in her dossier for Beaux Arts Magazine. "Too feverish, too obscene or created with a trembling hand... For a long time, the last works of artists were hidden for the wrong reasons, referring to the imminence of our own death," the journalist writes in the preamble. "However, these periods were often those of fertile and uncompromising creative struggles, when Henri Matisse invented his paper cuts, when Jean Dubuffet gave in to his gestural impulses and when Louise Bourgeois returned to childhood. And to announce a "zoom on the ultra-free ultimate work of the artists".
One can enjoy reading all these reflections, which are based on the book "Art at the risk of age", of course, but also on the Deadline exhibition held at the Musée d'Art Moderne in Paris at the end of 2009 and beginning of 2010, the catalogue of which is still accessible, as well as on two articles that can be found online, which are as clear as they are richly documented: La créativité des peintres vieillissants. L'œuvre tardive de Picasso, Klee, de Kooning, by Simone Korff-Sausse, on cairn.info , and Fleurs de cimetière - Réflexions sur l'œuvre ultime, le "style de vieillesse" et le "style tardif", by Maria Zerar-Penin, on journals.openedition.org
It took time, and his contemporaries never resigned themselves to it, but we came to appreciate Titian's (1488-1576) last manner, when he began to leave the brushstrokes visible, or even to apply his paint with his finger, he who had ruled Venice all his life with his works of art for sale consisting of polished portraits and perfect female beauties. In any case, the question of the late work was only raised by art historians and critics in the course of the twentieth century, jostled as they were by the revolution of the avant-garde, eager to see works of art differently than they had always been seen, that is to say, by the yardstick of a life and a career. It was now a matter of considering them "for their intrinsic, singular, unique character". To Titian were added Rembrandt (1606-1669), Goya (1746-1828) and Turner (1775-1851). The first having rid himself of all superfluity in his last portraits, the second providing the soil for the future daring of Romanticism and modernity by painting his famous black paintings of dizzying depth on his walls, and the third, first and foremost a "painter of light", put the depression and melancholy that eventually consumed him at the service of an outpouring of sensations in his landscapes, carried away by the raging natural elements, which would feed the Impressionists "and in which some have even detected the beginnings of abstract art". ..
Finally, "far from embodying wisdom or accomplishment, the last works would be marked by a profound intranquillity", notes Daphné Bétard. "A fertile turmoil that allows the artist, after having sought to prove and impose his vision of the world, to free himself from all discourse and the rules in force in order to abandon himself to his creative impulses alone. As proof of this, the journalist cites the exhibition "The Ultimate Work: from Cézanne to Dubuffet", which brought together Bonnard, Rouault, Braque, Matisse, Picasso and Miro at the Maeght Foundation in 1989. Miro (1893-1983) ended up burning his canvases, painting them with his fists, walking on them, to make a masterpiece of his last large format, Hope of the condemned to death.
The decision to oversimplify forms "in order to get to the heart of the matter", according to Daphné Bétard, exults with Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), whose crude works of 1970 caused a scandal. But his great rival of modernity, the father of conceptual art Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), bid farewell in a completely different way. He prepared a work in his studio that was not to be unveiled until a year after his death... and which will therefore intrigue for eternity, since he will never be able to give the keys to it.
In the realm of death-defying contemporary art, we also love Christian Boltanski's (1944-2021) rocambolic idea of selling the end of his creative life as a life annuity, or James Lee Byars' (1932-1997) idea of inviting spectators to a staged performance of his death three years before it takes place. And what about 94-year-old Yayoi Kusama's idea to have an automaton representing her draw her signature polka dots continuously in the window of the Louis Vuitton boutique on Place Vendôme in Paris? This is a nod to mortality that resonates joyfully with the worrisome questions of today's world linked to artificial intelligence. Will we find works of art for sale on the art market signed by the Japanese artist... after her death?
Illustration:
Titian, Allegory of Time Governed by Prudence, c. 1550-1565, oil on canvas, 75 x 68 cm.
National Gallery, London
Public Domain