The penultimate appointment of this journey between drawings and bacteria, between Viruses and Art. As always, with the manner of The Blue Drop. With a drop of ink and a drop of color. Writing that speaks of art, art that speaks of life.
In the last time of Viruses and Art, we have seen the role of some venereal diseases, first of all syphilis and its particular poetic role. We have seen how syphilis became not only a disease but also a kind of physical entity. This inspired the artists for scenes of high expressive value. Before continuing I will focus on a last work inspired by syphilis: this represents the culmination of the artist’s involvement in the scene, so far from the recordings of chronicle value seen in the other chapters.
Edward Munch plays a very active role in the representation of diseases of his time. Meanwhile, because he lived between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, then at the height of the idealization of these diseases. Second for its various family bereavements. Third and most important motivation, for his way of perceiving and dealing with these events and then representing them in his works. Both works with unreal and real subjects undergo a very strong deviation given by the almost negative attitude of the Norwegian painter and his visions of death, his suffering and his resignation were used as a filter. A firm distrust in oneself, in life, in love, the conviction of the indifference of others and a melancholy attitude tending to spiritual fatalism. This was Munch, who wrote about himself: << Flowers will grow from my rotting body and I will be inside them: this is eternity >>.
To represent a deadly disease, it meant for Munch, to paint it in an atmosphere of total resignation for death. It meant using soft outlines that evoked a complete breakdown of the matter and dark colors.
Questo è ciò che troviamo nell’opera “Heritage“: si tratta di una scena che a quanto pare Munch vide veramente in un ospedale.
A woman with syphilis is desperate because red bubbles have appeared on the diaphanous skin of her newborn baby, a symbol that he too will suffer the same fate and without having done anything wrong. Only the misfortune of a mother. The artist voluntarily chooses to call it “inheritance” precisely to emphasize that all that the mother will leave to her baby is the burden of her illness. Being the work after the scream,
Munch cites himself, making the newborn a shape of the head and an expression that is very reminiscent of the screaming protagonist of his masterpiece. Her face is very clear and focused, while that of the mother is little more than a reddish detail contracted in sobs and illness. The mother is an outbreak, Munch does not forgive her. While the child is an innocent, pale as if he were already dead, with the sheet that looks like a shroud, like that of Jesus.
The disease in Munch, like other elements, are entirely related to the personal experience of the artist and his perception. It is not for him a detached painting, as for other of his contemporaries who were about to finally show their personality: expressionists, impressionists, symbolists …
Speaking of Symbolism, I believe that their (beautiful) wing also participated in a way of seeing the disease in a unique way. Symbolism, which took root above all in France, Germany, England and northern Europe, can be considered an evolution of Romanticism; he interpreted the external world in a “symbolic” way, using the real and unreal datum as a way for another, relying heavily on Baudelaire’s dictates. For this reason, the iconographies and mythologies and folklore of their own countries also resumed.
Arnold Böcklin, a Swiss symbolist artist, presented his vision of the disease in a work entitled “The Plague“. Again, the most interesting thing to see is the completely personal, dreamlike and puzzling way used. It is no longer a question of documenting, explaining or devotion. Here we are dealing with introspection, unconscious fears, archaic superstition filtered through art and renewed with the new poetry of the symbol; which attracts a majestic force towards itself, since it merges with the curiosity of the public. Everyone likes “symbolic” paintings, because they are considered as puzzles to be deciphered. The symbolic disease of Böcklin is a reference to the medieval plague, which passes through the streets of an ancient Switzerland, mowing down its victims. The disease-death link is indissoluble.
The beast that rides is a kind of bird with duck beak and bat wings. It is a fantastic bestiary that recalls the medieval and Renaissance way of drawing the dragon against which St. George fought. Among the figures lying in the foreground are a dead girl, dressed in white, as if she were ready for burial. But she also has a veil. A wedding that will not be celebrated.
The real question is why among so many arguments – and did Bocklin use so many – just the plague? A quote to the history of your nation? Possible, also given the bodies of the two women with the symbolic colors of Switzerland. An omen of death that would have come in ten years with the war? Maybe. But above all, the artist had a predilection for the theme of death; in my opinion more than morbid, deriving from a series of cultural, psychological and artistic interests, imbued with the romantic catharsis.
We will now see another protagonist of the history of viruses, who, in spite of himself, linked himself to the history of art and literature. Novelists and composers used it as a great antagonist and enemy of great love stories, killing heroines such as: Mimì, Violetta Valery or the Lady of the Camellias. And with it died extraordinary characters such as Amedeo Modigliani, Blaise Pascal, John Keats and two of the Brontë sisters.
The Big T, Pott’s disease, the white sore, the scrofula. Let’s talk about tuberculosis, if you still haven’t understood. This disease, believe it or not, already existed in Neolithic times and was called in many ways by many peoples. My favorite is the Latin term consumptione since it perfectly represents the state of physical decay of the sick. Physical decay, the “consumption” day by day through even very long periods – the TB could last for years in latency stages -. In the last article I said that viruses are terribly democratic. Although tuberculosis is no different, its “status” made it more selective. I’ll explain better.
Tuberculosis was easier to catch because it was transmitted by air. However, it could be kept at bay even before the vaccine, making the body more resistant. The patient could be taken to a sanatorium where he could breathe clean air, making him eat properly and with the right rest. In general, the first thing to do was avoid contact with heavy-air environments such as large smoky cities. But these things could be afforded by wealthy physicists and who could be absent for long periods from work. Those who could not afford it (workers, workers, miners, washerwomen) or those who added to the tuberculosis an unregulated lifestyle, made the disease particularly devastating. Although it belonged to all environments, ideologically it linked to a very specific environment.
Illness became the favorite company in the lower middle classes and in the proletariat and of course among the poor people. But it was seen as a “romantic” disease due to its proximity to artistic circles, with people with an unhealthy and even a little self-destructive attitude. In the 19th century it became one of the symbols of Bohemian life (not for nothing the heroine of Puccini’s Bohème, Mimì, dies of this). It became a sort of banner for those who consumed themselves in favor of sensitivity, poetic work and the refusal of a healthy life in favor of a higher degree of inspiration. George Sand, the poet who pretended to be a man in order to publish, said that her <<Fryderyk Chopin coughed with infinite grace>>
The appearance of the TB patient was decidedly melancholic. A thin person, exhausted from coughing, with red and shiny eyes, tired and placid, just because without strength. An almost serene image, in stark contrast to the visual horrors of the plague and syphilis. Tuberculosis involved far more people, because of its ease of transmission and also because it was sometimes difficult to diagnose it. The sick were hiding so as not to lose their jobs. The image of the tuberculosis patient was romantic, ethereal, distinct, even fairytale.
This was only in the collective imagination, since the factory worker with six children, sick with tuberculosis, had nothing artistic or fairytale. The tuberculosis patient was resigned to living the life he had left in the name of inspiration; instead, the syphilis patient was a stinker who went for brothels. Edward Munch was always a great interpreter, as several members of his family fell victim to it, such as his mother and sister. In a famous painting “The Sick Child” the scene is exactly this:
This version was only the first that the painter painted, in a cycle that went up to 1927. However, although the image has an almost photographic cut, the protagonist, the little sister Johanna Sophie, had already been dead for 8 years. The desire to rediscover the intimacy of that pain emerged when, in the 80s, Munch began to express his repressed melancholy through diaries. But also and above all with his first paintings, the “soul’s canvases”.
“The Sick Child” was one of these. If we compare it with the canvas previously analyzed “Eredità”, we will see a completely different tone: here it is the intimacy of his family. The pretty girl smiles politely, as if wanting to calm the woman in tears. They are the two faces of resignation: placid and desperate. Tuberculosis is expressed with longed for serenity, syphilis as a plague that not even innocence can evade. But Munch represents all the spheres of emotion in illness, his great friend, who never seemed to leave him.
Tuberculosis, as a banner of a life devoted to romantic and sometimes heroic self-destruction, built its fame through the names of many famous people. We have mentioned a few, but the list would be long. Even without depicting it on the canvas, often certain characters, with their actions and their attitude, made themselves direct interpreters. The most emblematic remains Amedeo Modigliani, of whom I think it is right to speak. Also because his life was always tied with the disease.
Modigliani is 15 years old when he falls ill with typhus and in the delusions of fever he says he wants to be a painter. Two years later, in public school settings, he seemed to contract tuberculosis: since he dies at 36, he will be a close life partner. And this cannot fail to have influenced his vision of life and art to a minimum. For example, the choice to pass from sculpture to painting is also voted by the respiratory problems that it contracts in being in contact with the dust.
The style of his works is famous: simplified lines, long necks, orbits, deep necks for women, tapered hands. A look at prehistoric art, an intention to simplify the form to leave room for the inner datum, for the simplicity of the human datum. We cannot say whether the awareness of having precarious health could have induced the artist to face life with a sweet resignation or with an unbridled race to the carpe diem.
It can be assumed that he had a strong love of life, thanks to his easygoing temperament and his well-known sociability; but also for the indescribable quantity of works he did. It was as if, knowing that he could not live it in his own way, he was trying to solidify his vision of the human being and female beauty. In the solidity of stone and color. Because in Modigliani the colors are rather solid and firm; he had not let himself be captivated by the affected shades of Impressionists.
Although I don’t like to paint Modì with the clichés of which he is often the victim – drugged, alcoholic, sick, agitated – something unfortunately undeniable: Picasso was the number 1, nobody did what he did. To keep up, you had to give an help to imagination. It was his need, but also that of others, to direct his own artistry towards the artificial paradises that certain substances could offer. Describing Modigliani, in addition to the critical data, it is necessary to put also the emotional data, the living conditions and above all the disease. Her place is among the artists who represented her.
The “Self-Portrait” is one of the few self-portraits – if not the only one – and was painted one year before his death, when conditions were already compromised. Here appears a serene, placid, elegant Amedeo. The self-portrait always has the power to show what it really is. Even in the most extreme conditions of health or in the strongest will to show something instead of something else (a mask). Modì was ill but he knew he was a great artist, a person of heart, a cosmopolitan, a handsome boy, a passionate man, to have many friends, a love and a girl. On the back of his last painting he wrote: <<life is a gift (….) of those who know and have what they don’t know and don’t have”>>. He knew he was a man he could do. So why not smile.
Tuberculosis was never completely eradicated and continued its sad presence on the podium next to syphilis and more. But in the two-year period 1918-1920 there was the dawn of the Spanish flu, which represented an enemy not so romantic. It became a pandemic that quickly hit the whole world, causing between 17 and 50 million deaths overall. Munch contracted her and, although her physical condition was already not good, between alcoholism and nervous breakdowns, she came out healed. In the following years he composed self-portraits which, paradoxically, had a decidedly more positive light, atmosphere and setting.
It was as if in speaking of oneself, one could use a softer and less serious tone. What was written before for Modì also applies to Edward. The circumstances that accompanied the realization of these works cannot be ignored. In fact, in the years in which he made them, the painter’s life had directed towards a solitary but calm and serene style in his Norway.
Solitude was evidently a condition for which the painter was spared a little suffering. For his darkest moments, for his distrust of the world and for the amount of mourning he had in his family, it is possible to believe that he had developed a sort of sense of guilt. The loneliness, the silence, the absence from the art world and from the cosmopolitan capitals in which he had lived, seemed to give peace to the frenzy of his restlessness and to the scenes of “dissolution” in which he lost his reason.
The works of the last years became brighter and more colorful and even a sick Spanish Munch appeared with a non-ghostly air. Indeed, in the second version, above, there is a contemptuous look of those who have faced the disease and defeated it. A virus in solitude was preferred over mental illness in front of everyone.
If you want to see the Spanish Flu as a twin of Covid-19, you must also deal with the victims he brought with him. And if Munch was a survivor, Egon Schiele was a victim of it. The paradox must be immediately identified: although in his work there is ample space for topics such as death, disturbed childhood, eroticism, self-reflection, the double and the disturbing, Egon, most likely he would have gladly continued his life.
Also because he died at 28, a young age for anyone and also was about to become a father. He lived three days longer than his pregnant wife and drew his dying face, despite the fear and despair he likely felt.
He painted some dead mothers with their children, which made him pass for a sadist, a sick person and a misogynist, even for a necrophile, ’cause the women he represented sometimes looked like winking skeletons. But speaking of viruses, and of the Spanish in particular, the most emblematic work was certainly “The Family“, its secular version of the Christian family triptych.
The bitter irony is that the absolute sadness that this work possesses, Egon Schiele never knew it. At the time, Egon was married to the loved and possessive Edith, who demanded that no other model ever pose for the painter. Yet Edith was not represented here, who was blonde, but probably Wally (Wally Neuzil, his most important muse). The work was to refer only to a squatting couple, but in 1918, when Schiele learned that Edith was pregnant, she wanted to add the child to the composition. It may seem that the painter wanted to represent the family he imagined he had, but then why did not choose Edith?
Maybe because the real family would have wanted to do it with another one. With his wife Schiele achieved good stability, including economic one, and it can be said that the marriage was peaceful. But in “The Family” there is still something unsolved and mysterious. Although close and in contact the two spouses do not seem to see each other. The woman is naked and without feet. The child, perhaps the most expressive, clings to himself seeking protection. And here is the tragedy that Egon was unaware of because the little one will never see the light precisely because of the Spanish influence.
To conclude this third part, I want to use an emblematic work that contains everything that has been discussed so far. We are between 1917 and 1918 when George Grosz paints “The Funeral“. The background is this: Oskar Panizza is a well-known German psychiatrist in clinical circles, who however enjoys poetry and writing and out-of-the-ordinary subjects. In 1894 he published a theatrical text entitled Das Liebeskonzil (The Council of Love) in which he described the outbreak of syphilis as a revenge of God. The punishment for the man who had turned into a licentious and sex-dependent being. God is described as a gullible who is duped by Satan and sends a beautiful woman to earth who will be the official carrier of the virus.
For thus pointing to religion and the Church, Panizza passed an year in prison for blasphemy. Grosz was an expressionist painter who in the 1920s will use a rowdy, high-sounding, rough style – and for some even vulgar – to describe the post-war social evil and the degradation of the German world after the defeat. “The Funeral” is dedicated to Panizza and his blasphemous text.
The scene seems set in hell: the coffin in the center nails the idea of the procession with the figure of the priest who looks like a puppet; which shakes the white cross, able to stand out as a symbol on the other figures. Grosz does not describe the physical death of the friend, but the social one: the psychiatrist will lose credibility, work and mental health after the accusation. The idea in the picture is that Panizza is not yet dead, but for the society around him it is as if it were. Death happily drinks to his health as he sits on the coffin and gets carried away. The goddess of dancing death is taken up by “Danse Macabre“: an iconographic theme of medieval origin for which living and dead dance together in a sort of bacchanal, guests of Death.
All around, people of all kinds – and there may be even the dead – who flock and twist, in a frantic scene of unhealthy celebration. Hell of Grosz is in a city where the word that stands out everywhere is “BAR” (cafeteria). A nocturnal realm of alcohol and disease, where pleasures can come easily, while during the day they must be kept hidden by morality and convenience. But Grosz had no filter and for him the disease is social; indeed the virus, the microscopic one is a huge opportunity for man to remove so many disgusting masks.
In my opinion, the Covid-19 is doing the same…
Last appointment, Viruses and Art, in a couple of days!
