Posthumous fame of El Greco

El Greco (probably a combination of the Castilian and the Italian language for "The Greek",Ref_label|A|α|none 1541 – April 7, 1614) was a prominent painter, sculptor and architect of the Spanish Renaissance, whose dramatic and expressionistic style was met with puzzlement by his contemporaries but found appreciation in the 20th century.cite encyclopedia|title=Greco, El|encyclopedia=Encyclopaedia Britannica|date=2002]

Years of obscurity

El Greco was disdained by the immediate generations after his death because his work was opposed in many respects to the principles of the early baroque style which came to the fore near the beginning of the 17th century and soon supplanted the last surviving traits of the 16th century Mannerism. El Greco was deemed incomprehensible and had no important followers.M. Lambraki-Plaka, "El Greco-The Greek", 49] Only his son and a few unknown painters produced weak copies of his works. Late 17th and early 18th century Spanish commentators praised his skill but criticized his antinaturalistic style and his complex iconography. Some of these commentators, such as Acislo Antonio Palomino de Castro y Velasco and Ceán Bermúdez described his mature work as "contemptible", "ridiculous" and "worthy of scorn".Brown-Mann, "Spanish Paintings", 43
* E. Foundoulaki, "From El Greco to Cézanne", 100-101]

The views of Palomino and Bermúdez were frequently repeated in Spanish historiography, adorned with terms such as "strange", "queer", "original", "eccentric" and "odd".E. Foundoulaki, "From El Greco to Cézanne", 100-101] The phrase "sunk in eccentricity", often encountered in such texts, in time developed into "madness".

Re-invention of El Greco (19th century)

In 1838 the Spanish Museum of king Louis-Philippe was inaugurated at the Louvre on January 7, 1838. In 1835 Louis-Philippe had sent Baron Isidore Justin Séverin Taylor to Spain, in order to purchase, on his account, a representative group of works from the Spanish School. Taylor enriched the king's collection with nine paintings by El Greco: four with religious motifs, four portraits and an Evangelist. [C. Marinas, "La Galerie Espagnole", 168-175] Among 450 paintings by 85 Spanish painters, the French public was able to see typical works of El Greco for the first time. During this period the idea that El Greco represents the beginning of the Spanish School was formulated for the first time in an allusive manner. The ruling ideology if the founders of the museum placed El Greco at the beginning of the Spanish School, and gave him more or less the title of its founder. In 1838 the An of Spanish painting was already El Greco while the Z was Goya.E. Foundoulaki, "From El Greco to Cézanne", 98, 102-103] Nevertheless, Murillo, Velázquez, Ribera, Cano and Zurbarán were the painters to whom critics, artists and public referred reacted favorably to the Spanish Museum. Only a small élite preferred El Greco and Goya. [P. Guinard, "Baudelaire, le Musée Espagnol et Goya", 321]

With the arrival of Romantic sentiments, El Greco's works were examined anew. To French writer Théophile Gautier, a French poet, dramatist, novelist, journalist, and literary critic, El Greco was the precursor of the European Romantic movement in all its craving for the strange and the extreme.J. Russel, [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE5DC1739F93BA25754C0A964948260 Seeing The Art Of El Greco As Never Before] ] Gautier would esteem and admire the later technique of El Greco, connecting him to art contemporary with himself: "The best works of his second period resemble the romantic paintings of a great deal". [T. Gautier, "Voyage en Espagne", 96-97, 217] The critic Zacharie Astruc and the scholar Paul Lefort helped to promote a widespread revival of interest in his painting.

It was precisely then that the myth of El Greco's madness came into being. The second Romantic generation, the adherents of the Theory of art for art's sake, were in search of the fantastic and the rare, whatever eluded norms and limitations, what resisted interpretation and was unique. Consequently, madness was re-evaluated. The myth of El Greco's madness came in two versions. On the one hand, Théophile Gautier believed that El Greco went mad from excessive artistic sensitivity. [T. Gautier, "Voyage en Espagne", 217] On the other hand, the public and the critics would not possess the ideological criteria of Gautier and would retain the image of El Greco as a "mad painter" and, therefore, his "maddest" paintings were not admired but considered to be historical documents proving his "madness". During the operation of the Spanish Museum, El Greco became the ideal romantic hero, the gifted, the misunderstood, the marginal, the one who lost his reason because of the scorn of his contemporaries. The critics of "Courrier Français" and "La Presse" would retain the image of El Greco as a "mad painter". His "madest" paintings were not admired but considered to be historical documents proving his "madness".

In 1867, Paul Lefort, an expert on Spanish painting, dedicated an eight page article to El Greco with engravings of four works. In this article, Lefort extols El Greco, refuting the all powerful commonplace of his "madness" and proclaiming him the founder of the Spanish School.E. Foundoulaki, "From El Greco to Cézanne", 102] Between 1860–1880 the archival research reveals some new important documents, such as a letter written by the Croatian miniaturist, Giulio Clovio, who characterized El Greco as "a rare talent in painting".M. Lambraki-Plaka, "El Greco-The Greek", 42
* M. Tazartes, "El Greco", 67] In the 1890s, Spanish painters living in Paris adopted him as their guide and mentor. During this period, however, El Greco continued to still be a matter for the "happy few". Lefort was opposed to distinguished critics such as Charles Blanc and Louis Viardot, whose hostile comments on El Greco were a powerful commonplace. Therefore, Lefort wrote an article recommending the repossession of El Greco by the historians.E. Foundoulaki, "From El Greco to Cézanne", 103]

Re-evaluation of El Greco (20th century)

In 1908, art historian Manuel Bartolomé Cossío published the first comprehensive catalogue of El Greco's works.Brown-Mann, "Spanish Paintings", 43] According to Foundoulaki, "in this book El Greco is not established as the founder of the Spanish School, but as the conveyor of Spanish soul par excellence". The same year Julius Meier-Graefe, a scholar of French Impressionism, travelled in Spain and recorded his experiences in "The Spanische Reise", the first book which established El Greco as a great painter of the past. In El Greco's work, Meier-Graefe, who regarded El Greco as an utterly contemporary painter, found foreshadowings of modernity. [J.J. Sheehan, "Museums in the German Art World", 150] These are the words Meier-Graefe used to describe El Greco's impact on the artistic movements of his time:The early cubist explorations of Picasso were to uncover other aspects in the work of El Greco: structural analysis of his compositions, multi-faced refraction of form, interweaving of form and space, and special effects of highlights. Several traits of cubism, such as distortions and the materialistic rendering of time, have their analogies in El Greco's work. According to Picasso, El Greco's structure is cubist.E. Foundoulaki, "From El Greco to Cézanne", 111
* D. de la Souchère, "Picasso à Antibes", 15] On February 22, 1950, Picasso began his series of "paraphrases" of other painters' works with "The Portrait of a Painter after El Greco". In 1957 Picasso wrote a surrealist farce entitled "The Burial of the Count of Orgaz" where he has the "Meninas" burying the count.E. Foundoulaki, "From El Greco to Cézanne", 111] Foundoulaki asserts that Picasso "completed ... the process for the activation of the painterly values of El Greco which had been started by Manet and carried on by Cézanne".E. Foundoulaki, "Reading El Greco through Manet", 40-47] David Douglas Duncan relates that once, while he and Picasso were talking about influences from El Greco and Cézanne that appeared in his early paintings, Picasso grumbled in his voice that sounded like a cello: "Naturally, a painter always has a father and a mother". [D. Douglas Duncan, "Picasso's Picassos", 52]

The expressionists focused on the expressive distortions of El Greco. According to Franz Marc, one of the principal painters of the German expressionist movement, "we refer with pleasure and with steadfastness to the case of El Greco, because the glory of this painter is closely tied to the evolution of our new perceptions on art".Kandinsky-Marc, "Blaue Reiter", 75-76] Jackson Pollock, a major force in the abstract expressionist movement, was also influenced by El Greco. By 1943, Pollock had completed sixty drawing compositions after El Greco and owned three books on the Cretan master.J.T. Valliere, "The El Greco Influence on Jackson Pollock", 6-9] Contemporary painters are also inspired by El Greco's art. Kysa Johnson used El Greco's paintings of the Immaculate Conception as the compositional framework for some of her works, and the master's anatomical distortions are somewhat reflected in Fritz Chesnut's portraits.H.A. Harrison, [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9504EFDA133CF933A15750C0A9639C8B63 Getting in Touch With That Inner El Greco] ]

El Greco's personality and work were a source of inspiration for poet Rainer Maria Rilke. One set of Rilke's poems ("Himmelfahrt Mariae I.II.", 1913) was based directly on El Greco's "Immaculate Conception". [F. Naqvi-Peters, "The Experience of El Greco", 345] Greek writer Nikos Kazantzakis, who felt a great spiritual affinity for El Greco,Rassias-Alaxiou-Bien, "Demotic Greek II", 200] called his autobiography "Report to Greco" and wrote a tribute to the Cretan-born artist.Sanders-Kearney, "The Wake of Imagination", 10]

In 1998, the Greek electronic composer and artist Vangelis published "El Greco", a symphonic album inspired by the artist. This album is an expansion of an earlier album by Vangelis, "Foros Timis Ston Greco" ("A Tribute to El Greco", Greek: "Φόρος Τιμής Στον Γκρέκο"). The life of the Cretan-born artist is to be the subject of an ambitious Greek-Spanish film. Directed by Yannis Smaragdis, the film began shooting in October 2006 on the island of Crete; British actor Nick Ashdon has been cast to play El Greco.Athens News Agency, [http://www.hri.org/news/greek/ana/2006/06-05-09.ana.html#32 Film on Life of Painter El Greco Planned] ]

Notes

α. Note_label|A|α|none Doménicos Theotocópoulos acquired the name "El Greco" in Italy, where the custom of identifying a man by designating a country or city of origin was a common practice. The curious form of the article ("El") may be from the Venetian dialect or more likely from the Spanish, though in Spanish his name would be "El "Griego". The Cretan master was generally known in Italy and Spain as "Dominico Greco", and was called only after his death El Greco.

Citations

References

Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Нужно сделать НИР?

Look at other dictionaries:

El Greco — This article is about the artist of the Spanish Renaissance. For other uses, see El Greco (disambiguation). El Greco Portrait of An Old Man (presumed self portrait of El Greco), circa 1595–1600, oil on canvas, 52.7 × 46.7 cm, Metropolitan… … Wikipedia
Dormition of the Virgin (El Greco) — The Dormition of the Virgin Artist El Greco Year 1565 1566 Type Tempera and gold on panel Dimensions 61.4 cm × 45 cm (24.2 in × 18 … Wikipedia
Christ Driving the Money Changers from the Temple (El Greco, London) — Christ Driving the Money Changers from the Temple is a 1600 Christian art painting by El Greco, now in the National Gallery in London, England. It depicts the Cleansing of the Temple, an event in the Life of Christ … Wikipedia
Christ Driving the Money Changers from the Temple (El Greco, Madrid) — Christ Driving the Money Changers from the Temple is a 1609 Christian art painting by El Greco, now in the church of San Ginés in Madrid. It depicts the Cleansing of the Temple, an event in the Life of Ch … Wikipedia
Christ Driving the Money Changers from the Temple (El Greco, New York) — Christ Driving the Money Changers from the Temple is a 1595 1600 Christian art painting by El Greco, now in the Frick Collection. It depicts the Cleansing of the Temple, an event in the Life of Christ … Wikipedia
performing arts — arts or skills that require public performance, as acting, singing, or dancing. [1945 50] * * * ▪ 2009 Introduction Music Classical. The last vestiges of the Cold War seemed to thaw for a moment on Feb. 26, 2008, when the unfamiliar strains … Universalium
Cretan School — This article is part of the series on: History of Greek art Greek Bronze Age Cycladic art Minoan art Mycenean art Art in ancient Greece Archaic Greek art Classical Greek art Hellenistic art … Wikipedia
Opening of the Fifth Seal — The Opening of the Fifth Seal Artist El Greco Year 1608–1614 Type oil on canvas Dimensions 224.8 cm × 199.4 cm (88.5&# … Wikipedia
The Disrobing of Christ — Artist El Greco Year 1577 1579 Type oil on canvas Dimensions 285 cm × 173 cm (11 … Wikipedia
Egypt, ancient — Introduction civilization in northeastern Africa dating from the 3rd millennium BC. Its many achievements, preserved in its art and monuments, hold a fascination that continues to grow as archaeological finds expose its secrets. This article… … Universalium

Academic Dictionaries and Encyclopedias

Posthumous fame of El Greco

Look at other dictionaries:

Share the article and excerpts

Academic Dictionaries and Encyclopedias

Wikipedia

Posthumous fame of El Greco

Look at other dictionaries:

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link