Kings, Clowns, and Depth
Douglas Hyslop
Summary
My art centers on human figures. They are often clowns. They want to belong. They want to be respected. I try to oblige. I try to find an appropriate emotional and intellectual space for them. To this end I make figures and objects transparent, as well as make mirror image reflections of them. Transparency means more than one figure or object can occupy the same two-dimensional space on the picture surface. Reflection, on the other hand, means the same figure or object can be seen in more than one location on the same picture surface. The ultimate objective is to provide a sense of humanity for the figures, to suggest a dignified presence and meaningful relationship between one figure and another, between figures and objects, and between the figures and the totality of the pictorial composition. More than this, in the end, it is truth itself that is sought. The mode of narration, if you can speak of that, is of a quest.
Figures
It should be evident that my art centers on human figures. But more than that, I attempt to create an emotional and intellectual space for them. First the figures. I have been asked, “Why all the clowns?” Simple answer: clowns tend to be truth tellers. It has often been said that the king trusts only his jester to tell him the truth. In King Lear the old king banishes his most faithful daughter for telling him the truth, but listens when his Fool does likewise. However, the place of clowns in the larger scheme of things seems to be problematic. They tend to come and go, appear and disappear, be part of the story but not part of it. As for Lear’s Fool, it seems he disappeared from the story midway through the play, and his fate remains uncertain to this day. We learn with certainty the fates of most of the important characters in the play, but not that of the Fool. To compound this, we never learn the real name of the Fool, as though he possessed no conventional or real identity. So where does the clown fit in the larger scheme of things? The poet Rilke wrote about the clowns in Picasso’s Les Saltimbanques (The Acrobats): Rilke argued they existed in an “arduous nowhere.” This was early 20 th -century, the time of World War One and the collapse of the old order. A century later I don’t think we need artists and poets to tell us that on the whole we seem again (or still?) to exist in some kind of nowhere. Is it possible to find a better place, or a pathway or process that leads there?
Rosamond Tuve, a scholar and critic of another time, wrote extensively on allegory: “The major strength of allegory is its brilliant resolution of the problem of the relation of particulars and the general or universal.” Without trying to define allegory, suffice it to say allegory is a mode of story telling full of metaphors and images, particularly mirror images, but other double images as well, all in an atmosphere that often seems to direct action with a sense of fatalistic exactitude. Allegory famously (or infamously?) provides the language of ideology, for example, of politics and religion. But it also provides the language of the quest.
In literature and art a distinction is sometimes made between the serious (sometimes referred to as tragic) and the comic (you could say real as opposed to ideal) mode of representation. In the former figures are portrayed as their models “should be” (like Greek classical depictions of their gods); in the latter they are portrayed as their models “are” (with their flaws, as it were, and often as comic caricatures). Consider the context of ballet. An accomplished ballerina makes a great effort to get her poses and movements just right, to trace out harmonious lines and to provide an atmosphere replete with aesthetic beauty. But ballet is about more than discipline and aesthetics. Consciously, or unconsciously, the true ballet dancer arguably strives to dance with the spirit of the 16 th -century pléide poets, who may have provided the spiritual ground of early ballet. The ballerina turned historian, Jennifer Homans, wrote of the pléide poets in this context: They “believed that hidden beneath the shattered and chaotic surface of political life lay a divine harmony and order — a web of rational and mathematical relations that demonstrated the natural laws of the universe and the mystical power of God.” If my understanding of early ballet is correct, early dance masters strove to find a way of comportment in the dance that was worthy of the ideal world they envisioned beyond the chaos they lived in. In more recent times, Alexandra Danilova, a 20 th -century ballerina, said Balanchine’s Apollo “doesn’t just demand good dancers, it demands goddesses.” Discipline, aesthetics, noble comportment to the point of appearing god-like, these seem critical hallmarks of ballet. In handling the human figure, I try to take my lead from here. In short, although I generally work with comic figures, I attempt, when possible, to portray them in the tragic mode. There is the notion of a quest here: hopefully the figures suggest they are seeking to become better than they are — what they could be.
In times past during Carnival, the period of reckless abandon preceding Lent, role reversal was a prominent theme. For example, the king played the clown and the clown played the king. Reading Shakespeare you begin to believe clown and king share some sort of ontological relationship with each other, as though each is the other’s antipode. The Henry IV plays arguably have a carnivalesque structure. At the core of these plays is an intertwined relationship between Prince Hal, future king of England, and John Falstaff, one of the great buffoons in all of literature. Certainly my world is not that of Shakespeare, neither Elizabethan nor Jacobean England, but I do recognize an uncanny relationship between king and clown, a relationship that may be a sort of universal, part of the essence of humanity itself. In any event, in my world, when the clown aspires to better him or herself, I imagine that personage aspires to become not so much a king or queen, but rather some kind of philosopher king or philosopher queen.
Strictly speaking, a philosopher king was conceived of in terms of an ideal ruler or statesman. I am thinking of something more general. Plato, who conceived the idea of the philosopher king, lived at the end of the Golden Age of classical Greece, and was a younger contemporary of the great playwright, Sophocles (However, although their lives overlapped, there was a 70 year difference in their ages.). In Greek drama of the time the person who spoke the truth to the king was often a blind seer (Has there been an evolution historically from seer to clown?). In Sophocles’ Oedipus the King blind Teiresias told King Oedipus the truth, the upshot of which was the self-inflicted blindness of the great king. It has been said that for Sophocles the “blind man” was the image for “humanity.” The idea seemed to have been humanity progressed like a blind man. In the case of Oedipus, only when blind was he able to see beyond appearances, see humanity, you could say. I don’t think you need to be literally blind to “see” humanity, but I believe experiencing loss helps. Blindness serves as a pretty good symbol for this. My notion of philosopher king or philosopher queen would be able to perceive, feel, understand the meaning of and be compassionate toward humanity.
Over the years I have painted a number of blind Harlequins. Harlequin is a classic character in the Commedia Dell’Arte (Comedy of Art), which has a long history in the realm of slap-stick comedy. Traditionally Harlequin was something of a trickster, but also a survivor. A century ago Pierre Duchartre, in a study of the Comedy, observed that “the masks of Pulcinella (another Comedy of Art character) and Harlequin will always signify something vital and intense, for they are sculptured by both art and time to a semblance of humanity.” More than once I have portrayed a blind Harlequin as a flamenco cantaor (singer) in what might be called a juerga (flamenco session made up of singers, dancers, guitarists, a few others). Whether there is any real sense of humanity or the presence of philosopher kings or philosopher queens in these paintings is up to the viewer to decide.
For me, if king and clown share a kind of antipodal relationship, ballet and flamenco do likewise: If the ballerina excels at toe-pointe (dancing on toes as though ascending into the air), the flamenco dancer excels at zapateado (dancing that stresses the percussive effects of footwork). Flamenco traditionally is danced on raised wooden floors with empty space underneath. The beat of the “floor stomping,” if you can call it that, can perform like an echoing incantation, and the overall effect of the aching voices of the singers, the sometimes wild and virtually always dramatic dancing of the dancers, all combined with the compàs (rhythmical structure) set by guitarists who, because of compàs, seem almost magically to hold everything, performers, observers, the juerga itself, in unison, can be mesmerizing. I am not a flamenco aficionado (I have never been to Spain.), but this art form speaks to me. In the Electra of Euripides, the great classical Greek tragedian, there is a scene where a nameless Mycenaean peasant demonstrates nobility worthy of the Theban royalty who visit him. I may be the only one, but I find something like this sometimes happens in flamenco: the dancers of the Salt of the Earth can be just as noble as the Angels of Apollo. I believe in this nobility there is also a sense of humanity, regardless of how much suffering and pain is or is not experienced by the artists at either end of this spectrum.
Depth
Besides the figures there is the emotional and intellectual space. Begin with “depth” in drawing and painting, something which has a long history. Although height and breadth of a picture can easily be measured, pictorial depth cannot. Although you may see depth in a picture, its surface is really flat, so the distance of any depth is an illusion. For modern Formalists, the illusion of depth was to be eradicated, but I think the ensuing eradication led to a sort of literal reductionism that took the life out of painting, left us with a void, you could say (As far as I can tell, the dogma of Formalism still reigns supreme, however.). I begin with philosophy during the pre-Socratic period. The famous philologist, Bruno Snell, said the following: “In Heraclitus the image of depth is designed to throw light on the outstanding trait of the soul and its realm: that it has its own dimension, that it is not extended in space.” I don’t know how many people believe in souls anymore (Carl Jung, famous for his theory of archetypes, is said to have said modern man has lost his soul, and doesn’t know where or how to find it.). Nevertheless, I find the ideas of Heraclitus worth pursuing in the context of painting on a flat surface. Even if we don’t have souls anymore, maybe we do have some animating principle that can be ignited so that an inner fire burns (In times gone by, many found evidence of the presence of the soul in the illumination of the personage in question, but I don’t think illumination is still considered a valid concept in this context.). In modern depth psychology an attempt is made to relate depth written about by the ancient Greeks — particularly Heraclitus — to dreams and underworld mythology. The mythological underworld is sometimes called an upside-down world, and it has been asserted that other upside-down worlds are found in the circus and carnival, the world of clowns. In depth psychology there is the notion that the work of writers and artists is a way to get in touch with the soul or animating principle above. George Orwell said that Tolstoy’s War and Peace was full of characters who were “struggling to make their souls.” Souls or not, this is what has drawn me to Tolstoy, especially the Tolstoy of War and Peace.
How to proceed in the realm of depth? For a long time I have believed painting helps me make contact with my subconscious, regardless of whether there is a soul there. In this context I pursue the notion of depth. However, I do it in a rather literal manner, by way of transparency and reflection. I attempt to make figures and objects glass-like, both transparent and reflective (Dante, in The Divine Comedy, discourses on the soul using both the metaphor of a transparent “aery body” and of a perfect “mirror image.”), as much as is possible and meaningful. Here we arrive at the crux of my method of painting. First Transparency. When more than one object or figure occupies the same two-dimensional space on a canvas (so there is overlapping of figures or objects, meaning that in three-dimensional space the object or figure in front should block from view that behind), I attempt to portray both that which is in front, and that which is behind, as far as is meaningful. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, a 20 th -century phenomenologist, wrote extensively about perception, and defined what is called the “riddle of depth,” which is about the connection between the overhead view of a scene and a straight-on view: “It is precisely because things disappear behind each other (straight-on view) that I see them in place (overhead view) … (and) it is precisely because each is in its place (overhead view) that they are rivals for my gaze (straight-on view).” It is arguable that in my painting I am trying to investigate, penetrate, speculate on the meaning of this riddle, and ultimately let things go where they will. However, to repeat myself, I attempt to portray both that which is in front, and that which is behind, as far as is meaningful. This seems to suggest, to me at least, that just because one thing is behind another, it is not necessarily inferior to that which is in front. It is said that in Gothic churches just because a figure is represented in a more humble location of the church than is another figure, it does not mean the humble figure is less important than one in a more exalted location. I think understanding this may be more important than all the thoughts, notions, ideas I am presenting in this essay.
Mirror images work differently when compared to transparent ones on a flat surface. Whereas with transparency two or more figures or objects can exist in one place, with reflection a figure or object is multiplied, and seems simultaneously to exist in more than one location. In this sense, there is something of an antipodal relation between transparency and reflection, but both play their role in part-whole relationships. In regards to reflection, I tend to restrict reflecting surfaces to mirrors, windows, and up-right pianos (In my handling, although violins and accordions seem suited for transparency, pianos do better at reflecting mages.). I also tend to portray figures and objects at oblique angles to the reflecting surfaces. The idea is to see the mirror image of the personage or object in question from a different angle than the actual personage or object is observed, to see the personage or object in question in a new light, you could say. Actually, use of oblique angles is part of a larger scheme. Generally I construct objects and architecture of a picture obliquely to the picture plane. In such cases the rules of classical point perspective require two infinite points on the horizon. The resulting composition is generally more dynamic than a straight-on single point perspective viewpoint where the viewer is perpendicular to the picture plane. I find that two point perspective usually facilitates a sense of “opening up” of the action in the picture, so that something in the background may appear to be about to come forward or reveal itself. More specifically, with oblique perspective, foreground empty space is fairly easy to come by, as are smaller spaces further back between objects and figures, all leading to an accumulated space that can provide the eye with empty locations to move into, as well as a pathways to get there, often in a diagonally implied movement.
But I must comment on my using classical perspective. Since the time of Cezanne and subsequent Cubism, as well as abstract art in general, classical perspective has been considered inappropriate, at least by almost every modern art critic that I have read. I always take seriously the ideas of Merleau-Ponty, so I will try to respond to what I think his position was. He considered perception, and depth along with it, a full bodied experience, and referred to it with terms like “embodied experience” or “embodied spatiality,” phenomena which he asserted could not be reproduced with classical perspective techniques. I agree. It has been said that Paul Klee, when he walked through a wood and looked at the trees, he imagined the trees looked back at him. Certainly more than perspective would be required to pictorialize this experience. But I also take seriously the question posed by the art historian James Elkins: “Is it too extravagant to say perspective is both that which pushes the eye through paintings and that which pushes thought when one thinks about that painting?” I would say this is true when I try to create paintings, as well as understand them. It seems to me that perspective alone cannot yield the “embodied experience” of Merleau-Ponty, but I also believe perspective should not be totally rejected. As it turns out Merleau-Ponty also argued that in this context there is a dialectic at work between conceptual (reflective) and perceptual (pre-reflective and emotional) dimensions of consciousness. In short, concepts also affect how the world appears to us. For me, at least, classical perspective is within the realm of the conceptual and reflective. When I try to create paintings, I try to work with classical perspective, as well as with the unreflective and emotional (the subconscious, you could say), to have a dialectic between them.
In allegory costumes and jewelry symbolize something essential about the personages wearing their costumes or jewelry, who these personages are and where they belong in the larger scheme of things. This is often stated in terms of cosmos: There is focus on the relation between the micro-cosmos (individual personage) and the macro-cosmos (the larger world or universe that the personage exists in). In allegory the word cosmos generally refers to world or universe or larger whole from the stand point of having some kind of unity or harmony, as opposed to being amorphous or meaningless. However, the word cosmos also is said to mean “ornament,” suggesting the importance of the jewelry and design patterns discussed above. In order to find the deeper meaning of a personage or the whole, a relation needs to be understood between them, and this is generally sought with the aid of metaphors and images and symbols. The idea in allegory is to bring real events in parallel to symbolic ones (This idea is sometimes referred to as “magical causation.”). My first interest in all this is to bring a sense of integrity and dignity to the personages that I portray. Here jewelry and costume can play a critical role, the idea being that a particular individual has his or her unique symbol or design pattern. I make a special attempt to articulate this jewelry or costume, both for figures in front and those behind: when more than one figure, jewelry, costume, object occupy the same two-dimensional space on the canvas, the goal is to maintain the integrity of all. Can the different figures, their different symbols (costume designs, for example) in the same space be individually identified and exist with their symbols intact? If so, I think there is a sense of integrity implied for each. And if there is integrity, it would seem dignity is not far away. In addition, for me at least, the figures seem to attain a kind of special relation to each other. And if they have a relation to each other, maybe they also have a relation with a larger whole, at least with something more than themselves. This would seem to be expecting a lot. But I can at least try to portray such. In my quest, I follow a difficult pathway: If with figures I try to trace out lines worthy of those traced by a ballerina as she moves in empty space, with the costumes and jewelry worn by the figures I try to construct designs and patterns with the sense of flawlessness found in Hiberno-Saxon manuscript illumination painting of long ago. Celtic artists of the time (7 th - through 9 th -century CE) painted elaborate designs (the most complex and impressive called carpet pages) made up largely of spirals and interlacing ribbons, and done impeccably. J. O. Westwood, a 19 th -century scholar, analyzed the Book of Armagh and made the following comments: “In a space of about a quarter or an inch superficial, I counted no less than 158 interlacements of a slender ribbon pattern formed of white lines edged with black ones upon a black ground. No wonder that tradition should allege that these unerring lines should have been traced by angels.” In my case, the overlapping figures and designs and objects do not have such complexity, are not traced without mistakes, and certainly not by angels. But I would like to think they are at least traced with the aid of the better angels of my nature. I handle musicians and their instruments as I do figures with each other. Now the transparency and overlap is between figure and object, the appropriate musical instrument. When dealing with musical instruments I often am reminded of the comments of the existential philosopher Gabriel Marcel, who questioned “how the soul of the violinist, let us say, can pass into the violin.” I don’t know if a soul can pass into anything, but certainly something special happens when a great violinist performs, but at least since the time of St. Augustine, souls have been construed in terms of a musician playing his or her musical instrument. Architecture is also important here. Besides towers, I have many columns and arches, often in series, and like the double arches of the great mosque-cathedral of Cordoba, they are often striped. As I said above, I almost always portray objects, including architectural objects, obliquely. As a consequence, visibility of columns and arches that would be blocked from view when seen straight on, now potentially can be seen both because of transparency and because of the angle at which they are viewed. Sometimes columns and arches in the background seem to be in the foreground, and those in the foreground the background. More than this, it can be difficult for the eye to keep the architecture still, as it were, as it seems to dance about. To summarize, in regards to the goals and methods outlined in this long paragraph, whether there is integrity, dignity, special relationships, larger wholes, magical causation, dancing of columns, presence and movement of souls into empty violins and accordions, the observer will have to decide for him or herself.
Between the years 726 CE and 843 CE a great controversy raged in the Byzantine world concerning whether or not icons (religious paintings) could be painted. The period is usually referred to as the Iconoclastic Controversy. During this period icon painting was forbidden with punishment being amputation of the hands of the artist. In the years leading up to the controversy, John of Damascus (sometime called the Damascene) provided a defense of icon painting that may be considered the paradigm for the foundation of icons in the Orthodox Christian church (Since 843, icon painting has been sanctioned by the church.). Although the Damascene arguments roam far and wide, I have focused on an observation by the art historian and philosopher Moshe Barasch: “It (the Damascene argument) is an approach to the image in terms of the human condition.”
Whatever the human condition means to others, to me it means we, as human beings, if we are truly honest with ourselves, have an inherent need and desire to understand who we are, where we are, where we are going, what we belong to. But these questions may ultimately be unsolvable, at least if we are not helped in some way. If I understand Barasch correctly, he maintained a critical passage here that lays the Damascene foundation is I Corinthians 13: 12: “I see through a glass darkly, but then face to face.” The idea seems to be that the “dark glass” (also referred to as the “enigmatic mirror”) is a prototype or metaphor for the icon as a mediator between icon observer and meaning beyond the icon itself, a mediator that helps you see through the icon, as it were, to the meaning on the other side. It could be said that with my glass-like, partially transparent figures and objects, I pursue something of what John of Damascus argued for (Indeed, Barasch, speaking of the Damascene position, said “the bodily elements can be made diaphanous, at least to a certain extent.”). Whether I impart any meaningful sense of the human condition or how to deal with it the observer must decide for him or herself.
Merleau-Ponty said the following about mirror images: “The mirror itself is the instrument of a universal magic that changes into a spectacle, spectacles into things, myself into another, and another into myself.” The idea seems to be that when I look into a mirror, I see myself as others see me, but I also see myself as another, which leads to an “intermingling of self and other.” This has been called “the enigmatic and un-canny character of the specular (mirror) image.” If I understand Merleau-Ponty correctly, he is arguing we are not as isolated from each other as we might think. Maybe a sense of belonging to something beyond our individual selves is not impossible. Maybe the endgame of the present epoch doesn’t have to be nihilistic. Regardless, a slightly different take on mirror images is as follows. It is sometimes said that the person reflected sees him or herself in a kind of utopia, as it were. It’s as though the individual personage sees him or herself in some ideal place, as though the mirror and its image represent some kind of allegorical cosmos. Actually the so-called ideal place might be conceived as somewhere between utopia and dystopia, a place where the actual meets the aspirational. My thought is that if this occurs, maybe the person in question comes to know better who he or she is, comes to know better the self. The classical Greek never stops reminding us of the importance of knowing the self. Focusing on the self may begin with selfishness, alienation, narcissism, but when pursued as it was by someone like Socrates, it is arguable that it leads elsewhere and becomes a search for truth. Shouldn’t art be about this? In the wake of Socrates, Plato, even though he banned artists from the Republic, he also argued the pathway to truth is found in the pursuit of beauty. Come better or worse, this is the pathway I try to follow.
Epilogue
I have presented my goals and objectives, methods and techniques, and some of the ideas behind them. Now I need observers and an audience. The literary critic, Claire Harman, wrote about Jane Austen and her audience: “Even when she was published and praised, in the last six years of her life, she’d learned from that long attrition of waiting not to place too much hope in real readers, but focus on the ideal one.” I am no Jane Austen, but if she wrote for an ideal reader, I paint for an ideal viewer. As I write this (the year is 2024), I have painted seriously for a little more than 50 years, but still no audience. Should I be surprised? Perhaps not. I have created a “clown world” that is not funny. Everybody knows clowns are supposed to be funny. Nevertheless, as I said at the beginning, my figures want respect. I am more interested in the other side of “funny.” Who is it that is there? What is the “could be” of the personage behind the mask? Every now and then someone stumbles along and seems to look, see, understand, even pay respect to my work. I can only hope my paintings survive long enough for a few more rare souls to stumble along and possibly do likewise.