Hello, I’m Emily and I am a first year English Literature student, which has completely inspired my love and appreciation of art.
Forster once stated in his essay Art for Art’s Sake that “A work of art – whatever else it may be – is a self-contained entity, with a life of its own imposed on by its creator”. This concisely expresses the value I find in the study of art, in whatever form, as by observing a reflection of life restrained in this “self- contained entity” there is morality and images that stain reality as a consequence. Whilst Literature chronologically creates and constructs these entities in the reader’s imagination, art accessibly vivifies it – presenting the observer with a creation that has evolved from within the entity.
Later Romanticism in literature is, for me, my favourite area of study; the mythic exoticism associated with Keats, Shelley and Byron is derivative of much classical art and studies which transpires through to my preferences of art. Keats once stated in a letter to Benjamin Bailey that “What the Imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth”, it is through art such as the Romantics and the impressionists that I observe this truth most readily.
Their art is the essence of beauty derivative of imagination, and personally in literature and art I find that the mind constitutes the greatest part of artistry.
My love of the Impressionists originally stemmed from my love of Debussy and Ravel. It is through listening to pieces such as my favourite, Debussy’s Des Pas Sur La Neige (Footsteps in the Snow) or Ravel’s Pavane Pour une Infante Defunte, that I began to learn how the Impressionists gradually feed the listener with beauty developing their imagination to create an overwhelming sense of truth just as Keats’ so urgently emphasises.
The Impressionists in art are no different, which is why they are one of my favourite art movements. The ethereal quality that shadows the works of the likes of Monet, Renoir, Degas and Manet has the same essence of beauty as a Shelley poem. The ability to transform a monotonous outdoor scene into an empyreal, pure picture jeopardises the tedious nature of realism.
The open composition and pointillist techniques used by the Impressionists give the “self-contained entity” of the paintings their own internal structure and order that confines itself to the entity. It is within these minute boundaries and restrictions that the observer can learn from the regulations of the imagination. Despite it being rejected from the 1867 Salon on account of them rendering it being incomplete and careless due to the visible brushstrokes, my favourite Impressionist painting is Monet’s Women in the Garden 1866. The patches of sunlight streaming through the foliage, the shadows and pale reflections of the striking white skirts creates such a penetrating image of simplicity and beauty that it is hard not to praise.
I am also interested in the Pre- Raphaelites and their sympathies with the mythical attraction of the past. The Pre-Raphaelites exacerbate an erotic melancholia that fuse together ideas between sex, art, love and death in many fatalist paintings.
I am most fascinated in this in the wild relationship between Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his dead wife Lizzie Siddal, in which he immortalises his love for her in his mourning by captivating her as a continuation of Dante’s Beatrice – haunting the Victorian and contemporary observer ghost like from behind the canvas.
The Pre-Raphaelites grasped the gravitas of the ill – how life can appear heavier for them and yet more transparent which transpires the fleeting nature of life across the canvas with urgency. The Pre-Raphaelites, although they valued it, were moving out of the Imagination that the Romantics so pressingly emphasise. They started to make the beauty that Keats spoke about more of a corporeal, tangible vision by bringing beauty out of the imagination into reality.
For example, in my favourite Pre- Raphaelite piece, Rossetti’s La Ghirlandata 1873. The woman depicted has angels around her whereas Blake would have painted her as the angel or Shelley would have written her as the angel. Robert Browning makes a slight return to the sublime in his poem Porphyria’s Lover as the narrator makes Porphyria ethereal, immortal and divine in her death. This shows the consideration of the sensuous implications of grieving, and obsessive mourning over a body in a period which was overshadowed with melancholy.
I have most recently seen the Coast to Coast exhibition at the York Art Gallery. It was a mixture of landscapes and artists depicting the sea in a myriad of ways; from tranquillity to storms and shipwrecks. The multifaceted nature of the coast and humanity’s vulnerability to its susceptibility to change were made evident in this exhibition.
Being a part of the Norman Rea Gallery has enabled me to immerse myself further among these entities and into a community amongst the beauty and creativity of art.
Written by Emily Quli
We warmly welcome Emily to the Norman Rea's Blog team! Other pieces written by and introducing our other team members will be featured on our blog in the upcoming weeks.
If you are interested in writing for our blog email our editor Rosie Day at editor.normanrea@gmail.com