- Posthumous fame of El Greco
El Greco (probably a combination of the Castilian and theItalian language for "The Greek",Ref_label|A|α|none 1541 –April 7 ,1614 ) was a prominent painter,sculptor andarchitect of theSpanish 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 complexiconography . Some of these commentators, such asAcislo Antonio Palomino de Castro y Velasco andCeán 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 theLouvre onJanuary 7 ,1838 . In 1835 Louis-Philippe had sentBaron 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 wasGoya .E. Foundoulaki, "From El Greco to Cézanne", 98, 102-103] Nevertheless, Murillo, Velázquez, Ribera, Cano andZurbarán were the painters to whom critics, artists and public referred reacted favorably to the Spanish Museum. Only a small élite preferred El Greco andGoya . [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 , andliterary 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 criticZacharie Astruc and the scholarPaul 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 asCharles Blanc andLouis 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 FrenchImpressionism , 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] OnFebruary 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 theImmaculate 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 writerNikos 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
*cite journal|last=Anstis|first=Stuart|title=Was El Greco Astigmatic |journal="Leonardo"|volume=35|issue=No.2|pages=208|date=2002|url=http://psy.ucsd.edu/~sanstis/PDFs/Greco.pdf
*cite book|last=Barr Jr.|first=Alfred H.|title=Picasso, Fifty Years of his Art|year=1946 | publisher=The Museum of Modern Art
*cite book|last=Brown Jonathan|first=Mann Richard G.|title=Spanish Paintings of the Fifteenth Through Nineteenth Centuries|year=1997 | publisher=Routledge (UK)|id=ISBN 0-41514-889-8|chapter=Tone
*cite journal|last=Byron|first=Robert|title=Greco: The Epilogue to Byzantine Culture |journal="Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs"|volume=55|issue=No.319|pages=160–174|date=October 1929|url=http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0951-0788(192910)55%3A319%3C160%3AGTETBC%3E2.0.CO%3B2-%23|publisher=The Burlington Magazine Publications, Ltd.|month=Oct|year=1929
*cite book|last=Crow|first=John Armstrong|title=Spain: The Root and the Flower|year=1985 | publisher=University of California Press|id=ISBN 0-52005-133-5|chapter=The Fine Arts - End of the Golden Age
*cite book|last=Denis|first=Maurice|title=Théories 1890-1910|year=1920 | publisher=L. Rouat et J. Vatelin
*cite book|last=Foundoulaki|first=Efi|title=From El Greco to Cézanne (catalogue) |year=1992 | publisher=National Gallery-Alexandros Soutsos Museum|chapter=From El Greco to Cézanne
*cite book|last=Duncan|first=David Douglas|title=Picasso's Picassos|year=1961 | publisher=Harper's
*cite journal|last=Foundoulaki|first=Efi|title=Reading El Greco through Manet (in Greek) |journal="Anti"|issue=No.445|pages=40–47|date=24 August 1990
*cite book|last=Gautier|first=Théophile|title=Voyage en Espagne (in French) |year=1981 | publisher=Gallimard-Jeunesse|id=ISBN 2-07037-295-2|chapter=Chapitre X
*cite encyclopedia|title=Greco, El|encyclopedia=Encyclopaedia Britannica|date=2002
*cite book|last=Grierson|first=Ian|title=The Eye Book|year=2000 | publisher=Liverpool University Press|id=ISBN 0-85323-755-7|chapter=Who am Eye
*cite journal|last=Guinard|first=Paul|title=Baudelaire, Le Musee Espagnol et Goya |journal="Revue d'Histoire Literaire de la France"| volume=67 | issue=No.445|pages=40–47|date=April-June 1967
*cite book|last=Helm|first=Robert Meredith|title=Neoplatonism and Western Aesthetics edited by Aphrodite Alexandrakis and Nicholas J. Moutafakis |year=2001 | publisher=SUNY Press|id=ISBN 0-79145-279-4|chapter=The Neoplatonic Tradition in the Art of El Greco
*cite journal|last=Johnson|first=Ron|title=Picasso's "Demoiselles d'Avignon" and the Theatre of the Absurd |journal="Arts Magazine"|volume=V|issue=No.2|pages=102–113|date=October 1980
*cite book|last=Kandinsky Wassily|first=Marc Franz|title=L'Almanach du "Blaue Reiter" |year=1987 | publisher=Klincksieck|id=ISBN 2-25202-567-0
*cite book|last=Lambraki-Plaka|first=Marina|title=El Greco-The Greek |year=1999 | publisher=Kastaniotis|id=ISBN 9-60032-544-8
*cite book|last=Marinas|first=Christina|title=La Galerie Espagnole de Louis-Philippe au Louvre, 1838-1848|year=1981 | publisher= Edition of the "Réunion des musées nationaux"
*cite journal|last=Nagvi-Peters|first=Fatima|title= A Turning Point in Rilke's Evolution: The Experience of El Greco |journal="Germanic Review"|volume=72|date=22 September 1997 |url=http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&se=gglsc&d=97922727.
*cite journal|last=Procopiou|first=Angelo|title=El Greco and Cretan Painting |journal="Burlington Magazine"|volume=94|issue=No.588|pages=74+76–80|date=March 1952|url=http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0007-6287(195203)94%3A588%3C74%2B76%3AEGACP%3E2.0.CO%3B2-P|publisher=The Burlington Magazine Publications, Ltd.
*cite book|last=Rassias John, Alexiou Christos, Bien Peter |title=Demotic Greek II: The Flying Telephone Booth |year=1982 | publisher=UPNE|id=ISBN 0-87451-208-5|chapter=Greco
*cite journal|last=Richardson|first=John|title=Picasso's Apocalyptic Whorehouse |journal="The New York Review of Books"|volume=34|issue=No.7|pages=40–47|date=23 April 1987 |url=http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0951-0788%28193804%2972%3A421%3C154%3AADSBEG%3E2.0.CO%3B2-W&size=SMALL|publisher=The Burlington Magazine Publications, Ltd.|month=Apr|year=1938
*cite book|last=Sanders Alan|first=Kearney Richard |title=The Wake of Imagination: Toward a Postmodern Culture |year=1998 | publisher=Routledge (UK)|id=ISBN 0-41511-950-2|chapter=Changing Faces
*cite book|last=Sheehanl|first=J.J.|title=Museums in the German Art World |year=2000 | publisher=Oxford University Press US| id=ISBN 0-19513-572-5|chapter=Critiques of a Museum Culture
*cite book|last=Souchère de la|first=Dor|title=Picasso à Antibes (in French) |year=1960 | publisher=Fernan Hazan (Paris)
*cite book|last=Tazartes|first=Mauricia|title=El Greco (translated in Greek by Sofia Giannetsou) |year=2005 | publisher=Explorer| id=ISBN 9-60794-583-2
*cite journal|last=Valliere|first=James T.|title=The El Greco Influence on Jackson Pollock's Early Works |journal="Art Journal"|volume=24|issue=No.1|pages=6–9|date=Autumn 1964|url=http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0004-3249%28196423%2924%3A1%3C6%3ATEGIOJ%3E2.0.CO%3B2-M&size=SMALL|publisher=College Art Association.|month=Nov|year=1964
*cite book|last=Wethey|first=Harold E.|title=El Greco and his School (Volume II) |year=1962 | publisher=Princeton University Press| id=ASIN B-0007D-NZV-6
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