Crime et Châtiment: A Historical Account on Artistic Perception of Crime

Last week, taking the opportunity that I'm now in Paris, I went to see the exposition "Crime et Châtiment", or Crime and Punishment, at the Orsay Museum.  Generally, it was an interesting exposition, though the extensive number of works presented, around 450, made it a heavy exposition to watch, particularly if you stop to look and wonder at every work like I do.

The show didn't have the objective of focusing on any particular artist, or artistic movement, but on the perception of crime and punishment by the artist, and the different mediums every epoch used to document or perceive these acts.  For example, around the 1870's, most artist through the main development of journalism and the spread of mass media, had to document their views in journals. They would draw or paint little crime scenes, either mockingly or shockingly, and that would be printed in high numbers. I mostly saw this exposition as an encyclopedic account of crime and punishment throughout history, going from the Bible, the French Revolution up to Bertillon's bases for photographic judicial identification.

The exposition starts by showing the first and most popular crime of history: the murder of Abel by his brother Caïn.  Follow images of the abouts of the French Revolution and their use of the guillotine. Documents and facts are plenty, they even have a real guillotine exposed, just in case you had no idea of the apparent violence and size of the machine.  I must admit it was my first live encounter with one and it's not like in the movies, especially this one who actually had a few hits of her own.  Then come the murder of Marat and Fualdes, the romanticist view on art with all the witches by Goya in his Caprices and ladies MacBeth by numerous artists. The exposition then presents  excerpts of journalist artists in Le Petit Journal of 1866, images of judges and lawyers from the judicial world, a view of the pain of death by Victor Hugo and Warhol. Finally, the exposition finishes with the scientific approach that the system took in order to document and investigate crime. This affected the artists imaginations particularly by the searches of Lambroso, Georget and Bertillon.

Putting aside the fact that there were a lot of people and that the documentation was sort of unnerving, Crime et Chatiment still clarified compelling aspects of the time, )articularly the subjective view of events by the artists. Indeed, just as political parties or even everyday people, artists would take sides and present the event in that way, or this way, putting an emphasis on different aspects.  The most appalling example, I must say, was the murder of French revolutionary Marat by Charlotte Corday in 1793. The most famous painting of this event belongs to Jacques-Louis David, turning the man into a revolutionary martyr. Yet, opinions on the murder and the murderer diverged.  Cunning criminal for the revolutionary and a hopeful Jeanne d'Arc for the royalists.  Some diversity also existed in the matter of the event; is Corday even important, is her presence relevant. Following are two works presenting the event. The first by Jacques-Louis David, and the second by Paul Baudry. These two works exemplify the pictorial diversity that existed regarding this event. Startring by the title, they both show what the important matter in the painting is. David's one is called "The Death of Marat" whereas Baudry's is simply called "Charlotte Corday". David, a sympathizer for the revolutionanry cause, choose not to show Corday. Nor is she mentionned in the title or even placed on the picture. By totally excluding her, he shows how irrlevant she is to the event, just as stray arrow is to the death of a king. Because of this, David tries to make people forget about Corday and her royalist cause. If she is nowhere to be seen or read, she will eventually be forgotten and Marat glorified as a martyr for the nation. In David's image, Marat's wound is present, and so is the murder weapon. Yet, his face is of someone not in pain, but in extausion. He keeps a smile on the corners of his lips. Generally, this image is not violent at all. It even has something solemn to it. The light on the right creates shadows that beautify his body and render his face younger and healthier. When delivered to the convention in November of the same year, a present critic said: "(...) the face expresses a supreme kindness and an exemplary revolutionary spirit carried to the point of sacrifice".  Even Baudelaire wrote in 1846 :"(...) by a strange feat, it has nothing trivial or vile". David succeed to really create an admirable and respectable figure for his contemporaries and for further generations. 

On the other hand, Baudry's painting puts Marat and his death to the left of the image, almost as a secondary plan, where they leave the man alone to his suffering. He concentrates in depicting the complexity of Corday's figure. She stands miliseconds afetr the act, her left hand still in the position of clutching the knife.  Baudry depicts her as a grave character, snuggling in the corner but still keeping a determined face, as though just realizing the graveness of her act yet accepting it proudly, knowing it is for the defense of France and the return to peace. This is shown by the map of Frane in the back of Corday.  Her vacant eyes, lifted up to the sky, seem to glaze and answer to someone from high above, thus the comparison to Jeanne d'Arc. Moreover, where David's painting idealised Marat's death, Baudry really gives us a crime scene. The violence involved in the act is quite apparent. The turned over chair, the fallen paper and the stumbled wooden plank show how Marat and Corday must have fought. Plus, the weapon is still tucked in the body. The grimacing face, the clinging hand and the half-opend mouth testify of Marat very soon to come death.

 

This diversification of opinions really interested me in the visit of this exposition because no matter what, painters remain human and will have point of views on things.  As Max Ernst said: Just as the poet who writes down what he hears in his head, the painter must clarify and try to paint what he sees in his head".  In "Crime et Chatiment" we also see Dehas opposing Lambroso's criminal anthropology by the creation of his "Little 14 years old dancer".

Finally, I must say that even if this exposition had apalling parts and an enormous amount of goodwill and work in order to research, compile and categorize the huge amount of information they had, it is precisly this vast amount of written and pictorial documentation that might have created an overload on the spactator and thus not integrating and wholy appreciating the exposition in its right valor. Sadly, I wished there had been less works in order to let the viewers truly concentrate on the core works and not diverging and deconcentrating by all the satellite ones.

Victor Spahn: The Beauty of Movement

A boat. A beautiful sailboat, storming through the sea, fighting it's way among the waves while the crew stood impatiently waiting to know what was to happen next. The whole scene was something to admire. The tilting movement of the boat, the snapping sound of the flapping sails, the crashing of the water along the boat's hull. All of that was my first impression of Victor Spahn's painting of "Régate Ameroca".  The impression of energy and the understanding of movement was stunning.  Not only did this painting from the French-born painter struck me because of my love for sailboats, but also because of his very particular technique. He somehow managed to render the whole scene something to marvel at. The energy and the movement involved was something of prowess.

Born from Russian parents, Spahn has had a productive career. Many of his paintings have served as posters for sportive events such as for Paris's first tennis open in 1986, in 1992 for France's F1 Grand Prix up to the Rugby poster for the French Stadium. In an article from 2009 by Patrice de la Perrière, Spahn said: "I try through my works to transmit to the public a certain concept of sportive life, favoring movement and precise motion in a determined context."  Upon reading this, I understood that my impression of "Régate America" was not a coincidence and that Victor Spahn was an artist of movement and energy.

On his website I discovered many paintings demonstrating the importance of speed and dynamism as a core subject for the artist. One of them was blatant and easily comparable.  Indeed, Spahn based one of his works on an old painting, but presenting it in a totally different way. It is the painting of Napoleon crossing the pass of St-Bernard in the Alpes around 1800.  The first version belongs to Jacques-Louis David, official painter of Napoleon Bonaparte, done between 1811 and 1815. The other one is done by our discussed painter almost two centuries later.  In the first version, David gives us a very still image of the emperor, where the important details are centered on Napoleon. The image is there to skyrocket Napoleon's popularity and thus magnify the persona. It represents how glorious and imposing, how richly decorated, how determined he is. Moreover, on the bottom left corner, Napoleon's name is placed next to Hannibal, the famous commander, as to place these two great men side by side.

On the other hand, Spahn's work is only centered on the action done by Napoleon and his horse. Indeed, he erases all traces of the Alpes, of the fellow soldiers, of the scribbled rocks. He places Napoleon in a total void. There are no hints of time or space, we don't even have details for his face or anything that might help us to replace him. If it wasn't for the title or general knowledge, we would have no idea  of who he is. This means Spahn concentrates himself much more on the action done by Napoleon and his horse than on details of richness and prowess in order to uplift the person's qualities. Spahn's version is realistic on the progression of movement, focusing on the importance of the strenght required for the accomplishement of the action. The kicking movement of the horse's legs and the forward thrusting movement of Napoleon's body are what Spanh want's us to see. He seeks to demonstrate to us the progression of movement involved in the action.  In David's version, Napoleon is painted very still, very naturalistically, as thus a photograph had been taken of him whereas in Saphn's version, we have a total loss of details in order to make the viewer center himself on the progressive dynamics of the image. As such, we perceive how it is the importance of motion as opposed to anything else that triumph in his paintings.

Clearly, Spahn's work is concentrated into the demonstration of movement, speed and dynamism. His work makes me think a lot of the futurist movement in visual arts. Started by an Italian poet, it centered itself on the beauty of speed and how they would be able to catch movement and it's progression on a still image. Filipo Marinetti, the creator and writer of the Futurist manifesto, once said as regards to the Futurist movement: "The splendor of the world has been enriched by a new beauty: The beauty of speed." I believe this quotation is at the center of Spahn's work, centering his art on the importance of movement.

Following are two other works of art that exemplify and relate to what Victor Spahn seeks to achieve. The first one is another work by Spahn.  The second one, a photograph by the futurist artist Bragaglia.  The similarity between these two works is strongly apparent. Both of them concentrate themselves on the movement done by the musicians and not who they are or any other personnal detail. Again, the fact that Spahn erased the face of the musician, just as he did with Napoleon, tip us on the idea that they are not important. In his work, Bragaglia sought to take photographs that would present movement and it's progression. He would keep the camera's shutter open for a long time in order to catch movement. In his painting, Spahn also tries to present the movement done by the musician. How his right hand goes up and down and his left arm back and forth.  It is only the musician's body movements that matter and on which we have to focus on. The instrument, compared to the body of the musician seems completely stable and solid. 

                                                                  

Many comparisons could follow between artists that center themselves on particular facial expressions or that go extensively on details and Victor Spahn's disinterest of it. Nevertheless, I believe these two comparisons exemplify and clarify Spahn's precocupations for movement by comparing him to his opposite (David) and highlighting the similarities with ressembling artists.  Interestingly enough, Spahn not only depicts music and horses but also paints many various sorts of sports such as Golf, Rugby, dancing and ice skating. This demonstrates a deep observation by the artist of how these different sports evolve in their movement, how they are executed.  Since 2006, Victor Spahn has been depicting cities and landscapes. For an artist that is used to paint sports and movement, this new aesthetical interest gives a quite fascinating result. By clicking on the article's title, you will be able to acces directly to his website and explore his art by yourselves.

Here is a slideshow of some of Spahn's work that I like the most.

Moment Productions: The talent behind the Corporation

Since the creation of animated photography by the Lumières brothers in 1895, the cinemaographic genre has became a real segment of the art industry. Artists such as John Baldessari, Matthew Barney and even Andy Warhol have found a way to express themselves through this type of art.  It is notably recognized by its particularity of mixing sound and image at the same time while still keeping a continuity, a certain duration. Moreover, it is more in touch with modern technologies and permits nowadays, through mediums of mass media such as internet - thank you youtube-  to get out of museums and reach a broader public.

A few weeks ago, I contacted a young artist of which I had seen a few expos and had been impressed by his originality and dynamism. I asked if I could write about him. He warmly accepted and sent me an email with his website's adress. After visiting his website, I found myself in front of a grand footage creator with a passion for sport video editing. That passion has led him to win the notorious Cold Rush re-cut RedBull video contest. I knew he was promising in the visual art field, painting, sculpting, etc. I never thought he was as good in the art of video editing.

Nicolas Guy-Caron is a young artist from Montreal. He found his passion through coincidence after being filmed by one of his friends while trial biking. From there it is only through personal interest, friend support and self-taught work that he has reached his present state.  He started filming from school trips, people skiing to art expositions and has now found himself winning the RedBull contest.

Even though I find Nicolas a very pleasant person, we need to be professional about this and explain why his work interested me in an artistic perspective. In his videos, Nicolas Guy-Caron presents his creation in an interesting manner, positions himself well and takes precise shoots. Originality of construction is clearly present in his work.  Though I am not a ski video expert and personally know more about painting than backflips, I am nevertheless able to recognize talent when I see it. Considering that he hasn't been doing this for a while, gives him even more credit for what he does. Going through his website allowed me to see the progression of Nicolas and convinced me of talent. Trust me or not, I still advise you to go through his website and have a look at his work.

First of all, it is the equilibrium of compostion between the image and the sound that appealed to me in Nicolas's work. A certain rythm is installed between the both of them, each of them complementing the other one, rendering the whole even stronger. Indeed, his choice of music and the way he films give the video a young, dynamic and exhilarating sense. We get carried by the video. We truly get involved in what we see, not passively, but excitedly. In the following video, we see how the artist plays with simple but effective elements in order to build a viewer-reactive video. 


SNOWY BRO - Freeskiing from MOMENT PRODUCTIONS on Vimeo.

Nonetheless,  what impressed me the most about Nicolas Guy-Caron is his ability to collage elements, put things together and create a compelling whole. Collaging, or the act of putting things together, is not an easy one. It requires a lot of creativity and that spark that will give a character, a presence to the whole. It also needs a vision as the foundations on which everything will be built. What exemplifies best the artist's ability to collage is his winning-video for the RedBull Cold Rush re-cut contest. For those who, like me, don't know what it's about, it consisted in choosing and editing from 18 minutes of skiing and 8 minutes of interviews with the skiiers. Music was open for the competitior to choose. The only mandatory element was the RedBull logo.  Clearly, in order to build a prize-winning video, you need, talent, originality and creativity to put together bits and pieces and build something outstanding. I believe Nicolas Guy-Caron has achieved this. Just as the painter James Rosenquist that put heterogeneous elements together in order to build his famous painting F-111, Nicolas gathered elements and through vision and creative sense, through good taste, specially for music, and talent was awarded a widely recognized prize. Vision is what really sets these two artists apart.  Below are the Rosenquist's famous 25 meters long F-111 and Nicolas Guy-Caron's award-winning video. Seek for the similarity between the two, creativity is not far away.

Red Bull - Cold Rush Recut from MOMENT PRODUCTIONS on Vimeo.

Seize the Moment is Nicolas's  moto in a way. In an interview he explained to me that the reason behind this sentence is that it came to him from a friend, but later adopted it because it represented him well. Indeed, I see how Nicolas by chosing the elements, in order to build a whole, seizes the element he wants to transmit by expressing it in all possible levels. By mixing the music and the video he gives us a moment for us to seize and feel. That is why I believe Nicolas Guy-Caron sets himself apart from video editors to a real  video artist.  I thus invite you to visit his website by clicking on the article's title and seize as much emotion from his videos as humanly possible.

Inside Farb’s studio: A Symphony of colour and space.

A few weeks ago, when I was in New York City, I had the chance to visit Adrienne Farb in her studio. Farb is a Franco-American painter based both in NYC and Paris. She has exhibited extensively in France and in the United States. A white box of sound and silence was my firts impression of her NY studio. Very modest in manner, all white walls with multiple little windows on one. Decorated with nothing but two plastic chairs, a table covered of paint tubes and all these series of paintings reverberating with different sounds, rythms and intensities. Even if the technique could seem redundant or repetitive for an outsider, unexpectedly they are all different from one another, just as you are different from your neighbour, your siblings, fathers and friends. Conversating with Adrienne helped get a deeper understanding of her work. At first I saw them as a melody, just starting out of silence, every note interacting with the others while staying unique as regard to the feeling they create in us. It is truly through the observation of contrast of color between them, with all their natural and their unnatural, and against the silencing white background that we truly perceive the uniqueness of each painting, I dare say of each individual. It's only after the conversation that I recognized these paintings as more than ismple paintings, but as individuals. Adrienne Farb has been experimenting and developping her own particular aesthetic since the beginning of the 1990's.

As history has taught us, abstraction is more often than not related with expression of feeling. Each of these paintings, as Farb kindly explained, are there to impact us, make us feel something, make us relate to them. We could perceive Adrienne as a chemist building creations out of a combination of various elements. A little blue, merged with yellow and green against a red and purple line, and so on to compose an emotionally powerful solution.  It is through the ensemble, the mix of these elements that the painting becomes alive and then tries restlessly to communicate with us.

As an example, "Becoming Night, No. 2" of 2007, instantly conveys to us a presence of itself. It is a very imposing character. Strong by the intensity of the chosen colors and of the size of the brush strokes. The 'V' shaped image on the left, the reddish stripe behind and the green stripe on the far right give this painting a strong, present foreground. Then, on the middle ground, we have that complex mix of colors, combinations we rarely find in nature. Finally, on the background, that blue stripe running diagonally from one side to the other gives a sense of profoundness and volume, as though a heavy block of emotional feeling, talking, expressing themselves and breaking the silence that sorrounds them. We could call  this painting the tenor.

 

On the other hand, we have "Fin d'ètè, No. 5" of 2006. Colors from this painting bring us a more immediate and intensive response than "Becoming Night, No.2". Whereas the previous was more solid, smoother in it's mathching of colors, "Fin d'ètè, No. 5" is more punctuated by varied zones of direrent intensities. In effect, the yellow bands, because they are contrasted with colors such as blue, purple, orange and white become more apparent and shocking than other zones of the canvas. Rythm in this composition is also of varied speeds. They start slowly and calmly with lonely blues and purples.  Suddenly, yellows, reds, and greens  heighten the speed where it reaches its intensity in the middle of the painting with a cacophony of bands of contrasting colors. To the right of the center, the bands cool down again with long and slighter calmer colors. Let's call this character the soprano.

In conclusion, as Adrienne Farb herself said "I strive for a visual choreography in my painting, the feeling of 'becoming' created by color", her art, by putting these bands of various colors, sizes and orientations create and 'become' something of their own. They become individual and independent, being there as self-sufficient and conveying their personnalities onto their viewers for them to relate to their work. I hope by my metaphors of the tenor and the soprano, that the viewer can better understand how these two paintings very similar upon the first viewing are indeed so different. Although the vocabulary is similar, the juxtaposition of forms, colors and strokes make for the two very different paintings and thus two different discourses.

Below, is a slideshow of some of Farb's work raging from from 2000 and onwards.

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Carlos Zerpa and the Venezuelan Government: The Continuation of a Legacy

Governments, politicians and people in power have often used art as a weapon in order to pass a message and fulfill their political objectives. Building art into a political weapon is not a new practice. It has been lingering on the line of art history since its beginning. Kings would have portraits made of them and sent by diplomats as a political message, filled with symbols and messages in order to establish relations. Governments in the 20th century, specially the Communist and the Fascist one would restrict their artists to create works of art that supported the party’s ideals. For example, Kasimir Malevich saw his very abstract art restricted and censored by the USRR because it didn’t show the soviet people at work and the prowess of its people and leader. For the American government of the 50’s and 60’s, the artistic movement of Abstract Expressionism was a way of showing the world the freedom of thought that the country had. The degree of deep internal abstract expression was a way of comparing themselves to the rigid control the USSR had on its people. Their art was a symbol of democracy and freedom that the American government didn’t miss a chance of using. Indeed they used it as the ideal comparison so that they appeared better than the soviet government who censured its artist into a figurative and partisan art. Nowadays, governments keep using art as a strength in order to pass a message.
The Venezuelan government just found itself supporting graffiti and street artists who blatantly show the opposition to American government and their empire-like control over the world. Caracas’s Ministry of Commune is now creating and supporting groups of street artists such as Guerrilla Communications which give stencil and graffiti workshops all around the city. Others, like Communications Liberation Army, operate somewhat autonomously but still get material like spray paint from the government. Mr. Chavez’s policy is to endorse graffiti artists who support his revolution and his demonization of the American government. For the people walking on the streets, all these graffitis work just as advertisements work for consumerism, they push you to adhere to a certain belief and behavior.



If we compare two works, one from the XVI century and one from the XXI, we’ll see that in that particular aspect, art follows a certain pattern, it keeps serving the same purpose, no matter the cause, the aesthetical style or the materials used. Art has a legacy itself, that of passing a message, that of being a symbol. That is why politicians have used very often in history. The first piece is a painting of the English King, Henry VIII by Hans Holbein, a German painter established in London. In this painting we see that the painter depicts the king with a distorted figure, making it look much bigger than normal so that he looks more menacing and imposing. The facial expression is that of someone who is serious, who is there for important business and doesn’t want to waste his time. Finally, his clothes, rich and covered with jewellery and bright colors give the sense of a rich and powerful man. The presence of the gloves and the sword present the king as someone who is diplomatic and a gentleman, but nevertheless capable of going to war if the occasion requires him to. Overall, this image passes the message onto the receiving diplomat that the King is not to be joked with and that if things get sour, he would be ready to go to war. The painting constitutes a political message. A few hundred years later, in Caracas, we have the work of Carlos Zerpa, a member of the Communications Liberations Army, melted onto the walls of the busy city. In his graffiti representing Caravaggio’s David having cut Hilary Clinton’s head instead of the giant Goliath, M. Zerpa fills also a political role for his government by criticizing the American Secretary of State. This work of art, just like Holbein’s, is supported by its government because it fulfills a role of sending a message, a political and ideological one. As the artist himself put it, “It’s a metaphor for an empire that is being defeated”.

Though centuries and miles apart, Holbein and Zerpa twisted art in order to fulfill the same purpose, that of which making it serve as a political symbol in order to pass a message. This comparison, I hope, illustrated that Art, even though it suffers a lot of different movements and conflicts, some things stay elementary to it, no matter the time or place.

Carl Andre: The viewer Differentiation.

When going to a gallery where a Carl Andre work is shown, watching people relate or not to the work of art is quite an interesting phenomenon. For example, Aluminum Copper Alloy Square is an ensemble of picked and found metal plates, grouped together in order to form a square and laid on the ground. Now, you can have three different types of viewers: The first that doesn’t even realize there is a work of art on the floor and walks on it in order to get to the next room, the one who notices the work, either by looking on the floor or by reading the tablet on the wall, and that will circle it admiring it from different angles though never walking on it. “It’s a work of art” they will say, “It would be an insult to the artist and the work to walk on it”. Finally, you have the viewer who notices the work, understands it and walks on it, thus relating to it. Though, which viewer is right? Definitely not the one who didn’t even notice the work. Maybe the one who will not dare walk on it? Somewhere he is right because he identifies the work as a sculpture and walks around it as it were on a pedestal. He will determine the work of art himself by delimitating the perimeter of the work, where it starts, where it ends, where he can walk and where he cannot. By doing this he will also show the rest of the people how to relate to the work, working as monitors. Nevertheless, he didn’t quite understand everything. The viewer who sees the work and walks on it understands that the artist sought to create a relationship with the viewer by making them walk on the grid and feel something, be part of the work, and not take it as seriously as other would. That is why the plates are a little bit over elevated, so that when the person walks on it, he will sense a difference from the gallery floor to the work, making them feel something. The work is then truly functional.

Although, this work opens the discussion to much wider subjects, I wanted to stress the point of how people react differently to works of art, and I’m not talking about very personal expressionist art, but to a simple and very neutral minimalist work, basically metal grids on the floor. So now, you might ask yourselves: “What kind of viewer am I?” Asking yourself that question, is one of the first steps in order to better understand art. How will you position yourself to the work, how are you supposed to move around it and relate to it; Am I meant to touch it or simply look at it?, Walk around it or plainly look at it straight forward? Once this is set, the function of the object will become much clearer. That is why I choose to use Andre’s work because it shows that once the individual understands how he has to position himself to the work, its purpose becomes transparent. I agree it’s not an easy task, but one worth doing.

Along with this article, I added a video of someone truly, though playfully, interacting with the discussed work.