Presentation and Context of the Pearls of Aphrodite - Case Study Example

Working The Pearls of Aphrodite Art can be appreciated on many levels and through many different approaches. Some people are able to appreciate art merely on a surface level, determining whether they like an image based on what they are able to see with their eyes. Others take a deeper appreciation of the art by seeing the image with their eyes as well as their physical sense, noting the techniques used to produce various effects and recognizing the influence of color upon the senses reactions. To attempt to appreciate a painting fully, however, one must learn to see it with their eyes, their heart and their minds, understanding the context of the painting and what the artist might have been attempting to communicate regarding his subject. This is particularly helpful when the artist is not as well known as, say, Michelangelo or Jason Pollack. To understand more about the historical time period as well as the artist, “The Pearls of Aphrodite” by Herbert James Draper will be examined in terms of its presentation and context in order to determine what Draper might have been trying to communicate regarding his view of the world. Herbert James Draper was born in 1863 London. He received his early art education at the St. John’s Wood Art School and was accepted into the Royal Academy Schools in 1884 (Morgan & Nahum, 2006). He began exhibiting at the Academy in 1887 and in 1898 his “Lament for Icarus” was purchased by the Chantrey Bequest, which was the country’s most important public fund for purchasing modern art. Draper won the Royal Academy Traveling Scholarship in 1889 with “An Episode of the Deluge” (Lavender & Woodwark, 2000). For the next few years, he studied art in Paris and Rome, supplementing his painting with income from book illustrations and through patronage support thanks to his romantic affairs (Lavender & Woodwark, 2000). He married Ida, who helped to settle him down as well as provided a model for some of his works. In 1900, the “Lament for Icarus” won a gold medal at the Paris Exposition Universelle. “At about the same time, the artist received an important mural commission for the ceiling of the Draper’s Hall, headquarters of one of the old London livery companies. His work combined academic figure drawing with an almost Post-Impressionist color range and pointillist technique, designed to retain the works’ brilliancy when seen from a distance and under the artificial lighting of the company’s dinners” (Morgan & Nahum, 2006). From 1901 to 1908, he worked on the mural for the ceiling of Draper’s Hall. Despite his prolific work and obvious talent, his work was never recognized in his lifetime or afterward, due, it is suspected, to some sort of falling out with the Academy leaders (Morgan & Nahum, 2006). His later years were spent focusing mainly on portraiture and continuing his larger works. Draper died in 1920 in declining popularity that continued to decline as the art world began to favor a completely new form of expression in the form of Modernism. . The painting to be discussed here, “The Pearls of Aphrodite”, is suspected to have been part of a series of paintings Draper began working on in 1894 until approximately a year or so before he died. “The structure of his major pictures is remarkably constant: they are mostly built around a relatively small number of nude or partly clad figures, mainly but not exclusively women, and hung lightly on classical or mythological pegs. There is very little of the elaborate archaeological scaffolding which other painters used to reinforce the antique tone of their pictures, and in many of Draper’s paintings this element is replaced by water: fresh or salt providing different flavors” (Lavender & Woodwark, 2000). Other than that, not much is known about the specific details behind the commission of the painting. The Victorian age is at once identified generally as a time of nostalgic perfection and rigid oppression. It is the age of change and social advances as well as the age of strict social structure and a severe regard for the customs of the past. Under the reign of Queen Victoria, the Industrial Revolution came of age, blossomed and brought sweeping change across the country and the world. Life switched from being primarily dictated by the land one owned to a social structure based on commerce and manufacturing (Greenblatt, 2005). In this switch, there was a great deal of social upheaval as people living in these changing times began to question the status quo. Social class structures were beginning to break down as common men were able to make fortunes in industry and landowners found it more and more difficult to keep the idyllic life they’d constructed alive. Moving into more modern times, the advent of two world wars, world-shaking scientific discoveries, tremendous advances in technology and new theories of the mind all served to bring questions into long-established customs and norms of society (Radek, 2006). These changes brought about new ways of thinking about the world and a fundamental shift in popular theories regarding art and literature. Modern artists working since the early part of the 1900s have dedicated themselves to depicting the range of human emotions within the colors and lines of their work rather than through the pictorial approach taken by artists of the past. The modernists, such as Picasso, focused on the emotions themselves with little or no reference to the popular symbols or issues of the times. They felt that the only way to portray the realism of their subject was to break the rules of art in order to explore images of pure emotion or the sublime (Lyotard, 1984). In this shift, technical artists such as Draper, who used pictorial images as a means of expressing ideas and thoughts, quickly fell out of favor with critics impressed with the new approach. “The Pearls of Aphrodite” features a tall, honey-blonde near nude figure standing upon some rocks. Her hair billows around her white body like a protective cloak and is held from her head by a golden circlet. Her pose, as she stands, is leaning slightly back away from the picture plane with one arm raised to hold a string of pearls up by her slender neck and the other hand extended out and curved slightly around her body to hold the other end of the pearls. The shape of her arm seems to suggest a graceful ballet movement which, combined with her contrapposto stance, gives the energy of the painting to Aphrodite herself Aphrodite is nude on the upper portion of her body with the pearls falling gently across her small cleavage and her white body itself stands as the typical revered white column usually associated with antiquity. Her lower body is loosely draped with white gauze only slightly whiter than her skin, representing purity and godliness, which were the ideals of the feminine, but also draped with a red cloak barely visible behind her, representing her more sexual nature. She is flanked on either side by nude or mostly nude young girls, all of whom are looking adoringly up at her as she pulls at her beads with the exception of one. This one, mostly dressed, is leaning down into the pool at Aphrodite’s feet where a dark and well-muscled young man holds a bunch of pearls in his upturned palm for her selection. The women are grouped on a small rock outcropping in a water-filled grotto surrounded by tall cliffs, giving it a secluded, protected feel. The painting has a very vertical line to it with the exception of the center column, which includes the young man, the young woman’s arm reaching down to him and providing the necessary bridge into the smooth curve of Aphrodite. The myth of Aphrodite traces back to the idealized ancient Greeks, a trend of looking back at the past that characterized the art and literature of the Victorian era in response to the changing world around them. “According to Hesiod, when Kronos (Cronos) had cut off his father’s members, he tossed them into the sea. The immortal flesh eventually spread into a circle of white foam... from this foam, Aphrodite was created. Her name literally means foam-born” (Stewart, 2005). Although she is somewhat the daughter of Ouranos, as it was his phallus from which she grew, she has no associated mother and took several lovers, including Adonis (Cotterell, 1980). Aphrodite emerged from the waters already a goddess of love, beauty and growing things. As the goddess of love, Aphrodite presided over sexual love, affection between people and other social relationships. According to Guerber (1990), she was not only the goddess of lovers, but the goddess of gardens and gardeners. “The rose, lily, hyacinth, crocus and narcissus were sacred to her; so were the dove, the sparrow, the dolphin and the swan” (Guerber, 1990, p. 90). Aphrodite was as well known for her anger, jealousy and tendency to interfere without forethought as she was for her beauty and sensual connotations. “In fact, she can tend to drift into situations with an aplomb only possible through reckless disregard for the future. Aphrodite can be the source of envy arising from a pulsating desire for life and love” (Miller, 2002). The combination of love and power within this individual deity brings into play the possibility of a “union of opposites wherein the lovers are annihilated” (Miller, 2002). Comparing this generally accepted concept of the myth with the depicted image as presented by the Victorian painter Draper helps to demonstrate the artist’s conceptions of women. As has already been mentioned, the concept that Aphrodite was the promiscuous goddess of love is illustrated in the painting through the very subtle addition of the red cloak billowing behind her, but this is heavily outweighed by the Victorian concept of the perfect woman as a pure virgin, thus the white drapery around her. The inclusion of the water symbolism both at Aphrodite’s feet and behind her serve to characterize her as the goddess born from sea foam while the white clothing also helps to suggest the foam of her birth. The enclosed area of the painting, surrounded by light-colored cliffs with a gentle V shape in the center back suggests the secluded, protective womb of the ocean from which the goddess was born. Flowers in the hair of some of the handmaidens refer to Aphrodite’s association with the garden and growth. Victorian values are again instilled in the image, though, with the careful nudity depicted. While many of the characters in the image seem to be nude, only Aphrodite’s bare breasts are exposed, the others cleverly concealed by clothing, less scandalous body parts or other characters. Draper also includes the jealous aspect of the love inspired by the deity in the adoring faces of the young girls attending her. Despite the handsome and muscular youth emerging from the pool of water at the bottom edge of the picture plane, the only woman who notices him is the young woman gathering pearls for her mistress’s use, looking directly into the palm holding the pearls rather than out toward the young man. The interest here is not in building couples, but in adoring Aphrodite as the perfect female form. Thus, Draper manages to use the traditional conceptions of Aphrodite as they had been understood for centuries to convey a sense of women as both goddess and monster, deserving adoration but commanding it as well. Those living in the reign of Queen Victoria might have felt much the same inner tension. References Cotterell, Arthus. (1980). A Dictionary of World Mythology. New York: G.P. Putman’s Sons, pp. 131-33. Greenblatt, Stephen (Ed.). (2005). “Introduction: The Victorian Age.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Vol. 8. New York: W.W. Norton. Guerber, H.A. (1990). The Myths of Greece & Rome. London: Biblo-Moser. Lavender, David & Woodwark, John. (2000). “Herbert James Draper.” Phryne. Available February 9, 2008 from Lyotard, Jean-Francois. (1984). The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Trans. Geoff. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Miller, Iona. (July 20, 2002). “The Empress.” Synergetica Qabala. Available February 9, 2008 from < http://zero-point.tripod.com/pantheon/Aphrodite.html> Morgan, Hilary & Nahum, Peter. (1989). Burne-Jones, The Pre-Raphaelites and Their Century. London: Peter Nahum. Radek, Kimberly M. (May 30, 2006). “Women in the Twentieth Century and Beyond.” Women in Literature. Illinois Valley Community College. Available February 10, 2008 from Stewart, Michael. (November 14, 2005). “Aphrodite.” Greek Mythology: From the Iliad to the Fall of the Last Tyrant. Available February 9, 2008 from Read More