Lavin on Caravaggio, Alpers on Velazquez, Hyde on Boucher - Essay Example

Painting as Artifice Apparently, some critics of visual art subscribe to the common notion that painting is an artificial discipline; hence paintings are highly constructed artifices. Throughout their articles on contextually different paintings, Irvin Lavin, Alpers Svetlana, and Hyde Melissa separately reiterate that the art of visual representation through painting is a highly artificial practice riddled with contextual ingenuity, inventiveness and conspicuous contrivance. Abstractly, the three critics believe that painters skillfully invent the contents of their artworks to serve specific purposes.

Below are summary and analysis of articles by Lavin, Alpers and Hyde. Lavin on Caravaggio Essentially, Irvin Lavin remain skeptical concerning the purported interpretation of Caravaggio’s Calling of St. Matthew. According to Lavin, Caravaggio relied on the Renaissance comprehension of rhyparography and physiognomy in representing the Calling of St. Matthew, thus ending up creating paintings that were not only cunning, but also contextually devastating in literal interpretation. Technically, limited congruency between the literal interpretation and purported meaning in the paintings features as the main element of craftiness in Caravaggio’s work (Lavin 92).

Apparently, characters that would otherwise occupy similar social positions seem to play distinct, incompatible roles as portrayed by Caravaggio. On one of Caravaggio’s painting, some members inside a tax collector’s office are obscurely represented, especially the youthful beardless characters, while the old mature tax collectors including Levi are clearly illuminated. In this context, the main purpose of using distinct lighting intensities and hues is to convey a sense of directional divine illumination on selected individuals.

Alpers on Velazquez With respect to Velazquez’s painting on Las Meninas, Alpers mentions that certain contents and elements in the artist’s paintings are solely appended on the historical contexts of the characters rather than on their natural pictorial representation. Technically, artificial representation of elements and contexts in Las Meninas is in tandem with the 17th Century painting where important contents were fore-grounded or proximally situated with respect to auxiliary contents.

Apparently, the pictorial quality of Las Meninas is inventively created and sustained so as to distinguish particular features from others (Alpers 34). For example, the princess together with the dwarf maid in Velazquez’s painting is wholly depicted on the painting’s foreground. However, the upstanding soldier and other characters at the rare are casually acknowledged as a means of creating a gaze rather than a glance on the viewer. Therefore, Velazquez’s paintings of Las Meninas are anecdotally narrative as opposed to being genuine in nature.

Predictably, the artificial representation of characters in Las Meninas is meant to highlight the distinguishable social ranks of different characters. Hyde on Boucher With respect to Boucher’s portrait of Pompadour at her Toilette, Melissa Hyde acknowledges the fact that the painting is a self-representation image; hence Boucher played a re-representation role in creation of the pictorial artwork. Apparently, Pompadour wanted to self-depict herself in front of a mirror (Hyde 468). As a result, Boucher strived to pictorially represent Pompadour in a customized mirror-like reflection.

In this case, the painting is essentially an image of the character. Despite being abstractly successful as a mirror image of the character, Boucher’s work failed to achieve absolute coherence as a mirrored reflection of Pompadour. Technically, Boucher failed to meet all the mirror-reflection attributes on a painting. After the Pompadour was perfectly clad and ready for the painting, her bracelet was on her left hand; hence the bracelet should have appeared on the right side on the mirrored painting.

However, Boucher failed to represent that bracelet in a reversed manner (Hyde 468). In this case, the omission of reversion in mirrored painting is an element of artificial portrayal. Admittedly, the main function of Boucher’s artificial picture was to convey a sense of pseudo self-portrait of Pompadour in her Toilette. Works Cited Alpers, Svetlana. Interpretation without Representation, or, the Viewing of Las Meninas. Representations, 1. (1983): 30-42. Hyde, Melissa. The “Makeup” of the Marquise: Boucher’s Portrait of Pompadour at Her Toilette.

The Art Bulletin, 82. 3, (2000): 453-475. Lavin, Irvin. Past-Present Essays on Historicism in Art from Douclello to Picasso. New York: Cengage learning, 1993. Print.