Mysteries of the Unimportant
Many great artists have captured the mystery of the unimportant, the insignificant, and made it immortal. Flip through an art history book and look for all the great paintings of nothing; at least nothing of material significance.
There were hundreds of windmills in Holland. This one, painted by Rembrandt, does not appear to be particularly special, but he renders it almost divine with its exalted position set in incredible lights and darks—and it is molded in those same contrasts. The people at the bottom help it come alive but are themselves incidental.
In this cramped bedroom, as mundane as any space can be, Van Gogh gives us something of wonder. In fact, he did three versions, all very similar. It is perhaps the subtle color composition that transforms the ordinary and lifts it into the stratosphere of masterpieces, but there is something more that is hard to pin down.
It’s just a diner. It could be any diner anywhere in the country in an inexact year. Unimportant people in an unimportant place. It’s “Nighthawks,” by Edward Hopper. It has become an American icon.
Sometimes the peripheral things are the most powerful. In Orazio Riminaldi’s painting of Cupid, ordinary objects become keenly symbolic, but it’s his loving treatment that gives them a separate brilliance.
Yes, every work of art can be said to be about composition and technique. The glowing underpaintings of Edward Hopper are rarely discussed but constitute a power that makes the commonplace almost overwhelming.
But what makes something or someone important is often as much mystery as what makes a thing unimportant. An appearance? An assumption? Maybe it depends on who’s looking and how you look. Something indefinable is hitching a ride on the canvas, then jumping into our flickering and hurried thoughts, stirring up our imagination. Maybe it’s the artist’s sense of wonder that grabs us – lifts us beyond the temporal and lets us fly.
It’s the up-side of PTSD. Even in the dark enclosure of hurt, there is something in our life that can lift us, propelling above the darkness. I think it’s ultimately the beauty found in the supernatural.
I loved this column today, and all of the paintings featured.
One of your best yet